Confessions of a Light Drinker

With Drink, as with the Mass, the Norm is No Bination!

You should apply the rule for priests saying Mass.

+ Limit one a day.

+ No daily planned bination (two only by way of rare, unforeseen exception; and mention it to your confessor).

+ No trination (three only by way of the very rarest exception; and perhaps you need to confess it).

+ Never four! (absolutely never more than three in one day: that you must confess).

The norm is ONE!

Unlike with the Mass, it is highly recommended by the Church that the priest celebrate every day. One need not do that with drink, though it is recommended by health experts. But one must first save one's soul! The Christian goal is sanctity!, not just moderation.

Stick to one drink or less! Lately my friends and I will take half a glass of wine with dinner! Learn to do with less! Practice doing without.

You see, if you habitually take more than one drink a day, you will soon begin to need daily drink (even if it is just with meals)! You will create a chemical dependency. You will get "hooked!" You should never need anything daily, besides Jesus. That is at least the beginning of a problem. Then you should go cold turkey for a while,...or for life, if necessary! Nothing outside of Mass, and very little there.

No joke!

Drinking more than one drink in a day for your health is...
...like going to a prostitute for a hug.

Wine can no longer make my heart glad; a little of it makes me sad, much makes melancholy. My soul is faint and impotent; in vain I prick the spur of pleasure into its flank, its strength is gone, it rises no more the royal leap. I have lost my illusions. Vainly I seek to plunge myself into the boundless sea of joy; it cannot sustain me, or rather, I cannot sustain myself. Once pleasure had but to beckon me, and I rose, light of foot, sound and unafraid. When I rode slowly through the woods, it was as if I flew; now when the horse is covered with lather and ready to drop, it seems to me that I do not move. I am solitary as always; forsaken, not by men, which could not hurt me, but by the happy fairies of joy, who used to encircle me in countless multitudes, who met acquaintances everywhere, everywhere showed me an opportunity for pleasure. As an intoxicated man gathers a wild crowd of youths about him, so they flocked about me, the fairies of joy, and I greeted them with a smile. My soul has lost its potentiality. If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so foaming, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility.

Kierkegaard Either/Or (Vol. I; DIAPSALMATA: AD SE IPSUM)
A Kierkegaard Anthology, ed. Robert Bretall Random House, New York, 1946, pp. 34-35