It’s Just A Few Beers

I heard this great joke once. A guy says to his son “I’m giving up liquor for Lent. What are you giving up?” His son says “I guess I’ll give up candy”. A few days later Dad’s drinking a beer. Kid says “I thought you gave up liquor”. Dad says “I did. I gave up hard liquor”. Next day the kid’s eating a Milky Way. Dad says “I thought you gave up candy”. “I did” says his son. “I gave up hard candy.”

Skid row bums grasp bottles of booze with their shaking hands. Hard drinkers stumble into a bar and ask for a whiskey. Three-martini lunches pave the way to expensive rehabs. But what harm can an occasional cold beer do? It’s America’s favorite leisure beverage. A refreshing alternative to sugary soft drinks. Healthy too, lots of nutrients. Filling, so you never drink too much. And only 4% alcohol. Hard-core drinkers don’t waste their time on beer.

Or do they?

My love affair with beer started when I was 14. I was also experimenting with rum and cokes, screwdrivers, Boone’s Farm wine…whatever I could get my hands on. But once I got to college it was all beer, all the time. My first day of freshman year I checked into my dorm, registered for classes, rented a refrigerator, stocked it with a case of Budweiser and hit a keg party at a frat house. I spent as much time in the campus bar as I did in the dining hall. (The drinking age was 18 back then.) At fraternity parties I discovered that I had a skill for chugging beer. Tolerance, enthusiasm and an uncanny ability to open my throat won me praise and admiration as I out-drank all the other girls, and most of the guys. Meanwhile, what was happening with my grades? Yeah, you guessed it. My dad was paying a lot of money for me to learn how to party.

Dad loved beer. But he could have one or two. He wouldn’t even order a pitcher unless there were at least four people. I NEVER had one or two. I got hammered on beer. Many, many times. I remember some fatherly advice Dad once gave my sister and me. We were pounding Amstels at a backyard barbecue and he informed us that “light beer is a bad value”. Oh, and “if you’re worried about calories you ought not be drinking beer!” Sage advice, which I dutifully heeded. Like my dad, I’m all about bang for the buck. Unlike Dad, I drank to get wasted.

So I switched back to regular beer, calories be damned. I soon discovered malt liquor (Carlsberg Elephant packed a real punch) and dark German Spaten (Oktoberfest all year round) and British bitter. (London Pride? Come ON!!!) I spent some time at pubs in England where most women order half pints but I would never be caught dead holding one of those wimpy little mugs. Give me full pints of good strong ale, and lots of them.

There are plenty of alcoholics who never touch hard liquor. A DUI arrest often starts with a police officer asking “Have you had anything to drink tonight?” The answer is usually something along the lines of “just a couple of beers” or “just some wine with dinner”. As a recovery coach I work with a woman who never drank anything other than Champagne. But she drank a lot of Champagne. And there were a lot of consequences. She never lurked on a street corner hiding a bottle of liquor in a paper bag. But that doesn’t mean she’s not an alcoholic.

Back to the joke.

As a good Catholic girl, I gave up drinking every Lent for years. I thought it proved I wasn’t an alcoholic. But I was Irish as well, so I gave myself “special dispensation” on Saint Patrick’s Day to drink beer. A lot of beer. Sometimes it was green, and it always got me drunk.

I still like the Lent joke. But the best jokes usually start with “A guy walks into a bar…”

Unfortunately, what happens after that isn’t always a joke.