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6.

LIMINAL POINT: ARE WE REALLY DRINKING FOR THE TASTE?

“Recovery is all about using our power to change our beliefs that are based on faulty data.”

—Kevin McCormack

Before you ever drank a drop you observed everyone around you drinking, seeming to enjoy the taste of alcohol. Yet your early experience probably contradicted that belief. Kids generally don’t like their first sip of alcohol. Since you continue to observe others around you drinking, you assume there must be something good and beneficial about drinking, despite the taste. You conclude that you should persevere in drinking; you may even be told you need to “acquire the taste.” Over time, you do indeed acquire a taste for alcohol. Now your experience is in line with your observations, and you can more easily conclude that alcohol tastes good, and you do, in fact, drink because you like the taste.

Let’s consider reality:

You Just Have to Acquire the Taste

This justification is the great deceit that lures new drinkers in. My colleague, Yani, is French. She told me her parents encouraged her to have sips of wine at dinner from the age of eight, much like my parents encouraged me to at least taste the spinach on my plate. She never liked it and would tell them so, but they would insist on at least one sip telling Yani to just wait and see—she would like it when she is older. Sure enough, Yani now drinks wine every night. When we take our first sips and almost gag, there’s always someone there to reassure us that alcohol is an acquired taste.

But let’s consider again our awesome bodies, whose purpose is to make sure we remain alive. We know that we need food and water to survive, and if we don’t eat and drink, we will die. Other animals are not consciously aware of this, so how does nature make sure they eat and drink? Instinctually, they feel hunger and thirst.

We know that certain things are poison because we are told so or because the label says so. How does a doe know what is poison, which grasses to eat and which will make her sick? It’s a brilliant aspect of her design, yet quite simple: Grasses that deer are meant to eat smell and taste nice, while the grasses that will make the deer sick smell and taste bad.

Our sense of smell and taste are vital to our well-being. They help us distinguish between good and rotten food. The products in our refrigerators may carry expiration dates, but our own ability to smell when meat is rotten or taste spoiled milk is more sophisticated than the dates placed on foods. These senses ensure our survival.

I was recently in Brazil and saw ethanol for sale at the gas stations. You may be surprised to know that the ethanol you put in your gas tank is the exact same ethanol in the liquor you drink. Yep, alcohol, without additives, is ethanol. Pure alcohol tastes awful, and a very small amount will kill you. We use extensive processes and additives to make it taste good enough to drink. Unfortunately, none of these processes reduce the harms associated with drinking fuel.

Alcohol destroys our health by attacking our liver and immune system and is related to more than sixty diseases.⁵³ Yet because we are only peripherally aware of the harms but very familiar with pro-alcohol social messages, we often justify our drinking by saying we drink for the taste. And we believe this is true. We have an uncanny ability to unknowingly deceive ourselves.

Imagine a college kid drinking one of his first beers at a football game. It’s cheap and warm, and almost certainly does not taste good. You are fairly sure he would rather be drinking a soda. If you ask him why he isn’t drinking a soda, he will probably tell you he likes the taste of beer. In truth, he wants to fit in, and only kids drink soda during football games. He cannot admit this, and might not even realize it, so he tells you he likes the taste. This does not sync with reality as you watch him choke the beer down.

If you ask him a few months later, at the homecoming game, he will again tell you he likes it. Since he has been drinking for a few months, the answer may hold some truth. He has started to acquire the taste. And since the alcohol is addictive, it has created an imperceptible craving for itself, which, when satisfied, gives him the perception of enjoyment.

I don’t know anyone who drank so many sodas they puked. Yet, how many people do you know who have drunk enough to throw up? Even the most moderate drinkers I know occasionally take it too far. Throwing up is awful. Awful, but when you think about it, actually incredible. Throwing up saves our lives, protecting us from alcohol poisoning. The implication is clear: Alcohol is not good for us. Yet we are not deterred. We carry on, thinking of our nights “worshiping the porcelain gods” as a badge of honor. It’s college after all, and we are determined to acquire a taste for booze.

Finally, you actually like the taste of alcohol, but it is still the same chemical in your gas tank. It is still destroying your liver, your immune system, and your brain. The taste doesn’t actually change— that’s impossible.

Think of the guy who showers in cologne. You can smell him coming from a mile away, yet he is unaware. It’s the same concept. I went to school in an agricultural town surrounded by ranches and farms. Aggie towns have a very intense smell. After a few months there, I couldn’t smell it at all. It’s remarkable how, given enough time, senses grow immune to the most unpleasant things.

There’s no doubt alcohol tastes bad. Why else would we need to go to such great lengths to make it palatable with mixers and sweeteners? You may be a manly type who now loves to drink whiskey straight. You acquired a taste for whiskey like I acquired a smell for animal crap.

Do you really drink just because of the taste?

It Enhances the Taste of Food

The enhancement of food by a particular drink makes sense when you think about milk and cookies. You actually take a cookie and dip it into milk, changing the texture and flavor of the cookie. I can understand how this could enhance the taste. But you don’t put wine in your mouth with your steak, so how can it change the way food tastes? Not to mention it’s been medically proven that alcohol actually deadens your taste buds rather than increasing their sensitivity.⁵⁴

Now, I admit the flavor of wine can be great in sauces, but so can just about anything depending on what else you mix with it. A popular cooking show forces chefs to cook with all kinds of nasty ingredients to make them palatable. I find it strange that, with thousands of beverages in existence, we only use this excuse with alcohol. We don’t hear people claiming they drink Coke because it enhances the flavor of their hot dog. It strikes me, as a marketer, that this is a genius marketing tactic. If we can marry the product (alcohol) with the authentic pleasures of eating, we have a much higher chance of selling a glass of wine, at its incredible markup, every time we sell a steak.

Conversations justifying why we drink happen all the time. We don’t sit around justifying other things we like, like why we eat grapefruit. Yet when you turn down an alcoholic drink, it seems everyone around you launches into a diatribe explaining in painful detail all the reasons they are drinking. If you pay attention, you will start to notice how conversations about alcohol are not balanced. When eating a doughnut we will probably mention the calorie count or how much sugar it has. And for good reason—it helps us limit ourselves to just one. Yet when discussing alcohol you never hear someone say, “This booze is delicious. It enhances the taste of my food, but I do worry about liver damage.”

Why is this? Why do we group together and chat up the great things about drinking? It’s so we can collectively close our eyes to the dangers. Herd mentality makes it easier to believe or do something because everyone else is saying or doing the same thing. This is exactly what happens when people start to talk about the “full-bodied, oaky, lemony, exaggerated, pompous yet fruity” flavor of a Cabernet.