Highbraü 3 - Drinking by Highbrau Magazine

Volume I, Issue III

Spring/Summer 011

HIGHBRAÜ

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DRINKIN’

Volume I - Issue III - Spring/Summer 011

Words

IMAGES

JIM CAVILl

JOEY BELL 4-5

MICHAEL CHARPENTIER

18 ASHLEY CAMARA

8-9 JONNY DANGER

13 City Center

19 DAVID ESO

19 Adam Dee

18 BRONWYN FREY

15 John Gosselin

6-7 IRENE GESZA

7,8 MELISSA LUKEZIC

3 JODI Koberinski

5 IAN STUMPF

14-15

Jesse MacLeod 10-12 ERIN OH 17

Cover: Danielle McCrorey

Back cover: ASHLEY CAMARA

IAN STUMPF

Mark Ciesluk

EDITORS

Graham Engel

HIGHBRAUMAGAZINE.COM

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A-MUSEMENT Under one definition, amusement is what we do in order to avoid thinking. What do you find amusing? What are we trying to avoid thinking about?

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Submissions Due: Jan 6* Release: Jan 27* (Just in time for a new year of distraction)

SAM THE MONK BY IRENE GESZA

Theravadan Buddhist, Sam came to Canada from Thailand, dipatched to serve the spiritual needs of a small Buddhist community just outside of Cambridge. After only a short time in Canada, Sam observed that while we were a nation of people with a lot of abundance, we were also a nation of people with a lot of suffering — anxiety, depression, anger, greed, stress. So, in his spare time, Sam decided to offer meditation classes for Westerners out of the little Buddhist temple, to see if he might help some of us alleviate some of that suffering. Meditation, Sam promised, would help us create an inner landscape of calm, peace and wisdom, that we might be better able to navigate the vagaries of life. Sounded good. We were a few classes into the 21day course when Sam introduced The Five Precepts, the Buddhist equivalent of The Ten Commandments. Sitting in meditation was not enough, Sam told us, to increase wisdom and encourage right thought and right action — with happiness as the ultimate goal. Along with regular meditation practice, he promised that following five Precepts would transform our state of consciousness and improve the quality of our lives. Sam was compelling. Here he was was, a stranger in this country, five-footnothin’, physically only a tiny scrap of a being, yet huge in his way. He owned nothing, save for the robes on his back and a few personal items (a toothbrush, one would imagine.) He kept in the little room of the temple he called home. Yet he was so happy, so spacious with us, so generous, so gracious in his desire to share with us, to help us. Not paying attention to what he was saying, under the circumstances, did not appear to be an option.

These are The Five Precepts: 1. No killing 2. No stealing 3. No false speech 4. No sexual misconduct 5. No intoxicants causing heedlessness Did he know where he was? Did he know who he was talking to? Everybody kills — something, sometime. Everybody steals — a pencil here, a few sheets of paper there. Everybody gossips, talks about people when they’re not around. And sexual misconduct? Cheating on your partner and using other people for sex (friends with benefits) is normal, the way it’s done around these parts. Did Sam never watch TV? Had he never seen Desperate Housewives?And that last one, #5? What a notion that we wouldn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t drink. How were we supposed to pull that one off and still have anywhere to go, anything to do for fun and anyone to talk to? It was not lost on the group that Sam introduced these ideas on the Thursday before the May 2-4 long weekend. He couldn’t be serious.

everal of us asked for clarification. What did he mean by heedlessness? Did that mean falling-down-pukingdrunk or just slurring words or what? What if you only had two or three and you weren’t driving? Would that be okay? If you only had a little bit to drink but were nowhere near heedlessness, would the meditation-thing still work? Sam would not be moved. While some North American meditation teachers cut practitioners a bit of slack when it comes to alcohol and other popular drugs-of-choice not covered in this issue, Sam was not one of

them. In fact, he said if enough people took his course or even just followed the Precepts, the makers and purveyors of alcoholic beverages and the like would be out of business and may even go so far as to take out on a contract on his life. He could say the cutest things. Alcohol, Sam explained, mostly served to muddy consciousness, to distract us from full experience of any given moment, to lead us farther and farther afield in our quest to discover our own true selves, our individual Buddha natures. To illustrate, Sam told this story:

nce upon a time, there was an ascetic. Having devoted his life to seeking enlightenment, he removed himself from society and all its trappings and went off alone into the forest to reach nirvana. One day, a woman came walking through the forest. In one hand, she carried a knife. In the other, she held a goat on a leash. Under her arm, she cradled a bottle of alcohol. When she approached the placid, blissful ascetic, she took one look at him and decided, “This guy ain’t right.” “Look,” she said to the ascetic. “I’m going to give you three choices. Either you kill and eat this goat” (ascetics don’t kill or eat meat), “or you have sex with me” (ascetics don’t have sex), “or you drink this alcohol” (they don’t do that, either). The ascetic wasn’t buying it. “And if you don’t do one of those things,” the woman persisted, “I am going to use this knife to kill you.” The ascetic pondered his options and decided that drinking the alcohol would be the easiest thing to do, given the circumstances. So he drank the whole bottle. “And then the next day,” Sam told us, “This guy had a verrrry BIG hangover, and you know what he did? He killed the goat and ate it and had sex with the woman.” Sam paused. “That,” he said, “Is the nature of alcohol.” I laughed right out loud. If Sam was right, that would explain ... so much. And I think that he was. 3

THE MOSTLY TRUE DRINKING STORY BY JIM CAVILL

’m going to tell you a drinking story. Better yet, this one’s mostly true; every event in this story actually happened. I’ve changed names and minor details to protect the identities of the individuals too blottoed at the time to remember. This story takes place in a remote mountain village. No, really. When I was 18, my graduating high school class put our greasy, pimple-covered heads together and concluded that we should arrange our own graduation trip. We went to a Catholic high school so a self-planned trip was a requisite for any kind of fun on the trip. The small, self-elected committee of girls in charge had settled on a remote ski village in Quebec, a few hours from where we went to school. The girls had arranged with a few parents willing to act as our guardians to rent the bus and oversee the trip. Since my hometown consists mainly of alcoholics, farmers, and alcoholic farmers, the guardians were likely chosen strategically by the girls for their somewhat lax policy on alcohol and drug consumption. The party started pretty much immediately after boarding the bus. Not twenty minutes into the trip, the air on the vehicle was dank with the smell of beer and sharp with the smell of liquor. The bus driver, who had to have smelled the powerful fumes, pretended not to notice. A guy named Martin, who, much like Paris Hilton, was popular for no discernible reason, kept screaming ‘Get ‘em into ya!’ People seemed to be following his suggestion. A few hours later, we all filed crookedly off the bus and began to look for establishments that would serve us the alcohol we coveted. Most of us had suddenly become the legal drinking age upon crossing the provincial border and many wasted no time. Needless

to say, my friends and I were excited. We’d been looking forward to this trip all year and, at the time, had believed we truly deserved it for all the hard work we’d done in our senior year of high school. Looking back, our mentality back then was pretty cute, but I digress.

he group I found myself in that fateful weekend was Sam, Ryan, and myself. Both Sam and Ryan stood easily over six feet in height. Sam was the beefier of the two, and a black belt in several martial arts. Ryan, on the other hand, was long and wiry, with hair that seemed to stick out from every angle on his head no matter how short he cut it. Sam and Ryan had been friends since they were kids, far longer than I had known either of them. I had noticed pretty early in our friendship that they tended to bring out the worst in each other. They were constantly pushing each other to go further, be crazier, and drink more. Despite their somewhat destructive relationship, we had been friends throughout high school and had managed to arrange to share a suite in the ski village. None of us planned to go skiing while we were there. Our first two nights there were actually pretty uneventful. Neither Sam, Ryan, nor I wanted to test our newly acquired drinking legality for fear that the servers would immediately detect our ruse and, I don’t know, call our parents or something. Instead of purchasing alcohol while there, we drank the beer we had brought along instead. Some stupidity ensued but it was nothing compared to our third and final night. There was something in the air that night. All of us could feel that we would soon be packed back onto a bus to return to our nonalcoholic lives. That night, it was as

if we were drinking to make up for the past 18 years of sobriety. Sam and Ryan began to argue and become belligerent as drink after drink went down our throats. I wasn’t paying much attention to the subject of their fighting; I was busy texting Michelle, the girl of my teenage dreams. There had always been an unbearable sexual tension between Michelle and me, although nothing had ever happened. However, this night promised to be different when I received this text message from her: “U SHOUD COME TO M ROOOM”

I quickly downed another drink and began to search for my jacket when I was suddenly distracted by the increasing calamity coming from Ryan and Sam. Ryan was already wasted. He remains, to this day, the kind of guy without an off switch. I don’t know what he had done to infuriate Sam, but the two had gotten into a shoving match. I could see Sam struggling to refrain from roundhouse kicking Ryan’s head off. I stepped between the two, catching an elbow with my face. It didn’t hurt too badly thanks to the anaesthesizing effect of the alcohol and I calmly told Ryan to take a walk. Thankfully, he obeyed my drunken command and left the suite. Sam was still seething and began to yell incoherently at me. I wasn’t sure what had angered him so I decided to leave. As I walked down the hallway away from the room, I heard two crunchy explosions of sound behind me. I looked back to see Sam with both his fists planted up to the wrists in the drywall of the hallway wall. Instead of going back to deal with the destruction, I proceeded to Michelle’s room. I probably should have stayed to calm my friend, but a nubile virgin trumps a near-homicidal martial arts expert any day.

y the time I actually got to Michelle’s room, the alcohol inside of me had taken full effect and as I swayed in front of her door, I seriously consid-

ered going back to my room. Instead, as the hormone-driven young man that I was, I opened the door and went inside. The room seemed empty and after a few minutes of calling/mumbling Michelle’s name, I collapsed face-first onto her bed. As I did this, my stomach churned the alcohol inside of me and I vomited a long stream of 50-proofpuke across Michelle’s bed. Then I fell face first into it and passed out. When I woke in the morning, dried sick caked to the side of my face, there was still no sign of Michelle. As I tried to blink away the knives of light penetrating my eyeballs, I heard a feminine groan from the other side of the bed. I peered over the edge and found Michelle still passed out on the floor in her own pool of dried sick. I knew right then what I had to do: I left immediately, hoping that Michelle would think my stomach’s remnants were her own. Later, back in my room as I washed the dried puke off my face, I noticed a large, dark purple bruise on my eye from the elbow I caught the night before. I couldn’t remember whether it was Sam’s or Ryan’s and still can’t today. I remember thinking that the multi-colored vomit and the dark purple bruise worked together to create the effect of some weird clown makeup and I laughed despite my crippling hangover.

Drinking on the Job - Melissa Lukezic

didn’t see Sam and Ryan until later as we boarded the bus. Sam came on first, his knuckles already scabbed over from their brief rendezvous with the drywall. He told me that his credit card had been charged for the holes in the hotel and he sighed deeply, obviously calculating the number of hours he’d have to work at his gas station job to pay it off. When Ryan climbed onto the bus, a few kids started laughing but Sam and I just stared in open-mouthed shock. He looked like absolute hell. His nose was swollen and appeared broken. Both eyes were blackened and he was missing an eyebrow. When he sat down in the seat across the aisle, both Sam and I eagerly asked what had happened to him. “I don’t wanna talk about it” was all he said and he was snoring in his seat before the bus even began to move. Luckily, Martin happily filled us in on the events of the night before. Apparently, Ryan had showed up to Martin’s room, unbelievably blottoed and belligerent, and the people in the room had decided that, for Ryan’s own safety, they had to take his alcohol and lock him in the bathroom where he could do no damage to himself or others. Unfortunately, Ryan, in his intoxicated state, had interpreted this act of care as some sort of imprisonment. He had burst through the bathroom door

then sprinted down the hallway, shouting something about prisons and nazis as he fled. Some of the guys from Martin’s room had chased Ryan down the hallway, attempting to stop him from damaging anything, but this proved unnecessary. A foreign exchange student from our class named Andrew had heard the commotion from down the hall and had stepped into the hall just in time to see Ryan sprinting towards him. Despite his incredibly peaceful and pacifistic demeanor, Andrew had done the only thing he could think of as he saw Ryan loping drunkenly down the hall, pursued by several angry men. He clotheslined Ryan, breaking his nose in the process. The guys had then dragged Ryan by the ankle back to their room and had shaved off one of his eyebrows, presumably for fun.

am and I listened to the story in silent disbelief. Ryan slept peacefully, seemingly uncaring about the events of the night before. On the trip back, I texted Michelle and asked her if she had enjoyed her night. I didn’t get a reply. I never found out whether she had known I was in her room, but we avoided eye contact with each other for the rest of our lives. True story. I’m not proud of any of this but I tell the story to entertain and educate, not to boast. 5

“. . . AS THEY UNDERSTAND HIM” BY BRONWYN FREY

n April, I went to my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with my mom. She’s been sober since January and I was going with her for moral support. I have no intention of giving up alcohol, and I figured that being surrounded by people whose lives had been warped by addiction would be depressing. Not so. As I entered the church basement, people smiled and nodded at me. Maybe I’m just used to Toronto, but Canadian strangers seem like experts in eye-contact avoidance. The coffee, surrounded by the expected donuts and also cake, wasn’t finished brewing. I sat next to my mom in one of those splinter-prone wooden chairs at the back of the brightly painted, dimly lit Sunday school room. These forty-odd people, like any other A.A. meeting, are collectively referred to as the “Group”. Most of them looked older than 35. Introductory remarks from a round and bespectacled younger man. Upcoming birthdays and get-togethers were announced (with promises of more cake), followed by a brief discussion of A.A. doctrine which was barely audible from my seat. A white haired giant in a leather jacket laid a kindly hand on my shoulder and told me the coffee was ready. Differently coloured chips were handed out according to the duration of a person’s sobriety. The rotund emcee began with longer periods. A year; six months; a week. Finally, you could get a chip if this was your first meeting or you had a sincere desire to stop drinking. My mom has a silver, a red, a gold and a green chip which she keeps in the niche of our front hall. Some members shared their struggles with us. A wiry, worn man with a big moustache and baseball hat said he couldn’t let anyone new into his life without jeopardising his sobriety. We

recited the Serenity Prayer (an appeal to God to help us change the things we can change, accept the things we can’t, and be wise enough to know the difference) and divided into groups. About twelve members plus my mom and I went to another room for “open discussion”. This is what I had expected; a circle of people introducing themselves as alcoholics (“Hi, Bob”) and sharing their struggles without interruption.

he themes picked for the evening’s discussion were resentment, progress and Step Three: the “decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand him.” Phil (all names changed) told us about a terrible cycle wherein he sobers up and sees his life more clearly, but the awful state of things impels him to the bottle. When he goes out to a bar, people sometimes inform him that there’s something wrong with the way he drinks. Sherry has long shiny hair and wears bell-bottomed jeans. She could be a high school student except for her deeply lined face. She dreads the next time her children visit her. She still hasn’t bought their Christmas presents because she can’t afford it. People around her don’t seem to understand that she has this incurable disease. Kyla is a respectable and attractive wife and mother. She talks and dresses smartly. She is grateful for the support of her family. She considers herself intelligent and capable. Step Three has been difficult for her. “Some people’s sobriety I don’t want,” she says. Bill is co-ordinating this discussion and has been in jail a few times. “Tomorrow I won’t sell drugs,” he says. “I’ll go to work. I won’t slap my girlfriend. I won’t take a drink. I couldn’t have given you those guarantees four

and a half years ago.” Resentment? A.A. members are advised to let it go, but this man’s grudge against himself motivates him to stay sober and attend meetings. As a personal symbol of how he has decided to co-operate with the laws of society, he no longer jaywalks. Neil introduces himself as an A.A. “neophyte”. His speech is almost a mutter. His career as a jazz guitarist went hand in hand with booze. He’s lost his wife and his beautiful house in Waterloo, and now lives with in a small townhouse with his son and daughter. He keeps his eyes on the ground. Sherry is smiling at Brett, the twitchy, hulking man next to her. He clearly doesn’t want to be here. His sponsor Patrick, the leather-clad titan, sits on his left. Bouncing on the balls of his feet, Brett talks about spending large amounts of money on video games and consoles to keep himself distracted from his urge to drink. Rory, a personable Irish fellow, sits on my left. He playfully kicks my dangling purple Dr. Marten-shod foot. David and Joe are well into their sixties. They each talk for a long time. They mention God frequently and comfortably. My mom no longer drinks away the day’s stress after work. Things are less foggy. She isn’t following the Twelve Steps very closely, but she’s happy to come to the meetings. I’m just here to support her. A collective “aww”. As the discussion group disperses, Rory tells me that my boots remind him of his days in Dublin when gangs were distinguished by the colour spray-painted on their Docs. Stephen, a large pale man in a dress shirt and many gold rings, tells my mom that she is on the right track and that by coming to these meetings, she will find that God is here to help her.

xamination into my mom’s new sobriety regimen and the statistical likelihood of inheriting a parent’s addictive behaviours have increased my awareness of my own addictive tendencies. My eating habits are hardly based on hunger, and my marijuana

consumption interferes with my practical responsibilities more often than I’d like. While many, including myself, wouldn’t consider these habits unusual or significantly problematic, my new sensitivity has made me wonder if there are some A.A. tenets I can weave into my own life as a kind of safeguard against more ingrained and destructive addiction. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions is a foundational text of Alcoholics Anonymous. One of its central themes is that sobriety is only possible through acceptance of and surrender to “God as [individual A.A. members] understand Him”. The A.A. member must accept that s/he is powerless over alcohol and that, since the individual’s own resources have been ineffective, s/ he needs assistance from a power outside his/herself. This directive breaks down into roughly two components: acceptance of a higher power (whatever that may be), and displacement of the self as the centre of responsibility and power. Step Three is hard to swallow. A.A.’s characterization of this higher power as the male Abrahamic “God” indicates, of course, a patriarchal and Western bias. I trust that motivated A.A. members acknowledge this semantic shortcoming while finding creative, personally acceptable ways to “understand” a more-than-human entity. The reader, however, may question the validity of surrendering one’s will at all. Like the smart middle class mother, many of us believe that selfsufficiency is a foundational life skill that we would teach our children to take pride in. Self-confidence is based, at least in part, on this ability and/or assumption that we are effective, even inspired, caretakers of our own lives. A.A. members have damaged their reputation, health and relationships to varying degrees. Alone, they are unable to sustain aspects of their life they genuinely care about. Their habitual thoughts and behaviour have catered to their weakness for so long that they can’t be trusted to make constructive

steps towards sobriety by themselves. In this case, trading one’s questionable sense of self-sufficiency for an unwavering, impersonal moral force might have a steadying effect.

irst published in the 1950s, the “Twelve and Twelve” made use of the most obvious and culturally ingrained higher power at the time. But God is not the only guiding, transcendent force. Ideals such as justice, free will, and beauty influence the actions of many Westerners. The “Twelve and Twelve” itself allows the substitution of God with the Group, “a very large group of people who have solved their alcohol problem”, as the required higher power. The individual’s subjection before the divine is common in other religious traditions, as exemplified by

Drinkin’ - John Gosselin

the ecstatic devotional poetry of Hinduism. The goal of ego dissolution recalls East Asian traditions such as Buddhism and Daoism. Although we can’t assume that any religious element can be simply transplanted into a twelvestep recovery program, A.A. encourages personalized understandings of the necessary higher power. Sticky Step Three does, I think, yield some fruitful contemplation on addiction and self-control. While subjection to any higher power resembling God still reminds me of Sunday-school drudgery, checking my ego against empirically responsible choices seems like good practice. In Buddhism, the self is characterised as endlessly grasping for pleasure and permanence, which

in turn creates dissatisfaction because nothing (pleasurable or otherwise) is truly permanent. A better understanding of the especially temporary nature of intoxication or delicious food might stem a proto-addict’s eagerness to escape into these pleasures. This awareness might also reframe the indulgence as an experience to be savoured rather than something habitual or deserved. Most importantly, the pleasure is less likely to be accepted as some kind of solution.

s Phil described trying to drink away the unpleasant reality of his situation, I was reminded of a line from the Daodejing (as translated by Jonathan Star): As the gates of Heaven open and close can you remain steadfast as the mother bird who sits with her nest? At the time, I was reading the Daodejing for the first time and I was struck by how useful Daoist philosophy might be in A.A. The Daodejing teaches that the Dao, or “Way”, can’t be described, but is synonymous with material reality. The sage who is in tune with the Way is flexible and moderate, and seeks mindfulness rather than honour. These poeticized principles describe a transcendent force whose ways are more valuable than personal gain. Hopefully these reflections prevent having to question one’s selfsufficiency and relationship with a higher power during an A.A. meeting in a church basement. But transplanting insights from Daoist and Buddhist doctrine to Alcoholics Anonymous raises a number of concerns. Is the use of these insights outside of their South and South-East Asian context as politically problematic as assuming God to be the definitively higher power? Can non-religious systems of recovery be made to work? Is political correctness or the individual’s recovery more important, and can these two ideals be reconciled? There are no definitive answers to these questions, but they point to the need for critical examination of the A.A. program through a personal as well as a political lens. 7

DRINKING WITH THE MOON BY MICHAEL CHARPENTIER 1. The night sky sits pretty on all horizons. My mind’s image of it is particular, a memory used as a placeholder for the sky’s unknowable dimensions, literally and rhetorically. The memory likely took place in July or August some years ago, postmarked by the Kitchener skyline. We could see downtown Kitchener very clearly from the spot; the pharmacy school wasn’t there yet. Before I had my own place to drink comfortably, before my good friend was old enough to drink in bars, on nice nights we would sit with a case of beer by the train tracks, obscuring it from sight with a jacket or our backpacks. Drunkenness and obscurity mixed to create the impression we could say and do anything; youth are outside of time, granting them a reckless gall that diminishes each time something besmirches their soul with responsibility.. We’d talk about the usual things drunks like to, but every so often a polished opal came rolling off a tongue and landed before us to our astonishment and wonder. “Cities are misunderstood mothers,” my friend once said. “Right here I can see the skyline as a wide-armed embrace.” We both let the words register for a minute, I don’t think either of us knowing exactly what they meant but being impressed by them all the same.“You should write that down,” I said, finally. “Nah.” My friend nonchalantly shook his head. “Fuck it.” He stood up, walked with an impressionistic sway a few meters in front of us and began to piss. And that: Jason urinating with Kitchener rising up before him, far enough off that it could be personified a mother instead of experienced as the frightful sounds of people, the dirty swaths of worn asphalt, the 8

barrage of expectation’s cruel reminders, as the strange physical projection of time’s dialogue with humanity - and look! a full moon laughing above it all - that’s the image that first comes to mind when I ponder the sky. 2. While not approaching consciousness in too technical of a sense, reserved perhaps for the neurologists and psychologists, it’s helpful to think of it as a person’s awareness of their environment, circumstances, peers, and self. Given that this is subject to rapid change, describing consciousness in this way only gives us insight into the feelings and perspectives of specific moments. If you’re reading this, it means that you possess some kind of particularly human consciousness: comprehending the marks on the page as units that form communication, understanding that communication to the ability that you’ve learned the language it’s written in, a little more or a little less dependent on your familiarity of the subject matter. The way you’re understanding this would also depend on what lens you’re filtering your immediate environment through; that is, are you sober, drunk, high on something, angry, sad, ecstatic? People in all places and times have found ways to modify consciousness, and the methods they’ve used have produced differing understandings of what reality is, and how individuals as selves relate to it. It’s naive to claim some kind of objective knowledge about “normal, everyday consciousness” for several reasons - perhaps because what that means is bound to differ from person to person, or even with the same person at different points in their life. If we created, for rhetorical purposes, a “normal,”

