Drinking on the Tools

“Drink is not only worth doing; it is worth thinking about.” - Anthony Burgess

I have (sort of) enjoyed nearly a decade of sobriety. “Enjoyed” because I never thought I’d be able to quit. It still feels so unlikely that I sometimes wonder if there’s still time, at 53, for me to run out in the second row for the NZ Warriors.

My first mouthful of grog (a sadly retired term) took place beneath a Formica trestle at the Ōtāhuhu Rugby League club when I was eight or nine. Our poison was a big bottle of ice-cold Lion Red. By adolescence, every coin I came across was quickly transubstantiated into marijuana or alcohol and LSD, and during my misbegotten years as a professional musician, I would merrily forgo solid food in favour of a liquid diet. Sober, I couldn’t fight my way out of a paper bag; drunk, I could square up to two bouncers simultaneously – eat a big right hand and sit straight up like the killer from Halloween. These Darwin‑defying exhibitions earned me quite a reputation. The morning‑after Dane views this period as one long suicide note set to 4/4 time.

For all that, I probably always held the potential to quit because I could create and stick to boundaries. I would never perform drunk. My decadence settled when I trained to become an actor, but reemerged in the writerly years, into a timetable of near‑monastic precision: complete a bottle of Pepperjack Shiraz at 10 a.m., a pint of Waikato at three, an additional bottle of wine and the neck of another after dusk, perhaps chased by something amber. This was scarcely Dylan Thomas territory, yet it remains my most faithfully observed ritual, onanism notwithstanding.

It didn’t affect or limit my output. Alcohol was the only thing that could see me cut a rug, and my fingers would often feel like they were dancing across the keyboard. Clockwork Orange author Anthony Burgess managed to write Earthly Powers while valiantly assisting the wine and spirits industry. At the height of his output in the 1960s Burgess took delivery of twelve bottles of gin every week; earlier, sweating through Malayan afternoons, he maintained a heroic rhythm of a bottle of gin a day, convinced the tropics would perspire it away. Even after the death of his first wife from cirrhosis, he only slightly softened his foot on the pedal, maintaining a cellar that rarely dipped below a hundred bottles, and declaring that “Drink is not only worth doing; it is worth thinking about.” I was never in this league, though even writing on Burgess fills me with romantic notions, and this despite experiencing its ravages firsthand and losing a spouse in the same manner.

Burgess – and I - understood that alcohol is civilisation’s licensed explosion. Lately, however, the gods of marketing have turned that explosion into a sherbet‑coloured children’s party. My eldest son staffs a liquor shop, and each visit presents a buffet of novelty: Hot Cross Bun Vodka, perfumed with cinnamon and caramelised demerara. Banana‑Toffee Whiskey, an American confection promising “tales told and secrets shared”. A Double‑Dry‑Hopped “Steak & Cheese Pie” hazy IPA, the very phrase makes the esophagus flinch. Not daunted, the distillers of Rattlesnake Rosie offer Maple‑Bacon Whiskey, lovingly infused with Grade‑A syrup and phantom rashers, while Skrewball’s Peanut Butter Whiskey continues its rise in the charts, legitimised by food writers who ought to know better.

One could go on – there is now Gherkin beer, Toasted‑Marshmallow rum, Jalapeño‑Pineapple tequila. The alchemy that once turned grapes into verse has been re‑tooled by Willy Wonka. It is less a revival of drinking culture than the dessert cart wheeled out post the previous generations’ gorge.

I made the mistake of running my nose over the Banana Toffee vial at my son’s shop and was so seduced I almost tore up the contract, then and there. Then the memory of my children watching their mother implode filled my senses. A sobering chaser if there ever was one. A single dram might not kill me, but symbolic acts have their own metabolism. To raise the glass would be to instruct the audience that we were only at the interval and that the old play was about to resume.

I said “Sort of” earlier, based on this encounter. I can imagine the hot, syrupy liquid running down my throat but am blind to its afterglow.

I may resume imbibing at 65 – retirement age – when a brand will exist that emulates the flavor of famous and prominent vaginas. A retro edition? Sophia Loren circa 1959? I’d be content with a Banana Toffee Whiskey for now - maybe a shot in my morning coffee as Brahms’ 4th symphony swells to fortify me against the blank page.