I stopped growing emotionally at the age of 17 when I started drinking. The alcohol killed the pains that were so necessary to mature. I’m still 17 years old…
When I was in high school during the early 70’s the drinking age was 18 years old. Every one of my friends was a big drinker; some of them even drank in my father’s bar, where I worked. It was unbelievable how much booze these kids could consume. I witnessed kids drinking a case of beer in one night, others drinking pitchers of mixed drink, and still others drinking booze right out of a bottle. I myself would have a few beers occasionally, but my real drinking didn’t start until I was about 25 years old.
By the way the girls in high school used to go crazy for the guys who were called the big drinkers. It seemed like the prettiest girls were impressed with a guy who could drink a pitcher of beer without coming up for air. Drinking was common place in the early seventies. Then all of a sudden you would hear about a group of teenagers who were killed in an alcohol related car wreck, That’s when everyone laid low for a while, and didn’t drink or at least didn’t drink and drive.
After one too many of these alcohol related accidents, the laws and the penalties got stiffer. The parents who had one of their children killed because of a drunk driver started to organize and formed the group Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). The students who had their friends killed in accidents formed Students Against Drunk Driving (SADD). Police task forces were organized and were trained to identify people who were driving a car under the influence of alcohol. The word designated driver took on meaning.
This was supposed to be the person who didn’t drink at the party and could drive everyone else home who was drunk. It started to be less and less fashionable to be drunk at a party, and heavy drinking was starting to become taboo. I spent about 10 years of heavy drinking myself between the ages of 25 and 35. I decided to quit when my daughter Sarah was born, and so I stopped all alcohol consumption. This was probably the best thing that I ever did for my own health, and for the welfare of my kids. Sarah will be 17 soon if you do the math, I haven’t been a drinker for almost 17 years. Sarah even commented to me on more than one occasion, “Dad I am so glad that you don’t drink.”
She has been around some of her friends’ parents who are big drinkers and she has seen some behavior that she didn’t like. I felt very proud that I heard this from my daughter, until I discovered about 100 beer cans in the cellar of her house from a party that had gone on there about one week earlier. I started to wonder if she was going to take my place as the family lush. When I questioned her about the beer cans she said, “Oh yeah, dad can you take them to your house to get rid of them?
Mom doesn’t want to put them out at the curb here because she thinks it might look bad.” I said to her, “You’re damn right it looks bad, it’ll look bad no matter where you put those cans.”
I asked her why she was drinking. She responded with, “It helps you get loosened up.”
“Loosened up for what?” I said.
She finished the dialog by saying, “Dad I’m shy, and it makes it easier for me to have conversations with other people.”
By James Burns
Article courtesy of articles-hub.com.
To be cont’d…
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Wow…does this hit home with most Americans or what? We’ve all had to learn (if we ever grow up) to stop drinking if we want healthy lives and relationships.