Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.
Ernest Hemingway
I do love a good beer. During my years living in Berlin, I came to love beer even more, and why not? One of my favorite spots in Sarah’s and my Friedrichshain neighborhood of East Berlin was Hops & Barley, a little pub that brewed its own beer and offered up a mighty tasty Pilsner.
My choice the last three months not to drink even a drop of beer – or any other alcoholic beverage – has only enhanced that enjoyment. Moments do come along when a beer sounds awfully good – say, out at Citi Field in New York watching the Mets with my friends Nick and Dave, when both of them are having a brew. But it does not cost me any effort to smile and say, no, not for me, not now. I’m not so much firm in my resolve as uninterested in revisiting the question of whether I’ll really stick to the pledge of abstinence. I see Nick tip back his beer, the way he did many times back in Berlin when we were talking over a tall one there, and yes, the nerves do start firing and I have the feeling of tasting how delicious a beer would be right then. But in not having one, I feel in a way I’m taking a step closer to a deep enjoyment of any beer I ever drink, and for that matter, any beverage I ever consume.
My love of drinking water has only deepened these three months. We’re on well water at the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods and delicious water it is, too. I love going for a run down to the Capitola Wharf, four miles from our front door, or along The Loop behind the house along with Sally our dog, and then coming back, cooling down, and drinking glasses of water with my taste buds alive, as if it were ambrosia I was tipping back. I am in these minutes not “re-hydrating,” I’m drinking. There is a difference. The bottled water craze is mostly idiocy; we should pay attention to our bodies and drink when we are thirsty, and then drink with pleasure and presence in the moment.
My choice to live nine months of abstention from alcohol has in this way moved me even more toward enjoying every sip of any beverage I take, though that’s never Coca-Cola or any soft drink, especially not the disgusting poison known as diet soda. (Sorry, Dad, I know you love your white Cokes, but I can only call it a filthy habit.) We live in times when much is made of the notion of not having a choice – our impulses are prodded through the skilled manipulation of advertising so relentlessly that we come to believe, somewhere deep down, in the idea of inevitable behavior: You are hungry, you see a McDonald’s, you are going to step up to the metal counter and come away with fries or a Big Mac or both. Turning away from these impulses is a way to give ourselves power over our bodies and our souls and to redirect ourselves toward the great pleasure of enjoying what we enjoy with the knowledge that we have truly chosen to enjoy it.
My perspective on my break from alcohol is tinged by the joy I take in it: When Sarah gives birth to our baby this September, I’ll celebrate with Champagne! I’m very happy for now to keep her company in refraining from our customary glass or two of red wine with dinner. I enjoy never having to think about cops on the way home from a rare restaurant meal and never waking up with even the barest trace of a hangover. I enjoy knowing that if I said anything stupid the night before, my stupidity had nothing to do with alcohol – and I don’t have to push through hazy corridors of memory to recall, like Hemingway, clownish boasts a drunken state pulled out of me. But above all I enjoy the feeling that it was remarkably easy to decide to take a break and then simply remove beer and wine from my life: It was like flipping a switch. I wasn’t fighting with myself, yearning for a sip, any of that – just one day, no more beers, no more hard stuff, even at times, like around the death of my sister, when hell yeah, my nerves could have used a jolt of Johnnie Walker Black.
Even after the baby is born and I’m back to enjoying a Sierra Nevada some afternoons when the sun is out and nothing tastes better, still I’ll also go days and weeks without drinking any alcohol. It’s not that I fear the bottle. I did go through a time in my thirties when I was a traveling sportswriter and drinking a lot every single night was part of the culture; I would not have wanted to continue with a work life so inclined to push one toward an unhealthy relationship with consumption. Nowadays I’m bored with heavy drinking, but do love the flavors of a good red wine, for example. In Sarah’s regular yoga sessions at WCR she talks about the importance of letting thoughts come – and then letting them drift away, so the mind, body and soul can relax. I think we can take the enjoyment of a drink, hold it close, then let it drift away – we don’t need it, we can do without it, which only makes it more enjoyable the next time.
– Steve Kettmann, co-founder, WCR