The state of Sor and Booze: 2020

[sorcyress]

Alright, it's Sor talks about alcohol funtimes!

100% true statement: I drink alcohol.
95+% true statement: I don't drink alcohol.

So, I often like the taste of hard liquor (scotch is my preference) and I *adore* the way high-proof stuff "burns" in your throat and stomach. My favourite boozes in the world have been slightly sweet scotches (I've had some mapley-tasting ones, so good!)

However, I do not like the vast majority of feelings that come with tipsy or drunk. I do not like the way my legs go fizzy after a sip of beer or cider. I do not like the way it makes my brain muddy and feel stupid. I don't like the way it makes me _super_ insecure and paranoid about my romantic relationships. I do not like the way the room gets slightly out of wack and I have to concentrate harder on walking or standing.

(I do get an ironic enjoyment of the fact that my brain always *insists* that this time it'll be funny for me to say out loud "I am soooooo drunk right now" in a valley girl voice. I also, on _very_ rare occasion get mild enjoyment from being extremely giggly and laughing a lot and lying on the floor and leaning on people in a way that even I can't tell how much is "alcohol" and how much is "psychosomatic symptoms of alcohol" and how much is "I'ma pretend!".

But that is really the only thing, and it is definitely not an "every time I drink" and if we're being totally honest "giggly and silly and lying on the floor" is something that happens to me pretty easily if I feel safe and happy enough, even when I am stone cold sober. I don't need alcohol to be in that state, so I don't actually think of it as a symptom of being tipsy/drunk.)

I have only maybe twice in my life been "drunk" and I have never been "serious drunk" --definitely never blackout or memory loss, no bad hangovers (rarely: very mild headache and cottonmouth the next day), I don't believe I slurred speech or had significant trouble walking, etc. FWIW, none of those symptoms sound the least bit appealing either.

So I effectively hate every single thing that happens to my body once alcohol gets in it, and given that I am a tiny person who barely ever drinks, I have *no* tolerance. I start feeling the booze a few sips into virtually any drink, and it steeply goes downhill from there.

But I do enjoy the way it tastes! I do *want* a sip here and there -partly to be included, partly because it is tasty and I do like it.

So here are the situations in which I do and do not drink:

*I do not drink when I am alone or the only one drinking. This is one of the Rules. I have slightly bent it once or twice in the past to drink around my (acquaintance rather than friend) roommates, even when they're not drinking. That once or twice is not a vague rounding, it is literal.

*I do not drink around coworkers, period full stop. We have monthly "first Fridays" at the school where teachers go to the pub after work, and the last day of school is always a several hour multiple stop pub crawl. I join both of these, and drink a lot of coke and/or shirley temples. I also get to have fun-times conversations about "yeah, so I don't drink" way more often than I actually want to with my coworkers! (coworkers are not given nuance).

*I do not drink at parties where a significant portion of the attendees are under 21. This hasn't mattered since college, but wow was I not going to drink illegally around college kids.

*I do not drink if I ever utter or think "god I need a drink". This is the first Rule and it is ironclad.

*I do drink around people who I am in established sexual relationships with, but only if I expect that we will not be having sex that night, or if I am able to talk with them about consent while sober. (Almost none of my serious partners drink, I've dated three complete teetotalers, and all three of my current partners drink with similar frequencies to me, read, rarely.)

*I do drink at parties, if the majority of people are over the legal drinking age, and a "high enough" proportion of them are people I know/trust.

*I drink at Scottish Pinewoods, except the last two or three years I've bought myself a bunch of fancy bottled sodas and shirley temple mixings instead. It gives me the same boost of "oo, special drink at camp!" without having to consume alcohol.

*I drink with my family, mostly because I want to be a Real Adult who can order a Real Margarita Or Cider at a restaurant (I'm 31, this happens less often than when I was 22).

*I take sips of drinks from almost anyone who offers and isn't under 21 or a coworker.

The really big stopping block for me is that it's difficult for me to get a small enough quantity of alcohol to be happy. Surprisingly hard to approach a bartender and say "I would like you to make me a mixed drink with the absolute minimum alcohol you can put in", and harder still to say "I would like you to pour me a scotch but literally no more than a teaspoon or so". I sip from shot glasses -and if the shot is more than half full, it will probably take me all night to finish it.

