The Peculiar Monk of the Eastern Church
What Does Dry January Tell Us?
Photo by Christine Isakzhanova on Unsplash
A lot of people are doing "Dry January": a month of abstaining from alcohol. After all the holiday excess, people want to sober up and skim down.
It's understandable.
There are two attitudes toward going dry: abstaining or teetotalling.
Teetotalling is a bad attitude. It says, "Alcohol is bad, so I'm not going to drink it." Teetotalling is Puritan. The Puritan hated Christmas; he hated alcohol. If something was incarnate, it didn't have the spiritual purity required by Puritanism. I can't imagine what the Puritan thought about that filthy manger.
Abstinence is a good attitude. It says, "Alcohol, being part of creation, is good, but I need to pull away from it for higher, better purposes."
That's why I'm doing a damp January: pulling away from alcohol for better reasons, but not treating it like a bottle of leprosy.
Too often, I fear, people who embrace Dry January might be taking the teetotalling attitude.
Andrew Huberman is Getting Teetotallish
Andrew Huberman's Lab is one of my favorite podcasts, but he's gone near-teetotaller lately.
Awhile back, he warned that, if a person averages just one drink a day (seven in a week), he's courting accelerated cognitive decline (and other health issues). He said the safe maximum might be six per week. As the episode continued, he drove the safe number lower: five per week, maybe as low as four. Then a few weeks ago, he said more than two drinks per week is a problem.
I'm not saying he's wrong, not at all. Maybe alcohol in any amount is terrible for your health, but at this point, he's running up against tradition: People have always enjoyed alcohol and some of its greatest minds have celebrated its life-giving effects.
Never drink because you need it, for this is rational drinking, and the way to death and hell. But drink because you do not need it, for this is irrational drinking, and the ancient health of the world. G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
If history has been showing us anything, it shows us that science consistently loses to tradition in the long run analysis.
Tradition is Like the Magisterium
You can think of Tradition (capital "T") as the secular version of the Magisterium. The Magisterium stimulates innovative theological thinking because it sets up barriers. If your thought crosses the barriers, you took an intellectual misstep somewhere. It's helpful and allows robust intellectual play (like children playing on a high plateau surrounded by bumpers that prevent them from falling off, analogized GKC; remove the barriers, and the children huddle scared in the middle).
Tradition does a similar thing. It sets up parameters. If your ideas (or, in Huberman's case, his science) go beyond them, it should alert you that you may have taken a misstep. Tradition's bumpers aren't as strong as the Magisterium--they're vaguer and lack authoritative interpreters--but they're helpful if respected.
But regardless, both Tradition and the Magisterium agree: moderate drinking is a good thing.
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About the Author
Eric Scheske is a freelance writer whose works have appeared in dozens of publications, including Our Sunday Visitor, Touchstone, Columbia, and the Detroit Free Press. He was formerly a columnist for National Catholic Register, Busted Halo, and Catholic Exchange. He owns and operates The Daily Eudemon, which is one of the Internet's oldest continuously running blogs (est. 2004).
