My family’s history with alcohol is complicated. Actually, it’s my history with alcohol that is complicated. It is pretty straightforward with my family. Alcoholism bores deep into the old family tree and runs its veins through all the branches with the same frequency as men with big noses. And there’s a lot of dudes with big noses in my family, self included.
Do you drink? If you do, do you recall the first time you tried alcohol? I do. I was probably four years old. My dad’s parents were visiting, and I adored my Grandpa Lickman. His hands were these powerful, gnarled cudgels that held my attention because he’d lost one of his fingers to a table saw. When he laughed it filled the halls of our home with joy. And he always seemed to have a beer in his hand. One evening during this visit I was looking up at grandpa as he cracked open another can. My curiosity got the best of me.
“Grandpa, can I try your beer?”
Goddamn, how he laughed at that. “You want to try my beer?” (I can still hear the charming, Yooper tilt of his accent. ) “Sure!” And he pressed the cold can into my hands.
I remember the wet condensation dripping around my fingers as excitement filled me. I was going to share a beer, a grown-up beer(!), with my grandpa. Without hesitating I brought the can to my lips and took a huge swig. The punch of stale rye bread soaking in armpit sweat filled my mouth. I instantly began to choke. I thrust the can back in grandpa’s hands with a quickness.
Was that an example of bad parenting? Maybe, but I can tell you two things. 1) The memory of that first sip steered me clear of alcohol until college. 2) The laughter that filled our kitchen that night stuck with me. My first memory of how alcohol can liven up a gathering.
I won’t go into the details of what led me to break my dry streak and start drinking in college. But drink I did. It’s funny. The first sip of beer I ever experienced is branded into my memory, yet I don’t recall the taste of the beer that broke me into the habit. Instead, I remember the why of it. I was upset and depressed. And I was assured by my friends that powering through the beer would get me into a happier frame of mind. Probably not the best way to start a relationship that may stick with you your entire life. But I’m sure I’m not the only one who reaffirmed their acquaintance with alcohol in such a way. Yet from that point on I was always mindful of my drinking, lest alcoholism would swallow me like it did so many others in my family.
Despite a few nights of indiscretion here and there I would categorize my relationship with alcohol throughout my adult life as “average”. I have written on here before about how I discovered beer beyond American mass-produced lagers, and how my wife introduced me to homebrewing as a joke (a joke which of this writing is still referenced in my author’s bio). Learning how to brew my own beer is really where my relationship with alcohol advanced to the next level. Learning the science of zymurgy and experiencing how the different grains, hops, and yeast interacted made me fall in love with beer. Not just for what it did for my mood, but also for its varied world of flavors and aromas. Quite a far cry from my first sip, no?
Plus, I daresay I was good at brewing beer. I won a few (small) homebrew contests, making it the first artistic endeavor in my life that earned me recognition. On the Steampunk convention circuit I became known as an expert on not just brewing beer but on its history as well. And speaking as someone who has always felt on the outside of social situations, a strong sense of confidence filled me whenever an attractive woman approached me at a steampunk party and said, “I know you! You’re that guy that makes really good beer.”
With all that positive reinforcement, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that beer became part of my identity. Even at my day job my co-workers knew that if they had a question about beer, they could go ask Lickman. So when in 2012 I decided to launch a website dedicated to my writing projects, it only made sense to name it “Beer and Monsters”. After all, the title incorporated two of things I enjoyed writing most about. Plus its simplicity made for great marketing. Not only have I used it to promote my fiction, but it has been a springboard to other opportunities. For a time I wrote beer reviews for the Tipsy Techie (RIP) and I appeared as a guest on people’s horror-themed podcasts. And while a number of setbacks in my life have made it so I have not been utilizing my website as much as I could have, I am very protective of what I have built here. Several people have tried to take this URL from me. Some have tried via malware to take control of the site. One guy straight up asked me to if I would give it to him. Again, with beer being a part of my identity, and being savvy of just how good beerandmonsters.com is as a domain name for recognition, I am very protective of what I have built here.
Which makes what I am going to write next all the more awkward. During the nightmare that was 2020, I began to notice that my usage of alcohol had gotten to a point that made me uncomfortable. On nights were I would have had one or two drinks, now I was having three or four. On the weekends I would sometimes have up to five. While the increase didn’t blatantly impact my life negatively, it bothered me. It started to impact my sense of self-worth. The Specter of Alcoholism lingered around the street lamp at the end of my driveway, nodding “How ya’ doin’?” each night. So on January 2nd of 2021 I decided to give Dry January a shot. And, despite having grave misgivings about being sober on January 6th, I stuck with it. However by October of that same year I found myself sliding back into the bad habits I had developed.
Which brings me to current day. Once again I am partaking of Dry January. If I did it successfully before, why am I talking about it publicly here now? Because I want to be held accountable. Something about it feels different this year. Perhaps I’ve gone to far around the bend with regards to my drinking? I don’t know. I hope that when/if I start drinking again in February or March, that my relationship with alcohol isn’t a dependent one, but more like the old days when I appreciated it for more than how blitzed it got me.