How To Drink Like An Ex-Mormon? Add a Little Ritual to Your Pint

“I remember my first beer.” A phrase canonized in the halls of memedom. A way to taunt friends and coworkers with poor taste and judgment — for those who have had too many, or sometimes, not enough.

Was there a time when these words were spoken with misty eyes, rather than a 1000-IBU tongue? A time when these words had not yet been salted with cynicism and bespoke the rite of passage that is one’s first frosty pint?

First beers are rarely afforded their proper ritual space. American culture recognizes four major rites of passage: Drive, Vote, Drink, Retire.

Our driving rituals include teaching the child how not to wrap themselves around a telephone pole, then wrapping up a key fob under the Christmas tree so Bobby Sue can sprint outside to see a Lexus wrapped up in a red bow.

Voting age is marked by the peer pressure of relatives to be Red, Blue or Green… a card which allows you to die for America, and sweetened with a razor from Gillette, so you can die clean shaven.

Retirement celebrates the end of your personal enslavement. Having knelt to the titanic eagle of industry, you are blessed with golf clubs then rise, hobbling down the fairway towards the great clubhouse in the sky.

Drinking age has no set ritual. Youths create their own. Generally, it’s the purchase of alcohol that’s celebrated, followed by overindulgence and then a loss of the senses. There’s no space between, where a young man or woman is taught to manage their intake responsibly. The family doesn’t pour a chalice and speak of the proper time and place to relax, breathe, and recognize the beautiful present.

From BYU to IBU

Recently, I witnessed an event rarer than a solar eclipse – an ex-Mormon enjoying his first beer with friends at a bar at the ripe age of 28. The average American’s first drink comes at 14. He had about three pints, from two IPA and lager pitchers, over the three hours it took us to close down the small-town bar.

In that time, he gained a pleasant buzz while engaging in deep conversation, mingled with outpourings of affection for his friends, philosophical intrigue at the effect of alcohol on the mind, and the dawning realization that for most of his life, he was told that a night at the pub led to eternal damnation.

For a grizzled connoisseur, it was akin to watching your child take their first steps. The world of beer shone anew through his eyes and reflected onto those around him. It really didn’t matter what we were drinking, beyond that it was beer. He was excited at how he were drinking – in a bar, with friends.

It wasn’t just a rite of passage for him. It was an honor for those whom he chose to share that moment with. It felt divine. I can only guess at my first beer, but I will always remember his.

A Sacred Ritual

Humans have engaged in ritual since the dawn of time. We can trace the word “ritual” back to the Sanskrit “ṛtá”, meaning something like “divine, cosmic order in the universe.” Everything in its right place; Thom Yorke gets it.

For those of us who have had more beers than lovers, chances are the ritual of beer drinking has lost a bit of gleam somewhere along the way. Perhaps we stopped buying the Westvleteren because the domestic got the job done quicker. Perhaps we bought the Westvleteren, but had so many that we didn’t remember anything about them the next day…

Wouldn’t it be nicer to ride in a Rolls Royce for an hour, rather than an Acura for an afternoon? You can get back that gleam, and you don’t need Joseph Smith to do it.

All you need is a bit of conscious ritual. It can take any form, based upon what is meaningful to you. Salvaging meaning from the shipwreck of dead patterns determines whether you are drinking to live or living to drink.

Engagement in ritual, consciously, really means engaging in awareness and gratitude. And if those words sound like words of a dirty longhair – awareness and gratitude translate to an appreciation of the present, and a recognition that life and its inhabitants can be pretty good.

When has a beer meant something more? Within your personal archive of brews imbibed, which experiences would be kept in the rare book section, preserved through memory with reverence?

What made those experiences so much more special than beer three of the six-pack on a workday in front of the TV? Did you light candles and draw the bath before inviting a transcendent craft beer in, or did you just bring it home from the bar, turn off the lights and draw the blinds?

On Valentine’s Day, we lay rose petals from the front door to the bedroom and regain romance. Ambience adds much to a pub. You can create your own ambience. Fulfilment of desire becomes mechanical without proper romance. Why not do something special for your next drinking experience?

Historical Drinking Rituals

Humanity can now trace its drinking history back at least 13,000 years, to a cave in Haifa, Israel which contained traces of a beer believed to be used for ritual feasts to honor the dead. They weren’t worried about badges on Untappd.

Ancient Egyptians celebrated a “Feast of Drunkenness,” which brought them closer to Hathor, champion of music, fertility, and intoxication, among others. More than simply getting blotto, it was a means of understanding their goddess.

Beer-loving Sumerians considered beer a gift from the heavens, and would gift it back as an offering to the gods.. Again, this was an act imbued with meaning, closer to divine communion than common revelry.

Then you have the Greeks, whose alcoholic (and likely psychedelic) kykeon beverage served as the culminating event in their Eleusinian Mysteries. These rituals required a vow of secrecy and were considered so profound that despite being performed for over two millennia, no one dared break the vow. The closest we’ve had is Heady Topper.

And lest we forget, Christian communion has wine drinking built in. Replacing the grape juice with a nice NEIPA might bolster the roll call.

These hardly scratch the surface of ritual alcohol consumption, but for our purposes, let them be a reminder that drinking is – and has always been – a ritual activity with intrinsic meaning. The meaning behind our drinking is being washed away in a deluge of consumerism and nihilism. Let’s not collectively be that guy.

Cheers!

Rituals don’t need to be complex or corseted with religious overtones. You can just clink glasses with friends, or toast with a beer quote. You can pour out a thimble for your dearly departed pet gerbil or whip out your favorite frosty mug and pour a perfect head as if it were a Zen tea ceremony. In theory, you could take a straight razor and shave the excess head off the glass, but then you’d sort of look like an asshat.

You actually don’t need to do anything, outwardly. You can just think of someone or something you care about before you drink, thereby adding meaning to what otherwise may be an exercise in escape. The trick is to not let the cart get away from the horse.

We drink to return to transcend our fall into mundanity, to re-engage with the notion that our lives and the people in them are sacred, in a way that Joseph Smith could never ordain. Drinking is a ritual, and when we honor that notion, we put everything in its right place.