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.

I had a little health scare last weekend. I had purchased a bottle of Russian vodka for what seemed to me like a very good price. Big bottle. Fancy label with a lot of Cyrillic writing on it. Eighteen bucks. Quite a good deal, I thought. After all, it was imported! 

Stuff tasted like battery acid. Didn’t stop me, though. I’ve always prided myself on the ability to drink just about anything. When I was a kid in college we made beer out of a kit. Mixed it up, put it in the basement to mature. One night, we had a party, ran out of booze at about midnight, so we went downstairs and brought up the “beer,” which had been aging for about two weeks, and drank all of it. Everybody got sick but me. I’m a horse. 

At any rate, the Russian vodka was consumed along with a big plate of spaghetti and meatballs and an arugula salad. I’m sure it was the salad that did it to me, but possibly the vodka didn’t help. At 1 AM I awoke to find I was either dying or wanted to. It took me three days to straighten out and I missed a day of work. I’ll spare you the details. A word of advice, though. If business, family history and stress have issued you a hinky gut, it’s probably best not to pour a cheap corrosive on it. Make it the expensive stuff. 

So the bottom line is that I’ve decided that any person willing to drink that kind of junk as long as it’s cold, regardless of the taste or the effect it might have on his system, probably should take a couple of months off the fun train. It’s been a few years since I didn’t drink. I’ve always told myself it would be no big deal to stop if I wanted to. I’m not a sot or anything. I just like a drink or two every single day, no matter what.

A life in business makes it easy. And it’s never hurt either me or my act, in fact I’m pretty sure it’s helped me. My first corporate culture was inhabited by a bunch of crazy rummies. I loved them and they loved me. My current milieu – along with the rest of the business world – is a lot more sober, but we still get our licks in. It’s part of how we function, keep the whole thing amusing and possible. How do you sit across the table from a banker at dinner without a glass of wine in your hand? 

Also, you know, I love booze. I watch a Western, I want to drink a shot of rye along with Mr. Eastwood. When Bogart is in the absolute pit of despair in Casablanca, I want to share that consolation martini with him. Wine. Beer. Brandy. Gin, even, although I’ve left that part of my stable of beverage behind long ago. Gin will kill you. It’s the crystal meth of alcohols. 

All this goes to say that drinking has been a hobby and entertainment of mine for a long time, and now I’ve given it up. I don’t know if or when I’ll ever start again, but I’m serious about it. I know it’s not going to be easy – not so much physically, but socially. For instance, I live for part of the time in Northern California. This means I will have to talk about wine for hours on end without drinking any. When I go out for drinks after work with Bob and Fred and Chet and Betty, I’ll have to order club soda? It’s weird. Do-able, you know. But still… weird. 

I stayed last night at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. I realized that this was the first time, perhaps ever, that I would be there without having one of their intensely fabulous martinis, and I’ve been coming here for a couple of decades. It was okay, though. I had a few pangs of desire, which I squelched. I’ve given up other things, you know. Smokes. Coffee, even, for a while. I know how to quit stuff.

I had dinner in my room and not in the bar. Watched a movie. Went to sleep. Woke a little while ago. My stomach didn’t hurt. Sometimes boring is better, huh? I may have to work out a solution to the tedium issue going forward, though. I will clearly have to eliminate the things I did in my life that were possibly only when I was drinking, which I suppose will involve yet more work for my subordinates.

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!

1. Seeing the sun rise over the smoking city, a pale pink disc hanging in the misty haze above a blessedly-empty bridge.

2. That first cup of fatally-hot Pete’s Coffee standing with rest of the cattle still asleep on our feet.

3. Not talking with anybody until you get there, and even then maybe not for a couple of hours.  In the silence there is a Zen repose. 

4. Being out of electronic communications during the precise time frame in which other people are just getting going on the most aggravating stuff of the day.

5. Checking in early and finding your room is ready for you. Or conversely, if your trip is a brief one to a relatively nearby location, the knowledge that you are not destined to be a prisoner of Hotel Land this time.

6. Being greeted at the meeting as if your showing up mattered.

7. Often being marginally aware of the issues. And there being a boundary for the most part to the portion of the day during which one must be gainfully occupied. Even the busy sales droid comes to the end of the pitch, eventually.  Lunch, of course, may intervene, and is seldom tuna fish. If there is dinner, that’s nice too, since it is rarely at the worst place in town and your hosts are with a person — you — who represents an absolutely unassailable presence on their expense accounts. And if there is no dinner…

8. Being out of electronic communications during the precise time frame in which other people are just getting going on the second-most aggravating stuff of the day.

9. Catching a nap on the plane back. In space, no one can hear you drool.

10. Coming home. And actually looking forward to getting back to your desk.

Those are my 10.  And yours, fellow travelers?