mentally sound individual, we would have to acknowledge a continuum of consciousness in their life. We’ll name this continuum “sobriety” and say it includes all waking states that aren’t under the influence of alcohol, narcotics, yogas or shamanic practices that bring about very deep changes in how reality is perceived. This vast sobriety still includes: morning grogginess, hunger, arousal, anger, sadness, excitement, boredom, pleasure, anxiety, hope, and more in many combinations, but perhaps most tellingly it has the perception of self operating according to certain rules of society and time. 3. Classical Chinese poets would drink a prescribed amount of wine before picking up their brush. About two cups was thought to remove any ego that might interfere with the stillness required for poetry. What survives of Li Po’s (701762 C.E.) barely legible calligraphy, and the mythic history that sounds him, indicates that Li Po liked to drink more than was traditionally considered correct. In a long praise of wine, he wrote: “Three cups and I’ve plumbed the great Way, a jarful and I’ve merged with occurrence appearing of itself.” He allegedly lost a position in the Emperor’s court for daring the most powerful eunuch to address the Emperor without his shoes on. Li Po thought this was funny. Enraged, the eunuch narc’d on Li Po, denouncing him for showing up drunk. The Emperor conceded to his adviser’s wishes and relieved Li Po from service, although not without bestowing gifts upon him.Li Po’s life mostly consisted in carefree wandering in the lovable, Taoist sense. Although he held government positions at different times in his life, he maintained a laudable distrust of humanity’s institutions, choosing to spend his time embracing the spontaneity of nature. His legend and historical shadow shaded countless poets: he won praise from many of the poets of his day, including poems and dedications by Tu Fu (712-770 C.E.), who is widely con3

sidered China’s most gifted innovator in poetic voice and form. Charles Bukowski wrote that Li Po “could say more in one line than most could say in thirty or a hundred.” Even those who hate Ezra Pound’s obtuse pretension love his interpretive translations of Li Po. Gary Snyder and many others have tried their hands at interpreting his works. My favourite of his poems goes like this: Birds have vanished into deep skies./ A last cloud drifts away, all idleness./ Inexhaustible, this mountain and I/ gaze at each other, it alone remaining. 4. Islam has its own brigade of wineloving mystics. Sufism emphasizes the experiential dimension of loving God in a direct way, focusing on immediacy.Drunkenness is the perfect metaphorical way to describe their understanding. How often, when drunk, do you let an intuitive notion grab hold of you, whether you have the rational basis for it or not? Overcome with feeling - with the present - drunks can easily feel themselves slip outside of the sober world that operates according to the rules dictated by society and time. Alcoholics become unkempt, losing awareness or care for maintaining the appearance of their person to others; their homes fall into shambles; they talk loudly, planning impossible things; the world as they understand it operates according to the rules of their intoxication. I’m not saying that Islam’s revered mystics are alcoholics: that’s their own metaphor for their longing for and intoxication with the ways of the mysterious, transcendental and allpowerful. The poet Sinai cautions drunks: “Don’t wander out on the road in your ecstasy. Sleep in the tavern.” Rumi elaborates that the world is full of children, and they cruelly follow, taunting the drunk “not knowing the taste of wine, or how his drunkenness feels.” These comments are likely referring to the fate of the mystic al-Hallaj

who declared himself to be “the truth” - one of the many names of Allah - in a marketplace, with many scholars and clerics present. He was beaten, lashed, crucified and burned for the crime of “shirk,” which is equating anything with God. Only other drunks ever know what a drunk is talking about. 5. The allure of drunkenness is similar to the romantic allure of wanderers. The wandering sages, the troubadours, even the Beatniks, possess an image of freedom and truthfulness. It seems as though they are not bound to the laws of ordinary life, of time as it applies to humanity; not forming bonds with one place or position in society, they are directed by an inner compass, and directed to live according to a higher order. When we drink, we attempt to free ourselves from the ordinary view of ourselves sobriety asks we take seriously. We become possessed by the immediate, and escape from time.

Reflection - John Gosselin

6. There is a legend of how Li Po died.

He was boating at night whilst drunk on wine. Seeing the reflection of the moon in the water, he was overcome by the urge to embrace it, an attempt that drowned him. During a rebellion, the Emperor went into hiding, and the prince declared himself the Emperor. An order came from the new ruler accusing Li Po of associating with the rebels, sending him into solitary exile.After the turbulence, the old Emperor learned about Li Po’s fate. He sent an emissary to the mountain to retrieve Li Po and give him a ranking position in the government. This being the age before speedy travel and telecommunication, the emissary discovered once he arrived there that Li Po had been dead for some months. It was likely disease that killed him. History and myth frequently contradict one another. There is an artful tact to the legend of Li Po’s death, beautifully summarizing his life. His itinerant life and poetry is drunkenness, not only in the literal sense, but in the beautiful Sufi sense. Pervading all stories of him is that he refused to take the world of society seriously, he could gain and lose positions on a drunken whim. Could it be he saw the reflection of the transcendent reflected on the world, so it didn’t matter what position he occupied? 7. All these stories, of course, hang on the drunken notion I hold dear, that what I see in the tales of the numinous can be seen in the world all around me. No, it’s not directly the similarity to the Sufis I find in Li Po’s lines (“Wine’s view is lived: you can’t preach doctrine to the sober”), although that’s very interesting. Nor are the shared drunken roots of Jason’s maternal skyline mingling with Li Po’s staring contest with the mountain to the fascinating thing. It’s that Jason, pissing by the train tracks, has converged in my mind with Li Po on the mountain, drinking with the moon: together sharing the drunk’s free-form expression of existence on the outside margins of time. 9

A CRUSADE AGAINST CRAP: THE CRAFT BEER MOVEMENT BY JESSE MACLEOD

hen most people think of beer, they picture a fizzy yellow drink, the value of which being directly related to how cold it is. But there are actually dozens of other styles of beer from all over the world, offering a fascinating range of aromas, flavours, and alcohol content. This is the craft beer world, ‘craft’ in the sense that the beer is made in small batches by a dedicated brewer, with quality ingredients. It’s also known as ‘micro-brewing’. The beer that most people think of is produced in massive industrial breweries by people who have a quantity over quality approach to their business, despite what their advertisements or representatives may say. This stuff is collectively referred to as ‘macro’ beer, and more money is spent on its advertising than the beer itself. Before I write anything else, I should explain that I am a ‘beer geek’. The term is not derogatory, and it is a category of beer drinkers which is highly diverse, despite what stereotypes may exist about beer ‘snobs’. When I became of legal drinking age I chose to dive into the world of craft beer. I value a product made by someone who has a passion for their craft. I do not look down on those who prefer to stick to familiar macro beers, I only wish to enlighten those who want to learn about the world beyond mass-market crap. What if all anyone pictured when they thought of bread was Wonderbread? No rye, sourdough, pumpernickel, etc. That would be kind of a bleak bread world. Or what if most people had no concept of tea beyond Orange Pekoe? Most people have at least some knowledge of different varieties of bread or tea, yet most perceptions of beer are based around the Wonderbread equivalent, macro-produced pale lagers. Beer,

like bread, - actually, a lot like bread considering they are made with the same ingredients - comes in many different styles. When picturing a beer that isn’t a pale lager, you may think of Guinness, that black stuff. Guinness is a Dry, or ‘Irish’ Stout, and it’s actually kind of a boring example of the style. Stouts come in different varieties, made from heavily roasted barley malt which gives them their near-opaque dark brown colour.

