I walked home last night from the office. All along the route, I passed the places I used to stop in for a drink. It’s been a month now since I had a nice, frosty martini, so cold that the ice chips float to the top and the sides of the glass bead up with condensation… or a brawny glass of Johnny Walker Black, sinuous and golden in a big bottomed glass… or even a festive balloon or two of rich, big-shouldered, blood-red Zin, oaky and spicy and redolent of cinnamon and chocolate…

I walked by these places but did not go in. I figure the time to start drinking again is when I don’t feel the inexorable pull to the cozy dimness that lies beyond their inviting portals. In other words, when I don’t need a drink is precisely the moment when I’ll feel okay having one.

When I reported my intentions a month ago, one very astute commentor told me two things that would happen. Both of them have indeed transpired. First, he informed me that people would be churlish about my decision to quit drinking for a while. This has indeed turned out to be true. Two nights ago, for instance, I went to a corporate event with my boss, one that was preceded, as they almost always are, at that hour, by cocktails. He got his usual. I got a cranberry and soda with lime. Odious thing. My drink of choice at the moment. The following conversation transpired:

“What’s up with you?” 

“Nothing. It’s been a month since I had a drink. I figured I’ve had a drink every day for the last 30 years. I can take a break.”

“You gotta be kidding me.”

He was peering at me as if seeing me in a slightly different way all of a sudden. In business, you never want anybody to see you a slightly different way unless you’ve planned the change of image beforehand. So I added, “We can still be friends, you know.” He took a thoughtful sip of his drink and regarded me narrowly over the rim of his glass. “Maybe!” he said at last.

It was a joke, of course. We’re still friends. But he’s right, too. Everything is a lot harder without liquor.  This brings me to the second part of my correspondent’s prediction: that stuff would look a whole lot weirder when you’re the only totally sober one in the room.  A few weeks ago, I went to a formal dinner. I won’t tell you who was there because one of them could be reading this. Very high nabob percentage. Lots of wattage in the room. Virtually no oxygen remaining for people with normal-sized heads.

By 10 p.m., everybody but me had sopped up a full flagon of wine. There was hugging among individuals who by no means would have hugged had they not be very well oiled. There was some singing by voices rarely raised in anything but anger. One graybeard leaned over and told me a personal tale so odiferously raunchy that I am praying he never recalls the person with whom he shared it. And I sat amid it all like the albatross at the wedding feast. Nobody but me cared that I wasn’t drunk. But I cared. Deeply. And yet I stayed the course.

Since then, I have realized that my current dry spell has made certain things impossible. I can no longer have dinners with boring or annoying people, for instance. This is a significant liability in business, perhaps a crippling one. I have to see if I can moderate this position, for professional reasons. If I can’t, it’s clear that I will have to either leave business or start drinking again. Boondoggles, sales functions and other social/business events, too, are pretty much out of the question. It’s not that I require a drink, that’s not it. It’s that the entire purpose of the thing is to get hammered and feel a whole bunch of stuff about the people you’re hanging with — love, jealousy, loyalty, hatred, inappropriate amusement. It’s a total bummer to be in a room with a bunch of swirling people and feel absolutely nothing. It’s a group experience and you’re not part of the group, because the glue that holds the human souls together in that space is everybody’s common and shared inebriation.

I’ll be back pretty soon, I guess. Right now, it’s more a matter of pride for me, a test of my will, than any physical requirement to maintain and abstain. But I’ll be honest with you: this isn’t an easy time to walk around in this condition. Look at the news. We may all be getting to a point where walking around sober is a lot more dangerous than the alternative.

We’re all drinking a lot less for business reasons now, because… well, I don’t really know why. We just are. You go to lunch and a proud phalanx of sparkling water bottles festoons the room, and everybody is munching on salads like giraffes. This is sad for two reasons. First, sobriety is not a congenial condition in which to do serious business, and second, this leaves far more drinking to be done on personal time. As far as I’m concerned, this is ass-backwards. There are solid reasons why the majority of imbibing should be done on company time.

Here, in my view, are the excellent functions alcohol provides within a business context:

1. Grease the wheels: It is a well-known fact that growth rates have plummeted since we all stopped drinking at meals, particularly breakfast and lunch. In the 1980s, many a fine deal was hammered out while we were.
2. Builds friendships that last a lifetime: How many of us are really interested in the stuff that our peers are involved in? My pal builds boats. Do I care about boats? I assure you I don’t. I, on the other hand, collect ancient guitars that once sold in Montgomery-Ward for $2.99. Does he have the slightest interest in that? But put us together with a couple of beers, three or four scotches and a few after dinner drinks and I assure you we love each other, and have for almost 20 years now.
3. Makes golf possible: Think of what that stupid game would be like if we didn’t have booze before, during and after it?
4. Meeting facilitator: Okay, you don’t need a couple of stiff ones to survive a two-hour meeting with PowerPoint. But these all-day things they put us through a couple of times a year at least, or the annual squeeze-fest with 300 senior managers in Boca? Without booze? You sit in those things and the martini in your mind coalesces at about 10 AM and stays there all day, a beacon of hope amid the gloom and forced collegiality.
5. All-purpose topic of conversation: The tedious things that business people talk about! Lord! Interest rates! GAAP. Monetizing prospective revenue streams! Phooey! But when the conversation moves around to wine? Or single malt scotches? Or what booze goes well with mongoosse? Everybody’s an expert in one way or another, and even those who are not can quietly watch the blowhards blow while tending to an aggressive cab with a big nose and huge shoulders.
6. Anesthetic: As we get on in years, or engage in sports no human was ever meant to pursue, our bodies begin to attack us. Shoulders ache from improper employment of a 9-iron. Elbows throb from repetitive tennis activity. Me, I’ve been wracked with some kind of back pain brought on by over-use of my mouse. You could take percodan and blow up like the Hindenburg, like Jerry Lewis did, or blow your mind on other crazy substances now popular in Los Angeles, but a warm glass of gin never met an ailment it couldn’t soothe. A few weeks ago, a small flagon of warm port cured my flu. I report that fact now in hopes it will be picked up by medical authorities and pursued with responsible vigor.
7. Sleeping potion: Right after that, I fell asleep, by the way. True, those who use booze for this purpose are likely to awaken at 3 AM when its effects wear off. This is different than the usual waking at 3 AM, which I do every night anyway. In the latter case, it’s harder to fall back asleep.
8. Excuse: You can’t do it too often, of course. You get a reputation for yourself that can make people doubt your stamina and probity. Unless, of course, it’s a recourse shared by your entire corporate culture. Which is probably why I miss all the guys I came up with at Westinghouse.

Hi, guys! Remember the good old days? On second thought, I bet you don’t!