Hello and welcome to Episode 18 of the How To Eat Alone Podcast!
It is quite difficult to talk about boozing by yourself without bringing up topics of dependence, isolation and other antisocial behaviours. We associate the lone drinker as someone who drinks their feelings and downs their sorrows in an unsavoury way. In other words, drinking alone is more stigmatised than eating alone:
Episode 18 is about drinking alone.
In this episode, the goal wasn’t necessarily to completely de-stigmatise drinking or drinking alone. After all, alcohol is to be handled with care and I don’t want to be insensitive to those who do struggle with drinking, it is a tricky drug to balance. But it is also true that many of us might enjoy a drink by ourselves. And that’s ok!
I include myself in this, although my journey with it has been complicated — I would never drink alone before I lived alone, I was always told it was an unhealthy thing to do. But when I look back to my 20s and early 30s, I would regularly drink too much with others, I was hungover several days a week, my weekends were full of binge drinking sessions. Since I have started drinking alone, I drink less and I drink less often. Which sounds better for my health? But which sounds like a more socially acceptable scenario?
In episode 18, I wanted to talk about drinking alone with two people who have a pretty undramatic view about the whole thing — the first is Mrinal Mohanka, a friend of mine perpetually in search of the best cocktail bar in some far corner of the world. He runs Instagram account, Dial A Drunk, which chronicles his findings. To Mrin, drinking alone in interesting cocktail bars is a hobby, it’s not in pursuit of drunkenness, it’s in pursuit of flavour and experimentation, an appreciation of mixologists and those who work in bars alike. He describes visiting bars alone when travelling in the same way we might describe visiting an art gallery in a foreign city. Drinking, to him, is sightseeing!
The second is my partner, Jake Sears, who has over a decade’s experience of working in the hospitality and drinks industries. Jake currently manages a country pub where drinking alone punctuates daily routine in a normal and quiet kind of way for many of the regulars who drink there. Visiting your local by yourself is such an intrinsic part of British culture. Jake’s days are full of the quickly grabbed pint after work, the glass of wine alone at lunchtime whilst reading the newspaper, and to him, the dram of whiskey after a long shift pulling pints and serving food. Drinking, to Jake is more about unwinding and focusses on slowly drinking something tasty, not downing 10 pints with friends in 5 minutes.
Mrin and Jake both mention how martinis are the quintessential drinking-alone-drink, and so this episode sits alongside a recipe for a dirty martini for one, to be served alongside a deliciously salty Spanish pintxo, the gilda.
Many thanks to both Jake and Mrin for talking to me in this episode. I hope that these conversations put a slightly different lens on the idea drinking alone, it doesn’t always have to involve being sad, even though I understand that it is a topic that is complicated for many.
Enjoy listening!
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