LITTLE ROCK — As an ad-sales executive with Forbes magazine, Terry Lavin worked hard to earn his reputation as a dependable drinking buddy.
“I just basically rented space at P.J. Clarke’s,” he said, referring to the midtown Manhattan watering hole. “I was always the last to leave, always had a cocktail in my hand.”
In a business built on likability, the role helped him succeed. Until 2010, when he decided to give his body a break and quit drinking for six months. His health got better; his business did not.
“I would call guys I was friendly with, guys who had their hands on big ad budgets, to see if they wanted to go to happy hour or get something to eat,” he recalled. “And they’d say: ‘Are you drinking? No? Don’t worry about it.”’
So much for the benefits of the sober life.
Even as three-martini lunches and whiskey-fueled staff meetings become harder to find outside of cable TV (ala Mad Men), plenty of American business rituals continue to revolve around alcohol. Whether it’s courting a client, sketching out a deal or simply proving you’re a team player, quaffing a round of beers is arguably more vital to many jobs than nailing a round of golf.
For professionals who abstain from alcohol — for health, religion, recovery or simple preference — it can sometimes seem harder to get ahead if you’re not willing to throw one back.
Social pressure to drink is hardly a new phenomenon. In the Hebrew Bible, Daniel (of lion’s den fame) and some fellow Jewish exiles caught flak when they refused to eat the Babylonian king’s (presumably not kosher) meat or drink his wine.
Instead, they ate “pulse” (lentils, legumes, beans and whatnot) and quenched their thirst with water.
In the Bible account, God rewards Daniel and his comrades’ dietary decisions by giving them extra health and vigor and wisdom.
But that was Babylon — not the Big Apple.
In the big cities of 21st century America, nondrinkers may face barriers.
“You’re expected to drink, and drinking is part of what you do, and there’s a little bit of circumspection if you say you don’t do it,” said Link Christin, director of a special treatment program for legal professionals started last year by Hazelden, a network of alcohol- and drug-rehabilitation centers based in Minnesota. “If you say you don’t drink, you have to deal with the suspicion that you can’t play the game.”
To find that attitude in action, look no further than this year’s presidential campaign. As a part of his pitch to voters that Mitt Romney, a teetotaler Mormon, is different from most Americans, President Barack Obama has made a conspicuous display of his own regular-guy fondness for beer.
“Yesterday I went to the State Fair, and I had a pork chop and a beer,” Obama boasted to an Iowa crowd in August the day after he closed down a beer kiosk so he could buy brews for himself and 10 other fairgoers. “And it was good. Today I just had a beer. I didn’t get the pork chop. But the beer was good, too.” The crowd rewarded him with chants of “Four more beers!”
Obama has even released recipes for his own homebrewed beer.
Presidents, in general, have either welcomed alcohol or tolerated it at the White House.
Peer pressure to drink extends from politics to high finance.
On Wall Street, where a “models and bottles” lifestyle prevails, those who don’t drink “complain that they can’t close a deal, can’t even get into early negotiations because they won’t engage in drinking behaviors,” said John Crepsac, a New York therapist who counsels Wall Street workers in recovery.
Of course, sobriety and success are not mutually exclusive. Warren Buffett, Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Larry Ellison are all lifetime abstainers.
Frank Lockwood of the
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Religion, Pages 12 on 10/06/2012