Has Drinking Alcohol Become a Moral Issue?

I'm one night into what is already promising to be a fun few days in one of my favorite cities in the world: Paris.

As I write this on my hotel balcony overlooking the cobbled streets of Montmartre, London feels like a distant memory. I have already visited my regular eating and drinking haunts: cidre and salmon tartare at Cafe Charlot; afternoon Martinis at The Cambridge; red wine in Normandie glasses; escargots and a seriously soaked rhum baba at Bouillon Julien. I believe they call it joie de vivre.

Social media will tell me that I should now be in a hell of my own making: anxiety-ridden, hiding under the bed sheets, with a Deliveroo on the way and a day of unproductivity ahead of me. And yet here I am at 9 am, 5km run along the Seine complete, and two black coffees and a devilishly buttery croissant consumed. Now, with both a fully charged laptop and frontal lobe, I’m ready to deliver 1,000 words before a long champagne lunch booking at Lipp Brasserie.

As we begin to resurface from the annual onslaught of Dry January, I’ve been reflecting on the language and messaging coming out of the non-drinking movement over the last year. After all, my job as a spirits and cocktail writer requires me to be mindful of my alcohol consumption, and my choices around what, when, and how often I drink have certainly become more nuanced as the years have gone on.

Having been a staunch advocate for excellent non-alcoholic beverages made with care (Botivo, Muri, Sylva, to name a few) since the scene started to gain pace, I am far from adverse to promoting the benefits of not drinking.

Let’s not forget that the World Health Organization has officially stated that when it comes to alcohol consumption, there is no safe amount that does not affect our health. Let me get one thing straight before I continue: I’m not here to argue against the science. Alcohol is addictive and can cause real harm if abused, not only to an individual but also to their loved ones. For those affected, abstinence should be applauded.

For the rest of us, it feels as though the rhetoric over the last year has shifted away from health concerns and into morality. The insinuation is that only those who live clean can enjoy 5 am wake ups, maximize productivity, and enjoy meaningful relationships with their loved ones. Meanwhile, drinking alcohol inevitably leads to missed alarms, failing to reach your goals, and not valuing time with your children.

This notion, of course, is nothing new: alcohol and ‘goodness’ have been adversaries for centuries, and most religions have a stance on whether its believers should be drinking it or not (abstinence is often the preference). Numerous Prohibitions have been implemented throughout history and across the world, and Neo-Prohibition movements are on the rise. The situation came to a head in Oregon last year when, as well as lobbying for higher taxes on alcohol, it conflated drinking beer at home with bad parenting.

The ‘all-or-nothing’ mentality is becoming more mainstream, and not just with alcohol, but what happened to everything in moderation? I’ll be the first one to profess my love for the sesh, but as a millennial teetering on the right side of 40, somewhere in between is my more natural state. Those 5 am wake up calls can still happen (if I want them to) after a couple of lunchtime coupes of champagne; productivity isn’t impossible after a night at the pub if you plan your tasks.

And while there are, sadly, people who (and cultures which) have unhealthy and addictive relationships with alcohol, conflating abstinence with productivity or goodness is missing the entire point of why a lot of other people and I enjoy drinking alcohol. It’s the dram of Scotch distilled in your birth year that becomes a time travel machine; the tot of rum from the bottle you brought back from your Caribbean honeymoon; the champagne you popped to celebrate the birth of your first child; that slightly soft, blurry haze that takes over you and your friends on a balmy summer Saturday.

Most importantly, though, is the fact that meaningful relationships and rituals with loved ones, while not built around booze, can certainly, in my experience, be enriched by it: Having an Irish coffee with my dad because it reminds him of his first date with my mother, making my brother his favorite ‘welcome back’ Martini on his annual trip to London from Vietnam (‘yours always taste the best’), and surprising my best friend with portable homemade Grasshopper on a Christmas walk, just because she loves them, are all cherished memories of mine.

The moral of the story? Drinking is not morally bad, just as abstinence is not morally good. Nuance can exist in this conversation in place of judgment. And in a world which feels increasingly heavy, it’s those moments of joie de vivre that can save our souls.