Beer Goggles

"Beer goggles" is slang for the scientifically-proven warping effect that alcohol has on how we see the world. Specifically, it refers to the fact that we find others more desirable when we are intoxicated. In other words, if you're having trouble finding the "right person" to spend your life with, just hang out in bars and you'll be married in no time. Don't ever stop drinking, though, because with the "goggles" off, things may look different.

Beer goggles are good for more than just finding a life partner.  If you're choosing a career, trying to make a fashion statement, buying a house or deciding how to invest for retirement, the decision will go a lot quicker if you knock back a few. After you've signed up for the Marine Corps, got your tattoo, bought that fixer-upper and moved your life savings to Made-Offwidit Associates, you can kick back, turn on the television and pour yourself another cold one, secure in the knowledge that you're on course for a life of ease and comfort.

Or not.

Greedy, lazy, amoral people love it that you drink. It makes it so much easier for them to suck the life out of you. 

My father was a heavy drinker who spent half his free time in Harry's Bar in Mayfield Heights, Ohio. A stranger came into the bar one day offering to sell new televisions in unopened boxes out of a truck at a steep discount, the implication being that they might not be quite legal. The boxes were filled with telephone books. He sold them all.

I don't suppose the guy tried to sell them in churches and libraries. If you're a con, you want your marks loosened up.

My father never went anywhere without his beer goggles. I went to pick him up at the airport once when he came home from a business trip to Houston. I waited at the gate but he didn't get off the plane. Actually he did, but he didn't see me because he never saw me, and I didn't see him because he was dressed head to toe in a full Western outfit—cowboy hat, cowboy boots, fringed leathers, the works. Later he told me how that happened. He was killing time in Houston when he wandered into a Western outfitter's shop, just for kicks, with no intention to spend his modest means on anything foolish. The young woman there asked him if he would like something to drink. He said, "No thank you, I'm not thirsty." The woman replied, "You're not from here, I see. What I mean is, would you like a drink? We have scotch and Jack Daniels."

Would the world economy collapse if Americans stopped drinking? Possibly, but there's not much danger of that. You can stop drinking, though, without throwing someone out of a job. If you do, you won't have to win the lottery. By not letting yourself get hornswoggled all the time, you'll find you actually have enough of everything you really need.

And when you fall in love, it will be with someone you really want to be in love with.

The Song of Life

To be happy, you must know how to be happy. To know how to be happy, you must know what it is to be happy and realize that you may never have been happy in your life, or that it may have been a fleeting, elusive experience.

One word captures the true nature of happiness: harmony. It's the peace and tranquility that come from concord in our relations with others, with the earth, and with ourselves. It's what we feel when the song of life rings clear and true.

Alcohol distorts that harmony. Its song is a discordant clash of whining, grasping urgencies that tie us in knots and leave us desperate and isolated.

Poet Maya Angelou, despite her difficult early life, does not use alcohol, from all I can tell.  She said, "Love life, engage in it, and give it all you've got. Love it with a passion, because life truly does give back, many times over, what you put into it."

If you feel your life is out of tune, first stop drinking, then listen for the music all around you. Share in the song of life with a clear head and an open heart. Know what it is to be happy and don't settle for less.

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.

I Have a Dream

It's the 50th anniversary of the civil rights era March on Washington in 1963, and I, too, have a dream. I dream of a world in which people stop poisoning themselves with drugs and alcohol and live happy, generous lives.

How much unhappiness would go away if no one drank? I don't know, not all of it certainly. But half? Ninety percent? 

I first started thinking about this when I lived for a few years in Maldives, a Muslim country where almost no one drinks. They have their problems, to be sure, but mostly the people there are happy most of the time. You can't help being struck by it, coming from America where so many of us are unhappy even though we seem to have just about everything we could want or need, compared to much of the world at least.

Maldives is something of a paradise, of course—sun, sand, palm trees, ocean. Even so, if I imagine Maldivians drinking as much as Americans, it's difficult for me to see them so happy.

Only half of Americans drink, so what about the other half? Are they as happy as Maldivians? No, but I think the reason is that, even if you don't drink, you can't help living in Alcohol America. Family members, neighbors, co-workers and public officials drink, so there's no escaping it. 

I know how Quixotic it must seem to others for me to be writing this blog, but dreams do come true and they all start somewhere. If, like King, I dream a better world, will it come? I do know that it begins with believing it can.