I have a saying, carved into the granite of my own goddamn experience: If you don’t drink, I don’t trust you.
I’ve walked out on dates. I’ve walked out on business deals. I’ve walked out on perfectly nice, respectable people because they uttered those three little soul-crushing words.
Look around you. Look at the capitalistic hellscape we’re living in. Family structures are crumbling like wet cardboard. Homeless zombies are shuffling through the streets of every major city. Nobody has enough money to pay for college, nobody can afford the five-million-dollar mortgages, everyone is living paycheck to paycheck with zero in the retirement fund. The world is a loud, expensive, and completely insane machine designed to grind you into dust.
And you’re telling me you’re navigating that… sober?
What kind of monster are you?
Do you think the guy under the bridge drinks because he’s happy? No. He drinks to escape. He drinks to numb the friction of being a biological human in an anti-human society. And if you, sitting in your little apartment or your mom’s basement, living off child support or a dead-end job, aren’t drinking? Then you aren’t paying attention. You aren’t angry enough. You aren’t moving.
If you aren’t drinking, you’re just accepting the cage.
And don’t give me that “high horse” bullshit. “Oh, I don’t need alcohol to have a good time.” Really? You’re going to show up in a push-up bra, looking like sin on a stick, and then order a glass of milk? We’re going to sit here and talk about anal beads and the collapse of Western civilization over an iced tea?
No. It doesn’t work.
The Shrimp Incident
I was talking to this young lady online. And it was good. The banter was flying. The texts were pondering the big questions. We were connecting. I thought, Okay, this might be worth the price of admission.
I have this spot. A beautiful Mexican joint. They do these jumbo shrimps, wrapped in bacon, served with two different sauces and rice. It is a flavor bomb. It is a religious experience on a plate. And I hate eating alone.
So I pitch it. “Saturday night. I pick you up. We go get the shrimp. We drink some tequila. We solve the world’s problems.”
She’s excited. “Oh my god, that sounds delicious.”
The trap is set. The evening is planned.
And then she drops it. The bomb.
“But I don’t drink.”
I stared at the phone. “You don’t drink? What does that mean, you don’t drink?”
“I just… don’t.”
And even though I’ve calmed down myself—I’ve lost 40 pounds getting ready for Vietnam, my beer intake is a fraction of what it used to be—I didn’t hesitate.
“I’m not interested. Sorry.”
She was baffled. “Why?”
“Because I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t drink.”
The Philosophy of the Pat Hug
It’s not about the alcohol. It’s about the judgment.
In my humbled, beautiful, and completely fucked-up experience, people who don’t drink are usually the most judgmental pieces of shit walking the earth. They sit there, sipping their water, watching you loosen up, watching you get real, and they’re keeping score. They’re the designated drivers of the moral high ground.
A date with a non-drinker always ends the same way. You think you had a connection. You think you shared something real. And at the end of the night, you go in for the kill, and you get… a pat hug.
A stiff, polite, “thanks for the shrimp” embrace that feels like hugging a telephone pole.
They’re safe. They’re controlled. They’re terrified of losing their grip on the wheel for even a second.
And me? I’m a man who is about to move to a third-world country just to feel something real. I want the chaos. I want the slip. I want the beautiful, ugly, and completely honest mess that happens when two people lower their guards and raise a glass.
So, no. I don’t want to date your sobriety. I don’t want to date your self-control.
I want to date a woman who knows that sometimes, the only sane response to an insane world is to pour a drink, look it in the eye, and say, “Cheers, you sonofabitch.”