So parties with pouring alcohol (sharing from a punch bowl or a bottle) are the most likely situ for me to drink in, because I can pour myself a minuscule quantity and enjoy the taste without the effects. (See again, Scots Pinewoods, which has a...weird drinking culture of "there are multiple parties throughout the day with alcohol but most people are drinking no more than a serving at a time and then doing lots of exercise and drinking tons of water and eating huge amounts and so despite literally all day long drinking, very few people are ever "drunk"")

Second most likely is at my parents house, because they will get it if I nurse a bottle of cider for six hours and then dump a third of it down the drain.

What this boils down to is, I probably drink a partial serving of alcohol (from a sip up) no more than 6-8 times a year, and a whole serving of alcohol (full bottle beer, shot glass of liquor) no more than...god...twice a year if that? And these numbers are trending _down_ as I get older. If I had to never drink alcohol again, my life would basically not change.

There are two significant things that helped give me my particular perspective:

The first is that I have been extremely lucky and grew up in a very alcohol responsible family. My dad will drink "a beer" at or after dinner, or sometimes "a wine" during dinner (and when we go out to sit-down restaurants, he's a sucker for "a froofy margarita with bright colours and a little umbrella"). But that's it. I have never seen my father drunk, and barely ever seen him tipsy. He likes an alcohol here and there, but he is definitely not an alcoholic, and most of his friends are the same way.

(He had one friend, when I was growing up, who would drink a lot and was generally a very fun drunk, and then one day he beat his girlfriend and that was the end of him being a part of my parents' friend group. The girlfriend remained one of my extended pile of adults¹, the drunk has never been heard from since.)

Mom drinks significantly less than I do. Like, she has a nip bottle of Baileys that she enjoys at New Years and has been working on the same nip for 5+ years. She has been drunk once that I've ever heard of (parents and their friends on a Vegas trip when I was 11 or so) and she was honest and forthright about how much it sucked and how she didn't enjoy it.

Most of my extended family are similar to my da -a glass of wine at dinner, some but not all nights, or an occasional beer, or what have you. Again, I am very lucky! I was raised neither to believe that Alcohol Was The Immediate And Constant Devil Who Would Ruin Your Life Forever, nor that "it's totally normal to be constantly miserably puking drunk".

The second thing that has given me my perspective is the fact that I have almost no social anxiety.

I am not scared of public speaking. I do not fear karaoke. I am capable of friendly conversation with strangers. I don't bother sitting on the edges of a party if I can jump in and start chatting.

Part of this is because I have spent a lifetime honing myself into a creature who knows exactly who and what they are, and has no shame for it. I'll be the first to call myself weird, but I'm certainly not gonna let you try and make me feel bad for it, how rude! Some people don't like me, but it's usually the people I don't like back, and it's rare that I have to be at a party with only them. And honestly, I find humans to be broad and fascinating and lovely, and I like a lot of people I meet --and am very capable of faking it for the rest².

And wow, I am not embarrassed by myself at all. I'm not embarrassed that I am quick to crack wise, that I am sharp-edged and sarcastic, that I can be extremely silly, that I always have a clever comment to make or a joke to riff on the situation. I try to be *mindful* of these things, and make sure that I am not dominating a conversation, and that I am being appropriate to the level of professionalism the situation demands, but I'm not embarrassed by myself at all.

And what that means is that I have never _ever_ needed alcohol as social lubricant. I do not need to drink to relax. I don't need to take the edge off --the edge has always been off! I don't know how I got lucky enough to be like this (I think "I was raised right" covers a lot of it, my mom is similar). I have many friends for whom that's not the case, and I don't judge them for it (jegus, why would I judge a friend for taking medication that helps them handle the world better?) but I simply do not have any "reason" to consume alcohol because the singular benefit for me is the taste and the burn.

My surety of self³ also means it is virtually impossible to actually pressure me into drinking. "It's weird you don't drink" says typical American society, and I respond "yep it sure is!" and continue sipping my Shirley Temple with triple cherries because I was super friendly to the bartender and now they like me. I have almost never had people try to pressure me past that, but it really doesn't go well for them.

This got hugely long, and I'm only a little sorry for that, but it is damn near definitive.

~Sor

1: I was raised by a village. Our house was The Place To Hang, mom loved having people around, and so I grew up surrounded by adults who treated me like a person (distinct from being treated like an adult).

2: I am not faking it for you, the person with mutual DW access reading this. I am certainly faking it for some of my Facebook mutuals, but if I am subscribed to your journal, it's because I genuinely like you and want to hear about your brain and life and everything. Like, I just doublechecked my subs list to make sure I could say that honest, and we're good.

