The Liquor Pigs

On Friday June 20th, 2025 I will celebrate 25 years of being sober from booze. I have to specify that it’s booze because some people get upset when i say I’m sober and still smoke pot. I quit that too. But ya know - I’m a people pleaser from the way back machine so we’ll just specify liquor and keep it moving.

Liquor Pigs is what my friends and I gleefully called each other back in the late 80’s early 90’s when we descended on the Hamptons each weekend. Back then summer shares were all the rage - much like Bravo’s Summer House - and our annual summer houses were party central.

Every weekend without fail about ten of us would pack into a house and raise holy hell. Our location of choice were the Dunes in Amaghansett. We would wander around the sandy streets looking for parties to crash and wreak havoc on total strangers. I usually ended up making out with someone I’d never see again and secure my place on the uninvited list to that particular house for the rest of the summer. We were maniacs.

Drinking - getting wasted - blacking out - were all badges of honor. You were cool if you were hammered and acting wild. We would recount the stories of insanity every morning after a night out - gathered around the kitchen with massive hangovers - sometimes letting other people fill in the blanks of our own actions. Then we would mix up giant jugs of vodka cranberry and lemonade - we called it PINK - and pack up our beach gear and walk our way into another hangover.

We drank all day and all night. I never saw the harm in it. I never thought it would lead me into the life of alcoholism. And that’s the thing - drinking is so romanticized. The Party Life is the life everyone wants. No one tells you that you that what you are doing is actually addictive. But one day you wake up and realize - I need to stop this cycle of abuse - and thats when things get really real.

You are no longer drinking to join the party. You’re drinking to disappear. And if you’re not careful - you will. I should be dead from all the bullshit i put myself through decade after decade. I should have permanent damage to my organs. I should have no friends - I pissed so many off. I should have no job - I was a hungover employee to many times. But i survived - perhaps for this. I survived just so i could tell you that drinking is a massive waste of time. That alcohol is poison. That you can have just as much fun without becoming someone else. I’m not talking to the glass of wine drinkers - I’m talking to the cocktail guzzlers. The people who can’t leave the house without a shot of liquid courage. It’s not courage you’re drinking. The courage is in quitting.