My Name is Arnie Wolfson Dept: and I'm an...

[Capn Jimbo]

"Hello! My name is Arnie Wolfson and I'm an alcoholic..."


"Hello Arnie!"

Have you ever been to a 12-step meeting? I have and standing up for the first time and saying those words can be both the most frightening and reassuring moments of your life. Something is out of control, you know it, and you accept that things are beyond your control, and that you choose to change and accept help.

Believe it or not reviewing spirits constitutes a considerable risk to one's sobriety. More than one well-know reviewer has developed a problem and had to address it, sometimes making a public admission on his/her website. Indeed, one of the Malt Maniacs (who have reviewed thousands of whiskies) finally had to come clean, and did so openly. In my case, after reviewing a hundred rums or so, Mr. Ulcer made his unwelcome appearance and I had to slow down. Way down. Fortunately the damage was not serious, and my stomach is back to normal. And we're still reviewing spirits, albeit at a healthier, slower pace.


But how 'bout Arnie?

Let me post some hypotheticals. Let's say Arnie's reviewing regimen is on the order of five spirits a week. Let's say this regimen consists of five trials of about an ounce each, plus perhaps a couple two or three more to create a cocktail frome each spirit. And let's say that Arnie also brags about finishing off a bottle in roughly a week? Is that a lot of alcohol?

You bet.

Like Mr. Romney, Arnie needs to do the math. Five reviewed spirits x 7 ounces (or more) for each is 35 ounces a week. An ounce of booze is about 30 ml for bout 1050 ml a week! Holy mooseshit batman! And that's not even counting Arnie's non-review tippling. To be fair, most shot glasses are 1-1/2 oz, and not even including sport drinkings, would then amount to a liver busting 1540 ml/wk.

That's about 1-1/2 to 2 standard bottles of high test a week. Should Arnie be concerned? You decide...



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Capn's Note: Health professionals recommend no more than 2 "drinks" per day for a total of only 518 ml per week, less than half of Arnie's intake, and frankly even daily drinking alone is tempting fate.

[da'rum]

He is certainly putting it away.

The recommended amounts are easily over done.

I remember when I was younger we'd knock over two bottles easily a week and that'd be just on the weekends because we hardly drank through the week except for the odd beer. I can't imagine the damage we were doing to ourselves.

As we get older the body tends not to take the punishment it once could and I have to be very careful with my dramming as I really flirt the edges of too much. I resolved to have rest weeks where I let the liver enjoy things like juice and water before subjecting it once more to the three dram a night pickling.

As you say though Jimbo, it seems that old mate is giving himself a good amount of punishment each week and although that is a concern for his health it also begs the question is his judgement going to be accurate when rating whatever plonk he has in his hand?.

If he is an alcoholic or becoming one then his ratings aren't worth bugger all as the sea saw of 'this is good stuff' to the self loathing 'damn all alcohol' will be commencing.

I hope he isn't because as much of a dill that he is, becoming a drunk is the pits.