Pubdate: Mon, 04 Dec 2000
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: The Vancouver Sun 2000
Contact:  200 Granville Street, Ste.#1, Vancouver BC V6C 3N3
Fax: (604) 605-2323
Website: http://www.vancouversun.com/
Author: Carellin Brooks

WHEN A TIPPLE BECOMES A MORTAL SIN

Have you noticed that there is no such thing as substance use anymore,
just substance abuse?

Time was, one could go for a quiet tipple or an after-dinner cigar
without anyone wagging a finger, metaphorically speaking, and
discoursing in ominous tones on the subject of chemical dependency or
atmospheric poisoning. No longer.

Time was, I drank a lot. I was forever mixing up strangely named
cocktails from outdated mixology bibles and experimenting with
different varieties of shakers.

When my doctors asked me how much I drank, I told the truth, more fool
me. I remember one enquiring, with infinite tact, if I thought it was
a problem. I paused. "No, not like a problem," I said finally. "More
like a hobby." She remained, I seem to recall, unconvinced.

Another time I happened to be scheduled for a checkup a couple of days
after a birthday party that had led to a state of hilarious
befuddlement, at least from my point of view. Somehow, the
conversation came round to the exact contents of my debauch.

Months later, I peeked at my file while the doctor was out of the
room, and was equal parts amused and horrified to learn that the words
"champagne cocktails" and "6-7 drinks" had been ominously scrawled at
the margin. Hey, if you're going to go down, at least do it in style,
I thought.

There are alcoholics and there are addicts and there are compulsives,
and we know them and love them (at least after they've gotten it
together to stop stealing our VCRs and go into treatment, that is).

And then there are people who drink and take drugs and smoke and act
eccentrically because they like it and because they can. The problem
is that we seem to have conflated the two categories.

Sleep till 3 p.m. one day and you exhibit clear signs of being, as
conferring acquaintances will agree with gloomy relish, clinically
depressed. Go out on a Friday night and get toasted and you will find
yourself, on Monday morning, confessing your sins with a slightly
defensive air. "I was really stressed -- I'm sure I should have just
gone to yoga, but ... "

Alcohol and drug use, applied judiciously, has lubricated a million
social situations and family gatherings. Why demonize tactics that
have proven, time and again, to be of such redeeming social value?

A peculiarly Canadian aspect of the pathologization of such
less-than-innocent pleasures is that nobody, except possibly for
Doctor, would dream of addressing the subject with the alleged abuser.

While everyone around you may agree that your penchant for picking up
strangers and going to bed with them is a clear sign of your tortured
avoidance of intimacy, nobody will say boo to you about it.

You may delude yourself that your weekly bottle of Southern Comfort
has escaped censure, but don't bet on it. While they smile and pour
you another drink, friends are regaling each other with the
exaggerated details of your booze-fueled striptease at last week's art
opening, as well as calculating the exact distance (and it's shorter
than you think, believe you me) between you and the darkest pit of
Hell.

If you think that our country's heavy-handed official disapproval of
mildly destructive ways of having fun has escaped world notice, think
again.

I was on a train platform in Germany this spring, smoking a cigarette,
when a charming senior citizen approached me. Finding our mutual
language gap just about unbridgable, he was nonetheless able to
ascertain that I came from Canada.

"Ah, Canada!" exclaimed the spry elder, with a winking glance at my
smoldering fag-end. "Drinking -- smoking -- verboten! Polizei! They
kill you!" He shook his fist in a parody of the hardhearted Canadian
official, prowling against vice, and smiled in complicity with my
daring, smokey ways.

The only thing that saves us from ourselves, perhaps, is that in
practice we remain endearingly flawed.

The same people who earnestly consume organic produce during the week
can invariably be found face-down in a pool of their favorite
grain-fueled alcoholic beverage come Friday night. The exact folk who
have cut out entire food categories like meat, dairy or good ol' wheat
itself because of their alleged poisonous properties seem never to
have met a toke of B.C.'s finest home-grown they didn't like.

Despite our desire to tar everyone with the brush of incautious
overconsumption, it seems we just can't help but blur those categories
ourselves.

So go ahead. Pass the bottle. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake