So the solution is to ban alcohol?
No way. Banning would do **** because it's already reached that point. Weed hasn't. It's not the same.
It's also not that cut and dried. If you're one of the 10% who have a negative physiological reaction to it, then you're not going ever like it no matter how much you learn a "desire to drink" trait. There are about 25% I think there's a kind of flat-line - take it or leave it - reaction (madame_furie is like this). They only drink rarely and then they don't drink enough to drunk.
See I just don't agree. It's not that I have a negative reaction to it, It's just that I don't comprehend why the reaction is so sought after. I think I fall into the "take it or leave it" category. There is certainly alcoholic drinks I like, I drink occasionally, but it's the social construct around drinking that I don't like and avoid because it's, well, it's just horrible. I can't understand how madame_furie, for example, could be around that situation and not be immensely worked up. If that makes sense?
That's normal in our society and a few others, but it's not normal across the world. The UK has a very poor attitude towards alcohol, but that doesn't mean it's the same everywhere. We keep on going around and around with this argument Joey In societies where alcohol is introduced to youngsters in a weak form and is used on a daily basis simply as "a drink", there is nowhere near the issue with alcohol abuse as we see over here and in the States. In countries where it's frowned upon to drink and seen as "something special" then it's abused, people get into the habit of abusing it.
So it is about society, but the issue is down to making it something that people see as risqué in some way rather than a normal part of life. It's stupid, destructive and pitiful; but the solution isn't to make society try to stop it, it's to make it acceptable in a different way.
We've been drinking alcohol in Europe as an alternative to water (in the working classes definitely) for hundreds, if not thousands of years. The practice only stopped roughly a hundred years ago. In most of Europe they've kept the idea though, but in the UK we've tried to stamp it out. You can't suddenly try to eradicate hundreds/thousands of years of societal attitude in such a short space of time without cocking it up, which is what has happened.
Yeah, pretty much agree with all this. But you know this.
As for why some people keep on doing it even though it has dire consequences? I think some people want an excuse to behave in the way they really want to behave. They can use alcohol as an excuse to be their true selves and then take it back and say "it was the drink". Again, it's not a good thing (people should just try being themselves and being honest about it), but the door is open for them to do it, so why not? It's considered an acceptable excuse (which it isn't).
Heh. My mum seems to think that being drunk "brings out the real you", to which I always ask why the real her is so miserable and why Tony is still around.
A lot of people seem to think they are better when they are drunk, presumably because they are less shy... But what they never realise is that speaking your mind isn't always a good thing. These people are usually the kind who get angry, argumentative, talk absolute crap, cry, whine, demand attention, shout over everyone else, etc. Mother is one of them. She does it after
one glass of wine. I know immediately if she's had one, because she starts to aggressively go "no no no no no..." to anything anyone says. But SHE thinks she's more confident and likeable. Confident, yes. But not in a good way.
So I guess I don't entirely agree there, but the principle is the same. People do tend to be a bit distrained from their perception of themselves. I guess that can be good, or bad, but I don't know anyone where I personally like it. Most people tend to make irrelevant, annoying, ****, nagging comments with that drunken laughy, mocking smile. It's disgusting, it really is. But apparently I'm the only one int he world bothered by it? I don't know what it is, I guess I don't like to not be taken seriously and I don't like my enthusiasm (for anything) mocked.
It's one of the reasons I don't like Tony. He's like this when he's sober, with the nagging mocking comments of irrelevance. Lol. It's hard to explain, but it's those kind of light hearted under your breath comments about the way someone else does something? Ya know what I mean...?
Here's me thinking this is a topic about marijuana, and yet here we are being moralised over by Joey's inexplicable "bring back prohibition" rants again.
I don't get why you just can't accept that some (a lot of) people like a drink. The vast majority of whom don't have a problem with it, don't spend weeks in "regret" or in "floods of tears" after it.
Your whole "society tells you to drink; that's why you do it" shtick is as incorrect and arrogant as it is boring. Change the ing record.
Feel free to change the subject, Gavin!
...No one else is!
