Alcohol - your servant, not your master

The quote is Churchill's. I cannot envisage a life without alcohol, but then nor can I contemplate being dependent on alcohol. December is a month for knocking it back - but in measure. Indeed, if you can't measure it, you can't manage it.

This afternoon, after four days without any drink whatever, I was imbibing copiously at our staff Christmas party, an occasion to let the wine flow and the Slavic souls to open to one another. Splendid stuff! Such is the essence of human life, the tribe together, celebrating, encouraging, expressing gratitude. Plentiful wine (seven generous glasses), denied by none, an essential ingredient. A great bunch of people I work with!

In the big picture, I have scaled back my alcohol intake. I've been doing so over the past five years, since I began logging paces walked, exercise, diet and drink, and I'm nicely on target to be below 20 units a week over the course of this year. This is, however, well above the new NHS limit of 14 units for men and women, but well below the 28 units for men that used to be the norm for years since a new puritanism took hold in the health service. 14 units or below is for, well, Mormons*.

I've stopped buying wine or beer for home consumption - these days, I generally limit drinking to social drinking, a glass or two of wine with dinner, the infrequent beer night with the London boys, a family celebration. Being somewhat on the Asperger's spectrum, I find alcohol to be an essential social lubricant. Going out to chat with people while stone-cold sober (as happens during Lent when business dictates), I say little and leave early. A glass or three of wine or a beer or two and I'm as voluble  and loquacious as the next person.

Does alcohol make one more creative? I find that it does, but again there needs to be an aim - if I know I'm going to be writing, a glass of wine or a bottle of beer does open new perspectives, make my mind more apt to coin new metaphors, it allows for fresh intuition and a sense of connecting with the Cosmos, breaking down the walls of Self. I can't remember which Polish writer it was, but asked about drinking and writing, she said that she writes sober, but edits her texts under the influence. With me, it tends to be the other way round!

Being in control is the thing; not so much knowing when to stop, as knowing at what rate to pour it in to achieve an optimal effect. In other words, the measured approach. Know when to drink, how to drink, and why. I've pretty much stopped drinking altogether when there's no reason. I don't reach for the bottle of an evening at home after work any more - it's an easy and lazy routine to get into. This year I'll have had quite a few more drink-free days than ones when I knocked something back.

But it is, if treated correctly, a spiritual thing - note the importance of wine in Catholicism and Judaism. It opens the Doors of Perception, it allows for a different perspective that enhances creativity. I find those anomalously familiar qualia flashbacks [past-life experiences] happen more frequently after a few wines or beers, but this is not to say they don't happen when sober.

Finding that balance is the key - it's easy not to drink at all, but that's a killjoy approach to life. I've managed 26 consecutive Lents without a drop of alcohol, each one being 46 days on the trot - it's no big deal. Not drinking during Lent is hugely beneficial to body and soul.

It's so much easier, however, to let oneself go and hit the bottle at every opportunity - this carries obvious health risks - but above all, the over-familiarity with intoxication takes away its essential magic. Don't drink empty units - in other words don't drink out of boredom, do not drink because 'drink'. Drink for companionship, drink for the new insights and perceptions that can be turned into creative uses. Like with many aspects of life, there must be a purpose. Alcohol should be seen as a tool. One doesn't pick up a tool unless there's a purpose to do so. Same with alcohol.

A propos past life... This morning I woke around 4am with the words 'Jerome Camp' in my mind. Just those two words. "Interesting," I thought, as I dropped off back to sleep. I woke up finally around 7am remembering those two words. "Must mean something. I shall google them". I did. Wow.

*UPDATE December 2022 - I managed the entire year on an average of 13.7 units per week, below the NHS guideline of 14 units. Probably for the first time since leaving home for university back in 1976.

This time three years ago:
Classic car quiz, 2015

This time four years ago:
Classic British Car Quiz, 2014

This time five years ago:
The poet's gift - an exploration into Why One Writes

This time six years ago:
Advertising H&M on Warszawa Centralna station

This time nine years ago:
Jeziorki in the snow

This time 11 years ago:
Staying Underground: Piccadilly Circus