Masculinity On the Rocks: Assessing the Bond Between Men and Alcohol

For years, I have loved drinking. I am, admittedly, one of those that enjoy smelling a whiskey (or whisky) and talking about it for half an hour before I even get to sipping it. We call ourselves “connoisseurs” which is actually French for “douchebag.” My relationship with alcohol has ebbed and flowed, though I have never had a drinking “problem” per se. Like many of us, alcohol would become unhealthy at times because I lived on the vast plateau between an occasional drinker and a diagnosed alcoholic. There is no name for this category of drinkers because men have always had a close relationship with alcohol. For at least the entirety of media history, drinking has become the prime prop of masculine imagery.

A cowboy in a saloon;

Don Draper pouring a glass in his Manhattan office;

Frank Sinatra crooning with his whiskey;

Ron Swanson and his beloved Lagavulin;

James Bond and his poorly made martinis (why are you shaking it, you monster). The list goes on.

This seemingly reckless portrayal of men and alcohol persists, reinforcing the cultural implication that a strong drink makes a man look masculine. Why? Because it is obviously true.

A cowboy ordering a club soda?

Don throwing back a Pepsi?

Sinatra without his glistening glass of Jack?

Ron Swanson pairing his steak with tea?

What about James Bond insisting he needs a clear head to work on a case?

It just doesn’t work.

The images of these men quickly lose their luster when the states of their mental faculties become boring. I’m not recommending we condone alcoholism outright (more on that later), I’m acknowledging the truth of the matter that it looks damn cool to be adorned with a liquid accessory. Unfortunately, many try denying this upfront. Instead of beginning where the drinkers are, they stand across the street from the bar where everyone inside is having a great time and attempt to yell about the pitfalls of drinking over the patrons’ favorite drinking songs (I’m a Baby Shark man myself). In what world does the approach of ‘the thing you’re doing right now that is totally fun, isn’t actually fun’, work as a communication strategy? How do we expect to convey a message of health through horribly-timed self-righteousness? The problems with alcohol remain because not enough of us are being realistic.

It is true that alcohol is a problem for many men. It is true that we lead in statistics of alcoholism year after year. It is true that it contributes to depression, domestic violence, and suicide. None of those things have changed though our relationships to alcohol might need to. So let us at least begin by acknowledging what we love about drinking before pretending we don’t just to prove our anti-alcoholism, and attempt to find a better balance.

I cannot count how many times in college I had a deep conversation with a friend over cheap beer on a folding table outside of a house party at 2 in the morning. This canonical experience for many young men, is supplemented by day drinking while watching sports where we grow communal bonds. Many first dates begin over cocktails and many serious conversations begin over a drink. Imagine how much business has been done with alcohol being an arbitrary binding agent between the two parties. Did alcohol make these things happen? Of course not. Does it genuinely act as an unspoken social lubricant? Of course it does. Moreover, consider the cultural relevance of different drinks. Imagine a trip to Munich without a hefeweizen or to Italy without wine. The majority of cultures throughout the world have swaths of their fabric stitched with their nations drink of choice. Visit Ireland and you will see that their love of Guinness is no Celtic myth. And yet, it would be crass to characterize these places in the same breath as the ever-present problems alcohol poses to many. It can be true that alcohol can be destructive while acknowledging that it can also be appreciated as beautiful products of culture. We should also be honest about the health effects of a moderate amount of drinking. There is a delicate sweet spot where a glass of wine or a splash of whiskey to unwind can contribute to a ritualistic management of stress. Consider the tradeoff of the spike in cortisol and its harmful effects on the body for a moderate indulgence. I am not recommending that we all take up habitual drinking. What I’m saying is there is such thing as a healthy level of consumption. People have plenty of good reasons to love drinking and they aren’t crazy for doing so.

