A Case for Drinking Alone
The contrarian harm reduction strategy for the contrarian thinker (and the committed drinker)
Last week I discussed the romantic myth of the tortured alcoholic artist and how this popular cultural trope gives everyone an excuse for bad behaviour. My appeal was broad-based – the assertion being that ‘the tortured artist’ can function as a metaphor for the human spirit, thus granting default permission to all who wallow in the existential angst that is both characterised and conceptualised by the wayward author, actor, or musician, to lose themselves in alcohol or drugs when feeling sufficiently put upon by the world.
No one is immune from this, and self-justification can take many forms, the tortured soul being just one of the more common. My message this week is perhaps more niche.
I’m going to be contrarian and refute the axiomatic red flag of drinking alone.
Popular wisdom asserts that drinking alone is problematic. As a problematic drinker, I find this maxim in itself problematic.
It rather absurdly asserts that the best strategy for harm reduction is to augment one’s own alcohol consumption with the myriad variables of a social setting which can include, just to name a few, the potential for: confrontation and violence; embarrassing public behaviour; wasting money on over-priced drinks; increased chance of injury (due to unfamiliar surroundings and unknown hazards); police interactions and arrest.
Now, if social drinking for you involves nothing more than a few glasses of plonk and some tapas, and nothing more raucous than shrill laugher and oversharing your personal life, then this discussion probably doesn’t apply to you, and you’re welcome to exit and check in again next week!
But in my experience, most people who like to drink recreationally tend to push the boat out further than this. And to be honest, even that little overshare with your third glass of rosé at work drinks last Friday was probably something you wish hadn’t slipped out when playing it back on Saturday morning, right?
My thesis here is simple, to the point of being reductive, but I still think it’s worth exploring. As I proposed in my last article, none of us is better under the influence of alcohol – we invariably become more volatile, inarticulate, and self-indulgent to name just the three most obvious side effects.
The logic then follows that if we are to put ourselves into such a state, then why would we want others to witness it?
Enter the ‘drinking buddy’.
This special category of friendship is critical to anyone who likes to overindulge. The crew of drinking buddies operates under a kind of mutually assured destruction doctrine – the idea being that all members of the circle have at one point behaved atrociously or done something supremely embarrassing, and the group guards its secrets closely and offers blanket amnesty for most missteps. It is a variation of the much loved ‘what happens on tour stays on tour’.
This fraternal code has been effective since time immemorial for tightknit groups who do not wish their behaviours to colour the public perception of their constituent members, and indeed, there is an obvious criminal application here. But for the purpose of safeguarding one’s dignity, a solid squad of drinking buddies has a very real and necessary application.
The problem is though, the code of silence and forgiveness only works if you and your crew do your drinking in a private residence. As soon as you hit the streets, you run the same risks that I outlined above. Furthermore, even when you are domiciled, accidents and confrontations can still occur. Things can be said, even between the staunchest of boozing buddies, that cause real regret or even lasting harm, and indeed, countless are the hospital admissions and even funerals that were precipitated by a just few beers with the brothers (or the sisters).
I paint a grim picture, but my intention is not to be the fun police. The extreme scenario of serious injury or death resulting from drinks with your squad is unlikely. More common are silly squabbles and misunderstandings, and the greatest strength of the drinking circle is that these can be washed away through a quick round of apologies (a simple text message will usually do the trick).
The real issue is, when one becomes too fond of the bottle, one starts evaluating all potential friends along the drinking buddy criteria, and before you know it, everyone in your circle is someone you’d be comfortable doing tequila shots with at 3am on a Wednesday morning.
This is not ideal for anyone wishing to cut down their consumption and, just like alcohol itself, the people with whom one commonly consumes it can themselves become an addiction – one that both triggers and augments the other.
What then is one to do?
