It may sound like I do, but I don't have a problem with people drinking.
I don't even have a problem with people drinking to excess. They want to destroy their liver, that's their preogative and their problem.
What I do have a problem with is people who get so drunk that they get violent and others pay, whether that's in a pub, on the street or when they stagger back home. I also have a serious problem with arseholes who get into a car, knowing full well they're over the limit, and take the risk - put others at the same risk - of hurting or killing someone just because they won't admit to being too drunk to drive. Arrogance is a terrible thing and can lead to fatal results.
I also have a problem with a society that stigmatises and looks down on those who don't drink, as if there's something wrong with them. I suffered this casual discrimination for years at work, to the point where, as I noted earlier, I more or less forced myself to find a pint I could stomach, even though I really didn't want to drink. I live(d) with a borderline alc - hell, let's be honest here: an alcoholic for a decade, and the only reason she eventually stopped was that the MS made it impossible for her to drink anymore. Had she continued, had she not got the MS, I know she would not be alive today.
So for people to trivialise and ignore the damage alcohol can do, and pretend the dangers it represents don't exist, annoys me. I'm not by any means saying everyone who drinks is a potential alcoholic, but almost everyone who drinks seems to have the same attitude towards those of us who don't, encapsulated mostly in the word why, as if not drinking is something socially unacceptable and makes you weird. And the attitudes posted here by most of you just back that assertion up.
Some of us don't want to drink. We don't like drinking. That doesn't make us odd, weird or in some way less than you. Do you know how many fights I've got into in my almost sixty years of life? I can count them on the fingers of one hand, if I cut all the fingers off. That's right: zero. Because the largest amount of violence is alcohol-fuelled, and that very much includes domestic violence. So who, in the end, are the ones contributing to, if you like, the breakdown of society more?
__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018
|