Do you all actually like alcohol or is it all an elaborate ruse?
By MADISON SEEMAN— meseeman@ucdavis.edu
LED lights, red solo cups and the worst acoustics possible filled a room holding 40 sweaty, drunk and sleep-deprived college students. Everyone else was drinking, and the party was in full swing; Noah was eyeing his class crush, Emily was eyeing the gin and Sarah looked dangerously close to texting her ex. In an effort to find something to do, I squeezed my way over to the drink table and took stock of my options: straight tonic, a quarter cup of orange juice and straight grenadine. Yum!
Low inhibitions and bad decisions — I look at moments like these, in dens of iniquity and vice, and think: “What’s the big deal?” What about straight vodka makes drinking until 2 a.m. on a Wednesday night worth it? Sober and confused, I decided to investigate.
I asked my friend Tomas — an experienced drinker — about his take on the substance’s appeal.
“For me, it’s the taste,” Tomas said. “Well no, actually, it’s not always the taste. I mean, I despise the taste of vodka and that’s never stopped me from getting wasted. But other times? It’s the taste.”
Digging deeper only fanned the flames of my confusion. I asked my friend Lupita, who has been an alcohol expert ever since she took “Introduction to Wine and Winemaking” last spring, to describe the flavor profile of some of my friends’ favorite drinks.
I was pleased to hear that gin was made of a berry — I can definitely understand the appeal of a fruity little drink. But Lupita set me straight: “It tastes like… trees. Bitter trees.”
Lupita’s description of rum started off stronger: “It tastes like vanilla and caramel” — but ended on a slightly more inedible note: “It also tastes like fire and wood.”
Vodka, she told me, tasted like “pure alcohol,” although she was quick to clarify that she had “only ever had the cheap kind,” so she “might not know what she was talking about.”
My research on the appeal of alcohol’s taste brought me up short, and it was time to move on to the other obvious appeal: getting drunk.
I asked my coworker Sarah what she liked about getting drunk, but her answer wasn’t what I was hoping for.
“I think I like making bad decisions, actually, and boxed wine really helps me get there,” Sarah said. “I wake up in the morning and it’s like I have my own soap opera to catch up on. But it’s my life. So, fun!”
Personally, I feel pretty confident in my sober bad decision-making and a little less thrilled about drunk bad decision-making than Sarah. Deciding she was an outlier, I asked my friend John Ray why he liked to get drunk.
“I miss my ex,” Ray said. He declined to comment further.
Since my interviews weren’t yielding the responses I wanted, I moved to another form of research: observation.
Embarrassing texts, drunk fighting, stumbling over feet. Nights of vomiting, hungover mornings. Is it fun? Evidently, it seems like people think so! Over the years, many parties have revealed to me the animal that lies beneath sober human skin, something I had very much appreciated being hidden.
But, it goes deeper than notes of aged berries and ruining your life. The further my research brought me, the more I uncovered the social hierarchy. Seltzers are for the weak and desperate, bartenders hate mojito lovers, suburban moms love rosé. There’s a hierarchy, a social game — symbolism behind each drink choice that says something about you. Alcohol is about status. And, if I order a Shirley Temple, where does that put me?
But really, why would you order anything other than a Shirley Temple with a little cherry on top? They’re so good! No hangover, no notes of inedible objects, no liver damage.
Maybe they’re just having fun. Maybe I’m just a bitter party-hater who has too much homework. Maybe I just really love Shirley Temples. All I know is that I don’t know anything.
Written by: Madison Seeman— meseeman@ucdavis@ucdavis.edu
Disclaimer: (This article is humor and/or satire, and its content is purely fictional. The story and the names of “sources” are fictionalized.)
