…why I didn’t drink

I spent four months in countries where I was above the legal drinking age. That’s 123 nights I could have spent at bars or in the streets throwing it back with absolutely no legal threat for doing so. I did spend a few nights in the streets, and I made it to a couple bars in the middle of the night. More than once I watched the sun come up as it refracted through the pile of broken bottles around me. I had every opportunity to pop a bottle.

I chose not to.

If you think you understand my decision because of A, B, or C – you probably don’t. The problem is, it took me months of being back in the bubble – where mouthwash borders on shameful, what with it’s 21.6% alcohol content – to figure out why I didn’t drink. I’ve heard every imaginable suggestion from people trying to understand why I didn’t, but none of them held, well, water.

The initial questions from my new roommates and friends – who, as an aside, are truly some of the best people I have known – hit every topic under the moon. It seemed odd that a college-aged male with no restrictions to alcohol consumption didn’t have a bottle in hand or a hangover. Eventually everyone bought the idea that I just didn’t want to drink. (There’s a valuable lesson to learn there: People will let you make a decision just because you made it.) The only person who couldn’t just swallow that answer was the only person who should have been able to: Me.

The nagging lack of explanation for not drinking kept rolling around in my mind. It should have been easy to believe the line coming out of my mouth, but there’s truth to what is said about drunk words being sober thoughts – My mind and mouth were reading different scripts.

Some people assumed I didn’t drink “because of my religion” and brushed it off. While this may be a valid explanation for some people, it doesn’t work for me. Sure, based on my “religion” (which is in quotation marks for reasons to be addressed in a later post) it would be wrong to get hammered. However, I have no religious objection to having a drink, in and of itself.

There have been people living in the bubble that assumed I followed the Declaration of Christian Community (DOCC) imposed by the University of Northwestern. For those of you outside the bubble, the DOCC states that “if we are traditional undergraduate students, we will refrain from the consumption of alcoholic beverages… for the entire length of… [our] association as a student” which stretches from signing the page to walking the stage. Technically, I should have used the DOCC as my grounds for not drinking. Full disclosure to my home university: I didn’t consider the DOCC when making my choices. The friends I made amidst those broken bottles can attest to my never using the DOCC as a reason to not drink.

Maybe I didn’t drink because I was afraid of what would happen – who would find out, what they would say, or if I would get in trouble. That barely makes sense on paper, and it certainly doesn’t make sense sitting on the other side of the world. Maybe I didn’t want to find out what I would do drunk. Maybe I could blame my not drinking on the expense it requires, but money is temporary and alcohol is inexpensive at a sell-all corner store.

After months of trying to pin down my decision not to drink, I finally got a grasp on an idea I could handle. It had never been the stumbling home or splitting headaches I wanted to avoid. Being the only person in the bar asking for water – again – didn’t bother me. Going to a wine tasting and staring through the condensation on the glass didn’t seem that absurd. Handing my complimentary tequila shot to my friend didn’t cause any issues. I didn’t drink because I wanted to say “I didn’t drink.”

I wanted to come back from a semester of supposed stupor and be able to recall every minute of those 123 nights. I wanted to be able to look my little siblings in the eye and honestly tell them I didn’t drink. I wanted to be able to walk into the office of the President of my school, if called upon, and tell him I didn’t drink. I wanted to be a testament to anyone who wanted to use any of the logical reasons above to not drink that it can be done. I wanted to some day tell my kids I didn’t drink because I chose not to, not because someone told me I couldn’t. I wanted to make sure no one would think less of me for something I could control. I wanted to be above reproach.

In the book of Philippians (2:14) the idea is to “do all things without grumbling or disputing, that [we] may be blameless (or above reproach) and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation.” The goal is to be different, in order to stand out.

That’s why I didn’t drink – I wanted to stand out. The bartender won’t look twice at the college kid ordering another beer or crushing another shot, but the kid sipping water doesn’t fit the crowd. The guy walking a straight line down the cracked cobblestone streets as the sun creeps over the horizon doesn’t fit the scene. That kid is different – that kid stands out.

Don’t misinterpret this. The goal was never to be better than anyone. I never thought about being more authentic or more committed or more faithful than anyone. The only opinion I cared about, truly, was the one staring at me in the mirror. I wanted to look into my own eyes and see resolve and reliability. It was so much more than thinking I shouldn’t drink – I made a choice so as to not disappoint myself.

I could have sipped a little more culture – I chose not to.