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Dear James,

I’ve been reading a lot lately about the long-term effects, mental and physical, of regular alcohol use. The trend toward being “alcohol free” strikes me as long overdue. I’ve never been a heavy drinker, but within my Irish family, we have a history of alcoholism. What I’ve discovered in the past year or so is that even a small amount of drinking—say, one glass of wine with dinner on a few weeknights or a cocktail or two on weekend nights—takes a noticeable toll on my health and general outlook. When I avoid alcohol completely, I feel lighter and more hopeful despite the state of the world, I sleep better, and my memory improves.

At the risk of sounding too preachy (or maybe tedious? priggish? take your pick), I wonder if you would dare suggest cutting out the alcohol to those who write to you saying they’re depressed and admitting to “drinking a little too much”?

Dear Reader,

Here is my thought on the question
of how much booze should be had:
Enough to make you merry,
not enough to make you sad.

A bit glib? Well, yes. Occupational hazard of light verse. And I appreciate that one man’s merriment is another man’s trash-can-knocked-over-at-3-a.m. (Or worse.)

But I do like a drink. Alcohol—like coffee, exercise, cold showers, heavy metal, and occasional churchgoing—is an important part of my Mood-Management Kit: I use it to regulate my personality. Or dysregulate it, depending on your perspective.

Not long ago, I was in a pub in Sydney, Australia, where right into my booze-melted ear a man delivered himself of the most beautiful apologia for drinking that I could ever hope to hear. He was soaring; he was plunging. Drinking, as he rhapsodically defended it, was about exposure, adventure, vulnerability, availability, commonality, democracy, poetry, blessed release, the mystical body of boozers … I wish I could remember exactly what he said. I can’t, of course, because I was drunk.

Depression and alcohol, I agree, are a bad mix. A sluggish and dangerous mix. If you’re low, the booze will take you lower—perhaps not straightaway, but inevitably you’ll hit some air pocket in your evening, some floorless moment when you drop 10,000 feet in three seconds. Anxiety and alcohol, on the other hand, are such eager bedfellows that their conjunction can feel almost sacramental: I’m nervous; I have a beer; I’m not nervous anymore. It works so well! The trick, I suppose, is knowing when to stop. You don’t want to get too not-nervous.

By now, it will be clear to you that I have nothing very useful, and certainly nothing prescriptive, to offer on the theme of alcohol. If your health, your sense of yourself, and your general feeling-tone are improved by abstinence, more power to you. Pour that sherry down the toilet and don’t look back. To my fellow boozers in America, I will just say this: The one thing that definitely cannot be fixed, managed, or ameliorated by drinking is an authoritarian takeover. Much as some of you may wish to plunge your head in a fuming vat of wine, for this one, you’re going to need to have your wits about you. Tyrants love a blotto population. Stay sharp.

Reluctantly feeling the call of sobriety,

James

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Editor’s Note: Is anything ailing, torturing, or nagging at you? Are you beset by existential worries? Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles readers’ questions. Tell him about your lifelong or in-the-moment problems at dearjames@theatlantic.com.

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Dear James,

I’m 27 years old, I live in New York, and I’m in a healthy, loving relationship with a guy I met here. He’s caring and hardworking, and my family and friends love him for me. The problem is, I don’t know if I want to live in the United States long term. I’m from abroad—a country far enough away that my partner has never been—and I moved to the U.S. on a temporary work visa. As my relationship becomes more serious, I grapple with the thought of having to be here forever.

I never grew up thinking I’d migrate anywhere permanently. I’m very close to my family back home, and I have a comfortable, if not cushy, life there. In the U.S., I deal with the social, political, cultural, and legal hurdles of being a foreigner in a place where the current climate isn’t always the most friendly. I don’t have the financial or personal freedoms I would like. I deal with racists. I get homesick.

My partner loves his job, it pays extremely well, and it legally ties him to working within the United States. Basically, he could never move for me. But when I think about committing to him, I can’t help mourning everything I imagine I’d be giving up. Maybe I’m just being young and foolish and don’t realize that my problems are a speck in the grand scheme of things. I don’t know. Perhaps you can tell me?

Dear Reader,

As an expat, self-transplanted from England to be in America with my American wife, I feel you. This is a beautiful, crazy, wide-as-you-like country, merciless in some ways, impossibly generous in others, and for better or worse I became myself here. That’s one of the things America can do. No gains without losses, though, and I feel the pull of home too: all the occasions missed, the conversations that never happened, the hangs unhung … It’s sort of a shadow on me, my life’s dark side of the moon.

But let me ask you this: Are you thrilled to be with this guy? I mean thrilled to bits, thrilling to his touch, all of that? You say he’s caring, hardworking, your family loves him—all good stuff. Great stuff. And I don’t want to do him an injustice. But somewhere, at some level, in some layer of your being, you’ve got to be thrilled. I think perhaps if you were thrilled, you wouldn’t be asking yourself these questions.

I could be wrong, though, and the two of you might have a scorching and vibrant thing that you have modestly under-described in your letter. Whatever the case, here’s my advice: Don’t leave. America is a challenge. America is an invitation. America puts you on your mettle. Especially right now, in (to use your phrase) the “current climate” of the United States: America needs you!

Reading the news and listening to Bad Brains,

James

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Editor’s Note: Is anything ailing, torturing, or nagging at you? Are you beset by existential worries? Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles readers’ questions. Tell him about your lifelong or in-the-moment problems at dearjames@theatlantic.com.

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Dear James,

I have a friend I used to be very close with—I was in her wedding party eight years ago—but life circumstances, life goals, and geographic distance have rendered us a lot less so. We don’t communicate much aside from reacting nicely to each other’s Instagram Stories, which don’t reveal a lot about a person. Recently, her posts, usually just happy photo dumps of her cat and vacations with her partner, have taken a turn; they’re full of odd quotes about being a bigger person, learning not to hate, purging one’s soul. She also posted an Instagram Story that made me think her cat was dead. But I follow her partner, too, and it seems that this person now lives in a separate city with the cat.

I feel called to check in, but all avenues seem awkward. Our last text exchange was just sharing links to news stories from months ago. Who am I to text, “Hey, saw on Instagram that you may be going through something”? I could send her a message on Instagram, but that seems insufficiently serious if she’s indeed going through a dark period as a result of what I presume to be a separation. If my presumption is wrong, then reaching out would be even more awkward. Any insight here?

Dear Reader,

This is why I’m not on Instagram.

You don’t get news about a person: You get shifts in curatorial policy. But it sounds as if your friend—unless she’s working on an elaborate cover story before embedding with a politically suspect performance-art troupe—is going through something. And as you’ve been conducting your own informal probe into her situation, you’ve been keeping in mind the old journalists’ maxim: Follow the cat. The cat has moved. The cat’s in a different city. The self-help quotes are proliferating. I smell brokenness.

The question is: Do you want to help her? Or are you just kind of fascinatedly tracking the downturn in her online vibes? (Another Instagram effect: It turns us into dissociated consumers of one another’s lives.)

If you do want to help her—and you were in her wedding party, which in my book gives you a stake, however remote, in this marriage—then I see nothing wrong with checking in via text, carrier pigeon, whatever. In fact, I would say: Definitely do it. It’s never too late, or too early, or too weird, to see if somebody’s okay. Encourage her, if you can, to give an account of herself that exceeds the pixelated Instagram version.

Rooting for the cat,

James

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