A long-term relationship is on the rocks and something tells me it won’t be an amicable split. Australia’s penchant for booze is back in the headlines, right next to its usual associations with violence, national holidays and reform laws.
You may have noticed, however, that something seems different this time, as though we have finally come to reckon with what’s at stake; that the perpetrators of so called ‘coward punches’ are the face of a new Australian barbarism, and are dragging us down a blood-strewn cultural path.
The Centre for Alcohol Research and Education recently found that a staggering 75% of Australians, many of whom no doubt regularly hit the bottle, think that we are collectively drinking too much. This immediately brought to mind Henry Chinaski’s sombre reflection: “That’s the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink.” Australian society hardly seems sober enough to initiate a serious conversation on this matter.
It’s depressing stuff. Almost makes one want to reach for the bottle. Now, I’m not saying that you should resist that urge (depending, of course, on the time you are reading this essay), but a lot also depends on the attitude and knowledge you bring to pouring and swilling.
The problem, then, as I see it: Australians don’t know how to drink. This does seem counter-intuitive, and young drinkers will no doubt want to offer a slurred rebuttal: You have probably heard a foreigner remark something along the admiring lines of “Gee, you Aussies sure know how to drink” accompanied by a stirring affirmation of pride. Here, knowledge is mistakenly associated with quantity, where the ability to consume an amount approaching alcohol poisoning is demonstrative of mastery, rather than stupidity.
I’ll make only one concession wrapped up in an insult: youngsters are coming up with increasingly innovative ways to illustrate my claim. The latest is Neknominate, a game of drinking brinkmanship in which one person sculls a beverage while doing something reckless, let’s say, hanging upside down. The victorious individual nominates a drinking companion who must upstage his predecessor. He, in turn, nominates . . . well, you get the idea. You also can’t stop the globalisation of inanity, and Neknominate has spread via social media to bring us videos of sculling while driving and reports of a particularly unfortunate gentleman’s testicles being nailed to a table.
Australia’s apparent claim to have started this game is something of a cultural nadir, wouldn’t you say? Fading away is the image of the only slightly drunk, but always humorous and welcoming Aussie drinker, replaced by the blood soaked, buffed up buffoon.
It bears repeating: this is depressing stuff, especially if you identify yourself as a moderate drinking enthusiast and an Australian. In defence of this identity, one must constantly reassert that any serious list of civilisation’s achievements includes irony, democracy, literature and the advent of yeast-fermented malts. Alcohol’s bracing and life-affirming influence on humanity has a long history, beginning, perhaps, in the Gilgamesh epic: “Endiku drank seven cups of beer and his heart soared. In this condition he washed himself and became a human being.” Literary reflections after this merely and wonderfully elaborate on the same theme.
Ask yourself, too: What is social intercourse without a lubricating cocktail or schooner? Of course you know the dry, difficult to penetrate conversation and the individuals who subsequently lack verve. Put a libation in hand, however, and marvel at the transformation.
By the way, I’m not drunkenly stumbling away from my original point. When I say that Australians don’t know how to drink, I mean that they fail to make drinking an experience that works in their favour. They can’t reap the benefits of the booze identified above, and the countless others. And their failure finds expression in a few salient ways.
First, there is the problem of excess, where an evening’s merriment is measured by how shattered the fragments of memory lie, while the advocates of moderation are denounced as bores and are drowned out among cries of ‘Chug’. Such an emphasis squanders all of alcohol’s wonder: the elongated conversation, the binding of strangers, and as P.G. Wodehouse impeccably put it: “the feasts of reason and flows of soul.”
Second, the choice of drinking establishment. Nightclubs are particularly loathsome, as everyone seems at some point willing to admit. Are not thirst and solitude preferable to high cover charges, overpriced drinks, deafness inducing music and the company of, well, people who attend nightclubs?
Third, the character of the modern Australian drinker: the drunkenly violent thugs who contaminate alcohol with harmful drugs. It is heartening, however, to see a well-deserved contempt directed at these individuals, and a serious attempt to limit the representative credit they have recently earned.
While I’m issuing condemnations, I may as well direct gentle scorn at those who don’t drink at all, especially for religious reasons. Next time you seek salvation from 40 degree summer heat, take a moment, too, as the barman sets down the schooner, to watch that thin rivulet of foamy head descend the glass as the first swill assures that all is momentarily right in the world – the closest we may come to experiencing the divine . . .
I may have gotten slightly carried away there, but as you can see, my lecturing position in Drinking101 comes with experience and references. Permit me, then, to issue some advice.
First, be wary of the signs that drinking is not working for you. Take a glance at your Facebook profile pictures or tagged photos – if you appear sloshed or are holding a drink in all of them, perhaps it’s time to slow it down, without, of course, becoming too abstemious.
Second, and staying on this theme, always make use of the experts, but look beyond the PhDs at research institutes. I mean the real experts. Kingsley Amis is particularly useful here, but only in moderation. Amis gave alcohol the literary and analytical attention it deserves, and he is particularly illuminating on the subject of the metaphysical hangover – what goes on underneath the headache, vomiting and fatigue. The metaphysical hangover is the following morning’s “ineffable compound of depression, sadness (these two are not the same), anxiety, self-hatred, sense of failure and fear for the future.” Do I detect in the reader a flicker of familiarity, often accompanied by the quickly abandoned commitment to eschew alcohol forever? Don’t rush to judgment. Use it as a learning experience, says Amis. You must feel worse before you can feel better, then find solace in his remedies in music and literature, and the introspection they provoke. For Amis, though, the path to recovery leads to a cul-de-sac, and here we part company. Instead of curing your metaphysical hangover so that you can immediately drink again, as Amis did many, many, many times, make it a permanent cure and opportunity for serious growth and self-realisation. Let it take you down the middle path, without careening back into excess or sliding into the not-so-bad-but-still-problematic-turn-to-teetotalism.
Third, for fuck’s sake, pair your potation with a meal. This goes some way to mitigating your physical hangover, and it lets the wonders of food and drink complement one another. And while you’re at it, decry anyone who declares that ‘eating is cheating’, so that this maxim becomes tired and eventually forgotten.
The task, then, comrades, is to rescue moderation from its associations with dullness. Moderate drinkers of Australia, unite! Let us excise the violent thug from our cultural image; let the conversation flow like wine and then stop at a reasonable hour; let the drunkard’s rallying cry to ‘Go Hard or Go Home’ be met firmly with the latter choice, perhaps for a nightcap; and let the delights of moderation permit clearheadedness and contentment.
Image credit: Kathryn Sprigg
