Several years ago I recognized that I had a drinking problem. To be specific my problem was that I was an average Wisconsinite.
From what I could tell from my observations of family, friends and the Badger nation at large, I was actually on the light side of local consumption. But it’s all relative and relative to the rest of the United States of America your average Wisconsinite drinks beer and brandy like residents of other places consume water and coffee.
Before I go further, let me jump in right now with a defense of my people. It’s cold here. Worse, have you ever experienced a March in Wisconsin? It’s all mud and ice and low clouds. One year we returned from visiting Palo Alto in mid March. It was sunny and 65 degrees when we left. The air was scented with flowers and money printed in Silicon Valley. In Madison it was 35 degrees and the clouds hung about fifty feet above our heads, these clouds excreting a half-frozen substance described by meteorologists as a “wintry mix” and by us as something that sounded more harsh, bitter, even profane. So, that’s as good a reason to drink brandy as God ever invented.
Also, there’s a lot of Germans here and also Poles, Irish, Italians and other peoples who know a thing or two about drinking. Conversely, we’re low on our supply of Baptists.
Now that I’ve vigorously defended my state’s honor, let me get back to my point, which is that drinking to the point of drowning face down in a puddle (yes, this has happened here and in Manitowoc to be specific) is not an optimal experience for the victim or a good look for the Midwest in general.
But once I acknowledged the issue, I rejected the obvious solution: leave. No, I was not going to move to the Bible Belt, where consumption of alcohol is relatively low and divorce is relatively high. And we could not afford to move to California where a single year’s taxes could purchase something less harmful, like a lifetime supply of Korbel — which ironically is made in California.
I also rejected going cold turkey (as opposed to going Wild Turkey) or joining AA. I decided to deal with it through my general philosophy of all things: moderation, the middle way, Goldie Locks incrementalism. Not too hard, not too soft, not too hot, not too cold. But just right.
Well, you can’t do anything incrementally without counting. Data is the very soul of the middle way because if you were to just go all in (or in this case, all out) there’s nothing to count. You’re either drinking or you’re not. One is as bad as one hundred.
So, over a decade ago I started counting every drink. And a few years ago, I started parsing that into the hard stuff versus beer and wine. Every year on New Year’s Eve I set a goal for total drinks (and a bunch of other metrics like total miles walked, skied or biked, number of books read, number of words written, etc.) in the coming twelve months and then every month I set a goal within that annual target. And every year that goal has been lower than the previous one. Also, virtually every year I over shoot the target, but still come in drinking less than I had the previous year, owing to the aspirational nature of the target. The result of which is that over a decade I’ve reduced my consumption of alcohol by a third.
This is a good thing for both health and social reasons. The latest scientific research suggests that even light consumption of alcohol is bad for us and drinking less or not at all is catching on as a fad. In fact, fancy restaurants now charge as much for alcohol free cocktails as they do for the full bodied ones. I have to think that this shoots the profit margins through the roof. Good for them.
Also, my favorite liquor store is doing so much business in NA beers that it has moved them to the front of the store, relegating the once popular mid-century industrial beers (your Buds, your PBRs, your Millers) to a lonely dark outpost in the back.
By the way, I’ve been sampling those NA brews and so far I can recommend Guiness, Athletic Hazy IPA and Best Day Kolsch. All quite good. I’d have a hard time picking them out as the NA choices in a blind taste test. The worst of the NAs have a soapy aftertaste. None of these do.
But here’s the thing. While I’ll continue to cut back, I have no plans to stop drinking altogether. Because despite the acknowledged health risks, I just like a cocktail now and then. I enjoy both the taste and the effect of a little alcohol.
And I like the ritual of cocktail hour. I like mixing a proper manhattan. I like making up a plate of sharp cheddar or creamy blue cheese and venison sausage. In winter I love carrying those things to my beat-up red leather chair next to the fireplace where the maple and birch that I cut and split a year or two earlier burns brightly and briskly. In the summertime I love mixing a Tanqueray and tonic in my cold WXPR Northwoods public radio metal cup (I’m a sustaining member!) filled with ice and taking in an early evening on our deck or porch overlooking Duck Lake. I even listen to NPR while enjoying my cocktail until I can’t take it anymore — meaning I can’t take All Things Considered anymore, not the gin, which actually allows me to endure the smug condescension In Mary Louise Kelly’s voice just a little bit longer.
I have this theory — wholly unsupported by any evidence that I’m aware of — that moderate consumption of alcohol improves both the quality and the length of a person’s life. It works this magic by easing tensions and helping a person to relax.
Alcohol does this faster and more effectively than “ice-breaking” exercises common at corporate retreats. I was at one of these when I worked for The Nature Conservancy. We were supposed to pair up and have a conversation with the person sitting to our left. Then they went around and asked each of us to tell something about that person that we found interesting. When it got around to me I said, “Well, I was interested to learn that Bob here once killed a man.” Then I stopped and calmly looked to my right waiting for the next revelation. People did not laugh. Bob looked mortified. The facilitator looked horrified. I was either telling the truth or I was mocking the sacred ice breaking ritual. Either way TNC’s pre-employment background checks would need to be tightened up. The ice may have been broken but more in the way that calving of an iceberg mixed with the Titanic.
My point here is that if we had dispensed with the exercise and mixed actual ice with gin, vodka or brandy this all would have gone so much better.
A life of rigid propriety makes a person tense and also no fun to be around. By increasing the tension all around them the most virtuous among us — largely, but not exclusively, Unitarians — sap the life out of us all.
So, let’s heed the health warnings and go with the social flow toward greater sobriety. But let’s not take it too far. Moderation in all things. Cheers.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 
I’ve also significantly reduced my alcohol consumption. Thank god for pot gummies.
