What I refuse to drink: alcoholic beverages. Next questions, when—where—how—and why?
During my young adult years, I tried alcoholic beverages
perhaps five times. When I turned 21, a
friend and I went to the University Restaurant in Tampa and had a beer or
two. Once I got a bottle of Colt 45 at a
convenience store and drank it. A young
lady and I had cocktails at Tampa International Airport—I had a Tom Collins. Once in Gainesville I had a bottle of beer in
a restaurant. Finally, in the early 70’s
a friend and I bought a bottle of whisky at a liquor store near campus and
drank some of it in my room. On all
these occasions I was making a symbolic statement that I was free of the
restrictions of my teen years at home. I
wanted to feel sophisticated and identify with a cosmopolitan lifestyle. But having tried it, I felt the effects of
alcohol and generally found even mild intoxication was unpleasant and wrong and ran
counter to the purposes for which God created me. I came to realize that clear thinking
and acting was what God intended for me. It seemed a sacrilege to the Almighty to cloud
the gift of perception—in its form and extent a unique gift to humanity. It became clear to me that I had no
meaningful inhibitions—that my freedoms were better served by a natural high. (I also tried cannabis several times with
precisely similar results—the positive promise was simply never realized.) So for many years now, I have been a teetotaler.
This has insured my role as a rebel—not a
rebel from my growing up home years, but a rebel to the phony sophistication of
alcohol. The negative impact of alcohol
on our society is incalculable. Ironically,
our society’s use of alcohol does not in the long run remove inhibitions, but
only serves to reinforce them. It does
not serve to make us sophisticated, but only serves to demean us. Of course propaganda to the contrary is
unrelenting—there are big bucks in the alcohol trade. The constant barrage of blatant falsehood only
serves to condition us for accepting lies and untruth. My hope is that one day prohibition will
return—not as a law, but as a steadfast choice.
My hope is that sophistication will be truly defined and ultimately consummated
in clarity of thought and action from which arise true fun and happiness.
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