Diminishing Returns

I don’t like to drink. That’s not to say I never do, or that I have a principled stance against it. Booze just doesn’t do it for me anymore. I don’t like how I feel the next day. I don’t like what I have to do to chase that feeling. And most of all, I don’t like what happens if I go just a little too far.

Alcohol and addiction are part of my DNA. My dad’s entire side of the family struggled and still struggles with a dependence on alcohol to varying degrees. Each of them (two uncles, two grandparents and an aunt), at one point or another, owned a bar. Some of my earliest memories are of my dad’s bar, Martin’s Inn, in Villa Park, IL.

I first tried alcohol—with the intent of actually getting drunk—as a freshman in high school. I didn’t drink regularly until senior year, when I would get drunk with friends on weekends, before going to watch sporting events, pretty much whenever an excuse met an opportunity.

Now prepare yourself for this scalding hot take: drinking was a lot of fun. Being drunk was a careless euphoria. I can still remember times when I was at that perfect level of drunkenness. I’m sure you can too, if you’ve ever felt it; it’s fantastic.

Maybe it’s because of my genetics, some predisposition to or tolerance of alcohol, or maybe it’s just this way for everyone, but after about two months in college it became more difficult to reach that happy zone, and harder still to stay there for any manner of time. My friends and I would half-jokingly say, “OK, were blacking out tonight!” It was a battle cry for the night ahead but also a tacit acknowledgement of the fact that we all needed to drink more than we should in order to enjoy ourselves.

In order for me to reach that plateau where I started to feel good, I had to drink to the point that I was on the verge of blacking out—and I mean right on the edge—or else the endeavor and subsequent stomach ache would feel pointless. Sometimes I would fall off the edge, and those were always the worst nights. It’s scary to wake up and not remember what you did, said or broke.

These days, I get infinitely more enjoyment out of a night in with a little weed than a night of drinking, and I’m not alone. Among people I know, more and more are seemingly, like me, favoring marijuana over alcohol.

It’s not that I never drink. I’ll have a beer or two with the game or with dinner. But something I’ve come to understand is that as I get older, even great things can have diminishing returns. Getting drunk, for me, is one of those things.