Lindeman’s Gueze Cuvée René, a genuine Lambic included in this summer’s LCBO seasonal release. You have to try a gueze to really know what it’s like. Often an acquired taste, though there are some to whom it may appeal from first sip.

eer is supposed to be made from 4 ingredients: barley, hops, yeast, and water. Barley is a grain, filled with starch (sugar), which gets boiled into water, and then has yeast (a kind of bacteria) added, and left to ‘ferment’, the chemical process which produces alcohol. Hops are a pinecone-like plant which grow on vines, and are added to beer for flavour and aroma, but also historically as a natural preservative due to their highly acidic quality. That’s how craft beer is produced. Macro beer is made with minimal barley, and primarily with what is cheap and fermentable, such as corn and rice. Yeast is used, as

it’s needed for converting sugar to alcohol, but the amount of hops used varies from one industrial brewery to the next, though generally speaking there is very little used as hops are expensive, often difficult to obtain, and impart bitterness into beer, which is scary to some people unfamiliar with how beer is actually supposed to taste. Also, the emphasis on ‘ice-cold’ beer isn’t necessarily because cold beverages are refreshing; rather it has more to do with the fact that the colder a substance is, the less you can taste it. Serving beer ice-cold is encouraged because it will mask the fact that the actual flavours in the beer aren’t very good. We’ve become so accustomed to drinking beer ice-cold that it is inconceivable to some that it can be consumed any other way. While most beer is better when a little chilled, a lot of other beers benefit greatly from being served just below room temperature. The delicious flavours of things like English cask ale flourish when they aren’t frozen into oblivion. In summary, craft = quality, deliciousness, supporting small business, where as macro = profits. So what did I mean by beer styles? Well, barley can be manipulated in a number of ways to produce different results in a beer, and hops are like grapes, as different climates produce different varieties of hops with differing characteristics. Yeast also comes in a variety of different kinds, but the two main categories are ale, and lager. Ale yeast ferments at the top of

Grand River Galt Knife, a fantastic ‘preprohibition’ style lager from Cambridge. Grand River is one of the premier craft breweries in Ontario.

the fermenting tank, providing different flavours (often fruit-like), and lager yeast ferments at the bottom of the fermenting vessel, and produces beers which are more delicate and need to be stored in a cool place for a while to smoothen out (‘lager’ comes from the German ‘lagern’, which means to store). There are more varieties of ale, and most macro stuff is generally of the lager family, though that is not to say that lagers can’t be fantastic beers (they just have to be done properly). Some different style categories include, with some prominent examples given: • Pale Ales (India Pale Ale, American Pale Ale, Barley Wine) • Dark Ales/Stouts (Amber Ale, Mild Ale, Imperial Stout) • Belgian and Trappist Ales (AbbeyDubbel/Triple/Quad) • Lagers (German Pils, Czech Pils, Munich Helles) • Sour ales (Lambic)

as a cheap substitute for barley. It produces a slightly drier taste than barley, though the most noticeable difference is that wheat beers typically have the yeast left in them, which adds a new dimension to the flavour and appearance (they’re ‘cloudy’). Yeast can be left in any style of beer actually. The Lambic style uses wheat and barley, fermented with wild yeast which produces flavours that would otherwise be considered bizarre, but for some reason work really well in its particular style niche. Lambic’s can be described as ‘funky’, ‘dank’, or ‘tasty but was this fermented in an armpit?’ It’s a very strange world of beer in Belgium, but many Belgian beers I’ve had have offered me some of the most rewarding drinking experiences of my life, not in terms of getting drunk, I’m talking flavours which will blow your mind and completely change what you think beer is or can be. The craft beer movement in North America has been building for around 30 years now. There are thousands of small, dedicated craft breweries across the continent. It is not exclusively a

• Dark Lagers (Bock, Dunkel, Shwarzbier) • Wheat Beers (German Hefeweizen, Belgian Witbier) My personal favourite style is India Pale Ale (IPA), though I’ll have to explain that many beers labelled as an IPA are in fact not real examples of the style. The name is derived from the strong pale ales shipped to British troops in India during Imperial times, so the beer is extra hoppy and bitter but with a solid malt backbone. Also, the ‘Pale’ in Pale Ale comes from the time when brewers finally learned to control beer colour, and their new beers were paler than the previous brown stuff. It doesn’t necessarily always mean straight up yellow.

o clear something up, wheat can also be used to make beer, and not

Dieu du Ciel Rosée d’Hibiscus, a soft wheat beer with hibiscus flowers added. Currently available through the LCBO’s Summer 2011 Release.

North American thing, though it started here, largely as a reaction against the fact that this is the land of lousy industrial, post-prohibition mass market beer. Places where beer styles originate (Europe) produce ‘craft’ beer but in a different sense as they are the originals. Though they are still considered part of the craft beer family, and if nothing else, astronomically superior to macro swill. Craft beer is produced

on a small scale, as the volume produced by breweries such as Molson or Anheuser-Busch is physically impossible for small independent brewers.

St. Bernardus Abt 12. Another Trappist brew, this one is full of dark fruit characteristics and well hidden alcohol (12% abv).

But that’s how we (the beer geeks) like it. Producing massive batches of colossal proportions is one of the things which makes macro brewed beer so cheap and awful. By its very nature, craft beer promotes moderation, with its emphasis on quality over quantity. Of course, many craft beers have alcoholic contents well above the ‘normal’ 5%, and some unscrupulous characters within the community may take it upon themselves to indulge a little too much in our beloved beverage. But I assure you that craft beer as a concept is the natural enemy of the notion that beer is a cheap means for getting drunk. With that said, I’ll have to explain a few key things before you go out and spend copious amounts of money supporting hard working craft breweries.

raft Beer can be expensive, and sometimes hard to find. The assumption that better-made stuff is more expensive and thus not worth buying is erroneous, but some really rare beer can get pricy. Keep in mind that beer is still by far the cheapest alcoholic drink. Compared to wine or hard liquor, beer provides a cheaper beverage with just as much (and some believe more) variety of styles and flavours. What’s more annoying is that not many bars, pubs, or restaurants provide good selections of beer. Think of an expensive steak 11

house, or some high-end restaurant, with an impressive and lengthy wine list. Ask them about beer, and you get 5-10 offerings, all macro crap. It’s ridiculous that this is the case with places which claim to offer quality food and drink, but things are getting slightly better as time goes on. Beer can pair with food just as well as wine. Not everything claiming to be ‘craft’ or ‘micro’ beer really is. With every popular movement of a consumer product, there will be cheap knockoffs out there, often from producers who have the means to be providing much better. For example, Rickard’s or Alexander Keith’s. They’re brands owned by a much larger corporation (Molson-Coors, and AB-InBev respectively), and both offer a seemingly impressive line-up of different beers and styles. These beers are occasionally semi-decent, or at least better than the more pedestrian offerings from their owners. But they’re essentially posers. Craft beer is getting an ever larger share of the beer market and it’s genu-

Orval is produced by 1 of 7 Trappist breweries in the world. It is occasionally available at the LCBO and is considered one of the most unique beers in the world, though an acquired taste.

inely frightening the big corporations which are losing that market share. If it were up to them, they would abolish all craft breweries forever as they see them as a pestilence. So please, don’t drink faux craft beer. You’re not going to like every craft beer you try. Some say there’s a beer for everyone. It’s true, but the flip side is that there are beers definitely not for 12

you. Don’t worry, even when they’re bad, they’re still pretty good, or at least interesting. But a lot of the more extreme beers take time to build your palate up to truly appreciate. Sour ales are unique, and even some seasoned beer geeks can’t stand them. But for those who like them, they are a world of deliciousness above anything else. You can still learn from a beer that you don’t like. Try to pick it apart, figure out exactly what about it bothers you, and why. Don’t be afraid of a beer. Most craft beers actually aren’t very bitter at all if you’re worried about that (you may eventually find that hops are delicious). Also, you can’t always see through coffee, or coke, or darker teas, so why would a beer that’s hard to see through scare you? Most darker beers tend to be sweeter anyways, so just dive right in. Everything has to go through the LCBO. The LCBO is a remnant of the immediate post-prohibition period. The government felt that if they controlled the distribution of alcohol, perhaps its legalized availability wouldn’t lead to the complete and utter collapse of civilisation. And they never really gave up their control, because I guess they’re still worried about roaming gangs of drunken 12-year-olds. While these days the LCBO is legitimately interested in providing a good variety of interesting products, every product listed has to go through extensive lab testing (couldn’t make that up), and pass the judgement of Social Responsibility. Beer gets rejected more often than wine or liquor, for packaging considered inappropriate. Nothing that could possibly appeal to children is allowed, despite all the coolers being sold which look exactly like pop. It’s complicated, but the LCBO is saintly when compared to the alternative source for beer in Ontario... The Beer Store is an evil, monopolistic organisation, which killed my cat and frequently kidnaps my family for no good reason. Okay, so maybe I made up that last part, but the first point is true. The Beer Store (The BS as I call it) is owned by Sapporo, AB-Inbev, and

Molson-Coors. As in, 3 foreign corporations. They claim to allow independent brewers to list products (for a substantial one-time fee), but you can get 6-packs of craft beer at most BS locations that are months past their expiry dates. Most stores discourage buying anything but ‘big-ten’ brands, with the ‘Ice-Cold Express’ style store-fronts. If it wasn’t the only outlet for returning bottles, I would never step foot in a BS. So I implore you, the next time you’re cruising around your liquor store, check out the beer section and try to find at least one craft beer you would like to try. Find out what your local brewery is, check them out. A great source for info is ratebeer.com, where most beers around the world are listed,

Grand River 1898 Ale, available only at Langdon Hall outside Cambridge. A great hoppy example of what local craft breweries can do for artisanal restaurants to raise the profile of local beer.

you can rate them, discuss them, and meet people in your area who are into craft beer. Don’t give your money to the big macro guys, they’ll just spend it on more obnoxious advertisement that are insulting to your intelligence. The craft beer world is friendly, open, and filled with delicious beverages that will pleasantly alter your views on what beer is and what it can be. All photos & descriptions by the author.

