Finding Love in Alcohol America

A recent film with Leonardo DiCaprio tells the iconic F. Scott Fitzgerald story of Jay Gatsby's doomed love for his Daisy, and it inspired me to pick up the novel.

There's a lot of alcohol in this story. Gatsby, who made his fortune selling the stuff, doesn't drink himself. Desperately trying to find the love of his life in boozy 1920s New York society, he ultimately loses hope and comes to a bad end.

Finding love in Alcohol America can be a problem, especially in a place like New York City where just about everyone drinks, but maybe there's hope. An alcohol-free disco has just opened, called "The Other Side", in Crystal Lake outside of Chicago. Other than that, though, there don't seem to be any other alcohol-free adult venues that offer a nightclub experience anywhere in the country. 

It says a lot about America that not drinking can be such a problem. At a party I went to recently, some found it disconcerting, and possibly even anti-social, that I don't drink.

You may need to make excuses. You can tell people you have a medical reason for not drinking, "stomach problems" for example. In fact, you're likely to get gastritis or pancreatitis from drinking, so it's not really a lie. If you feel the necessity, ask any doctor and they will tell you to stop drinking.

There's another problem though. If you're not drinking, your inebriated friends aren't going to be much fun, and you're not going to be much fun to them, especially if you start noticing what dopes they are when they've had a few. Probably you'll need to find new friends that don't drink. 

Where can you find such people? The web site meetup.com, a point of connection for thousands of social and special interest groups, hosts over 100 non-drinker social groups with 16,000 members. You'll find them at nondrinker.meetup.com. If there's no group where you live, it's simple to start one on the site. If you happen to live in New York, the group Smart Party NYC has 800 members who get together for parties, nights out and dancing. 

Or, you can get your friends and family to stop drinking. That's going to be hard to do, of course. I think that some of my friends have at least started to think more seriously about drinking since I started this blog, but it's a hard sell. 

If you're single, I guess you know I'm going to tell you that hooking up while drinking, or marrying a drinker, are two things that are pretty much guaranteed to leave you unhappy.  Take a lesson from Jay Gatsby. Don't drink, and don't fall in love with people who do.