I have what I would call a healthy relationship with alcohol, fully aware that that's exactly what somebody with a drinking problem would say. I grew up in a drinking family; a polite way of saying that my father and his brothers—my uncles—imbibed a little too much a lot too often. Like many of his generation, my father was not given the heart-to-heart, but one of the times he really wanted to make a point to me was in a bar right after my college graduation. I was drinking rum and Coke and my father said to me quite seriously, "You know, that stuff will kill you."
"What are you talking about," I said, "You're drinking whiskey."
"I'm not talking about the rum," he said, "I'm talking about the Coke. That sugar will kill you."
I entered a profession in which drinking was not just accepted but canonized by custom. The novelist producing Pulitzer material even as he drinks himself into a stupor, and the seasoned journalist knocking out prize-winning copy as he drains a few cold ones at deadline, are both familiar portraits in our country, and I certainly observed more than a few among my fellow writers. I also observed quite a few who wrote less-than prize-winning copy after drinking, by the way.
Hemingway used to say, "write drunk, edit sober," even though he probably wrote drunk and edited drunk. I never drank alcohol while writing, and when I had to write a long story overnight, my drink of choice to stay awake was—sorry, Dad—Coca-Cola. I don't have any more deadline journalism so I don't drink Coke anymore.
I bring all this up to talk about the 5:00 drink, a ritual to which my wife and I have been subscribing for the last year or so. We're not obsessive about it; we don't start watching the clock and counting down at 4:59. Sometimes, the 5:00 drink ritual commences at 5:05, sometimes at 5:20, but never, I should add, does it begin at 4:59. We have no desire at our age to turn into some version of George and Martha in 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf,' a possible outcome if you start drinking in the middle of every day. The 5:00 hour seems to signal, "Okay, it's nighttime." Am I right about that? Maybe I'm kidding myself.
Anyway, the 5:00 drink ritual has certain unwritten rules. No television, of course. Pretty much sit in the same spots; living room couch in cold weather, back porch in warm. Conversational subjects are the same; sons, grandchildren, health. We try to stay off the news because the main reason for the 5:00 drink, other than it tastes good, is to avoid the 24-hour doom scrolling that can take over your life.
Now, until recently, the idea of the casual drinker taking time out of their busy day for the 5:00 drink was widely accepted. The thought was: moderate, occasional drinking is good for your health, and there was supposedly research to back it up. In fact, when I started this essay, I thought the message I was going to send was, "the 5:00 ritual is good for your health." But research is starting to debunk that. A 2024 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that even moderate alcohol intake was associated with a higher death rate, with much of that increase seen in cancer and cardiovascular disease. And any amount of drinking, according to another study, increases the risk of colorectal and breast cancer.
So, is the purpose of all this to tell you we have abandoned the 5:00 drink ritual? No, it is not. It is our conclusion that the importance of the ritual; the setting aside of time, the being together—the ignoring of the news (wait, we're buying Finland!?)—overcomes the risk of moderate drinking. I wrote this, in fact, right after our nightly 5:00 drink, and edited it, Mr. Hemingway, stone cold sober.
