Back to Basics #21  

        Among other things to commemorate the Orwellian year of 1984, I wrote out a "macro" to send to editors every time I came across the Orwellian phrase, "alcohol and drugs" or one of its relatives.

            The phrase is acceptable in common usage and, well, quite common; the problem with it is less that it's got grammatical difficulties and more that its use in unethical.

            Indeed, about 1984 I found the phrase borderline obscene, and I'm starting to feel that way again.

            By 1984, my high school buddy, college roommate, and good friend "Mac" had already killed himself or was well on the way to doing so. His method was mostly drugs, and his first and continuing drugs were beer and cigarettes.

            I was reminded of Mac's death New Year's Day 2012 when I accompanied another friend walking his dogs and he encountered a neighbor on the street supervising removal of some family goods. The neighbor was 46 years old, and her husband had recently drunk himself to death at age 49.

            So I will repeat what I have often said, and many others have said, and I do want you to get this straight: ethyl alcohol ingested to get high, relieve pain, prevent pain, just be sociable — or whatever — is (goddamn it) a drug.

            I'm not saying here, "Don't drink alcohol." We're a booze culture and alcohol use is normal and, in moderation, done responsibly, is fine, and peachy keen with me.

            Just remember that when you do booze you're doing a drug.

            Alcohol is a drug that can be used — and is used by most people — recreationally. But alcohol is a "hard" drug: for some people a potentially addicting drug, for all of us a potentially dangerous drug.

            So saying "alcohol and drugs" is like saying "apples and fruit" or "editors and people." Apples are a variety; editors — hell, even journalists — are people; and alcohol is a drug.

            So that's "alcohol and other drugs."

            So you should judge all the scare stories about DRUGS!!! against your personal experiences with alcohol and in the context of the long human experience with booze.

            Hint on the length of that experience: What's the oldest long poem around? Try the Sumerian/Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh. How does Gilgamesh bring one of its protagonists out of a wild, innocent state and into civilization? The wild man Enkidu is introduced to sex and bread and beer. In the Greek myths, who are "The Two Great Gods of Earth"? Demeter and Dionysos: grain and the grape, bread and wine. How does one greet the Jewish Sabbath or celebrate Christian communion? Bread and wine.

            So that's alcohol and other drugs, with the reminder that from the beginning of civilization and probably long before it was well known that booze was a great gift but an ambiguous gift. Demeter was grain but also Mother Earth — and Mother Nature destroys even as she gives. More so — far more so — Dionysos was god of wine and intoxication and divine possession: kindest and gentlest of the gods in his great gifts, and, as Euripides illustrates in The Bacchae, potentially one nasty putz.

            Alcohol is a drug and can be fun and a lubricant to civilized social life — and dangerous. So with all other drugs.

            Drugs are far from alike and must be differentiated. First, though, drugs must be acknowledged as drugs.

            Start the acknowledgement with alcohol.

            "Hi, I'm Rich. On rare occasions, but now and then, I ingest ethyl alcohol for kicks. Hence, I use a recreational drug." Especially if you "drink," as we say, more often than now and then, deal with it.