The Lush Chronicles: Why We Drink- Distraction

In the middle ages in Europe when local economies were driven as much by barter as by hard currency, food found its way into the wages of everyday laborers as much, if not more often, than precious metals. Some fiefdoms ended up having to deal with drunk workers because many of them were paid in high-quantity spirits like beer. After all, alcohol kept for a long time and could be parceled out in discreet packages like bottles, bags and jugs. For your average feudal worker, an ale today had more value than a coin to be spent tomorrow. And why not get a little sloshed when there's wood to be cut and fields to be plowed? An alcohol buzz is distracting, pleasantly or otherwise. Though we today aren't permitted to drink on the job, there are plenty of us who would gladly take the opportunity to do so.

For the rule-abiding and healthy among us, drinking during work hours has fallen by the wayside. That's not to say it's been gone from our lives for long, or has been completely removed from the table. As indelible a symbol of the 1960's as tie-dye and LSD, the martini lunch was a real-life indicator of power and success. But what does it mean when certain individuals in our society are permitted, even expected to drink on the job?

Well, for our executives it's a measure of ubiquitous leisure. The captains of industry have worked themselves to the bone for years getting to that high office. The martini lunch and the decanter of scotch next to the filing cabinet are as much a part of the perceived perks as the private jets and presidential washrooms. Alcohol is, as it has always been, a holy libation. If our priests today are the Chief Executive Officers, then we accept that they've earned the privilege of achieving altered states while on the clock.

But I think it's deeper than that. Alcohol isn't just an ephemeral symbol, it's a medication. We take aspirin for our headaches, caffeine for our energy slumps, and likewise ethanol for our doubt and stress. Alcohol is a distraction from reality. Whether it's during the pressure of the work day or a decompressing agent after all the cubicles have been abandoned, we want to forget ourselves for a portion of the day.

Whether or not it's a good idea to self-medicate with the distraction of booze is ultimately a philosophical question. The Muslim world came down firmly on the practice hundreds of years ago, forbidding it for essentially all the same reasons why Western culture praised it. By alcohol we become numb, or less self-conscious, or downright forgetful. We are not workers while drunk, not learners or reliable judges.

I suppose that's why it has become half a punchline and half a real expectation for our creative types to employ mind-altering chemicals. What is the writer, the painter or the musician without his drink, pipe or needle? We want him to be uninhibited, to be honest and emotional and utterly incapable of applying himself to the mundane. All those philosophical musings that inevitably happen over bourbon rocks and double-file beer bottles, we want on demand from our artists. After all, artists create our sober distractions, so we need them to be distracted while they create.