Sometimes a movie comes along that is so in your lane that it's kind of not even fair. Another Round was one of those movies, for better or worse. It's the simple story of a group of four schlubby dudes who all teach at the same school in Denmark. They decide, for various midlife-crisis-related reasons, that they are going to test a theory that having a BAC of 0.05 at all times is the ideal. Various hijinks ensue, especially when that BAC level is gradually raised to put corollary theories to the test.
I might be a tad too young for a midlife crisis (don't ask me at Hour 11 of a twelve-hour day alone with the kids, though), but I'm definitely the perfect age to be considering the various pluses and minuses of alcohol consumption. You may have read a thing or two on this blog about this very subject!!!! "Getting drunk" is a shopworn topic here on Puke on Your Birthday, true, but Another Round actually managed to approach it in a novel way.
Of course, even without seeing the movie, you can probably guess where the road leads for four teachers who get progressively drunker day after day, at school, with kids, etc. You don't need to watch Another Round and you don't even need to be as familiar with intoxication as I am to know where that's all headed. But here's the really interesting thing about Another Round—judgment is sparse. This isn't an after-school special. The protagonists' experiment leads to some irreparable harm, sure, but ultimately, I think the movie is spotlighting the positives of drinking more than the negatives. It at least finds a pretty fascinating balance, anyway—somewhere in the vast chasm between Animal House and A Star Is Born (or Flight maybe? I dunno what the best example of "bad alcoholism" in film is).
Here's the really crazy thing: I've thought for a long time—long before Another Round was a twinkle in Mads Mikkelsen's eye—that I truly do operate at peak level after a very specific amount of beers. A long-running joke is that I'm "the best at everything after six beers." I usually tout this logic after winning a drinking game after approximately five-to-seven beers have already been consumed. Confirmation bias is some of it for sure, but I sincerely don't ever remember losing any game when I'm at six beers. Beyond beer pong or whatever, I feel my best in general at six-ish beers. I feel creative, friendly, outgoing, genial. It's the best feeling. It's not a unique feeling—obviously neither I nor Another Round director/screenwriter Thomas Vinterberg are the first people to ponder this theory—but it's a deeply held one anyway.
Now, my own personal problem has always been that I don't know how to stop at six. I don't have the will or desire or both to maintain a relatively manageable BAC. I feel good at six, and so I want a seventh, and a seventh all of a sudden turns into a twelfth, and I'm slurring and puking and creating marital discord. So the dream, I guess, is to stay at 0.05 BAC (or whatever—American Addictions Center tells me that six beers in three hours would be 0.09 for me).
Again—Another Round does not provide this blueprint, since clearly these men did not know how to "maintain 0.05." They tried blowing breathalyzers to get a sense of whether to speed up or slow down throughout the day, but eventually, like the best of us, the appeal of gaining more of that invincible feeling became too great (and ironically lead, like the best of us, to the very opposite of that invincible feeling).
But I'm not going to lie, I still couldn't help but daydream about finding that platonic ideal in my drinking. I've tried it before, but never as scientifically as the dudes in Another Round went about it. And I wondered if I could find out what my ideal is, how to maintain a buzz without going too far, whether that would even be fucking possible or enjoyable.
To clarify: my daydreams weren't about staying at 0.05 all day every day. Rather, I was thinking about those hypothetical post-pandemic all-day drinkathons in the distant future. The weddings, the bachelor parties, the summer BBQs made possible by a babysitter, lazy days on a beach far away. I've had days like that in my past, and many of them have been legendary, but unfortunately, many of them have also ended in some form of blackout or another. I'd love to be able to spend a double-digit number of hours with my mates and just maintain a buzz throughout, feel that six-beers high the whole time, remember every wonderful moment. That's the dream. Especially now that I'm getting deeper into my thirties and blackouts seem to come at me a lot quicker than I remember.
I guess the thought was to spend a day sometime in the future testing it out. Maybe a regular Saturday with the family, but set a strict diet of alcohol throughout the day, a particular sequence of drinks over a particular time period designed to keep me close to 0.05 BAC. E.g. start with two shots, then continue with one regular lite beer every hour on the hour. That's just an example; the point of trying it out would be to see how my body responds. If I'm feeling too sober, or if I start getting too drunk, then I adjust.
It was just a thought, a hypothetical. Especially due to the fact that I've spent the past thirteen-plus months working my ass off to try to somehow tame the alcoholic demons that reside within me, and especially especially due to the fact that keto is fucking up my alcohol intake in all kinds of ways (that I will probably elaborate on in a different blog post at some point).
I stupidly brought it up to Pam anyway. I probably didn't do a good job of explaining what I meant—she hadn't seen the movie—and her immediate reaction was laughter, and then concern. Why was I trying to emulate anything that happened in a movie in which the protagonists were getting drunk at their jobs? And so on. But that's not what I meant. I really just mean that I want to get to the point that I don't have to worry about "drinking too much" because I would already know exactly how much to drink and how quickly to drink it.
I understand her knee-jerk reaction of skepticism and apprehension though. She's been through enough of these alcoholic epiphanies of mine to know that solving my alcoholism takes more than just watching a fucking Danish flick. Not even thirteen months has been enough, I don't think. There are still too many memories bubbling around in Pam's brain of sloppy blotto Joey and his irredeemable mistakes. My hypothetical, to me, felt like an interesting way to avoid the worst of my drinking habits and hold onto the best. To her, it probably felt like just another fucking excuse to drink all day and act like an asshole. Understandable!
I guess the key to the conflict is our general disagreement that there are actually "positives" or "benefits" to drinking. Maybe Pam hates 0.05 BAC Joe too, I dunno. But to me—and to Another Round—there are indeed tangible advantages to being drunk. There are 1000 memorable nights from the past fifteen years that I wouldn't have lived if I hadn't cracked a beer first. I am less shy/nervous/anxious when I am drinking—maybe I wouldn't have had the balls to ask Pam out in April 2010 if I was sober, for instance. Many of my wackier and more fun ideas seem to bubble up from some hidden depth when I have a shine on. I could continue, but you need only look to Mads Mikkelsen dancing his ass off to understand what I mean.
I hope to one day crack the code and figure out the sublime balance between drinking and drunk. I sincerely plan on attempting to do so when the time is right. Until then, I am content to have watched a group of friends' attempt at it, and like any good scientific drinker, I plan on learning from their mistakes and building from their experiences.
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