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The Masochism of Counting
How many have you had is the question of the hour.
“I’m only having one tonight.”
There are some fascinating side effects of drinking that society deems acceptable. Think about it. You’re drinking. You’re on your 3rd or 4th or 7th drink. You either don’t know how many you’ve had, or you are really aware of how many you’ve had. Either way, that state of awareness is a side effect of drinking.
Sometimes it sounds like, “I’m only having one tonight.”
There’s a reason for this side effect, which is another — the hangover. There are a lot of things in the world that make us feel like shit. Our families, work, ourselves, a car accident, living in the South of France in July with no air conditioning, etc.
We experience these things, and, arguably, we have a choice in how they make us feel. There is a choice in whether or not we have a hangover, yet we choose the hangover anyway. We’re masochists.
The impulse to count is a signal that something deeper needs to be resolved.
A masochist, according to Oxford, is a person who enjoys an activity that appears to be painful or tedious.
My initial thought when reading this definition was, “Drinking booze definitely isn’t tedious; it’s…