THE OFFICIAL HIGHBRAÜ MAGAZINE

водка TASTE-TEST

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT OF SURVIVING RECORDS

n preparation for the Drinkin’ issue, the editors of Highbraü Magazine met with experts from as far away as the King Street LCBO in an attempt to discern which brand of vodka could meet our exacting standards in four punishing categories: straight shooting, screwdriver mixing, best vodkacranberry, and the dreaded martini. Thus, in the Spring of ‘011 we commissioned a rigorously scientific study which would attempt to compare four locally available brands. At the discretion of the judges, and in an attempt to gain the smallest understanding of the finer distinctions of European cultural expression, we included Finlandia ($25 / 750mL) from Finland; Svedka ($25) and Absolut ($25) from Sweden; and Slava ($33) from Ukraine. Our plans were set, our scienceglasses washed, our laboratory prepared, and our dosages cleared by the ethics board. Our self-experimentation was just beginning in earnest when a package arrived - a curious event in itself, since the Highbraü laboratory is a wholly ficticious creation invented for the purpose of embellishing this story, rather than the sort of actual place with a mailing address at which a package could be received. Nonplussed, we picked through what turned out to be a crate full of mouldering straw until we arrived at a dusty bottle marked by the Cyrillic phrase “Советский Машинный Хладагент” and a rearing black stallion. Assuming this to be a late entry to our testing, we dutifully placed what we assumed was labelled “Russian Stallion Brand” at the end of the bar (science-bar) to be tested in turn. Genetic sampling of less-charred sections of the few pieces of straw which managed to escaped the ensuing

explosion would later confirm that the crate had indeed originated in Russia. After flying to Moscow on a hunch, our detectives were able to backtrack the crate’s distinctive construction (it had been screwed together) to an abandoned Soviet-era machinist’s depot. It was only far too late that we came to understand the truth; that our “Russian Stallion Brand” vodka was actually “Soviet Engine Coolant”, apparently

distilled from the bodies of fallen plowhorses. Opening the bottle after thirty years had led to a violent and sudden decompression of fumes, which then mixed with certain ignited herbs in the vicinity of the laboratory. Much of the study’s voice-recordings and written notes, as well of all of the test-bottles, were lost in the ensuing blaze. Perhaps it is with the most regret that we convey the passing of our trained science-parBack cover & the above photo by Ashley Camara ashleycamera@gmail.com

rot, The Dread Pirate LeChuck, whose proximity to the test site was intended to facilitate an accurate recording of the evening in his avian memory, but instead unintentionally faciliated his becoming crisped almost beyond recognition and delicious beyond words.

o it is, then, in honour of The Dread Pirate LeChuck that we release a few minutes of the partial transcript of what we were able to salvage from our laboratory’s automated voice-recording system. This is for you, you damn squawking bird. 11:08 - “Rank your favorite shots:” Matt: Finlandia #1, smoothest, didn’t burn; Svedka, liked it because it kicked my ass; Absolut; Slava. Vince: Finlandia smelt like isopropyl, mild taste and sweet aftertaste; oh, but I didn’t finish yet, I’ll come back… Mark: Finlandia clean, the purest straight; Slava, tasty, some flavor; Absolut; Svedka – floral, ginny. Graham: Slava; Finlandia; grimacing, crying; Svedka; Absolut is last… . 45:30 - “Rank your favorite screwdriver:” Matt: Svedka was my favorite, blew my mind, best flavor but didn’t kick my ass; Finlandia, still taste the aftertaste but…; you guys are ruining me with your opinion; Absolut, like the other two; Slava – maybe too much orange juice to get a good taste; Mark: Svedka/Slava; Finlandia three; Absolut leaves me wanting to drink, but the worst; Matt: Slava, so good…. Graham: Screwdriver – Absolut – makes it sweeter; in order of others Slava, Finlandia, Svedka...shitty brand. 1:37:50 - “Group Status Report; lots of grimacing, crying, I am feeling like puking, Matt claims to have puked in his mouth a bit. We’re moving on to the Russian Stallion for the vodka-cranberry tes-” [Violent explosion, end recording] 13

DRINKING: A CULTURAL CONSTRUCT BY JODI KOBERINSKI

hen hearing Highbraü was dedicating its third issue to the topic of drinking, I had an immediate reaction… As a Canadian-born woman with a history of disruptive alcohol abuse in my family, the idea of intellectualizing, celebrating, or gaffaw-ing about drunkenness triggered all kinds of deeply held attitudes and upsets. Immediately I felt compelled to write something. As it turns out, I am writing a defense of drinking, and a critique of culture. I turned to the anthropologists to distinguish healthy drinking cultures from unhealthy ones. In my own experience, alcohol in of itself isn’t a problem, its what people do when they consume alcohol that becomes the problem. In their article “How Culture Influences the Way People Drink”, Stanton Peele and Archie Brodsky address the differences cultural and social context make to the way drinking impacts culture*. What these anthropologists conclude: • Alcohol problems are not simply a result of how much people drink. • Enormous differences can be observed as to how different ethnic and cultural groups handle alcohol. • Alcohol use does not lead directly to aggressive behavior. • Throughout history, wine and other alcoholic beverages have been a source of pleasure and aesthetic appreciation in many cultures. • Young people in many cultures are introduced to drinking early in life, as a normal part of daily living.

• Many cultures teach their young to drink moderately and responsibly. • A recipe for moderate drinking can be constructed from such successful examples as the Italian, Spanish, French, Greek, Jewish, and Chinese cultures . • Government control policies are misguided and ineffective in regulating cultural drinking practices. What lessons these researchers draw from their cross-cultural studies: 1. Beverage alcohol usually is not a problem in society unless and until it is defined as such. 2. When members of a society have had sufficient time to develop a widely shared set of beliefs and values pertaining to drinking and drunkenness, the consequences of alcohol consumption are not usually disruptive for most persons in that society. 3. Socially disruptive drinking occurs only in secular settings. 4. Where opportunities for group or community recreation are few and alcoholic beverages are available, alcohol consumption will become a major form of recreational activity in a community (“the boredom rule”). 5. Typically, alcoholic beverages are used more by males than by females and more by young adults than by preadolescents or older persons. Hence in any society the major consumers of beverage alcohol are most likely to be young men between their mid-teens and their mid-thirties.

