Complex Numbers

Stout

I haven't always liked beer.

This is probably because of one of my first experiences with beer, which involved a bunch of other underage drinkers, a houseboat, and this swill.  

I suppose I should be grateful for that, because if I actually enjoyed drinking when I was in college, I might not have graduated. As it is, I drank to be social, and I got used to the mass-produced crap that passes for beer in the US, which has the distinction of being cheap enough for fraternities to buy it by the keg.

Like many college students, I drank to get drunk.

And then, one day, around this time of year oh, about maybe 25 years ago, I went to a local brewery - one of the first in this area - with some friends. I don't remember exactly what or who convinced me to try it, but there was a Russian Imperial Stout brewed on premises.

Rarely does a person change their opinions when presented with logic or facts. Occasionally, an appeal to emotion will work, but even then, you're facing down the weight of that person's supposedly secure knowledge, which will, studies have shown, persist even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Their ego gets so wrapped up in being right that their minds simply do not process conflicting data. It's dismissed: fake news.

I try not to be that kind of person. I'm sure I must have some deeply-held personal beliefs to which I stubbornly cling, because everyone does, but the nature of these things is that unless they're pointed out to me, I won't even know that I'm wrong. But once it is pointed out to me, I do make an honest effort to revise my thinking. Sometimes, though, it's not logic nor emotion, but experience that proves to be the trigger to a new way of thinking.

And this particular beer, this... nectar of the gods, it changed my perception of everything.

No more was beer to be a cheap way to alter consciousness. From the moment the dark, magical liquid touched my lips, I was a changed man. It was the beginning of my alcohol-positive lifestyle: not about getting drunk, or being social, or succumbing to peer pressure, but about enjoyment, about immersing oneself into the experience of the sublime. Not about drinking to excess, but about drinking to access - to access the joy that can be so elusive in sober life.

It is a state that I term beerenity, although it can be achieved through other libations also.

True happiness is rare and fragile, but I found mine, and it was all because I was willing to try something new. Naturally, sometimes when I try something new, it doesn't work out so well; but sometimes it does, and I never know until I try.