Bottoms Up? (The Gaian Guide to Liquids, Part III: On Alcohol)

Back in 2023, when I wrote the first part of this extended treatise on sustainable beverages, I read about a terrible fungus thriving down in Tennessee, specifically near the Jack Daniel’s whiskey distillery. The article described how the black film now grows on everything: “homes, cars, road signs, bird feeders, patio furniture and trees.” What’s it feeding on? Alcohol vapors. For those unfamiliar with spirit production, a portion of every barrel evaporates as it ages. Some of that is water, but some is alcohol. That’s often called “the angel’s share,” though more accurately, it should be called the fungi’s share (or maybe the shroom’s share as that has a better ring to it).

Then this summer, I visited the Benjamin Franklin museum. Franklin was a Renaissance Man who had an uncanny grasp of the sciences,¹ statescraft, and society, and who prided himself on his temperance—at least when younger. At the museum, there was a video describing how young Ben drank water instead of beer as a printer’s apprentice and carried twice the weight in printer type as all his fellow apprentices.

But later, he overindulged—especially in alcohol—to the point he suffered from terrible gout. (There’s actually another video of him surreally having a conversation with his gout!) Next to that, there is a chart that his servants created of one month of Franklin’s wine consumption (by the glass). Most days he drank just one, though on some days he drank 11, 12, even 16 glasses! All in all Franklin drank 85 glasses of wine that month (or 21 bottles, assuming a glass still represents the same measurement as it does today and a bottle is still roughly four glasses).

I think we can all naturally agree that an average of nearly three glasses of wine a day is too many both for good bodily and planetary health. (The state of Franklin’s and the trees’ limbs nearby the distillery attest to that.) But, what is the right amount from these two perspectives?

How Much Does the World Currently Drink

Before answering that question, let’s ask a different one: how much do people drink? Currently, humans over the age of 15 drink an average of 4.9 liters of pure alcohol each year around the world. Of course, in some countries (such as where it’s highly controlled) that’s much lower, and in some, where it’s deeply ingrained in the culture it’s higher, such as Germany, Russia, and the U.S. where it’s 11.8, 10.5, and 9.9 liters per year respectively. Now that’s pure alcohol, so one has to convert this by the percentage of alcohol in one’s drink. So Franklin drank about 1.9 liters of alcohol that month (assuming 750ml bottles with 12% alcohol levels).

Doing the math, 4.9 liters converts to about 54.5 bottles (or 218 glasses) of wine (9.9 liters converts to about 110 bottles or 440 glasses). Even taking the smaller world average, that’s four drinks a week, and in the U.S. that’s 1.2 drinks a day!

Ultimately, this adds an extra 26,100 calories (or 52,800) of non-nutritive calories over the course of a year.¹ As we age we eat less, and thus every calorie has more import—if more of our diets are filled with non-nutritive calories (alcohol, sugar, etc.) our bodies will crave nutrients and stimulate us to overeat (or become undernourished). And of course producing all this alcohol adds to a lot of ecosystem demand—land, water, and inputs to grow the crops; electricity or fossil fuels and more water to transform them into alcohol; energy to transport the drink to other places, etc. And when grown in large amounts energy to deal with the waste products (and in some cases pollution—and not just whiskey fungus).

How Much Should We Drink?

Here’s where we get into the subjective. Clearly 10 liters/year is too much, but even 5 liters seems excessive. My gut tells me an average of one drink per week is a level Gaia might be able to maintain (at least without getting gout) at current human population levels. That’s 52 drinks (or 1.6 liters) a year—less than Franklin drank in a month—but still 13 full bottles of wine or nearly nine six-packs of beer or about three bottles of spirits. A generous amount but not so much that it could not go by quickly if one were not discerning in when one chooses to imbibe. That amount (if uniformly adopted) equals about a third of current production, shrinking the industry and creating space to heal ecosystems and/or shift grain production toward food rather than drink.³

An important note, 52 doesn’t mean a weekly drink. It means 52 over the year. Perhaps that means a drink free month (Dry January?) in combination with pairing alcohol with special occasions. For example, I do love a beer when camping so I have to factor those in. A Thanksgiving glass of wine, a birthday celebration—I’m turning 50 this year so I better save a few drinks for then! But unlike a vague aim to drink less, there is a clear limit—and this might make one pause before the ‘It was a long day and I just want a drink’ type of impulse. Those are the ones you might regret in June and you’re down to your last few drinks. In other words, 52 feels roomy until it doesn’t.⁴

Month One

Always up for an experiment, I decided to try this for the next year—and started at the summer cross.⁵ It’s been about four weeks and I’ve had six drinks (it’s camping season after all!). Truthfully, keeping the count that low hasn’t been easy. Especially in the summer, a cold drink brings joy. But a warm one brings joy on dark winter nights. And pizza is always better with a beer. And, and, and. It only took a few weeks to notice how readily excuses come to justify a drink—a special occasion, a piece of good news, a certain meal, a hard day. Now suddenly, I have to pause and ask, is this really how I want my limited drink tickets to be spent?⁶

Already, I’ve answered no several times and have seen a bit of a mental shift (similar to what I felt when giving up sugar for a month some years back). Knowing that drinks are limited, I pause, declining, or in a few cases just sharing one drink with my wife (a good strategy for still getting the experience of having a drink while drinking less). Still, at the current rate, there will be weeks, even a few months, when having a drink is off the table. But it does feel more free this way than just limiting it to one drink per week—especially as some weeks there might be no desire or reason to have a drink. The other potential downside is tracking—both on accurately getting the amount right (e.g. a mixed drink that you didn’t prepare, a glass of wine you didn’t pour) and remembering to make note of the drink in your ledger. But this latter has been fun so far and I can imagine it’ll be a good journal of celebrations over the years if I maintain this—as well as helping to reveal when drinking does and does not spark joy. I’m just at the beginning. We’ll see, as the year progresses, whether this becomes easier, natural, or a frustration. And hopefully I’ll end the year at 51 drinks, allowing me to offer a Gaian toast to the completion of this cycle. And if not, there’s no harm in toasting with a nice iced tisane!

Endnotes

1) Along with electricity, Franklin studied the Gulf Stream and its role in shipping and published the first Gulf Stream chart!

2) Divide those calories by 9,000 to get a rough sense of how they convert to kilograms of body fat (roughly 3 and 6 kg respectively).

3) I’m not naïve enough to suggest this is going to happen, just figuring out what level human society can really allot to this unnecessary but celebrated industry. Not prohibition, but true temperance (in the sense of moderation, not abstinence).

4) This might have been unconsciously inspired by Earth Overshoot Day (which was July 30th this year). Once one runs out of drinks in a year, that’s it. While we can’t do that with Earth’s resources, we can with alcoholic drinks.

5) I had the idea a few days before summer cross so it was a fitting mark to start at. But any turn of the wheel or start of a month or really any day would work. I do like the close proximity with Earth Overshoot Day though.

6) I didn’t actually make drink tickets but that’s not a bad idea as that’s quite visual. Instead, I’m using an Excel sheet to keep track—kind of like an updated Franklinian method but hopefully with far fewer entries!