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Reader question: Please explain “poison” in this headline: Work and babies: Women still have to pick their poison. My comments: Needless to say, neither work nor babies is poisonous. Instead, the need to make a choice between the two is. Kind of. “Poison” in the phrase “pick their poison” originally refers to alcohol. Drinkers of strong alcohol in America used to call their cup in hand poison, a reference to alcohol’s toxic nature. One gets drunk if one drinks too much of it at one sitting. Or standing or staggering. Plus, if one makes a habit of it, alcohol sometimes leads to terrible long term effects on one’s overall health. The phrase signifies the fact that all alcoholic drinks are harmful. No matter your choice, you can’t be free of its bad effects. If the effects are not immediately felt, they’ll be felt later, some time further down the road. Anyways, this expression caught on in the last century in America and Australia. In bars, the bartender would ask a client to “pick your poison” meaning to ask which particular kind of drink the client is going to choose for today. Whisky, brandy or any other hard liquor? Likewise, a drinker might ask another: “What’s your poison?” Same thing: What particular brand of drink are you having now? Over time, “pick your poison” gained wider usage. Today, it means the tough choices one has to make between two (or more) alternatives, especially when neither one is an easy choice to make. | 
