A while ago, the Daily Mail raised an interesting point:
How much pain would YOU tolerate for booze?
Heavy drinkers will put up with uncomfortable electric shocks to get their alcohol fix, study finds
Granted, I’m not a “heavy drinker” (I’m fat and I like a drink, but that’s the extent of it), so I’m not really in the target demographic, but it is nevertheless an interesting topic for conjecture.
Let’s change the methodology a tad (ignoring that violent electric shock nonsense), and ask instead: how much inconvenience and/or discomfort would you put up with in order to get your favorite booze down your throat?
Myself: quite a bit. I have been known to walk a considerable distance to get a decent pint of ale into me: I dimly recall once trudging across The Englishman’s muddy fields in the rain towards The King’s Arms at All Cannings (or maybe I was trudging back — Wadworth’s 6X has a way of affecting the memory), which was both uncomfortable and inconvenient. Don’t even ask how much I’ve trodden the sidewalks of e.g. Edinburgh, London, Johannesburg, Vienna, Paris etc. just to have some beer, wine, gin or Scotch, as the locale warranted.
And because Plano is lamentably bereft of pubs that serve good British ale, I have to drive nearly to Dallas — all the way south to Addison’s The Londoner — just for a pint of Fuller’s London Pride: a fair amount of inconvenience, I think you’ll agree.
But forget pain. Anyone who’s ever experienced chronic gout — the effects of which are exacerbated by booze — would probably join me in saying “Fuck, no!” if offered a gin while suffering a gout attack. I suppose that’s what differentiates me from being a heavy drinker to being a simple (and occasional) drunk.
Your thoughts in Comments, as usual…