As I have navigated my staged approach to sobriety, I have found that I’ve had to be careful how often I allow myself to get on it with my drinking buddies – for the very same reason that I have to be careful how often I allow myself to drink… one addiction feeds the other. And when one has spent ten or twenty years building up a wide network of drinking buddies, this can present a minefield of problems – not least that every drink you have with these folk reinforces the old behaviour and makes it twice as likely to perpetuate than if you were simply dealing with the one addictive stimulus.
Popular wisdom says don’t drink alone.
Okay, so I should drink with my drinking buddies? How is this any less problematic really? If anything it just enables me and amplifies my problem.
So, should I drink with colleagues and other associates around whom I need to behave more modestly? This is a terrible idea for anyone who cannot strictly control their intake. The damage we cause to our reputations by regularly drinking in these settings hardly bears mentioning. Speaking personally, I have alienated and insulted more people than I could ever quantify this way, and because such people are not part of my inner circle, the damage is permanent. A simple text message in these cases does not fix things, and in fact usually makes matters worse.
What then is the solution? I propose that a risk mitigation strategy, if complete abstinence is off the table, is drinking alone.
No, I’m not saying we should do all our drinking alone. I’m suggesting that for someone on a similar path to me, who is trying to drink less and minimise harm, then limiting the amount of time spent drinking in the company of others is a good idea, or at the very least, doing it well away from anyone we are ever likely to have to deal with again.
For instance, I am seriously considering not attending my work Christmas party this year. This doesn’t mean I’ll be opening a bottle at home instead (I’m actually running out of allotted drinking days in 2022 and need to save them for the New Year’s period!). What it does mean though is the next time I drink will likely be on the plane as we head off on our summer holiday – far from the judgemental eyes of my home stomping ground.
Secluded in my hotel room, thousands of miles from anyone I know (apart from my girlfriend) I can perhaps allow the less attractive features of my personality to be amplified by the drink. But even this carries a substantial risk, as booze is not great for couples who tend to wind each other up (as we do).
Again – it would probably be better if I were alone in a hotel room, with only the bottle for company.
That sounds awful, you might say. I would posit that, if you’ve read this far, you may identify with the problem I’m discussing, or know someone who does – the dangers of drinking to excess around other people. In that case, if the idea of drinking alone is too icky to contemplate, then why not just give it up completely?
Ah, yes – you don’t want to, do you. You think that the risk of a drunken faux pas is acceptable for the social reward of drinking with others.
Okay, that’s fine – as I’ve said before, I’m not in the business of telling others how to live their lives. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.
And again, I am not advocating for drinking alone as a rule. I am suggesting that if you absolutely have to have to get drunk on, say, thirty days out of 365, then would not the potential for reputational harm be reduced by 50% if you spent fifteen of those getting drunk alone?
Perhaps that’s simply not feasible for you, and if you can’t drink with others then you’d rather not drink at all. Fair enough. To this I say – Great! Then don’t drink… Or do all your drinking in social settings… but accept the increased risk.
Me, I don’t mind drinking alone. Perhaps that’s just my introverted, tortured artist coming out… But regardless, it is cheaper; I don’t tend to embarrass myself with inanities or inappropriateness (although smartphones don’t help in this regard); I don’t tend to fall down and hurt myself in the familiar surrounds of my home; the likelihood of confrontation is eliminated (though again, this depends on whether one lives with their partner and the state of that relationship); and the likelihood of police interaction is almost non-existent.
This is a murky topic which doesn’t lend itself well to generalisations. Alcohol use and its effects can be subjective and each person’s story will look a little different. I did not set out to establish a watertight strategy for harm reduction, merely to make a case for drinking alone in the context of harm reduction.
The best strategy for harm reduction remains complete sobriety, and many employ this to remarkable effect. Others drink with unbridled abandon like I used to, consequences be damned. And a great many more of us exist in the space in-between, cautiously navigating the minefield.
I have found that I step on fewer mines by doing some of my drinking on my own.
https://open.substack.com/pub/justinehsmith/p/gone-bad-come-to-life?r=1e02vv&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post