3: "Has anyone ever told you you are amazingly self-assured?" "I tell myself that in the mirror every morning".

Comments

[crystalpyramid]

I appreciated what you said about loving the burn of high proof stuff. I feel like that was an acquired... sensation? for me too but it's definitely something i really enjoy that i haven't really heard articulated. Not that i have a lot of conversations about alcohol.

[sorcyress]

I have learned about myself that I really like sensing stuff. This has included the covid-inspired realization that "wow, I really do touch everything normally" (going to the store the first time after things really shut down was a trip, I am so glad the research seems to be indicating that touch-transfer is not a high risk, even though I'm still trying not to touch things I know I'm not buying).

But I like sensing stuff and I very much like "weird" sensing. 3D glasses with neon paint and blacklights? Amazing. Music that jumps from one ear to the other with headphones? Yes please. A beverage that makes your mouth and throat and stomach turn warm, without being made of spicy (I'm a spice wuss)? HERE FOR IT!

I like it enough that I've tried looking up what causes it, and unfortunately, it is just straight up the alcohol. Something something, higher BAV means more dilated blood vessels and also solvent means drying out mucous membranes in a burny sort of way.

~Sor

[keshwyn]

I shall be delighted to give you a teeny tiny sip of very good bourbon, should you think you would enjoy it, when next we're proximate to each other! (I even have a tiny tiny beer stein to put it in.)

[sorcyress]

!!!

I mean, I am perfectly happy to just drink what looks like the dregs out of a normal glass, but that's because I didn't realize tiny tiny beer steins were an option!

[keshwyn]

I found mine at a weird secondhand/antique store in Vermont, but you can get them on Amazon. I keep it around for when I'm at SCA events and people offer me homebrew. If I say, "Oh, just a little!" and offer a teeeeny cup, if it's *terrible* homebrew, well, I don't have to suffer much of it, and if it's super good, I can say, "Oh, may I have some more?" and offer up the mug from my belt loop. ;-)

This trick brought to me by msmemory, who was a font of amazing knowledge and who I miss terribly.

[mindways]

Neat read! :)

There have been spans of months in my life - and maybe even a year, here or there? - where the plurality of my alcohol consumption was "the vanilla extract I put in my hot cocoa".

(This is.. largely that I don't drink much alcohol, but also, to be honest, a commentary on the amount of hot chocolate I go through.)

Surprisingly hard to approach a bartender and say "I would like you to make me a mixed drink with the absolute minimum alcohol you can put in",
I've had occasional success with "I'd like a mudslide with double the chocolate and half the alcohol", but also occasional failures where it was still too boozy. Still, I think the success rate for that phrasing is higher than "with less booze"; I suspect the specificity helps.

(Perhaps I should switch to giving an actual quantitative measurement.)

Okay, off to make myself some hot chocolate. :-)

[sorcyress]

but also, to be honest, a commentary on the amount of hot chocolate I go through

Hahaha!

Bartenders are really a whole complicated extra thing. Despite my bravado about not having social anxiety, I do have a little weird about not knowing how to be in a bar. (attending a lot of first fridays has helped with this some, I have figured out the whole "give them your credit card as a tab" thing, among other problems) So generally, unless the place is not very busy, I feel _super_ weird about taking up enough of the bartender's time to effectively explain "like I'll pay you full price for this drink, just please change the ratios super badly".

If I knew more specific mixed drinks --and what they were made of-- this might be easier. (My mixed drink of choice is a grasshopper, which is creme de menthe, creme de cocoa and heavy cream.)

~Sor

[squirrelitude]

The first alcoholic drink I can remember tasting was a grasshopper, when I was out with my parents at a restaurant as a kid. That might actually have been the last as well; just the smell of alcoholic drinks puts me off. (I like the smell of hoppy beers, and scotches and some wines are interesting to smell. They just don't smell edible.)

I suspect that I could quickly acquire that taste, but from an early I formed negative associations with drinking (despite my parents being similar to yours in that regard) and so my tastes in that regard are like a child's. :-)

[sorcyress]

(Have a joke first, to make up for the bottom half of the comment, which might be TMI)

So this grasshopper walks into a bar, right? Hops up on the barstool, waves over the bartender, the whole deal. The bartender looks at him and goes "Hey! I have a drink named after you!"

"You have a drink named STEVE?!"

