Understanding Alcohol
It is literally poison
Ever since my 21st birthday I never much cared for alcohol in any of its many forms.
When I was a young child my dad would let me taste sips of his beer. Like most other children, I thought it tasted vile and I was so perplexed as to why adults loved drinking it so much. When I got older into my young teen years my mom started to let me taste sips of her wine. Cabernet Sauvignon was her drink of choice at the time, and wow… I had just discovered something that tastes 10X worse than the beer my dad had been drinking.
All it did was made me even MORE confused as to why adults fucking LOVE this shit. I mean, I was getting old enough to understand that some people will do ANYTHING to get their hands on this stuff… it left me bewildered.
I was 17 when my brother turned 21. He started to get into whiskey and bourbon. Boy oh boy if I thought beer and wine were bad, I was about to be introduced to the depressing world of mid-shelf whiskey. Whiskey is REALLY bad.
I eventually came around to the taste of some beers and wines, but any form of hard alcohol has always been absolutely repulsive to me. I mean… vodka. Fucking VODKA??? Why does that shit exist?! At least whiskey and tequila and all the other ones PRETEND to have a nice flavor. But vodka is just straight pain. Like a rough, wide dildo with no lube. You can’t be a happy person if you enjoy fucking VODKA.
I haven’t even gotten to how it all makes you feel. The feeling of being drunk is like the feeling of when you’re a six-year-old and you had the chicken alfredo at the Olive Garden for dinner, then you convinced your parents to stop at the Dairy Queen on your way home and you destroyed an Oreo blast. 15-20 minutes later you’re sitting in the back of the car trying your damndest not to throw up and pass out. Your vision is all blurry, your palms get sweaty, knees weak arms are heavy. There’s vomit on your sweater already… I’ll walk myself out…
So the feeling of being drunk is like nuking your digestive system with a pound and a half of heavy dairy products. Why oh why do people do this to themselves all the time?
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not judging the average social drinker out there. Believe me I went to college with 40,000 other spoiled teenagers. I had my fair share of drinking nights that produced great stories, and it was fun! But was it worth it having to endure the pain the morning after? After 4 years of it my answer is HELL NO!
Really that’s the main part that I’m trying to understand here. Why is alcohol the most socially acceptable drug to consume in public? There are alcohol ads everywhere! Alcohol being sold in every grocery/convenience store on every street! Social gathering? Alcohol. Family barbeque? Alcohol. Wedding? Alcohol. Funeral reception? Alcohol. A kids theater play at the elementary school? ALCOHOL! You can even sip on your favorite vial of poison 30,000 feet in the fucking air cuz they’re serving this shit in airplanes!
I don’t know man. Like I said earlier, I’m not here to judge. My mantra is live and let live man. If you enjoy the taste of Jack Daniel’s and wanna get hammered, be my guest. Just don’t get behind the wheel after (I know this is absurdly difficult for those of you that drive a RAM 1500 but it’s not that fucking hard).
I never thought I would understand the enjoyment of alcohol. But when I was standing in line at the Costco checkout the other day, it hit me. It hit me like a ton of bricks. There was this young family in line right in front of me. Parents were young, probably low 30’s, three young children. Two girls, one boy.
The oldest child, one of the girls, was upset because they never went to the refrigerated section to get the yogurt she likes. She kept pestering the mom and the dad and eventually the mom gave in and said “fine, we’ll leave daddy and go look for your fucking yogurt” (I’m only exaggerating slightly). The dad said “we’ll be fine, go look real quick and come back” … leaving the dad with the other two kids turned out to NOT be fine.
The boy had been playing games on his iPad this whole time and suddenly everything was thrown into chaos. The iPad’s battery died so he started pulling on his sister’s hair. The sister started screaming and ran away to avoid the hair pulls. The poor dad… busy unloading the contents of their cart onto the checkout conveyor belt. The dad started scolding the kids and corralling them back to the cart. If you’ve been to Costco you understand, you have like 20 seconds to unload all of your shit onto the conveyor belt until the person working the register says, “chop chop you’re holding up the line”.
The dad continued unloading his cart. At this point the mom and older daughter are walking back from their unsuccessful yogurt search. The girl is dejected, sulking. The mom is done with everyone’s shit, you can see it in her face.
The dad reaches down to get the last of their cart items left at the bottom, and that’s when I see it. Bottles upon bottles of wine. Red, white, rosé and everything in between. Some sparkling but mostly red fucking wine. And that’s when I realized it. Oh! … I’ve never needed to enjoy alcohol because I don’t have to care for young screaming children.
Thanks for reading Target Practice! Continue the discussion below by answering my questions:
Do you enjoy drinking alcohol? What is your drink of choice? Did you always enjoy it?
Do you have any Costco wine recommendations for our poor couple that needs a break?
Do you think I will begin to enjoy alcohol when I have young children?
Why do you think alcohol is socially acceptable for public consumption? Will there ever be a day where a different drug holds this title?