I don’t like the taste, she says.
It has an acquired taste, people say.
I just don’t know why I’d try to acquire the taste of something that makes me feel out of control, she says.
But that is precisely why there is a half-drunk glass of champagne on my desk right now. That is one thousand percent why I am having an electrical surge of creativity untouched by the part of me that needs control more than anything else. I am here because of the control itself. Not to feel out of it, but to be free from my Ego’s made-up need for it.
The first time I ever drank alcohol, though, was not for creativity or unburdened communication (maybe one and the same.)
It was, without question, to be cool. The end of a long gravel driveway in God-only-knows-who’s barn in the woods. I held that brown bottle with the silver and blue label with all the effort in the world to make it look effortless. And though I vehemently do not condone those choices and my rationale for decision-making back then, it was the first time I realized there was a way to be without being in control (or at least without needing to believe you’re in control.)
Of course, when consumption of alcohol is synonymous with false measures of peer approval, being 1 or 2 drinks in— my ideal for the kind of creativity and deeply authentic communication I crave— isn’t really an option. To get those approval points that Ego so desperately needs at 17, 20, even 22, you have to zip past the phase of being cognizant of your inhibitions blurring and skip straight to the part where the words “cognizant” and “inhibitions” are themselves blurred.
(Or at least fake it. That has worked for me too.)
But at 30, I’m not only more settled into who I am, thus looking less to others to tell me, but the metrics of peer approval are different.
Instead of how little do you care about having your shit together, it’s now how much of your shit do you have together and where are you on the job-marriage-kids-house-retirement plan ladder? (When the answers to those questions feel shameful, wine comes in handy. Artfully dosed, however.)
So now, happily, (because I really never “enjoyed” those kinds of nights but so enjoyed being in the Cool Kids Club) I drink only as much as it takes to peel back that *one* layer of white-knuckled control where I am obsessed with pre-planning entire conversations as a means of maintaining my illusion of control, addicted to thinking about what’s next and how long it will take and what comes after that, existentially attached to wondering what other people are thinking of me.
Did you know there is a way to exist without those things??
(Hey Siri, play “A Whole New World.”)
But just last month, there was a night when I couldn’t get there.
I made a drink. I drank the drink. I felt the looseness in my body. I felt the collectively-connecting “damn, life is short, why don’t we have more fun??” feeling.
But I couldn’t find that familiar threshold between Control and Freedom, Ego and Soul, Image and Truth.
I made another drink.
Where was it?
I woke up the next morning and thought, “I can’t get drunk anymore.”
Perplexed.
And then I thought, what if I am starting to live on the other side of that threshold without any help from my whites and bubblies? What if, in certain settings, on certain nights, in certain moods, I have figured out how to live one layer down?
I wish we could all meet here. in the day time. in our real lives.
One layer down. All the time.