I can't drink wine, beer, or spirits. Alcohol of any kind, no matter how sophisticated or elegant, makes me ill. In this respect, I'm similar to my father and to one of my sons. People who know me only slightly imagine that I am unsociable or ascetic. Or that I'm a recovering alcoholic. In fact, I suffer from an inherited disability.
Now at long last the culprit gene has been fingered. It's ADH2*2, "a rare variation of ADH2, which produces a more active form of alcohol dehydrogenase, the enzyme that catalyzes the first step in alcohol metabolism."
Alcohol dehydrogenase? There are more than a sixpack of them: "alcohol dehydrogenases are a group of seven dehydrogenase enzymes that facilitate the interconversion between alcohols and aldehydes or ketones with the reduction of NAD+ to NADH...." More succinctly, "they break down alcohols." I don't know whether ADH2*2 digests alcohol too fast, or too slow, or just idiosyncratically, but the effect on me is stomach-ache, headache, and general queasiness. Wine, "the merry cheerer of the heart," sours my digestion.
The eccentric allele occurs in 20 to 30 percent of Jewish populations "suggesting that ADH2*2 is one of the factors explaining the low rates of alcoholism in this group." Recent investigations have demonstrated "significant relationships between ADH2*2 and alcohol use ... in all Jewish groups studied." "Those with the variant gene have been seen to drink less frequently, consume less alcohol overall or have more unpleasant reactions to alcohol."
This analysis makes perfect sense to me, but Science is apparently unsatisfied: "the exact reason why ADH2*2 tends to discourage heavier drinking isn't known." Well, Science, let me see if I lend a hand here. If you get sick rather than high from a few sips, you stop drinking -- unless you're a complete and total Schmuck."
Perhaps because I'm a teetotaler (though a reluctant one), I have little tolerance for drunken excess. I'm not amused by loss of inhibition, by sloppy speech, or by too-loud staggering enthusiasm. I've honored my father's warning -- "never get into an argument with a drunk" -- to the letter. In actual fact, I try very hard not to engage the alcoholically-addled in any discussion, whether serious or flippant.
I regret that I can't participate in wine-tastings -- the stuff looks and smells so good. But even there, I'm skeptical of the poetic language that oenophiles employ -- hints of rubber and raspberries and old leather and that sort of hyperbole. I tend to sniff deeply, and then proclaim, "tumescent but not rigid."
It's not hard to be witty when you're sober and your Falernian audience has been quaffing the pinot grigio.
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