Alcohol, alcohol, alcohol

Alcohol? Is it good or bad? Are they questions worth asking? I am not sure, to be honest. They just are. And thanks to my friends for giving the thumbs up/thumbs down in the picture above 🙂

I mentioned earlier that I might occasionally write texts in English to shake things up a bit. Here we are 🙂

Alcohol. Ethanol. C2H6O. As a chemical compoud, it is fairly simple. Yet, as a ”cultural compound”, it is something else entirely. I have been thinking about the role of alcohol in my life and in our society in general more than usual recently. Hence, I decided to focus on that in this post. What is my relationship with alcohol? I am not a teetotaller, but I rarely drink alcohol. I seldom buy alcohol. I do not frequent bars or pubs. Why? I do not like the taste of alcoholic beverages and the effect alcohol has on me. There is one exception, however. I like Salmiakki Koskenkorva, but I probably would not mind if it had no alcohol. I should perhaps try the salty liquorice liquid offered at pharmacies…

I have never been wasted because I dislike the feeling alcohol gives me. I understand why some feel the need to drink e.g. their problems away, but I have never understood the notion that you should be proud of being drunk. People proudly recount the (mis)adventures they had on weekends at work and their colleagues laugh at the stories. Sure, if being drunk is something you find funny, I will not take it away from you. However, is alcohol always the prerequisite of having fun? Can you have fun without alcohol? Alcohol – the lubricant of social events? I guess that, since alcohol is pretty much omnipresent in the Finnish society, we do not pay attention to it. Are you inviting friends over tonight? Of course you should have a bottle of wine or two at hand! That is just how it is. This is why I offer non-alcoholic drinks when I invite my friends over.

Furthermore, it is immensely frustrating that people occasionally need to explain why they do not drink alcohol. I felt the urge to explain my reasoning at the beginning of this post, which makes me sneer. A Finnish man drinks alcohol because that is what he does. The stereotype… However, it seems that the younger generations think that is no longer ”cool” to be drunk, so the future will be somewhat brighter in this regard, I hope. Apparently, the price of beer will likely increase in the future due to climate change. Will it reduce alcohol consumption in the future? Probably not, people are ingenious enough to come up with other ways to mess up their brains. 

I handed in my master’s thesis for review a year ago. So, I went to a bar the day before yesterday with my friends to celebrate the first anniversary of my graduation and to celebrate, loosely speaking, the fact that 10 years have passed since the start of our studies at the university. Yes, I had a pint of cider (pictured above). Why did I choose it? There were non-alcoholic drinks available, too. I just did it without too much of a thought. The bar is place where I will have a drink to remind myself of how much I dislike the taste of it. I know, it is a shabby explanation, but there you go :D If you were to buy me a drink, would I drink it? Yes, I would, provided that the drink isn’t too inebriating. Please, keep that in mind :) In essence, I would appreciate the gesture because I am not a socially inept asshole – most of the time at least :)