Let's Reconsider Our Love Affair With Alcohol

There are certain love affairs that we are better off ending--or better yet, never starting.

America's love affair with alcohol comes to mind.

I'm not naive enough to suggest that we try Prohibition again. Just as it didn't before, it wouldn't work now. Trying to implement it would only produce an ugly backlash and make criminals out of otherwise decent human beings. It'd end up doing more harm than good, just as it did the last time we gave it a try.

But wouldn't we be better off gradually changing the culture that leads to our childlike infatuation with alcohol?

There's already a road map in place for where we might go with this. Think about where our culture has gone with cigarette smoking. Rather drastic changes have occurred, even in my lifetime, that I'm sure once would have been regarded as impossible and even foolish to try to bring about. And I'm even talking about in North Carolina, a land well-connected to tobacco.

Let's start with advertising. Cigarette ads used to appear on television and radio, but by an act of Congress, they stopped shortly before I was born. Just as it's difficult for us now to imagine a world without beer commercials, I'm sure some people never expected a ban on cigarette TV ads to succeed. (I don't know if cigarette TV ads were ever as entertaining as beer ads, but if we ever do away with beer advertisements, I hope their creators transfer their energy and enthusiasm to advertising soap or other innocuous products.) After getting rid of alcohol advertising on television, we can look at getting rid of its advertising elsewhere.

Smoking doesn't occur in a lot of places where it was once commonplace. That's because it's not allowed in those places anymore. Gradually, rules/laws against smoking in different public places have taken over. Many businesses have taken the initiative themselves to ban smoking. While there are also some limits on when and where alcohol can be purchased and consumed, maybe we can find other ways and more places to curtail drinking. We've already managed to make smoking even less socially acceptable; maybe we can do the same with drinking.

On more personal levels, maybe we need to reconsider the messages we deliver to our children and fellow adults about alcohol. Do we wink knowingly and too easily at the notion of underage drinking? Do we celebrate and encourage drinking more than we should? Is our complacent approval of excessive drinking responsible for the horrible consequences that sometimes result (even if we don't drink excessively ourselves)?

I'm not saying that we need to get rid of alcohol. But might we move our society in a better direction by discontinuing our glamorization of alcohol use?

Think about Tolly Carr and other unfortunate drunks who have made the fateful decision under the influence of alcohol to drink and drive. And who, by so doing, have managed to harm and kill themselves and others.

Think even more about the far greater victims (the innocent ones) who have been hurt and killed by drunk drivers.

Think about the men and women who have found themselves in compromising sexual situations that one or both otherwise would never have chosen. And who sometimes suffer the future unintended consequences of such loveless encounters.

Think about the people who are--with the help of a little alcohol--able to sacrifice all inhibitions, including the one that would prevent them ever ignoring a sincere, perhaps desperate "no!"

Think about the people who find themselves without their usual strength to resist an undesired sexual pursuit.

Think about the otherwise good husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, lovers, friends, and strangers who manage to become human monsters under alcohol's influence, inflicting pain and misery upon anyone in their drunk path.

Think about the individuals who find themselves incapable of adequately responding to life's unexpected emergencies because of the condition in which their drinking has left them.

Sure, there are countless people out there who drink without ever becoming a burden or a menace.

But we too casually accept the problems alcohol too often creates.

And I'm not sure if our society has adequately analyzed its own responsibility for alcohol-influenced tragedies.

We casually cheer and promote a drug that we know changes people and affects their decision-making, sometimes drastically and sometimes for the worst. Alcohol's impact on a person can't be predicted prior to its use. So in a sense, we encourage a game of Russian Roulette: will you be one of the people who can handle his booze responsibly? Or will you be one who turns into a drunk menace to our society?

We've already proven our ability to change our culture's acceptance of an unnecessary, damaging, but legal product.

Maybe it's time we begin changing our culture's unquestioning embrace of another unnecessary, too-often damaging, but legal product.