Liquor research leads to a definite buzzkill
The latest research on the dangers of alcohol consumption is a total buzzkill.
It strongly suggests that we limit ourselves to no more than two drinks per week and it couldn’t have come at a worse time: St. Patrick’s Day is approaching. Hello?! Everyone knows St. Paddy’s Day is a sacred holiday in which we honour the patron saint of Ireland by dancing the jig, eating Irish stew and drinking ourselves into a light coma.
I highly doubt a cup of green tea will hold a candle to a pint of green Guinness. These days, I’m a lightweight who needs to take a week off after one measly glass of wine. My party days are squarely behind me but still I’d like the option of letting loose once in a blue moon by staying up past 10 p.m. and partaking in liquid merriment without being wracked with guilt and fear.
It’s a good thing this study wasn’t released in the 80s when I attended university. Back then, no one gave two hoots about the dangers of such trivialities as smoking, drinking and driving seatbelt-less. Not only was extreme alcohol consumption acceptable but it was celebrated and promoted. I went to St. Thomas University in Fredericton and the local pubs did their best to turn me into a washed-up drop-out and I daresay it almost worked. There was Fishbowl Fridays at the social club, Filthy Forties at the Hilltop and Migraine Mondays in my dorm room. A pitcher of beer cost less than the nickel stuck to the heel of my shoe. Hardly my fault I failed my Canadian Literature 101 midterm and thought the Dean’s List was a compilation of people named Dean.
Though I didn’t make the Dean’s List, I did manage to graduate, land a job and a husband and subsequently dry out. When years later I became a mother to our two sons, the fear center in my brain literally tripled in size and I dreaded the day they became alcoholic teenagers. When it came to my precious flesh and blood, I feared the worst and imagined every horrendous scenario, each one involving a gutter, a jail cell and a heroin addiction. Yes, yes, I know I’m a hypocrite but here’s the thing: when I indulged as a teenager, I had limited brain cells and a murky future to begin with. Our boys, on the other hand, were straight A students with bright futures and I felt it my duty to keep them on the straight and narrow. And alive.
Plus, I discovered the prefrontal cortex responsible for executive reasoning and judgement does not fully develop in boys’ brains until they are 25! Are you kidding me? Add alcohol to that and you might as well just go ahead and bury me alive. I went into (a downward, anxiety-fuelled spiral) overdrive. I slid articles with titles like Alcohol is the New Gateway Drug That Will Instantly Kill Your Brain under their bedroom doors. I regularly sniffed their breath like a highly trained K9 German shepherd and I tried to motivate them with pep talks: “your birth took 54 hours and required 967 stitches but I hardly remember it. Go ahead. Drink yourself silly. Ruin your life.” None of it worked.
When it became clear I’d lost the battle, I had to change my rhetoric: Always call us for a drive home. Make good choices. Take this green tea for you and your friends. Incidentally, I entered menopause at the very moment I received the first 1 a.m. text requesting a drive home from a field in the middle of nowhere that even the GPS couldn’t locate.
Like a baby’s cry, I could identify the ding of the boys’ texts in the middle of a disturbed, sweat-soaked sleep from anywhere in the world. I might have even lactated. I didn’t sleep again until they left for university.
Thankfully, I survived the party years, the parenting years and the menopausal years. I deserve a drink! Unfortunately, the party-pooper researchers say it can lead to such calamities as high blood pressure, heart disease and excessive lampshade-wearing. The truth is I’m too tired and boring these days to imbibe more than occasionally, except of course when it comes to St. Patty’s Day. Both my name and my childhood BFF are Irish; ergo, it is my sacred duty to raise a glass or two of Green Guinness. Heck, I might even let loose, stay up past 10 p.m. and kiss a Blarney stone or two.
Colleen Landry is a high school writing teacher, author of humour book Miss Nackawic Meets Midlife and co-author of the Camelia Airheart children’s adventure series. She and her husband are empty nesters in Moncton, N.B. Their two grown sons have ditched them for wider horizons. She is filling the void with Netflix, dark chocolate and Cabernet Sauvignon.