Not Drinking and Me

I was doing some hiking recently, and my mind began to wander as it often does when I’m hiking alone. I don’t remember what the train of thought was that led me to this topic, but I began to think about some of my youthful experimentation with illegal substances.

Or to be more precise, I tried marijuana a few times when I was 18 years old. Which, in and of itself, is not such a big deal. I fancied myself quite the rebel at the time, but I now realize, especially as I have ventured into the “post-Calvin” world, that trying marijuana a few times around that age is pretty much par for the course.

So what sticks out in my mind is not so much the action itself, but my intellectual weakness. I mean, here I was doing something really stupid, intaking a substance which I knew was harmful to my body, and I was so proud of myself.

There was no peer pressure, at least not in the “after-school special” sense of the word. I did not have a joint shoved in my face, and hear someone say, “come on man, everybody’s doing it.” In fact on the contrary, I had a reputation for innocence in high school, which many of my friends seemed eager to preserve. They would often encourage me not to do what they were doing.

But there was a sense in which I felt that many of the people I admired most in high school, the cool people and the popular people and the people I felt like I wanted to be like, were using marijuana.

After years of after school specials, public service commercials, and lectures from teachers and youth leaders, I felt like I had been lied to. Perhaps I had been a little too trusting to begin with, but I had fully believed that the marijuana users would all turn out to be the burned out losers they were portrayed to be in the anti-drug commercials. It was a surprise to find out that some of the most popular, and the most charismatic students were using marijuana. I thought that if I started using the drug, some of those traits might rub off on me.

But after having tried marijuana for the stupidest of reasons, it is amazing how proud of myself I became. I thought using the drug proved that I was not bound by conventional rules. That it identified me as one of a select few who were willing to take risks and do things forbidden. I compared myself to all the adults I knew, teachers, church leaders, parents and relatives, and thought that they all lived such boring lives. But I would be different. When I was old and gray I would have these moments of youthful rebellion to look back on with pride.

But from my perspective now, what I then saw as a strength of character only comes through as a profound weakness. How much better it would have been if I had been confident enough in my identity of self that I didn’t need to feel like I needed to intake a certain substance to feel like I fit in. If I had strong convictions that I would do what was right, and accept whatever social fall out there might be, then that would really have been something I could look back on with pride.

The thing that worries me is I’m not sure I’ve changed all that much since I was 18. So I resolved never that I should never again do something that I thought was wrong simply because other people around me were doing it, or because I needed to fit in.

And then I thought about drinking in Japan.

Again, much like the handful of times I tried marijuana, the issue with drinking in Japan for me isn’t so much that it is something I do in excess, as it is the principle underlying.

As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, Japan is a drinking culture. And although I often prefer not to drink, when out with Japanese friends, and especially at work related parties, I’ll drink as much as I feel is required by politeness with the justification of trying to respect the rules of another culture. I was also well aware that identify myself as a non-drinker might result in less social invitations from my Japanese colleagues.

But I started to see clearly that this was just another character weakness. I would be a much better person if I had the strength to say I just didn’t want to drink, and accepted whatever the fallout from this decision was.

The problem though, is it is one thing to start out saying that you are not going to drink. It is another thing to start out drinking at the parties, and then decide to reverse course halfway through.

This was made even more difficult by the fact that I had somehow gotten a reputation as a big drinker at my school. I’m not sure how this happened because, as I said above, I only drank what I felt was required out of politeness. I suspect it has to do with the fact that I have also acquired a well-deserved reputation as a big eater, and perhaps without anyone paying too much attention to how much I was drinking, it was assumed I was consuming alcohol in proportion to the amount of food.

At any rate, to suddenly declare I was no longer drinking would require a lot of explanation, and I wasn’t sure my Japanese was up to it, and even if it was I doubted Japanese people would be able to understand, since Japan is a drinking culture, and drinking alcohol is never thought of as something bad.

So at the end of the year party, I simply claimed I was feeling a bit sick. But I couldn’t use that excuse every time, and besides lying about it in order to avoid confrontation did not prove strength of character.

So, at the beginning of the year party, I said I was no longer going to drink alcohol anymore for religious reasons. This was a relatively easy lie to get away with, because, thanks to the presence of Mormon missionaries in Japan, many Japanese people already believe that all Christians aren’t supposed to drink alcohol. Of course I’m still lying, but I was willing to live with that.

I still had to explain why I had drank at the previous parties, so I said I had lapsed a bit in my faith, but I had experienced a renewal lately, and was now trying to be more true to my religion.

At the welcome party, the seating arrangements had me seated at a table of almost all women. I’d be happy about this under any circumstances, but it was an added bonus that I knew these women were unlikely to pressure me to drink. It was usually the old men who insisted on drinking.

Once the party got going a little, and people started mingling with other tables, I got a little bit of flack for not drinking, but it wasn’t too bad.

I didn’t really get in trouble until the new teachers were up on stage introducing themselves. One of the new teachers had been sitting at our table, and when it was her turn to introduce herself she said, “I’m sorry, I can’t do a good introduction because I’m a little drunk. Almost no one was drinking at our table, so I and Mr. Kato had to finish off all of the beer by ourselves.” And at this point there was a stir through the crowd, and I heard my name mentioned several times in the whispers. “What? Why isn’t Joel drinking tonight?”

Under pressure to explain myself in as few words as possible so we could return to the ceremony, I simply said, “Uh, I prefer tea tonight,” and held up a glass of tea to demonstrate. That seemed to briefly satisfy everyone, and we went on with the introductions.