***

(The rest of this comment is potentially TMI - cw: sex)

Regarding your comment on tolerance/acquired taste: I have said before that I view alcohol tolerance in much the same way as I view ease of sexual intercourse. Specifically, I am not very good at receiving penetrative sex (physically small, angles are cramped and hard, don't much like any of that kind of pain) and theoretically if I tried it more, I'd get better at it.

Which is the exact same problem with my low alcohol tolerance --if I drank more (and more often) my tolerance would go up and I'd be *able* to drink more.

But both of these options involve doing an unspecified amount of something I definitely find unpleasant, to eventually be able to do something I might? find pleasant. And in both cases, there is just such a *wealth* of related options that are already pleasant and lovely and enjoyable --fancy soda and shirley temples and smoothies that don't taste off on the one side, oral and fingering and kink and dry-humping on the other.

So fuck off, societal expectations. I'm doing just fine as is. ;)

~Sor

[squirrelitude]

Yeah, bingo.

[squirrelitude]

It seems like a few of your rules are about safety, although that isn't something you mention explicitly.

I mentioned elsethread that I don't like the taste of alcohol but could probably acquire the taste if I wanted to. A big part of the reason I don't want to (beyond "why would I?") is that I feel like alcohol would be an assault on my judgement or rationality. Once I've made the decision to drink, what stops me from drinking more, and making other bad decisions? (This is partly from seeing random people behaving badly while badly drunk, but also just how I value the integrity of my mind.) I'm also feel like I'm prone to addiction, so it really could be a terrible idea for me to like alcohol.

[sorcyress]

The safety thing is an excellent point, and it is a subconscious consideration --for all that I am an extremely large-personalitied non-binary pile of spiders, what I *look* like is a much-smaller-than-average adult woman. Who can't hold their liquor.

I didn't really expand on the party rule, but that part there of "a high enough proportion are trusted" is 100% a safety rule --if I don't feel like I know people who will keep me safe "even though I'm drinking", I won't drink.

It helps that almost nothing I participate in is a "drinking event" even though lots of events I go to involve drinking --parties are generally house parties first and "there are drinks" second, Pinewoods is a dance event with drinks, etc. First Friday is about the only thing in my life that is "drinking" as a primary goal, and as stated, I _never_ drink at those.

I'm not particularly worried about the feedback loop of "oh no I am drunk and now it's a good idea to get more drunk" mostly because I start feeling crappy *way* before I start feeling mental effects and almost certainly well before I start being impaired. Fizzy legs do *not* feel good or right, I do not like it Sam-I-Am, and it is damn near immediate for me upon alcohol consumption.

The addiction thing is a mild consideration, although I think my addiction dangers tend to be more mentally triggered than physically. (I am not allowed to own the game Minesweeper, for example, and part of why I don't gamble is exactly this fear, but the physical addiction around alcohol doesn't run in the family and I don't think I'm particularly prone to it.)

~Sor

[ckd]

I never got into drinking, which is just as well because on my current meds I shouldn't drink. (AIUI, they would basically make me an extremely cheap drunk.)

This is from a combination of factors:
1. I graduated high school early and went to college right away; being under the drinking age by more than a year at my college graduation meant that I wasn't going to be in as many alcohol-related social situations.
2. One effect of the Curse of the Gifted Kid Who Everyone Praises For Being Smart is that if you think your only value is your brain and alcohol kills brain cells you will not want to drink.
3. Self-control concerns, much like the ones squirrelitude describes: if I let loose, where do I stop? How do I stop? Do I stop?
4. A strong suspicion that I'd be a really morose drunk. Sleep deprivation reportedly acts like alcohol, and it can twist my extroversion into rejection sensitivity and fear of loneliness; that can go badly in a social situation, especially when those fears make it harder to leave and go to bed (because that's taking action that will make me be alone).

[sorcyress]

That last point is huge for me. I've had a few experiences of being tipsy-or-beginnings-of-drunk around people I love and feeling *super* paranoid and insecure about and around them. Deeply unfun!

Given the idea sleep-dep functions like alcohol, I probably have a better sense of what I'm like drunk than I think I do, and I don't like any of _that_ either. The only good thing about the pandemic has been that I have gotten closer to eight hours sleep than six for almost every night for five months now.

[l33tminion]

When you asked about ordering "a mixed drink with the absolute minimum alcohol you can put in", my first thought was "soda with bitters". Maybe too literal an answer for "mixed drink", but if you want something on the bitter side with just the barest hint of alcohol, it's a good one, and widely available.

I order that myself sometimes when I want something low-alcohol. I also have a very low alcohol tolerance.