alcohol

5 ways to help your anus thrive

My Fellow Inebriates,

Running out of alcohol feels like the end of the world, which—especially here in 2012—got me thinking about actual Armageddon.

How will it come when it comes?

Are we prepared? What does “prepared” even mean when we’re talking about wholesale annihilation?

Sobriety is a bitch but I have to admit it makes it easier to read Discover Magazine. I like the way Discover’s Phil Plait (Death from the Skies!) calculates the odds of each of ten flavors of cataclysm occurring. In a way it’s reassuring—in a way not. Then again, the only proper reassurance is a headful of booze to make his scary ideas go away.

But I’m going to deal with one of them today: asteroids.

Phil Plait calculates 700,000:1 odds of anyone dying from an asteroid impact. Those are vanishingly long odds, considering you have 18,000:1 odds of being murdered (and 2:1 odds of getting away with murder; consider that). Chances of a meteor crashing into your particular house? Try 182 trillion against. Chances of you getting hemorrhoids? You just need to be the lucky 1 in 25.

So it doesn’t make sense to worry about an asteroid slamming into the planet. Nobody used to fret about it, even with the 1908 Siberian event as a cautionary reminder that there’s an asteroid belt out there between Mars and Jupiter that slings the occasional city-size chunk at us. Plenty of asteroids have grazed us over the years, but we were blissfully ignorant. That or we realized our close call after the fact. Some of them, like the bus-size rock that glanced by us on Wednesday, would have disintegrated in the descent through our atmosphere. Others, such as 1,300-foot-long 2005 YU55, which whizzed within lunar distance last November, needed only a little English on their trajectories to take out entire cities.

Holy shit, how often does this happen?!

Well, it doesn’t occur nearly as often as painful hemorrhoidal itch does. Hemorrhoids are an absolute epidemic compared to asteroid hits. Worse still, your odds of getting hemorrhoids increase if you enjoy binge drinking. Tales of alcoholic woe abound:

  • …everytime i go out and party and drink alcohol in mass quantities at somepoint the hemorrhoids protrude. By the end of the night I feel them sticking out and the next day because of the irritation they tend to bleed…It only happens shen drinking alcohol. Help please!!
  • every time i have a drink the next day i see blood on the toilet bowl which is very scary…. i tried to quit drinking but its not that easy… i am only 22…. i was hoping to get surgery but i dont know yet…
  • it felt like as if there was something popping out, like as if i’m going to soil myself but it’s actually just the hemoorhoids getting bigger which makes me panic a bit…when my body temperature rises in a warm environment they start to get irritating…also when i drink alcohol they get worse and i’m running to and from the toilet a lot

Leaving aside the profound effect hemorrhoids seem to exert on spelling and punctuation, they do sound like a dreadful death knell for the party lifestyle. What are the wretched things anyway?

Also known as piles, hemorrhoids are painful lumps that result from excessive anal pressure. In addition to causing the ass to bleed, they interfere with comfortable pooing, and the unfortunate social stigma they carry often causes sufferers to avoid seeking medical attention or even purchasing soothing ointment. One of my mother’s friends was so embarrassed by his affliction that his hemorrhoids ran rampant until he finally shoplifted some Preparation H because he couldn’t face the drugstore cashier.

I should mention that he has an enviable liquor collection and rec-room bar. But is curtailing his drinking the only way to rid himself of the burning sensation of hemorrhoids?

Of course not—how silly that would be, and how intolerable. Here are some medical recommendations:

  1. Get some exercise. This would of course include grinding away at a dance club. (Did I mention my friend Julia Gale of Broker’s Gin recently injured her knee at such a discotheque, gyrating to Love Shack by the B-52s while her colleague Petronella looked on aghast? Julia, who described the injury as an “alcohol-fuelled” form of “self-expression” is going under the knife this week to repair the damage. This sounds infinitely worse than hemorrhoids, although of course the latter can eventuate in surgery too.)
  2. Eat fiber. This makes it easier to flush stool out of the rectum, alleviating anal pressure. Have your breakfast oatmeal with Jack Daniel’s instead of just having Jack Daniel’s.
  3. Drink plenty of water. This softens your poo, which also eases pressure on the anus. If you have hemorrhoids, it’s okay to water your scotch.
  4. Defecate regularly. I guess this means you need to make an effort instead of waiting for your business to slide out on its own.
  5. Avoid heavy lifting. This means modifying point #1 to exclude weightlifting. I’ve heard of compound exercises recruiting multiple muscle groups, but who knew the anus helped with your deadlift too?

