We all come from different backgrounds and a wide variety of jobs. By the time I was 22, I probably had ten jobs. One of those jobs was a 9-month stint as a bartender. It was in my 21^st year.  I had no job prospects for employment at the time. I finally found a job tending bar at a disco called Isadore’s in San Jose, California. I had zero experience. This was in the early 70s when disco was the thing. 2,500 people a night passed through our doors to dance to some of the most notable bands in the San Francisco Bay Area. The disco was a loud and boisterous place. I was thankful when my 9-months of employment ended, and I was hired as a deputy sheriff. At that point, my life took a new and welcomed turn.

An older bartender took me under his wing. He taught me the ways of the trade. Each night I saw people in all manner and dispositions of life. The most challenging times came when someone took their drinking too far and we were required to stop serving them.

My bartending mentor taught me when and how to tell a patron “I think you’ve had enough to drink.” At that point, we pushed a cup of coffee across the bar and offered to call them a taxi. For a belligerent person who was unwilling to call it a night, there were times when a final declaration was made, “I have to cut you off.” If needed, a bouncer was called to enforce our decision.

Bartending became an experience that taught me a great deal about life and how to work with people. The experience might have contributed to my eventual training as a hostage negotiator. In that learning process, I discovered the importance of self-regulation – being able to personally regulate the consumption of anything in my personal life before someone had to remind me, “I think you’ve had enough.” 

It’s important to know when we’ve had enough of anything that could take us to an unwelcome place. Maturity in matters of faith involves knowing when to cut ourselves off from the over-consumption of something that intoxicates us and separates us from reality. Like drinking too much alcohol, if we do not learn when to cut ourselves off, we will become impaired and unable to see straight or form intelligent sentences connected to the real world. 

What is your favorite “drink?” It might be always on the lookout for an opportunity to correct someone or a chance to defend a pet theology without employing the language of love. For others, it could be a repeated lust imagined in secret or living in a fantasy world that disengages a spouse from financial responsibility causing a family to suffer. Name your poison. We all have them. Recognizing them and calling them out for what they are – a desire to escape reality – will save us from a life of misery and a dependence on something that will never fulfill our deepest needs.