Alec Schaffer
Ponder this description of a standard college party: an over crowded, loud, sweaty, sloppy and odorous gathering, relieved of all moral and normative inhibitions; fueled by a mysterious and potentially dangerous house blend of bottom shelf intoxicants.
This degradation of drinking culture is essentially a trademarked trait of the American social gathering. Or perhaps, “social gatherings” wouldn’t even be the best term for it.
I propose more fitting terms such as alcoholic affair, drunken rally or intoxicated frolic, because that is what these events are. The focus of these gatherings is not usually getting together with friends, talking and enjoying the intrinsic value of good company, with the mild drinking lubricating the conversation. Instead, the focus is drinking yourself stupid, freeing yourself of all inhibitions. Until, of course, the sober realizations and regrets in the morning often accompanied by a throbbing pain in your head yields a generalized feeling of lethargic soreness.
While I do agree that such behavior can be fun, it has an appropriate time and place and is not to be overdone. However, ingesting alcohol well beyond healthy amounts seems often to be the goal of modern social gatherings. Repeatedly myself and others seem to see the cure for a stressful week to be a strong drink followed by many more until the stresses of the week are gone and all that remains are barbaric yelps and frisky encounters, lacking of any rational thought or coordination.
Now that we have discussed some of the clear problems with this attitude towards drinking, let’s examine a more reasonable, healthy and enjoyable way to drink. Moderation is ultimately more enjoyable, safer and cheaper.
What’s more, moderation is the way all real alcoholic beverages were designed to be drank. Alcohol in its pure form is a bitter, unenjoyable drink. However, bitter taste can be made tasteful when carefully arranged with sweet vanilla, chocolate or coffee under tones combined with aromatic botanicals acquired from aging.
In the aforementioned social gatherings, we see people haphazardly tossing together a combination of Everclear with a high-fructose corn syrup based, fruit-like juice. Although this is a cheap way to get drunk, it does not posses the same culinary experience as other real drinks. In addition, the problem with the classless type of drinking is that the goal is to get drunk and the purpose of the sugar drinks mixed in is to cover up the alcohol to a point were it is unrecognizable. Not only is this lacking sophistication, but more importantly it is a very dangerous style of drinking.
When you drink a shot of whiskey, you know what you are drinking and you know how much you are drinking. Jungle juice is an enigma and you may not even know what you are drinking. Moreover, you have no idea as to the amount you a drinking. This style of drinking is not only tasteless and unenjoyable, but it is also dangerous. One drink may have four standard drinks without you ever knowing you went above the legal limit. For the inexperienced drinker it can be all too easy to toss back 4 or 5 mystery drinks without ever knowing how much one drank.
Drinking is something to be enjoyed among friends in moderation. It is something where you should take the time to enjoy your quality beer, wine or whiskey in the presence of good company. It should not be something you will regret in the morning if you go too hard.
