That macho-camaraderie binge drinking thing!

Jul 30, 2017 Countryman, Features / Columnists

By Dennis Nichols

Ronnie was my college friend’s 14-year-old nephew. He was a good boy, but somewhat brooding and often impolitely inquisitive. In 1984 I was what you might call a binge drinker, albeit an occasional and generally reluctant one. So this young man wanted to know very straightforwardly, why a ‘nice’ person like me drank, (hard liquor) and I couldn’t give a straightforward answer. I couldn’t tell him I really didn’t like it but did it anyhow because, mostly, I wanted to fit in with the macho-camaraderie crowd. Or could I?

A little more than three decades later I can give a clearer and more honest answer, but one that still lacks common sense. I’ve written before about alcohol’s subtle lure and its devastating kick, but it isn’t that easy to delve into the heart of the phenomenon I call it the macho-camaraderie high. From beer to bush rum; from the ‘sajiewan’ to the wine connoisseur, the full measure of social elbow-bending in a country like ours is one of the more complex aspects of human behaviour .

Social drinking isn’t supposed to be a big problem. It is more or less having a celebratory drink or two as release from a stress-filled day or period of work-related activity. It is often a group exercise where the quantity of alcohol consumed is less important than the bonding and the release of tension. A wise person observed that ‘if you have to drink to be social, that’s not social drinking.’ But for too many Guyanese, social drinking occasionally evolves into an orgy of inebriation and debauchery.

I remember first wondering about this as a young child when I witnessed the embarrassing sight of an adult friend, Yankee, mired in vomit, sprawled senseless on the parapet near the junction of Camp and Princes Streets where my family then lived. He was a rough trawler man, but he was also intelligent, and a sweet-playing guitarist whom I looked up to with childish admiration. The spectacle troubled me.

By my late teens, and on the cusp of adulthood, I had become a sadder and wiser man. On at least one occasion, I found myself precariously close to mimicking Yankee’s drunken stupor. I was then working at the Waterworks among some of the roughest, toughest men I’d ever known, and one Friday afternoon after knocking back at least a dozen beers with some workmates, barely made it home before I collapsed under a stomach-churning cascade of you-know-what.

Never again, I scolded myself, but couldn’t fool my ego. I had to be a man! I had to show my colleagues that I could drink, throw up, endure a hangover headache, and defy common sense with the best (or worst) of them, if that was what it took to gain their acceptance and define my manliness. A big plus, or so I thought, was my growing boldness with girls, facilitated by a looser tongue and more spontaneous rapport. This side of me I hid from my family.

I was lucky; some of my drinking pals were getting perilously close to criminal lechery. I was able to stop in the mid-nineties shortly after the birth of my only daughter. Common sense kicked in fully, a few loved ones helped, and I guess God did the rest. Others aren’t so lucky or so perspicacious. The stories of liquor-fueled violence and destruction tell a tortuous tale. The newspapers and television sets reek of them.

Broken lives, premature deaths, brutal murders, horrific accidents, devastated families, and permanently-scarred survivors of alcohol abuse continue the wretched plot to a logical conclusion. But it doesn’t seem to matter to the hundreds or thousands of hard-drinking, male-bonding, women-abusing Guyanese men amongst us. Somewhere along the script line we got our roles as husbands, fathers and brothers, and our definition of manhood, twisted – in some cases beyond repair.

Granted, there are women who drink to an insensate degree, and abuse or kill others, but the numbers in Guyana are relatively insignificant. (Or hidden from the public) Anyway, reportedly, women drink mostly to deal with domestic or job-related stress or to feel equal to their male counterparts. Too many men drink to get drunk, to zoom out of reality and into violent confrontation with their wives, girlfriends, or perceived antagonists.

During a drinking ‘session’, the macho-camaraderie high can reach dangerously and insanely ludicrous levels, when occasionally the bonding turns to bashing, verbally and/or physically. I’ve seen two men, among five at a table, laughing and jokingly teasing each other, until one pushed too hard. Big fight! Wildly swinging fists! A minute later one of them is stretched out on the floor. Half an hour later they are supporting each other, staggering home, neighbour and friend.

I came close to witnessing an alcohol-triggered domestic dispute that resulted in the killing of a family of four. I’ve read and seen far too many similar stories in the newspapers and on the television screen to indulge in any swashbuckling notions of hol’-yuh-liquor manliness and control-yuh-woman assertiveness. But I do know how easy it is to fall prey to the cajoling, the taunting, and the mocking insults that some men are subjected to by their drinking buddies.

Once I was ‘forced’ into a bout of rum-drinking by an in-law; four large bottles among seven of us. It was a turning point. I was hugely disappointed in myself, because I knew the only reason I acquiesced to his invitation was to prove my fortitude; no matter I was like a sick child for three days, and all I wanted was to be coddled by my mother who had died four years earlier. One of the drinkers at that table lost his life in a road accident a few weeks later after another drinking binge.

Interestingly, I read somewhere that men may have a subtler, more subliminal reason for social and binge drinking – to share in each other’s emotions. It’s something I guess few men, especially Guyanese/West Indians would admit or even consider – the article did use the word subliminal.

It seems that we macho guys may be prone to one of alcohol’s lesser-known effects called ‘emotional contagion’ which it says leads to social cohesion among imbibers. Maybe the Social Cohesion Ministry should take note.

Okay, we know social drinking is not all bad, and binge drinking isn’t all about debauchery. But guys, remember the Porter’s words in Macbeth. “And drink sir, is a great provoker of three things … nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery sir, it provokes and unprovokes. It provokes the desire but it takes away the performance …”

So if you don’t want to consider the stupidity factor of macho-camaraderie binge drinking, maybe you ought to give more serious thought to Shakespeare’s insight into the more un-macho consequences of it.

Oh by the way, my friend’s nephew turned into an inveterate alcoholic.