Nobody Told Me the Drinking Was Optional

The first time I drank, I decided to.

I was 13. A friend's backyard, about 20 of us, a few tents at the back for whoever was sleeping over. I had Boomerang. Lemon-flavoured beer, because I wanted what beer does without having to taste beer. I wanted to feel something, and I wanted to find out what.

I found out. Somewhere around 2 a.m. the tent and I came to an understanding about how the night was going to end. Not well.

But that was a choice. I picked it. I went looking for it.

And that was the last time I ever decided.

Everything after that, I just did. The way you don't decide to have weather. Turning legal, the first real job, the wedding, the deal that closed. Drinking showed up already installed. At 13 it was a decision. At 23 it was a setting.

It came with the package

Nobody sits you down. There's no form, no moment where someone lays out the choice and waits for your answer. You watch the adults, and one day you're the adult, glass in hand, doing the thing you were always going to do.

It's a setting you inherited. Switched on years before you could reach the dial.

Last week, at a party

I was holding a Corona 0.0. It looks exactly like a Corona. Same bottle, same lime, same everything except the label.

A guy looked at it, then at me, and said: "I think you grabbed the wrong one."

He wasn't being a jerk. He was being helpful. In his head, the only reason a Corona would say 0.0 is that somebody mixed up the coolers. That's how deep the default goes. The alternative is so far off the menu that when it shows up, people assume someone messed up.

Twenty years of parties and nobody once said the word. Optional. They said "what are you having." They said "one won't kill you." Never "you don't have to have anything at all." Not because they were hiding it. Most of them didn't know it either. You can't hand someone a door you don't know is there.

How I found out

No revelation. Dry January 2022. I did the month like everybody does the month, and when February came, the Défi 28 jours was right there. So I just didn't stop. Two months back to back, mostly to see what would happen.

I kept waiting for the cost. The boredom. The missing out. The moment that would prove I needed it after all. It never came. The nights were still good. The deals still closed. My friends still called.

Sixty days. That was supposed to be it. That was four years ago. I've had drinks since, plenty of them. What never came back is the automatic part.

It's also one of the reasons Upside Drinks exists. Not the only one, but this one's mine.

Optional goes both ways

Optional doesn't mean quit. It doesn't mean never. It's not a rule wearing a nicer word.

Tomorrow is my birthday. I'm having a Grand Marnier with my brother-in-law. Not because it's my birthday, not because he's pouring. Because I like the taste. I'm choosing it, on purpose, and that's the whole point.

Some nights I don't. Also on purpose.

Optional just means the answer isn't decided before I walk in the room. Not less for the sake of less. Just mine to call.

So

At 13 I decided to drink, in a backyard, because I wanted to feel something. Then I spent twenty years not deciding at all.

Nobody told me the drinking was optional. So I'll tell you.

It's optional. It always was. You don't need a reason. You don't need permission.

And if the bottle in your hand says 0.0, no, you didn't grab the wrong one.

SP.