Grog: is it really all that!?

I'm about to tirade. Be warned!

Actually, before I begin, I wrote this yesterday on the laptop, and have actually cared enough to put it on a disk and post it here....I've thought some more about it since then, but here it is....

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What the HECK is the big deal with alcohol and drinking and their relation to having a good time???

I’m not trying to go all righteous and ‘holier than thou’ on you, but I don’t get it. Maybe that’s because I’ve never been drunk before. I don’t think I’ve even been tipsy before. Alexandra Ripley (that paragon of all authors!) in Scarlett (that paragon of all sequels!) described a state before tipsiness called being ‘high flown’, and that’s probably the extent of my life’s affectedness by a few cocktails.

Argh. I can’t express this without sounding like a prude. Nevertheless I shall valiantly write on!

Am I missing out on something here?? I don’t know! I manage to have a fine time at gatherings without needing to be in some chemically altered state of mind. Can someone please tell me what the big deal is???? I’m perplexed.

Hm.

There’s a few things that my pragmatic self finds incongruous about this whole subject:

1) Alcohol, for a large part tastes BAD. Not so much cocktails (which mask the nail-polish-remover-esque flavour of it with fruit…doesn’t that SAY something about the substance itself that you have to mix it with stuff before you drink it???), or pre-mixed drinks, but beer and wine (well, white is ok) taste horrible. Bitter. Sour. Eeeeeergh. I was talking about acquiring tastes for such drinks when Shanna pointed out that the concept of acquiring taste for something was basically “drinking something that tastes like s**t until you don’t think it tastes like s**t anymore”. Need I say more?

2) Pre-mixed drinks that seem to be prevalent at every party. In an exciting and assorted array of colours and flavours (the most exotic I recall is that royal blue coloured Vodka Cruiser, and the best tasting one was the pink grapefruit Subzero), they are but soft drinks with the requisite nail polish hit at the end. What’s the point?? Wouldn’t you just prefer to have something without the nail polish that tasted better? I suppose the answer to that “No, soft drinks don’t give the same effect!” feeds into my next point…

3) Drinking and having a good time. What is it saying about you if you need a few drinks to have a good time? What is wrong with the normal you?? And there’s a high chance that given the effect of alcohol, you might (at least!) say something carelessly or thoughtlessly, something that just maybe you shouldn’t have said. Hrmmm. I know that some people drink to escape from it (be it life, their issues, their personalities...) all, and I know it's easier said than done, but shouldn't you work out some long term solution that won't damage your liver??

4) Finally, my particularly Asian point: it’s expensive. I don’t think I could ever go out for a night full of drinking purely because it would cost too much. I could buy myself a nice 2-3 course dinner for that price thanks! And if you’re in for the effect, I wonder if it would work out to be more economical if you just had a shot or two of vodka at the beginning of the night and just drank water at for the remainder, rather than having to spend $5 every so often on a 4.7% alc/vol drink. Hm.

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So yeah, I'm still perplexed, but I think I've come up with a viable reason. It's something to do with drinking and it's social...[I'm looking for a word that means 'stigma' but without the negative connotations]...social implication I guess. I mean, having said all the stuff that I just said...why do I drink?? It's something to do with it's social acceptabiilty I think. (Corona is the most decent tasting beer I've had and it STILL doesn't taste that crash hot. For some strange, inexplicable reason it tastes like stale pub. I wonder why!) So why is it so socially acceptable?? What is it about it that makes it so?? I think I'm asking questions that I won't get the answers to unless I engage in some research.

So, my dear peanut gallery, over to you.

What's the big deal???