People drink alcohol socially and because they enjoy
the taste. However, more often, they
drink to experience the effects it produces, effects that can cover up
underlying personal problems.
Some people don’t want to start drinking, but can’t
say no, and others are unable to stop once they start. Thinking about these situations, I want to share . . .
My Drinking Problem
Like most kids growing up in the fifties, I
wondered what alcohol tasted like. As a Jewish youngster, I wished that a glass
of wine would be placed next to my plate at our Passover holiday meal in April.
But seated at the children’s table in my family home, with my sister and
cousins, this was not the case. My beverage was grape juice, served in a wine
glass.
Eyeing the glass, I looked at my father and
shook my head in disappointment. He grinned and said, “Looks like wine and
tastes a bit like it, too.”
“But it isn’t,” I groaned.
“Your time will come,” he replied.
When I became a teenager, my parents broke
the rules a bit. The drinking age in New York was eighteen. However, in unison,
they stated, “If you need to drink, do it in front of us—no other place.”
“Well, that works for me,” I said,
delighted at the thought I could have my first real alcoholic beverage in the
near future.
The next year, in March 1958, my uncle and
aunt opened their third children’s store in Queens, New York. I was not quite
fourteen years old at the time. At the grand opening, on a Saturday evening, I
entered the main room of the store and stared at the checkout counter, adorned
with glasses full of champagne.
My uncle stood before the group gathered
and stated enthusiastically, “Please take a glass so we can toast our newest,
most beautiful children’s boutique.”
Somewhat uncomfortable about grabbing the glass,
I looked for my father. Our eyes met and I pointed to the champagne. He nodded
his head in affirmation and held up one finger. I snatched a glass off the
counter— now my prized possession.
My uncle spoke, “My friends and family, I
am honored to share this wonderful experience with you. Please lift your glass
in celebration of the great things to come in this magnificent store. Now
drink, eat, and have fun!”
Well, I did as he said. I poured the long-awaited
drink into my mouth. “Ick,“ I muttered. It tasted like vinegar. It was so
disgusting; I spit it back into the glass.
After that evening’s experience, I shied
away from alcohol. Even when offered a drink in front of my parents, I politely
said, “No thank you.”
Years passed and I managed to avoid
drinking. Then the summer after my freshman year at the University of Rochester,
in upstate New York, I worked as a counselor at an overnight camp in the
Catskill Mountains, an amazing job that I put my heart into.
The first couple of weeks went so well that
the camp owner announced, “To reward you, our fantastic counselors, for what
you’ve accomplished and for how happy you’ve made the kids, we’re going to have
a party this weekend—a ‘beer bust.’”
On Saturday evening, the beer flowed from
the tap in a large keg that sat in the corner of the camp dining room. I was handed
a warm glass and told to drink up. Not knowing any better, I chugged the beer.
The warm brew entered my mouth and throat. The taste was miserable and I
thought I was going to choke to death. As quickly as it went in, I let it out,
spraying it over those around me and myself. I thought, Never again would I want a drink.
As my young adult life began to unfold, I
learned not drinking might be worse than drinking.
I moved to California in 1964, because my
parents had relocated there. I enrolled at UCLA and joined the same fraternity
I’d been a member of at the University of Rochester. I turned twenty-one the
next year and now I could legally drink in California, but I had no desire to
do so.
At a frat party that year, beer and other
booze flowed through the main room of the fraternity house. “Come on, take a
drink,” a fraternity brother urged.
“No thanks. I don’t like alcohol. It tastes
awful.”
He looked at me with a weird expression on
his face and said, “You do know you have to develop a taste for it.”
“Why should I try to develop a taste for
something I don’t care for?” I asked.
“Because everybody I know does,” he
responded.
I still didn’t do it. I held firm to my position
that drinking wasn’t my thing.
About three months later, driving home from
a date at 3:00 a.m. on a Friday during Christmas break, I was totally wiped
out. I drove the freeway from the San Fernando Valley to Los Angeles at the speed
limit, 65 mph, but my fatigue caused me to slow down, then speed up, and then
slow down again, however, never swerving out of my lane.
As I tried to remain awake, I glanced in
the rearview mirror. What I saw blew me away. Not one, but two sets of flashing
lights.
I pulled my car over to the side of the
road, rolled down the window, and shut off the engine. Two highway patrol
officers approached from their cars, lights still flashing behind me. The
taller of the two said, “Please hold your hands up so I can see them. Now show
me your drivers license, proof of insurance, and vehicle registration.” He
watched closely as I reached into the glove compartment and got them out. I
handed them to him. He looked them over and then asked, “Have you been
drinking?”
This is when my whole world fell apart and
I learned how not to answer this question. I replied, “No officer, I don’t
drink.”
Without responding, he opened my door, and
said, “Please get out of the car.”
For some reason I never understood, the
shorter officer pulled out his gun and pointed it at me. I felt like I was
going to puke. The taller one directed me to walk a straight line, stand on my
right leg and then my left, touch the tip of my nose with one hand and then the
other, follow his finger with my eyes, and pronounce five words. After I did as
he instructed, he asked me to exhale so he could smell my breath. It was
humiliating.
Rattled, I didn’t know what was coming
next. Then he stared me straight in the eye and said, “You’re free to go, but
you need to get off the freeway and use the side roads.”
“But officer, I have no idea how to get
home from here if I leave the freeway.” To my surprise, he took a sheet of
paper and a pen from his pocket, asked me the name of my street, and wrote down
the directions. I gasped, “Thank you,” got back in my car and headed home. If
this experience taught me one thing, it was if someone asks me again if I’d
been drinking, I’d simply say, “No.”
The fear of telling people I don’t drink
became an obstacle I had trouble overcoming. So at a party, I’d approach the
bar and request a screwdriver—with a little vodka and a lot of orange juice.
Since screwdrivers are served in a regular drinking glass, if no other guests
were present where the drinks were being served, I’d ask the bartender to fill
my glass with just orange juice.
My drinking problem lasted until I was forty-five.
It was only then I became comfortable saying. “I don’t drink,” when asked if
I’d like one.
My “non-drinking life” is not perfect,
however. Today, when I tell people I don’t drink, some say, “I hope you don’t
mind my asking you a question.”
I reply, “No. Go ahead.”
And then they ask, “How long have you been
sober?”
As we ring in another New Year, and I’m told
to raise my champagne glass in a toast to a wonderful future ahead, I will do
so with pride. However, my glass will be neither half full nor half empty—just
empty.
Copyright © 2022 Alan Lowe. All rights
reserved.
