“No pleasure is a bad thing in itself: but the things that produce certain pleasures bring troubles many times greater than the pleasures.” - Epicurus
The Crisis of Form
Modern man no longer knows how to drink. He drinks too much, or he doesn’t drink at all. He rips shots on Friday night and repents with electrolytes and podcasts on Saturday morning. He binges or he boycotts. He blacks out or he microdoses. He has forgotten the third way, the golden mean between excess and sterility, the art of drinking well.
It was not always this way. In better ages, alcohol was not consumed, it was honored. It accompanied births, deaths, weddings, sabbaths, victories, peace treaties, poetry, tragedy. The act of drinking was not a private escape, but a public rite. Men did not drink to forget. They drank to remember. To mark time, to sanctify place, to toast the living and the dead. The cup was not something you held; it was something you joined.
Today, alcohol is severed from its context. The drunkard is treated as a deviant. The abstainer is celebrated as enlightened. But neither is a model for civilization. The drunkard abuses the cup; the abstainer abandons it. One sinks into chaos, the other retreats into control. Both misunderstand what alcohol is for.
To drink well is to reject both of these poles. It is to retrieve something older than moderation campaigns and public health charts. It is to return to form, not in the bureaucratic sense, but in the classical sense. Form as discipline. Form as order. Form as style. A man who drinks well does not fear the glass. He commands it. He understands when, with whom, and how. He knows that a table is not complete without the bottle, and that the bottle is not complete without the toast. He does not drink to disappear, but to arrive.
Every civilization that lasted developed drinking culture. Not merely alcohol culture. That means memory, rules, rhythm, and restraint. In ancient Greece, men gathered for symposia, reclining together in the pursuit of pleasure guided by proportion. They drank wine diluted with water, poured in libation to the gods, and accompanied by music, speech, laughter. It was structured. Even the joy was bound by measure. One cup was for friendship. Two for conversation. Three was the edge of madness. Beyond that, Plato warned, man becomes a beast.
In Rome, wine was ubiquitous, but never barbaric. The rationed cup was part of military life, civic life, and intellectual life. Even in excess, the Roman understanding of drinking was rooted in duty. The soldier drank to dull pain, the senator drank to broker trust, the poet drank to summon the muse.
Judaism wove wine into every ritual. The Sabbath begins with the Kiddush, a sanctifying of the day over a cup. Passover mandates four cups as symbols of deliverance. Weddings, circumcisions, funerals, each moment marked with wine. To drink was to remember covenant. Even in Purim, when the commandment is to drink until one cannot distinguish good from evil, the act is not about indulgence but about reversal. A deliberate crossing of the rational boundary into the territory of divine paradox.
Christianity elevated the cup to sacrament. Wine became blood. The Last Supper became the eternal feast. For centuries, the altar and the table were one. And long before wine was pasteurized or wine was litigated, it was venerated. Christ’s first miracle was not healing the sick, but ensuring the wedding feast continued. And not with inferior drink, but with the best wine, saved for last. The gospels did not shy away from joy. They canonized it.
Even Islam, though officially abstinent, could not contain the metaphor. Rumi drank from the wine of divine love. Hafiz wrote verses that would make Dionysus blush. Omar Khayyam lifted his glass in open defiance. The poets kept the cup alive where the clerics forbade it. Because they understood: man needs ecstasy. Even when it is punished, it must be sung.
The medieval monasteries brewed beer not as vice but as virtue. Beer was sustenance, especially during Lenten fasts, when the body was denied food but not spirit. The monks refined brewing into craft, and from craft into worship. Trappist ales and abbey beers are the remnants of a time when brewing was a spiritual vocation. The fermenting cask was as sacred as the illuminated manuscript.
The English pub, now reduced to football and chips, was once the parish of the people. It was where arguments were settled, loyalties forged, stories passed down. To sit at your regular stool was to signal permanence. The landlord knew your name and your father’s name. Rounds were not transactions. They were tokens of trust.
All of this has been eroded. What remains is consumption without context. Liquor without liturgy. Booze without boundary. Drinking as self-medication, not celebration. A desperate swipe at connection in a world that forgot how to gather.
The modern drinker faces two temptations: the binge and the boycott. One turns every night into excess; the other refuses to drink on principle. But neither produces culture. The binge destroys memory. The boycott refuses to make any. The drinker of civilization is something else entirely. He pours slowly. He knows what he’s drinking. He knows who he’s drinking with. He knows when to offer the toast, and when to stop the pouring. His virtue is not in abstention. It’s in form.
Form means the cup is accompanied by food. It means the bottle is shared, not hoarded. It means the drink is named, not disguised. It means alcohol is taken at the table, not in the car. It means you don’t drink with people who hate themselves. You drink with people who want to live and who are unafraid to show it.
The old rules, unwritten but known, kept the drink human. You do not pour until everyone has a glass. You do not drink until the toast is offered. You don’t let a man drink alone. You pour for others before you pour for yourself. You don’t change drinks mid-evening unless you’re changing mood. You never pour the last of the bottle without asking. You never leave the table before the first story is told. You stay until the third. Then you leave while your name is still good.
These rituals matter. They are not etiquette for the sake of etiquette. They are binding agents, symbols that preserve the moral order even when nothing else does. They are little liturgies that keep men from chaos.
Modern culture does not fear alcohol because it is dangerous. It fears alcohol because it is unpredictable. It cannot be fully digitized. It resists optimization. It makes people say things they mean. It makes men stand up and sing, or speak, or confess. It interrupts the performative self and reveals the real one. And in an age obsessed with managing impressions, nothing is more threatening than revelation.
This is why the sterile class prefers wellness. It is not just about the body. It is about control. The wellness cult tells you what to eat, when to sleep, how to breathe. It replaces the feast with macros. It replaces the toast with mindfulness. It replaces song with curated playlists. It tells you that wine is a toxin and that Zoloft is neutral. That a shot of mezcal is a moral risk, but 10 years of SSRIs is wisdom.
The wellness cult has its own theology, and alcohol violates it. Because alcohol contains danger. It is unpredictable. It can harm, yes, but it can also reveal. And the sterile class cannot tolerate risk that might lead to revelation. They prefer sedation that mimics stability.
The man who drinks well knows this. He is not afraid of intoxication. He is afraid of meaningless intoxication. He is not ruled by the bottle. He is bound to the occasion. He does not pour at random. He pours to mark time, to honor life, to welcome the stranger, to remember the friend who is gone. He knows that every drink is a form of speech. And that every round, properly poured, is a miniature covenant.
The feast remains the highest form of civilization. And the feast without the cup is a meeting, not a celebration. A man who cannot toast cannot rule. A man who cannot pour for others cannot lead. A man who cannot pace himself cannot govern. And a man who cannot host cannot build anything worth keeping.
The future will not be built by the drunkard. Nor by the sterile optimizer. It will be built by the man who can fill the cup without trembling, who can drink in rhythm, who can raise the glass in laughter or grief, who knows when to stop, when to speak, when to stand, and when to let the night end without needing to be the last one at the table.
To drink well is to remember. Not just people, but forms. It is to remember how human beings mark time, form bonds, bury the dead, crown the living, and console the broken. To drink well is to live in rhythm with the human story.
No one will remember the man who sipped green juice alone in his condo. But they will remember the one who raised a glass when no one else had the words and made them all feel human again. So pour slowly. Raise your glass. Drink well. And remember the world we are trying to build.