Word of Wisdom Violations: A Complete Record

1. What Is the Word of Wisdom?

For our non-Latter-day Saint visitors — welcome, and thank you for reading — a brief explanation is in order.

The Word of Wisdom is a health code revealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith in 1833 and recorded in the Doctrine & Covenants, Section 89. In it, the Lord counsels His people to avoid certain substances that harm the body and cloud the mind. Specifically:

• Alcohol — wine and strong drink, except for the washing of your bodies (which the Gang has not, to my knowledge, used it for)
• Tobacco — not to be used by man, except for the sick and bruised (the Gang is frequently the sick and bruised, but that is not what the Lord meant)
• Hot drinks — interpreted by Church leaders as coffee and tea
• Illegal substances and anything habit-forming or harmful — including, one would feel confident saying, industrial adhesive fumes

The Word of Wisdom is not merely a set of rules. It is a promise: that those who follow it will receive health, wisdom, and knowledge of hidden things. The Gang of Paddy's Pub in Philadelphia has, over fifteen-plus seasons, provided an extraordinarily detailed case study in what happens when one does not.

I encourage you to read more at Theological Concepts Illustrated by the Gang. But for now, let us proceed to the record.

2. Alcohol

Primary violation. Pervasive. Essentially the show's fifth main character.

I have watched every season of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I can tell you with some confidence that the Gang is in possession of, consuming, or covered in alcohol in approximately 87% of all episodes. The remaining 13% are episodes where they are either in a hospital, a jail cell, or a desert — and even then, Frank usually has something tucked away.

Paddy's Pub is a bar. This is the central premise. Every day, the Gang opens a bar that has almost no customers, and they drink the inventory themselves. From a business perspective, this is unsustainable. From a Word of Wisdom perspective, it is catastrophic.

Notable Episodes by Drinking Intensity

• "The Gang Gets Blackout Drunk" (referenced throughout multiple seasons) — The title describes many episodes even when that is not the title.
• "The Gang Tries Desperately to Win an Award" (S9E3) — The Gang studies other bars to understand why their bar wins no awards. The answer, they eventually understand, is that they are terrible people. The alcohol consumption during this episode's research phase is remarkable.
• "Frank's Pretty Woman" (S7E1) — Frank's lifestyle is introduced with renewed vigor. He lives in a pullout couch with Charlie, eats garbage, and begins the season drunk. He ends it drunk. His arc is a straight horizontal line made of beer cans.
• Dayman/Nightman episodes — Charlie writes a musical. Everyone drinks their way through rehearsal. It is, improbably, one of the more touching storylines in the show. (See also: A Profile in Innocence and Concern: Charlie Kelly.)

Frank Reynolds: A Special Subsection

Frank Reynolds, played by Danny DeVito, deserves his own paragraph in any honest accounting. Frank does not drink socially. Frank drinks the way other people breathe — continuously, unconsciously, as a basic life-support function. He has been found in a couch. He has eaten a steak off a floor he has also been on. He keeps a flask on his person at all times, which is either a prop or a real flask, and at this point I am not sure the distinction matters.

Frank is not the worst person in the Gang (I have given this considerable thought), but he is the most comprehensively Word-of-Wisdom-violating person in the Gang. He is a complete catalog of Section 89 concerns in a small, gregarious human body. For further reading on the other characters' moral frameworks, please see Character Assessments from a Latter-day Saint Perspective.

3. Rum Ham: A Special Category

Frank Reynolds, "The Gang Goes to the Jersey Shore" (S7E2). A violation so specific it required its own section.

I must address rum ham directly and with the gravity it deserves.

In the seventh season, Frank Reynolds travels to the Jersey Shore. He purchases a full ham. He soaks this ham in rum — not a little rum, not a marinade, but a sustained, committed, philosophical soaking — and then carries it to the beach and eats it in the manner of a man who has found religion, except the religion is rum ham.

The ham is subsequently lost at sea. Frank mourns it. The show treats this as comedy. I have thought about it for longer than I am comfortable admitting.

Rum ham is, to my knowledge, the only food item in television history that constitutes a violation of two separate categories of Latter-day Saint teaching simultaneously:

• The Word of Wisdom — It is a ham soaked in rum. The rum content alone elevates this to a sacrament of the wrong kind. You cannot claim the alcohol has "cooked off" because Frank did not cook it. He soaked it and then ate it on a beach. The rum is very much present and accounted for.
• Food Storage Principles — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints counsels members to maintain a supply of food storage for times of need. Rum ham cannot be stored. Rum ham is not shelf-stable in any meaningful sense. Rum ham is, by its nature, an immediate-consumption item. It does not rotate. It does not store. It is the theological opposite of a 72-hour kit. Frank Reynolds has, in a single food item, repudiated both the Word of Wisdom and the entire provident living program of the Church.

