Not Even a Single Sip. . .

EAST OF SUEZ, in my late teens, I took my first alcoholic drink. I didn't like it and left most of it in the glass on the table. Some months later, in Malta, I had another beer. Although I still found it unpalatable, I finished it off. That must have triggered my latent alcoholism, because for nearly thirty years I continued to pour down any form of liquor that came my way. I learned to enjoy the flavor of all alcoholic drinks, but the taste was incidental to the main purpose of drinking: to get drunk.