The problems creep in as they do with any potentially harmful vice. Alcohol is used to numb pain, fill voids, and distract from life’s inherent suffering. Many of us have seen it done by our peers. In response, we forget that before realizing the alcohol is being abused, we liked it too, and either shun the budding addict or look the other way. Another common and dangerous response is to enable the drinker under the guise of refusing to judge them. Or, we decide this is the one circumstance where we want to meet someone where they are and drink with them even when we know they have a problem. I understand that there is a place for this and cutting them off as an initial reaction could cause more harm than good. But many of us stop there and even hide our own alcohol problem behind someone else’s. I don’t want to leave them alone. He needs to know I’m here for him. These are noble ideas when presented in good faith, but replace the substance with something more sinister and I doubt we would be so eager to accompany him with a needle in his arm. This critical impasse is addressed by the difficult distinction between addiction and its muse. Addiction is a behavior, not a substance. Alcohol – as powerful of a substance as it is – isn’t the problem. The circumstances necessitating its effects are the problem. Renowned physician Dr. Gabor Mate puts it best: Don’t ask why the addiction. Ask why the pain.

During a prolonged depressive period, alcohol wasn’t a full-blown addiction for me, but it did give me something to lean on when navigating social settings. It was easy to excuse poor behavior with a drink in my hand or relish in the mystery afforded to a man that is seldom seen without a glass of whiskey. The same allure that served the fictional Don Draper and the same affability that served Sinatra was drawn upon when I was too exhausted to be fully human. It was a highly effective strategy. Then I remember that Don Draper was little more than a handsome drunk with a litany of problems well into his 40’s, and Sinatra – who was buried with a bottle of Jack Daniels in his casket – was known to be violently temperamental and even attempted suicide multiple times. The same exemplars of cool that make drinking look masculine and sophisticated can also serve as cautionary tales. I don’t want the problems these men had. Alcohol did not cause their problems but I can’t imagine a handful of hard drinks throughout each day would help if you could be a selfish womanizer or a ruthless tyrant at your worst. Sinatra still had a prolific career with immense cultural impact, but had deep psychological wounds and was a poster child for high functioning alcoholism. We can overcome our afflictions to leave positive impacts on the world. But we shouldn’t tolerate recklessly developing these afflictions in the name of image.

What makes it so difficult to confront is how the commonality of the vice makes its abuse evasive. Alcohol was a crutch for me. I was not an alcoholic. What did that make me? Where do we find the line between harmless indulgence and lethal addiction? A better way to phrase this is, when does alcohol become bigger than me? In assessing our relationship with drinking we have to stop thinking about labels and be honest about behavior. Again, addiction is behavioral. But requiring a diagnosis shouldn’t be where we draw the line. Like many mental health diagnoses, you can have a handful of symptoms of a diagnosis without meeting the criteria for getting diagnosed. Diagnosis is not for the purpose of judging character. It is to establish the criteria for when someone requires professional intervention, and to codify the standards by which services can be charged for. To justify unhealthy drinking by saying it’s not like I’m an alcoholic, is like saying cutting myself is fine, it’s not like I’m bleeding out. You cannot do alcoholic cosplay for leisure and think you’re immune from the consequences. It is the inverse of practicing a good habit. You will get better at what you train for and be subject to the benefits of it. If you train for drinking too much, you’ll be subject to the same ill effects. If you notice you can’t seem to stop drinking once you start, or that you can’t turn down a drink when you know you have responsibilities that require sobriety, or if you find yourself lying to others about your drinking, or becoming unreliable, you still might not technically be an addict, but you do have a problem.

The pressing inquiry of drinking is why. If you encounter a stressful scenario and immediately think you need a drink, then you know drinking is how you respond to stress. If you’re depressed or grieving and have resolved to drinking every day, then drinking is how you cope. If you can’t pinpoint a reason you drink, then the thread of drinking is going too far into the depths of the psyche for you to see from where you are. You might not be an alcoholic. You might not be an addict. But you still have a problem that drinking is a behavioral symptom of. Chances are, other things in your life aren’t as good as they could be either. Chances are the hangovers come with anxiety about being fully aware of real life again. The life you’ve made with a drink in your hand might be a fun one, but it isn’t sustainable when its built on anguish you haven’t taken the time to understand.

Drinking is linked with manliness and that isn’t going to change. It is our relationship to drinking that we can’t afford to neglect. We can have our football with beer; we can have our whiskey and cigars; we can enjoy what we like knowing it takes maturity to enjoy responsibly. But we can’t do it at the expense of who the world needs us to be. A good man can enjoy drinking. But once a good man chooses alcohol over being good, he must be an honest man that confronts his need to escape, and brings himself back to earth.