And then the ocean took it. Which, I have to say, feels right.

Rum ham is not a food. Rum ham is a warning.

4. Tobacco

Secondary violation. Less prominent than alcohol, but present and accounted for.

The show is set in Philadelphia, which is a city, and the characters are the kind of people who smoke. This tracks.

• Frank's cigars — Frank smokes cigars with the relaxed confidence of a man who has made peace with every bad decision he has ever made. Which, given Frank's history, required making peace with quite a lot. Most Egregious Single Incident: "The Gang Gives Frank an Intervention" (S5E4), in which Frank smokes while the Gang attempts to address his drinking, demonstrating a commitment to multitasking that I reluctantly admire.
• Dennis and Dee — Both characters smoke cigarettes at various points, particularly in early seasons and in moments of stress. Given how often they are stressed, this is frequent. Most Egregious Single Incident for Dee: "Sweet Dee Has a Heart Attack" (S4E10), where she smokes immediately after a cardiac event, which is the kind of decision that would make a bishop close his eyes and breathe very slowly.
• Mac — Mac smokes occasionally, though his primary substances of choice appear to be denial and protein powder. (See: Mac's Faith Journey: A Latter-day Saint's Reading.)
• Charlie — Charlie smokes sometimes. But Charlie's tobacco use is so overshadowed by his other substance engagements that it registers almost as a wholesome activity by comparison.

Estimated tobacco violations per season: 12–20, varying by season. Notably lower in later seasons, possibly because the writers decided the characters had enough going on, which is accurate.

5. Substances

Tertiary violation. In many ways, the most theologically instructive category.

I want to approach this section with compassion, because one of the characters I find most genuinely sympathetic in this show is Charlie Kelly, and Charlie Kelly huffs glue.

That is — and I say this with all the gentleness I can muster — not something the Lord had in mind when He counseled us to treat our bodies as temples.

Charlie's Glue-Huffing: A Recurring Motif

Charlie huffs glue. This is established early, referenced often, and treated by the other characters with the casual acceptance one might extend to a coworker who takes long lunches. It is played for comedy, and it is funny, in the way that many things on this show are funny and also quite sad if you stop to think about them.

Charlie's glue habit appears to be connected to his circumstances: a life of poverty, neglect, and a complicated relationship with a woman called the Waitress who does not know his name. When I think about the Word of Wisdom as a protection for people in exactly Charlie's situation, I find it genuinely moving. The Gospel offers a different path. Charlie has not found it. I hope, fictionally speaking, that he does.

Most Egregious Single Incident: "Charlie Gets Crippled" (S2E1) — Charlie huffs in a hospital while Dennis and Dee pretend to be disabled to receive welfare benefits. The setting does not make the glue-huffing worse, technically. But the setting makes everything worse in a contextual, spiritually exhausting way.

Frank Reynolds: A Special Subsection (Again)

I must return to Frank. Frank Reynolds has, over the course of this series, ingested:

• Unidentified pills in large quantities
• Things from a dumpster that were not food
• Substances described only as "the stuff" in at least one episode
• A combination of things in "Mac and Dennis Move to the Suburbs" (S12E3) that I could not fully identify
• His own cooking, which may or may not qualify under this section

Most Egregious Single Incident: The entirety of "Frank's Back in Business" (S8E7), in which Frank resumes his corporate life and it becomes clear that the corporate Frank and the dumpster Frank have always been the same Frank. The substances consumed during this episode are the least alarming thing about it.

Frank's body appears to be operating on a principle not covered by standard medical or theological frameworks. He is, in the most literal sense, doing things to his body that we do not have names for. The Word of Wisdom says the Lord will give health to those who follow it. I believe this. I also believe Frank Reynolds is some kind of exception that the Lord did not anticipate.

Dennis and Dee: Occasional Escalations

Both characters have episodes involving additional substances during moments of life crisis. These are treated as low points even by the show's own standards, which tells you something about the show's standards. Most Egregious Single Incident for this category: "Dennis and Dee Go on Welfare" (S2E3) — a downward spiral so complete and so swift that it functions almost as a morality play, if morality plays ended with everyone exactly the same as when they started.

6. Coffee and Hot Drinks

The one grace note. Relative grace note. Everything is relative here.

Here is something remarkable: the Gang does not appear to drink much coffee.

I noticed this somewhere around Season 6 and sat with it for a while. These characters spend their days in a bar. They drink constantly. They have, collectively, made choices that would make most bishops weep quietly. And yet — coffee is not really their thing. They are beer people. Morning, afternoon, night: beer.

I do not want to overstate this. I am not saying the Gang is living the Word of Wisdom in any meaningful sense. I am saying that if you gave them a scorecard, "hot drinks" would be the section with the fewest checkmarks. In the context of everything else, this is approximately as comforting as noticing that a building on fire has very clean windows.

Tea similarly makes few appearances