Man vs. drink

I’m a huge Anthony Bourdain fan — I love his irreverence, wit, sense of humor and his take-no-prisoners attitude. I watch his TV shows religiously and enjoy how he traverses the globe: plate after plate; glass after glass, indulging in food and drink a bit more than he probably should, yet always ending up none the worse for wear. 

So I was surprised by an episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations set in Croatia wherein the host had just finished a private wine-tasting tour of one of its more established wineries and, as usual, imbibed a bit too much. The winemakers led him outdoors from the cellars for more of the same: food and wine, but this time al fresco with a view of the vineyards.

Then, for the first time in the many years that I have been a disciple Bourdain’s corpus operis, I saw him actually fall off his chair — passed out — and plop down to the ground in a drunken heap. Finally, the drink won! Huh? I never thought I’d see that. More importantly, his production team didn’t edit that sequence. But then that’s the appeal of Bourdain’s show: its tough, uncompromising realism.

I was laughing about this with friends one weekend as we traded stories about people who can’t hold their alcohol. There is this 30-something guy who has a habit of passing out on the street right outside his house after a night of partying hard. Talk about drunk driving. But he does manage to drive home safely, come to a full stop, park outside his gate and get out of the car, only to collapse on the ground and spend the night cheek-against-asphalt, until the houseboy discovers him at sunrise and delivers him to his bed.

This other man was supposed to meet his girlfriend at a party aboard a yacht that was to sail from Manila Yacht Club. But his friends hijacked him for a “few” drinks just as he was about to leave his house. After that booze detour he went to the club and still managed to catch the yacht, where he could see people drinking and dancing, just before it set sail. He jumped right into the party and helped himself to more and more alcohol. After several hours, as the boat was about to moor back at the marina, it hit him that he had not seen his girlfriend all night. He set out to find the host and owner of the yacht to ask about his girlfriend but he was told that some other guy owned the yacht. He had hopped onto the wrong boat and crashed somebody else’s party. He never saw the girlfriend again.

Another man, working in Europe, was in a long-distance relationship with a girl in Manila who he had hoped to marry one day. After a few months, she called to break up with him over the phone, saying she couldn’t wait any longer and had decided to marry someone else. As most men probably would, he hit a bar and drowned his sorrows in drink. When the alcohol kicked in, he instructed the bartender to put everybody’s drinks — strangers all — on his tab. He said that a girl he was flirting with that night liked the shirt he was wearing and jokingly asked for it. He proposed a barter — his shirt for hers — so you can imagine the spectacle of a man and a woman removing their tops and exchanging them in a crowded bar. That night not only did he lose the love of his life and the shirt off his back (literally), but his month’s earnings as well. â€œNever mind,” he said. “I got her to take her shirt off.”

Such alcohol-fueled behavior seems funny and entertaining but the health implications of alcohol abuse are nothing to laugh about. I guess as long as we live to see another day and get to drink some more, we discount the havoc that alcohol can cause inside our bodies.

“Alcohol and Men,” an article on the website drinkaware.co.uk, enumerates facts and figures, and a breakdown of male health problems associated with drinking too much. Here are guidelines on alcohol unit measurement according to patient.co.uk, on which the following figures are based. One unit of alcohol is equal to:

1. Half a pint of ordinary strength beer;

2. 25 ml of spirits such as whiskey, vodka, gin, rum;

3. 50 ml of fortified wine, sherry or port;

4. 85 ml of ordinary strength wine.

“If you are a man who regularly drinks above the daily unit guidelines (three to four units a day) you risk a whole host of health issues,” notes the article, “from low energy and sexual difficulties in the short term, to heart disease and cancer in the long term. You’re also twice as likely to develop liver cirrhosis and have nearly twice the chance of being diagnosed with high blood pressure.”

Your liver processes alcohol but it can only cope with so much at a time. Drinking more alcohol than the liver can cope with can damage liver cells and produce toxic by-product chemicals. And it’s not just older men who have to worry about alcohol’s effect on their health. According to the article, a quarter (26.6 percent) of male deaths between ages 16 to 24 can be attributed to alcohol. It also said that around four in 10 men drink more than the 3-4 units of alcohol per day. â€œRegularly” means drinking every day or most days of the week. 

Alcohol can also affect your fertility and sexual performance. In small amounts, alcohol may give you the confidence to make you feel less inhibited, but it certainly won’t help performance in the bedroom. It can also reduce a couple’s chance of conceiving. The good news is, if you reduce your drink, its effect on your sex life can quickly be reversed.

It also said that, “Alcohol reduces testosterone levels, which leads to loss of libido and reduce sperm quantity and quality. But not only does it affect hormone levels, it is directly toxic to the testes. This harms sperm production, stopping them from developing properly and reducing their motility or the ability to move toward an egg. Alcohol may also affect the structure and movement of sperm by stopping the liver from properly metabolizing vitamin A, which is needed for sperm to develop.”

“Alcohol can mess up your appearance,” the article continued. Alcohol is fattening but it isn’t just the calories in the drink that make you gain weight; it reduces the body’s fat-burning ability. â€œBecause we can’t store alcohol in the body, our systems want to get rid of it as quickly as possible, and this process takes priority over absorbing nutrients and burning fat.”

Excessive long-term drinking does all this to your health including: liver damage, heart disease, cancer, bone disease, inflamed pancreas, type 2 diabetes and anxiety and depression and yet this hasn’t stopped many from drinking. Maybe the more immediate adverse effects such as the damage on your looks could make a man more prudent about his drinking habits.

Alcohol abuse also causes some seriously unattractive things to men’s bodies and they include: withering of the testicles, enlargement of the breasts or “man boobs” and loss of hair. Heavy drinking can also worsen skin disorders such as rosacea, which causes blood vessels in the face to expand, making your face permanently redder. It can also cause sallow complexion, inflamed red spots and pus spots.

But more than just jiggly pectorals, alcohol can also cause gout, an arthritic condition that results in inflammation, swelling and pain in the joints most common in men aged 30 to 60. Gout seriously affects your quality of life so if altered appearances don’t bother you, gout should. 

Enjoy your drink and extract a good story or two from your bar escapades — they should be good for something, after all. But also learn to say when.

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 Thank you for your letters. You may reach me at cecilelilles@yahoo.com.