I have often wondered where I would be if I had never been accepted to medical school. After all, I got in by the slimmest of margins. I even failed at one application round, finally matriculating at Boston University after an icy post-college winter delivering UPS packages through the snow-covered streets of Cambridge and a depressingly lazy summer punching receipts at the exit to BJ’s Wholesale Club. Now, thirty years later, as my enthusiasm for surgical adventure wanes, and my tolerance for sleepless nights in the ER has evaporated, I am eager to find out. I’m not ready to retire. But I am ready for another grandiose challenge.
It seems logical that doctors can succeed in many arenas. We’re not walking around tilting sideways from an overdeveloped left brain. Physicians often have an equally impressive creative side, with a tremendous capacity for imagination and innovation. I’ve seen issues of JAMA with impressive artistic expression. I’ve seen colleagues design devices and put them to market. Overdue was my time to use this latent creativity. But the pandemic changed all that.
The idea for a ready-to-drink Old Fashioned cocktail occurred to me ten years ago when I bummed into a Boston rathskeller and ordered my favorite cocktail. “Mind if I pour it from a bottle?” the barkeep asked. It was one of the best I had tasted. Of course, he did all the other things right—plunking a two-inch cube of ice in a doubles glass, and throwing in a slim shave of orange peel. There’s something about that oak, surrendering its hidden vanilla and caramel. Then there’s the bitters, and a hefty dose of sugar.
“Hmmmm. What if I eliminated the sugar?” This is what occurred to me after I had been temporarily displaced from employment by COVID. Having thus moved to Sint Maarten to provide care to the ABC islands reeling from the disease, I often found myself on the beach. One afternoon, after the rush of cliff diving and a few shots of whiskey, a feverish energy took hold. My long-dormant right brain grew like the Grinch’s heart on Christmas. I quickly ordered bourbon, bitters, and baffers and grooze. I ordered beakers and barrels and gominy frooze. I mixed and I matched and I tested and tried, and none of the other doctors or nurses had lied. The result had been the boldest Old Fashioned ever created—one which gave us the sweet taste of the wild side without slowing down our vigorous and fit lifestyles.
It took a few more years, however. I had to wind down my surgical practice in New York. My loyalties were shifting. My identity as a surgeon meant less and less as TAT2 Spirits meant more and more. Marketing a no-sugar-added Old Fashioned ready-to-drink was my new passion. For twenty-plus years, I was happy to tell anyone who asked what I did for work. “I’m a surgeon,” I would say with pride. The other day I was at a bar, and someone asked me the same question. I told them I finally answered the great what if. What if I hadn’t gone to medical school? “What do I do?” answering a question with another question. Thinking it over for a minute, I smiled, then answered them convincingly, “I’m a spirit manufacturer.”
Matthew Brackman is a surgeon and author of Med Mal.
