I keep repeating myself.
It’s something I do when I’m drunk. I prattle and meander, returning to the same stories and ideas like they’d never before been spoken into life. Re-reading the writing I’ve done for Good Beer Hunting in the past 18 months, I see myself doing it again, in a more protracted pattern. Addiction, generational trauma, water metaphors: These things have circled in my subconscious for as long as I’ve been writing. Now they’re spilling into every story I publish.
The only way to break a cycle is to go back to the beginning. If you can pinpoint the instance that created the continuum, you can escape it. That’s why I’m writing this column. To talk about drinking and the beer business in a way that helps exorcise the patterns. To let go instead of getting dragged through it again.
The first time I ever took a critical, honest look at my drinking was in 2018, when longtime Boston beer writer Norman Miller quit his job in order to focus on his health. Miller first started writing his weekly Beer Nut column for the MetroWest Daily News in 2006, an assignment he took on in addition to his local crime and police beat. During his tenure, Miller became synonymous with the Massachusetts beer scene. But by 2018, Miller was drinking too much. As an obese man in his 40s, he needed a holistic lifestyle change. He never felt physically addicted, he says, but the pressures of being in the beer media were indeed getting to him.
“I didn’t consider myself an alcoholic, I just drank because I felt like I should keep up with everything,” he says. “It was a combination of trying to keep up with everything and sincerely liking to try different things. It was a bad combination. I decided to step away, because my health was more important than a weekly column.”
When I speak with Miller, it’s the first time the longtime reporter has spoken publicly about the Beer Nut since shutting down his column. His sobriety hasn’t been as straightforward as his publication record. Last year, he ended up in the hospital for three days, and since then, he’s been on a strict diet (“I don’t cheat on it,” he says). He’s getting his weight down. Recently, he’s had to buy new shorts, and he hasn’t had any alcohol in a year.
I’m not quitting drinking. Or quitting writing about it. But since Miller told his story, I’ve been thinking more and more about what it means to do the work of writing about beer. What does it mean that our subject is both endlessly fascinating and also objectively habit-forming? At what point do celebration and vocation turn into addiction? And if you’re in the thick of it, how do you see that change happening before you go too far?
When you’re a beer writer, alcohol is almost a secondary intoxicant. There’s also the access. As Miller says, the service. Each sip of beer is a duty to an audience. That’s why Miller’s wherewithal inspires me. Discontinuing his column meant that Miller had to sacrifice a piece of his identity. This was a man who was stopped in the streets and addressed as “Beer Nut.” People bought T-shirts with his face on them. Wormtown Brewery named a Chocolate Coconut Stout after him.
“The hardest part of stepping back from the beer world was the social aspect,” Miller says. “A lot of my friends, I met through beer over the years. Our hangouts were at breweries or going out for beer. That was probably more difficult than giving up writing about it.”
When my dad quit drinking, he immediately threw himself into another obsession: coffee. Most alcoholics get caught in these replacement cycles. For Miller, he’s taken on a hobby of collecting spices. He drinks seltzers (mostly Polar) with the same omnivorous curiosity that drove him to beer 16 years ago. He’s reading horror novels at a rate that wouldn’t be possible with nights spent bellied up at the newest taproom.
When Miller went public about ending the Beer Nut, there was a well-earned chorus of congratulations. Many folks like me were galvanized by his display of honesty. While some mocked him for being so vulnerable, saying he should never have become a beer writer if he couldn’t handle the necessary beer intake, for the most part, there was respect. Speaking in 2022, Miller is a gregarious dude. He’s incredibly productive, and his idiosyncrasies have long outlived the part of his personality that is the Beer Nut. The criticisms he faced in 2018 are long-decayed echoes today.
And yet, the beer industry is still reluctant to talk as earnestly about the problems it propagates. Beyond an obligatory “please enjoy responsibly” tag printed on the odd can, there is no real ongoing conversation around health, wellness, and addiction being held in craft beer. At least not in public.
“I don’t think it’s a negative towards the beer industry saying that there’s a lot of problem drinking, it’s just a fact,” Miller says. “It’s alcohol, it’s easy to abuse. And it’s easy to ignore the fact that you’re drinking 18,000 calories on a Saturday or your liver’s going to hell or you are just drinking too much. It’s something that should be addressed more often. I think people try to gloss that over.”
Miller’s story gives me resolve. And dedication. Now, I’m turning those feelings into a space where stories like his can be more than once-in-a-decade curiosities. I’ve been repeating myself, talking in circular questions. But here is where that circle stops. The point where the curve breaks, the line finishes, for a new one to be drawn.