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This is the proper way to talk about alcohol. The discourse has been incredibly dumb these past few years driven mostly by a few extremist individuals and institutions with outsized influence. There is evidence for longer life linked to moderate drinking, it just gets drowned out or dismissed by the mainstream. The “no amount is safe rhetoric” is also bogus and the same gets said about things like hot dogs and basically all snack food. Health effects from drinking alcohol largely come in at higher consumption levels as humans have known for centuries, if not longer considering we have consumed alcohol in some form since before we were a species. If you drink problematically you should cut back or quit, if you drink moderately you have zero reason to dial back. I drink way more coffee than alcohol but I am likely an above average coffee drinker so there is that to consider I suppose. There is nothing new with this debate, including the desire for more social control, which is at the root of the reason we talk about alcohol, outside of problem drinking, at all.
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“Several years ago I recognized that I had a drinking problem. To be specific my problem was that I was an average Wisconsinite.”
You needn’t be so hard on yourself…that’s One Eye’s exclusive province, after all, am I right?
Anywho, the average Wisconsinite…heck…even the well-ABOVE average, couldn’t hold a candle to colonial Virginians/Pennsylvanians generally, and the FRAMERS specifically.
Fact Check: George Washington’s HEFTY BAR TAB Days Before Constitution’s Signing, Is Real
“The bar tab of a 1787 farewell party for George Washington was left intact and legible […] According to the bill, the Founding Fathers drank 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of Claret, 8 bottles of Whiskey, 22 bottles of Porter, 8 bottles of Hard Cider, 12 of Beer and seven bowls of Alcoholic Punch.”
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Beautifully said.
Cin Cin!!!
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well, I have been thinking about cancelling my YSD for a while now. First, you spend too much time talking about things like UW athletics, Madison local politics/govt, and your NPR/CPB bashing was too much and full of inaccuracies. But this might just do it for me buddy. I’m not even sure what prompted this to be posted as interesting or useful to an audience?
As a recovering alcoholic, I and others who socialize with me will attest that I am just as much fun to be around now that I do not drink. And, given my disease, I am still alive, so I got that going for me. Alcohol is a great icebreaker because unlike any other drug, it hits the full range of frontal lobe synapses immediately and hard, which creates that “feeling” of what you call relaxation. It’s actually your blood pressure decreasing and central nervous system getting depressed, brain functions slowing.
To suggest that alcohol consumption is the only or best way to socialize, relax is not only anti-science, it is a dangerous way to excuse or ignore problem drinking. Put simply, preventing alcohol abuse is not about counting drinks. Problem drinking is not defined by the number of drinks consumed, but the purpose of the drink. What are you using it for? And how often do you feel the “need” to use the booze for this or that reason.
While I no longer drink, I am totally comfortable being around others who consume. I thrive at social events and can actually remember things the next day.
For many if not most persons with drinking problems, moderation is never an option. Having said that, I salute those individuals who can have a few beers and stop. or, those whose consumption is a glass or 2 of wine at a meal. but that cohort is small and not profitable.
indeed, the enormous political and economic power of the alcohol beverage industry spending millions to promote drinking as not just normal/acceptable, but a reward that is deserved –is what has led to the proliferation of unchecked alcohol abuse, illness, injury or death. The liquor industry has actually spent big money in states that legalized recreational marijuana because they see sales decline, profits dropping. and, they have helped to bury research about the dangers of drinking and fought drunk driving laws like sobriety checkpoints, liability for establishments, and a lower BAC threshold. All smart policy if you ask me.
Booze is promoted and sold online freely, and broadcasters/streaming have returned to advertising hard liquor products. Promotion of sporting and other entertainment. Deliberate, directed marketing to people too young to legally drink. Similar to tobacco companies cover up.
not to mention the trail of collateral damage caused by alcoholism. I can speak to that after losing my career, house, marriage, old friends, and nearly killing myself. Or, the guy who drank too much in Sept 1990 and took the life of my disabled sister when she was riding her bicycle.
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I am sorry for what you went through but I actually disagree with almost all of this. The tobacco analogy is way off because I’m pretty sure it is illegal to market alcohol to minors?
As far as marijuana goes it has nearly the same or equivalent negative side effects as alcohol, we have just been steeped in the propaganda of the legalization movement. If you want to see out of control marketing take a drive across lower Michigan and enjoy the marijuana shop billboards, there is about one every couple miles on the interstate in all kinds of fun colors and fonts (are fun colors and fonts what we consider marketing to minors?). I’m not against legalization I’m just tired of people pretending it’s something it’s not.
Back to your main point, everyone I know drinks moderately just fine and it’s not that small of a population. One you said sounds like a throw away line to justify restrictions as does most of your argument. If you want to talk health effects, again, you can tempest in a teapot nearly anything from ultra processed foods to run of the mill sugar to saturated fat.
I could go on but I’ll leave it there. I understand the space you are coming from, you should understand there are other perspectives and I believe the case was made for moderation after acknowledging many of the arguments you made above and alternatives to alcohol.
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“As far as marijuana goes it has nearly the same or equivalent negative side effects as alcohol, we have just been steeped in the propaganda of the legalization movement.”
Do tell; to wit:
“It’s Time for America to Admit That It Has a Marijuana Problem” NYT 02/09/2026
When you’ve lost the NYT…
“take a drive across lower Michigan and enjoy the marijuana shop billboards“
Heck, take a drive across the Montreal River into Ironwood, MI/the U.P.; there must be at least five (5)…um…locations from which to chose along U.S. 2. Go through before opening time, and you’ll see lines 20-30’/6.1-9.1 meters long.
From someone who’s been keeping an eye on it:
Gee, Who Could Have Ever Predicted That Marijuana Use Would Become a Problem? Me, For One…
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