A Day Off: Thursday, April 18: Golden Colorado

I’m not traveling on this snowy day; I’m hanging out at the Golden public library while Chris goes to work. A homeless man, belonging stacked next to him, occupies one of the reading chairs by the gas fireplace. He reads a newspaper for a while and the rest of the time he just sits there. 

I wonder what he’s thinking. I could go ask him, and I’m not sure why I don’t. I’ve been so goal oriented in my life and so schedule driven that I don’t know what it must feel like to just sit, hour after hour, hour after hour.

There has never been an easier time to become an alcoholic, or to seek recovery. It’s simple to drink in America (the period of the 18th amendment aside, not that that law stopped the determined drinker) and drinking is culturally acceptable and, in some circles, almost obligatory. The colonialists drank like fish; indeed, for many of them, alcohol was the safest thing to drink because it wouldn’t give you dysentery or cholera. Social drinking may have had its heyday during the Mad Man era – the three-martini lunch is certainly passe – and a new culture of “sober curious” is emerging. Alcohol consumption is going down among teenagers, yet rising worryingly among women. Still, as a fellow alcoholic noted at a meeting I attended, “In my country if I drop by to visit a friend, they offer me tea. Here, they offer a glass of wine.” 

Covid plus technology created a big, new, opportunity for those inclined to the bottle. The pandemic forced people to stay at home: ideal for the solitary drinker and, in case you don’t know, most alcoholics prefer to drink in their own company. Bars are very expensive (compared to buying in bulk) and you might actually have to be around people there. Drinking by yourself saves you from the judgmental eyes of the sober and the bullshit of the other drunks. And during Covid the drinker never even needed to leave home to get liquor. You could simply pull up your favorite liquor-on-demand app, order out, and they would deliver. Like Doordash and other food delivery services, the booze-on-demand apps do not carry any stock, so they have to go buy your stuff while the liquor stores are still open. Day drinkers might not be at the height of their executive skills, but they know enough about bottle store hours that it makes sense for them to buy an adequate supply to get through the night. No, make that more than an adequate supply, just to be on the safe side. And since the delivery apps charge a set fee per delivery, it makes even more sense to make a large order. The addled mind may not have fully worked through the incentive structure of ordering by app; still, I wouldn’t be surprised if drinkers bought more booze when they used apps than when they had to go to the store. In the first months of covid, an estimated one billion extra drinks per month were consumed, and not all of them were by me.  

Until the mid-20th century, if you were a drunk, lush, boozehound  – whatever term your community preferred – it was difficult to get help. Alcoholism was considered a moral failing, a lack of character. Remedies were limited to death, jail, institutions, or willpower. Not that many sought help. Your drunk uncle would probably say something like “I just like to drink” or “It’s none of your business” or “Leave me alone”. No empathetic treatment programs were developed (see this for history) until Alcoholics Anonymous was created by a couple of desperate individuals in the late 1930s. AA spread only slowly, however, and knowledge of meeting times and locations was only spread through word of mouth.

Today the problem drinker has a wide variety of options, easily accessed. Rehab centers are available throughout the country. Beginning in 2010 the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) required most insurance programs to cover behavioral disorders, including alcohol abuse. Approaches to treatment other than AA, such as Smart Recovery, have emerged, including those such as Ria Health that can be accessed through your smartphone. 

The alcoholic can now find an AA meeting at the click of a button. My ‘Meeting Guide’ app shows me the times and locations of the meetings closest to me, wherever I am, and many of the meetings are conducted by Zoom. Some meetings are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, so anyone with a desire to stop drinking can always find help.

Societal attitudes have also changed. While some continue to see problem drinking as a moral failure, the medical community and the broader society have accepted the idea that “alcohol use disorder” is a serious problem deserving serious attention.