6. The drinking of alcoholic beverages occurs usually with friends or relatives and not among strangers. Where drinking among strangers does take place, violence is much more likely to erupt. 7. Peoples who lacked alcoholic beverages aboriginally borrowed styles of drunken comportment along with the beverages from those who introduced them to “demon rum.” 8. When alcoholic beverages are defined culturally as a food and/or a medicine, drunkenness seldom is disruptive or antisocial. 9. Alcoholic beverages are the drug of choice for a majority of persons in any society, even if alternative drug substances are available. In cultures with healthier relationships to alcohol consumption: • Group drinking is clearly differentiated from drunkenness and associated with ritualistic or religious celebrations. • Drinking is associated with eating, preferably ritualistic feasting. • Both sexes and several generations are included in the drinking situation, whether all drink or not. • Drinking is divorced from the individual’s effort to escape personal anxiety or difficult (intolerable) social situations. • Inappropriate behavior when drinking (aggression, violence, overt sexuality) is absolutely disapproved, and protection against such behavior is offered by the `sober’ or the less intoxicated. This general acceptance of a concept of restraint usually indicates that drinking is only one of many activities, that it carries a relatively low level of emotionalism, and that it is not associated with a male or female `rite of passage’ or sense of superiority.

ow is it a culture finds itself inclined to alcohol misuse or abuse? “In moderate-drinking cultures, consumption is accepted and is governed by social custom, so that people learn constructive norms for drinking behavior. The existence of good and bad styles of drinking, and the differences between them, are explicitly taught. Alcohol is not seen as obviating personal control. Skills for consuming alcohol responsibly are taught, and drunken misbehavior is disapproved and sanctioned.” On the other hand, in immoderate-drinking cultures, like ours, “drinking is not governed by agreed-upon social standards, so that drinkers are on their own or must rely on the peer group for norms. Drinking is disapproved and abstinence encouraged, leaving those who do drink without a model of social drinking to imitate; they thus have a proclivity to drink excessively. Alcohol is seen as overpowering the individual’s capacity for self-management, so that drinking is in itself an excuse for excess.” (Peele & Brodsky) So what is it that our society teaches young people about drinking? It is not simply the lack of “social standards” nor “disapproval” for misbehaviour that has 20 year olds funnelling entire 24s in an hour. Drinking to excess is seen as a social rite of passage. The

Kegger. May 2-4. Drinking games at parties. The Bachelorette Party. Shooters with ridiculous names. Its as if we don’t believe young people could possibly experience youth without celebrating binge drinking. The drinking itself is the entertainment, rather than the accompaniment to the social interaction. “What’re you doin’ tonight?” … “Dunno, but I’ll be getting’ shitfaced!” [high five happens]. When the point of the social interaction is to drink to inebriation, we’ve certainly crossed a line. In a society which segregates people by year of birth at age 4, and maintains this as the main educational/ social peer group through college and University, the setting is ripe for the kinds of problems our anthropologists identified above. When we get our social cues primarily from others our age and the media, our context is commodified. One need only look to that high art form – the beer commercial – to understand what our commercial culture wants you to know about drinking: beer = skinny girls all your age around you (you being a young white male in most cases, because women are almost always accessories in these fairytales) = in with the other young men your age = hipness = Good Times. Drinking is not intergenerational. It is the point of the social gathering.

erhaps the most problematic for our culture is the idea that drinking in itself is an excuse for excess. That we drink amongst strangers as a culture and that we drink alone lead to the kinds of anti-social behaviours so readily dismissed as youthful indulgence. Yet these practices, coupled with a lack of responsibility for ourselves and each other that is generally on the rise in the Me First commercialized version of life we seem so happy to lap up as a culture, are the practices we accept as a ‘stage” of youth. Our drinking problems are cultural problems, and not an outcome of consumption itself. Glorifying the “piss up”, excusing poor behaviour as a natural outcome of youthful experimentation, normalizing binge drinking - all are cultural constructs that have repercussions for young adults as they age. When it is normal to turn to alcohol to “drown one’s sorrows”, or to drink until one passes out, we have blurred a line we ought to look to redraw. When abstinence is seen as prudishness rather than an acceptable choice, as if fun and drunken stupor are synonymous; when one’s choice not to drink in a setting is seen as a critique of other people’s choices to binge drink, we as a culture clearly have a relationship with alcohol that needs revisiting.

*All information referenced from: “How Culture Influences the Way People Drink” by Stanton Peele and Archie Brodsky which is available online at www.peele.net/lib/sociocul.html#i

Self-Healing Wounds - Adam Dee

I DRINK TO EXPERIENCE THE WHOLENESS OF MY SELF BY IAN STUMPF

once had to call the same bar twice in one week to find out if I had left my pants there the night before. I had. I’m fairly certain that I still had some pants on the whole time I’m just not sure how it got all mixed up. Note the way I shaped the first sentence. I could have written: “I once left my pants at the same bar twice in one week.” The phrasing I originally used indicates that I make a clear distinction between ‘me’ – up in the morning(ish) taking care of business, and last night ‘me’ – no pants partier. I became aware that I naturally tell the story in the first variation and later realized that I’m not alone in framing drunken events in this manner. It is said that we who drink to excess, do so to escape or forget. It is said that we drink because we can’t cope with reality. I have certainly taken to the cup under such pretense. Those are very specific kind of events and said motives do not nearly describe the full scope of why I enjoy the drinking so much. As my anecdote indicates, “I” am both last night me and today me. I am therefore not easily convinced that I drink to escape myself. I often drink to celebrate another day in this blink of life. I drink as I debrief the challeng-

Wholeness - Ian Stumpf 16

ing, yet fulfilling, experiences that I’ve walked through during my day. I am therefore not easily convinced that I drink to forget. As far as coping with reality… the world is a painful place, full of contradiction. The world is full of death. This is one of the reasons why Jesus chose wine to celebrate the gift of salvation. Wine is a living drink. Fermentation is alive.

or those of us offering our lives in the service of revolution, a buzz can remind us that there is another way of being, outside of the myths and constructs of modern society. A buzz is an adult version of playing make-believe about our liberated consciousness. Spiritual disciplines offer me much of the same and more, so why would I toast my loved ones and drink to a better tomorrow like some Friar Tuck? Why can’t we just be sober!? When we realize our new reality, I just might go sober (after a thorough round of drunken celebration) Most of my life is lived without a single drink in my system. The word sober is defined as the ability to think clearly. Drink or no drink, I will not have the ability to think clearly until we undo the Domination System, which governs the oppressive world that we occupy. The dizzying array of injustices, overloads our critical abilities. Our awareness of this mind-boggling hate is only rounded enough to send us running in circles. We local radicals understand the human condition in a way that most reading this will not. It is nonethe-less true that we maintain a greater understanding of a liberated tomorrow then we do of our imprisoned today. As we accept the great burden of undoing hate and injustice, some of us take a drink to loosen the bonds of the oppres-

sor for just a moment. Additionally, we must apply a lubricant to massage out the philosophical knots that we bound ourselves with.

e engage this fallen world and realize that we, ourselves, also make it go round. With this understanding comes considerable stress. Our deep love for humanity sometimes tempts us to hate the humans who carry out unloving acts. Oh, these philosophical knots! In far too many ways, we local radicals personify that confused drink, the ‘Cuba Libre’. A Cuba Libre is a drink comprised of Rum and Coke with lime. Killer Coke! Here the Empire dances with one of the more successful resisters. Cuba is not free (for so many reasons). Revel in the contradiction between the name of the drink and its ingredients while marveling at its optimism. Drinking has ruined lives and caused hurt. Let’s not exclude from this article the reality that many people refuse to be around alcohol because of its association with abuse they’ve experienced. Let’s be gentle with ourselves and others. There are many more tensions in my assertions; night me and day me are one though defined separately, I drink to celebrate life and I think that the world primarily generates pain, I see a buzz as foreshadowing a reality in which I may not get buzzed, I’m often sober but, I’m never sober. I guess that’s the dualism of the modern (white) person, or, perhaps that’s the modern person seeing double? Here’s to good health! Revel in the contradiction and marvel at the optimism. About the Author: Ian Stumpf recommends Ched Myers’ co-authored book “Say to This Mountain: Mark’s Story of Discipleship.” He is a member of Poverty Makes Us Sick (PMUS) and Anarchist Black Cross K-W (ABC K-Dub). He would like to start to try to lose weight.

