If you've been reading this blog for a while, you might have noticed that I don't drink alcohol, coffee, tea (we're talking Camellia sinensis -- I love herbal teas), or use recreational pharmaceuticals, including tobacco. A lot of this has to do with my faith, as I follow a health rule called the Word of Wisdom which advises members of my Church to avoid such substances. (Obviously, I'm not following it perfectly or I wouldn't be so fat, but that's another story.) Some of it also has to do with genetics; a statistically significant number of my ancestors and extended family members were or are addicted to alcohol, so I strongly suspect that I wouldn't stop at one glass with dinner. I don't presume to make choices for other people, but for me it's a question of deciding between teetotalism and alcoholism, and I've chosen the former.
When people first find out that I don't drink, their responses usually fall into one of two broad categories: "You don't know what you're missing!" and "You're not missing anything." I find this dichotomy curious. I think I understand the people who aver that I'm really not missing anything, since their past experiences with alcohol are, almost to a one, negative -- they talk about feeling dizzy, hypnotized, out of control, blacking out, driving drunk, and throwing up the next day, none of which sounds like fun. But what about the people who say I'm missing out by never taking a drink? What do they get out of the experience that makes them so positive about it?
I think -- and as mentioned, I may be very wrong about this -- that people who feel positive about drinking are either very light drinkers of the one-glass-with-dinner variety, or moderate social drinkers who use alcohol at parties or while out with friends. In this context, alcohol is an enjoyable social lubricant. It helps people relax, unwind, shrug off their responsibilities; it allows them to put their emotional guards down and open up much more than they normally would, to act silly and goof off and be vulnerable to others. It lets them be who they want to be without worrying too much that they're going to be judged for it.
And here's where I think I'm on solid ground, because you can get that same result without having to drink. It involves throwing a certain type of party with a certain group of friends. Seriously!
Why am I so sure I'm right about this? Because I've experienced it.
Back in my early 20s when I was the co-sysop of a Utah-based BBS, Fen (the sysop) used to throw irregular parties for friends and BBS members. Many of these were "stealth parties" where she'd send out the invitation only a few hours before the festivities began. Other parties were more planned out, and they always had themes. One was the Let's Destroy Barney Party, where people congregated at Castle Anthrax (really! It had a Grail-shaped beacon on the roof and everything!), ate a Jurassic Park cake, played various dinosaur-themed games and messily dismembered a Barney plushie in the yard. One was a Jump on the Mattress Party, where we dragged an old mattress to a city park and proceeded to, well, jump on it (then things got really surreal when the belly dancers showed up and started practicing). One was the Regress to Childhood party, where everyone came over in PJs or similar comfy clothes, ate homemade Rice Krispy Treats and sugar cereal, and watched Saturday morning cartoons. All these parties were completely drug free unless you count the liberal consumption of Toxic Punch -- a highly-sugared, grape-juice-and-lemonade-based drink concocted in a dizzy pre-party haste and re-created on numerous occasions thereafter -- which tended to put people into a silly mood.
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| Alas, as far as I know there was never a Dance a Jig with a Pig Party. |
During the Regress to Childhood party, a BBS member with the alias of Rod Serling showed up with a backpack full of Silly Putty eggs, which he began tossing into the crowd. He had assumed, rightly, that anybody who showed up at a party to eat sugar cereal and watch Scooby-Doo would be down to play with Silly Putty. Every time something like that happened -- when someone saw the party theme and decided to enhance it in some way -- things just got more fun.
I think these parties worked so well, not despite the fact that they were silly, but because they were silly. They had a preponderance of partygoers who were fairly uninhibited about goofing off in front of others, and that gave everyone else tacit permission to goof off, with the understanding that no one would judge them later for their goofiness. As a BBS member who went by the name of Maxie Zeus once put it, "This is the most fun I've had without being drunk!"
But that's kind of the point. You don't have to get drunk to have a fantastic time. You just have to be willing to put down your inhibitions without first picking up the alcohol. And to do that, you need to trust the people you're with -- that they'll join in, be uninhibited and silly right along with you, and just have fun.
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