I'll Drink to That...

Like many of my guy friends, I never met a beer that I didn't like. No confrontational personalities, no unwelcome discussions of politics or religion. Beer is generally friendly, comforting, and it has alcohol in it. We all know that alcohol is good as an antiseptic before or after an event. I figure the best way to use it is internally, as a proactive line of defense against all kinds of evil parasites and germs. I'm just trying to be practical here. So beer and I have been good friends since we used to hook up in college, driving from a dry county in North Alabama to a wet one in Tennessee, just to be together. But, unlike my friend Mike, I do have a few conditions.

You see, Mike and I were out in the middle of a parking lot one particularly scorching summer day here in Florida. The asphalt was starting to melt and grab our shoes. And there in that desert sat Mike's old junker resting on three wheels. The right rear was a rubber pancake and we needed to make it work so we could get the hell out of there before we melted too. Mike opened the trunk, leaned in, and did his impression of a dog digging a hole. Stuff flew out behind him as he threw out junk that had been hitch-hiking along in there forever. Somewhat surprised, he found a spare and it wasn't flat. But there was something else too. Rolling around on the inside of the tire, bouncing from side to side for the last 60,000 miles or so, was a very dirty can of Old Milwaukee Beer. An unopened can, a hot, very shaken can. Without hesitation, Mike yelled: “Look, my second favorite kind of beer!” he grabbed the beer with a rag in his hand in case it was too hot to handle directly, popped the top, threw it back in a slurping power chug that he had perfected many years before, and drained it. Hot foam dripped from his chin. He immediately put the can on the ground and with one definitive stomp, flattened it like the tire on his right rear. A huge belch punctuated the coup de grace. Turning back to the business at hand I said: “OK, I'll bite, what's your favorite kind of beer?” He confirmed my suspensions with his answer: “Cold beer!”

So although I admit that I won't drink Mike's second favorite kind of beer, all others are fair game and have stood with me through all the chapters of my life. In my bachelor years, we considered beer to be a balanced meal. We would no more forget the cooler when going on an outing than we would forget to wear pants. And sometimes, the beer would cause us to not wear pants. But I've never gotten a ticket, had a beer on the job, or ever had any problem with beer, until recently.

These days I've got a beer gut that won't go away, and putting my time in at the gym every other morning isn't enough to fix that by itself. I need to stop drinking beer at night, or at least cut back. And that's easier said than done. Now I never have a beer until I've completed my “to do” list when I'm not working or until after work when I am. Then I get the reward. But I know that the nightly calories are no longer burned off the way they were when I was younger. Most nights I think like a cigarette smoker...I'll quit tomorrow.

Yesterday afternoon I thought maybe it was the elusive “tomorrow” and I did something different to break the cycle. I Googled Alcohol Anonymous found a meeting a few blocks away, and went to my first ever AA meeting. Curious, I thought that I could pick up a few tips on how to incorporate beer free nights into my lifestyle.

The parking lot was full and some members were walking in from cars parked more than a block away. An informal gathering of tables and chairs preceded the coffee and doughnuts in the back. Order was called and one of the men read the creed from a printed script encased in a laminate cover, opaque and scratched by the wear of a thousand hands. He looked down and mumbled through the words that it appeared that everyone in the room knew by heart, except for me. And I was unable to hear anything the guy said. The next order of business was for the new people (me) to tell everyone just why I was there. “Well, I'm off work today and after I completed all my chores, I happened to see a note about this meeting on my Facebook page and as I was driving to the liquor store for beer, I simply stopped here first out of curiosity because I like beer and it makes me fat and I am looking for some tips on how to cut back.” Knowing looks accompanied a large verbal welcome from everyone in the room.

Then we got the stories from the AA veterans. A nervous young guy recently out of the slammer and unable to exercise any self-restraint to stay that way, was up first. The once successful business owner who drank himself out of a marriage and into a lonely bankruptcy. The woman who had been in an abusive relationship where the only thing that she and her ex had in common was alcohol. On and on. Bad stories, ruined lives, very often, the wrong side of the law. Alcohol fueled train wrecks for lives. But they seemed to know each other and they counted on each other for support. Most liked the camaraderie and all were in total agreement on one thing: No alcohol, zero tolerance. Each new story had me thinking, “Wow. that’s some seriously bad stuff!” And I kept remembering that I had never had any troubles like that. In fact, I had always been successful as a father, husband, employee or boss, and as a human being. I had never known an alcohol related problem other than around my waist. I just liked beer and it made me fat.

Finally, we wrapped up the meeting with some awkward group hugs and an even more uncomfortable circle of hand holding while reciting the Lord's prayer. I squirm at the thought of holding other men's hands or feigned belief in Santa Claus. Oh, but that unpleasantness was after they gave me my first “chip” to mark day one of my sobriety.

All in all, it was a learning experience. I learned that alcohol was an undeniably a huge problem for  the people in that room, as was daily life itself, I suspect. Feeling considerably better about my own situation, I drove straight to the liquor store to get the supplies I needed to properly celebrate my new- found sobriety I kept thinking to myself: “What's a few extra pounds anyway?” I mean it's not like I'm an alcoholic or something.