MY 12-ISH STEPS TO QUIT DRINKING BY ERIN OH

’ve been to a lot of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, not for myself, but with my mother. She quit drinking the day she found out she was pregnant with me. Around the time I was 11 - the end of her second marriage - is when she started going to AA meetings every day. Since she was a single mom and we didn’t have a baby-sitter, I went to the AA meetings with her. We went to a different AA meeting every night of the week for about 5 years. After a while I just kept going to the meetings because I enjoyed them, even though I was old enough to stay home alone. I liked hearing the crazy stories that people told about the days when they’d been drunk all the time. I also liked reciting the serenity prayer that closes each meeting. I had it memorized just a few meetings in. My mom would often prompt me to recite it in front of her friends. Proudly, my 11-year-old self would proclaim:God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I can. And the wisdom to know the difference. And then the AA folks always add: Keep coming back! It works if you work it! Each meeting begins with a recitation of the 12 steps. I’d like to adapt the 12 steps for my own purpose. I don’t identify as religious, and I don’t believe in a higher power that exists separate from myself. I believe that I am part of a higher power, I believe that energy is never lost, only transformed, and I believe that Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine (I really like that Patti Smith lyric). So I’ve adapted the 12 steps for myself. De-creepified them, de-patriarchicized them, de-religicized them (do real words exist for ANY of those sentiments?!) - and here’s what I’ve come up with:

1: Admitted that my drinking habits had made important aspects of my life unmanageable. 2: Came to believe that self-discipline, commitment, and accountability could bring me closer to becoming The Person That I Want To Be (I say that with a smirk and a nod). 3: Made a decision to radically commit to changing my habits for the better. 4: Made a searching and fearless(ish) moral(ish) inventory of myself. (I wish I could actually be fearless but striving toward it will have to do... as for morals... perhaps values is a more accurate word?) 5: Admitted to my blog (and by proxy other human beings) the exact nature of my wrongs. 6: Was entirely(ish) ready to take an honest look at my flaws. 7: (Sorry step 7, you had to be deleted entirely!) 8: Did some intense self-reflection and wrote about how my actions have hurt others. 9: Called myself out and apologized when I’ve hurt others. 10: Continued to do some serious selfreflection and when I acted like a jerk promptly admitted it. 11: Continued to write and reflect on how my progress is coming along. 12: Having realized that I can dramatically change my habits - and therefore my character and the course of my life - as the result of these steps, shared this message to folks struggling with addictions, and practiced these principles in other aspects of my life.

here’s this song I always hear on the radio right before I pop a cassette tape in when I’m driving around in my car. It’s something about being at the club on a Friday night and how

anything can happen. I was thinking last time that I heard that song how it must resonate with folks so much. Folks dancing in the club all gettin’ their drink on, dancing, laughing, so happy that the work week is over. And the sense that anything can happen. That the night can take them anywhere. At least that’s how I’ve often felt when I go out and drink. I think that I drink for many reasons, but mostly to create a situation where I lose a lot of control over what happens. I drink to create a sense that I am infinite, that I can go anywhere and be anyone. It’s a scary feeling of trying to compensate for NOT being those things when I’m sober. There was a time for an entire year when I would drink so much every Friday night that I literally could not get out of bed at all the next day. Saturdays did not exist for that year. I spent a full night and then a full day being totally out of commission. It was like I pressed the ‘pause’ button on my life and then resumed to ‘play’ come Sunday. What a total waste.

hat I love is having that ‘anything can happen’ sense - of infinite possibilities, self-confidence, and being able to walk into a new situation with ease - while being sober. Having that sense 7 days a week in all that I do. What is better than that? The truth is that I don’t need to be drunk for spontaneous, exciting, fulfilling things to happen to me. And that’s just it: I don’t need them to happen to me. I can consciously and willfully ensure these things happen in a meaningful and sustained way, through the academic path that I choose, the careers that I follow, and the relationships that I nurture. That’s a really cool realization to have because it reduces the perceived need to get wasted to make it so that anything can happen. PS: It’s been one month, no drinks. Follow my thoughts on absurd life happenings and not drinking at:

beyondthisvalley.blogspot.com 17

With These Words Left by David Eso there’s Bukowski on the couch drunk, ugly, old, angry kicking out at his wife kicking out at the womb kicking out at birth & death with no words left kicking out against the skin, the skin of the foot If Bukowski’s strength was strength of against that’s a strength that leaves us, but all his used-up ugliness & sour anger somehow calls us closer, makes our softer whispers we’d like to hide him from the world in an old paper bag, tuck him under our coats bring him out just for nips screw off his top, empty the liquid brown poison into ourselves let it pour in and be broken down by our most brave & capable organs,

leave only the clean squeaking glass Bukowski: transparent blur the world Hank wouldn’t’ve minded a sideways metaphor like that as long as the words were short & it came from my most brave & capable organs kicking out at silence & the great non-meaning making of the world that is not accelerating, is not disappearing despite all appearances No, Greeks in ancient streets or/and Plague-age peasants had just as sophisticated complaints just as wide a world to hide from & aren’t we lucky to have such deep and dependable things as unhappiness & death to kick out against & such brave & capable organs

Drinkin’ - Joey Bell

How the Brick Brewery Changed My Life by Jonny Danger When we did tire of Bud twenty-eights, we thought we’d try something new.

We needed a lot for us and our friends; so only a keg would do.

So off to the Brick Jody and I went, where we fell into our dreams. Pilsners and ales and stouts off all sorts, reds, ambers and creams…

Brick Amber happened to be the only one that Jody and I could settle on.

Three hundred and fifty bucks later, we had no idea what we had stumbled upon…

So off kicks the summer of liver’s ill repute, stumbling, drinking and smoke. By the way, James, the By-Law officer, isn’t such a bad bloke.

(He showed up just once to give me a fine for disturbing my elderly neighbour. Unfortunately someone thought it’d be hilarious to run her through with a saber.)

If we weren’t obtaining picnic tables or turning Smart cars then we were filling our glasses with glory;

Brick Amber, that wonderfully smooth-tinted beer, is the catalyst of this whole story.

Found Art unnumbered One - City Center findthecitycenter.blogspot.com

My basement apartment was the gathering place of smokers and drinkers, all sorts. Bring wine, bring weed, and bring mushrooms too! Spirits, hard liquor and ports.

Jody was there at the beginning, Mark was there till the end.

Damn pig moved the full sized fridge out five feet, and then sup’ed on a pound of spilt coffee.

Only one living thing passed through that house, who is no And still we drank on, from morning till …morning! Tex longer my friend.

only stopped when he passed out.

scheme of things, who can care?

changed his ethnicity, no doubt!

Not the guy who stole our bongs and laptops, for in the big Not the guy who broke the card table we ‘borrowed.’ Yes borrowed, I swear!

Nobody stopped me when I took a black sharpie and Gingerly we crept through the summer of ’05, all the while froth pouring out from our glasses.

Yes, that damn pig named Sebastian. It ate my lava lamp, a Endangering our health, our dignity and shame, all the camera and bit me!

while trying not to be asses.

Regrettably our party time came to an end. Too soon youth, life and friendship passes…

THE OFFICIAL HIGHBRAÜ MAGAZINE LAW & ORDER DRINKING GAME Hey kids! Clip me out and try this one at home!

Article i : Standards (1 drink)

a. Dun-Dun!* b. Oh my god, s/he’s dead! c. “Freakin” or other TV-friendly curses d. Motion to X (dismiss, exclude, preclude) e. Client - X privilege (lawyer, doctor, priest) f. Threats from the police/DA/FBI g. Prudery h. Moralising i. You realise that the “fictional” story you are watching was taken directly from real-world newspaper headlines

Article ii : Sass (1 drink)

a. Greek coffee cups** b. “This is a fishing expedition!” c. Street meat d. Screwed on the deal by the DA e. Perjury! f. Fleeing suspect taken down by the police g. Cameo from any of the cast of any other Law & Order series h. ...And the Emmy for egregious overacting goes to...

Article v: Did That Really Just Happen? (4 drinks)

a. Sass from the Captain b. Sass from an officer c. Sass from the judge d. Sass from the DA e. Sass from a witness f. General sassiness

Article iii : Stereotypes (2 drinks) a. Ethnic stereotype b. Sexual stereotype c. Good cop / Bad cop

Article iv : Frequent Occurrences (3 drinks)

a. Major character killed in the line of duty b. You suddenly remember with horror that District Attourney Arthur Branch was, following his stint on Law & Order, an actual Republican candidate for President of the USA c. You notice that an actor who has appeared before is now playing for the other team (e.g. he was a criminal and is now a judge, was a defense attourney and is now a DA, etc)

Instructions: Watch. Drink. Repeat. *“Dun-Dun” is as close as I’ve ever been able to come to describing the iconic Law & Order sound. It couldn’t be a more obvious time to cheers those around you and take a drink, 5-12 times per episode. **“Greek coffee cups” appear in all 20 seasons of the original series, though not quite in every episode. They are disposable paper cups readily identifiable by the repeating pattern near the lip of the cup. 20

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