And of course there are all sorts of other ways to strain the anus. You may have a favorite way, or even several favorites. The important thing is to realize that your anus needs a rest now and then. It is your friend and you mustn’t mistreat it.

But is alcohol necessarily contraindicated for hemorrhoid sufferers? Scientific reports conflict, besides which they are brain-numbingly full of numbers and terminology. I couldn’t make any sense of them at all, but they do conclude that alcohol’s contribution to hemorrhoids is dose-dependent. The upshot is that there’s a definite sweet spot when it comes to drinking—an amount that will allow you a few drinks yet permit your anus to thrive.

OMG, what amount is that? you may well ask. Sadly, I don’t have a clue. I don’t even have a functional anus, my friends.

But don’t envy me just yet, because there is a dark side to lacking an anal cavity.

It means my odds of getting hit by an asteroid are greater than my odds of getting hemorrhoids.

OMG!

Only a drunk would forget Robbie Burns Day

And I am a drunk.

The day is almost over—a day that did not feature scotch. A bloody travesty! But I mustn’t be bitter. I have some good whisky recommendations:

I’m going to pour some Malibu and pretend it’s a nice scotch while trying to figure out this poem. (I can’t help it! We don’t have any scotch! My parents have no idea how to stock a liquor cabinet.)

“To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough”

Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee,
Wi’ murdering pattle.

I’m truly sorry man’s dominion

Portrait by Alexander Nasmyth, 1787

Has broken Nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth born companion
An’ fellow mortal!

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
‘S a sma’ request;
I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,
An’ never miss’t.

Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
It’s silly wa’s the win’s are strewin!
An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,
O’ foggage green!
An’ bleak December’s win’s ensuin,
Baith snell an’ keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste,
An’ weary winter comin fast,
An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro’ thy cell.

That wee bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble,
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou’s turned out, for a’ thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter’s sleety dribble,
An’ cranreuch cauld.

But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!

Still thou are blest, compared wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!

– Robert Burns

SMITHWICK’S ALE—What to buy with that government cheque

My Fellow Inebriates,

It came completely as news to me today that the Canadian government does not and has never had any plans to subsidize my drinking.

My parents were characteristically insensitive about the whole thing.


I was talking about the hundred bucks per child my mum gets each month in the mail. Little did I know, the money in question represents not a small beer fund provided to keep Canadians happy, but in fact the government’s laughable and deliberately blinkered estimate of what monthly child care might cost. The $100-per-child benefit is sent to all Canadian families with a child under 6, to help them “balance work and family life by supporting their child care choices through direct financial support.”

As of January, the cheque has been halved because only one of the kids is under 6.

I just assumed the money was for beer because such a paltry sum couldn’t make more than a 15% dent in child care costs. I figured most parents received the cheque, snickered at it, snickered at the government, then cashed it and headed for the liquor store.

Okay, so it would be a bit of a departure from the norm if my mum took the cheque and bought, say, eight six-packs of SMITHWICK’S ALE. But even if she were willing—how sad it is that, thanks to Miss P attaining 6 years of age, it would cover only eight and not sixteen half-sacks!

My dad has enjoyed SMITHWICK’S for years, although he occasionally opts for GUINNESS instead. My mum doesn’t mind it, and probably gives it a bit more allegiance than it deserves because she has some Irish genes, but finds it less interesting than other ales and a bit too hop-forward than it needs to be.

As you can guess, I love SMITHWICK’S. It pours a nice rich amber with lovely foam and a slightly earthy but mostly malty aroma. On the palate it is crisp and refreshing with a longish, hoppy finish. It’s a bit of a cross-over between a lager and an ale, which makes it perfect all year—refreshing in summer but heavy enough for fireside imbibing in winter.

Once you’ve been drinking SMITHWICK’S for a while, its lingering bittersweetness becomes an acquired taste. It’s true—we’ve had SMITHWICK’S more than any other beer in the house over the years and I do find myself desiring its refreshing hoppiness every single day.

I was only joking when I suggested 6-year-old Miss P should earn some money. She doesn’t even really like doing her homework, and is otherwise such an absurdly happy kid that I wouldn’t want to introduce her to the wicked work force too soon. That and the fact that they don’t hire kids to sweep chimneys any more…because to do so would be demonstrably more archaic than supposing that $100 can buy anything meaningful in the way of child care.

But I do think my mum should get cracking and find a way to replace Miss P’s monthly $100 government largesse so we can stay properly hammered while we’re helping her with her homework.