Re: Alcohol | Forum — The Modern Antiquarian

Shelby Mustang wrote:

ban it all. let's make this island a fucking dry county for one year and see the changes in overall production and the more positive outlook we all would have getting up on monday mornings for instance. and young 'uns for one year without booze to contaminate them might just open their eyes and see the possibilities in life rather than when they can get down the local shop for some white lightning and get into a fight and dads getting home beating their kids up cos they're full of whisky of a saturday night and mums feeling suicidal and left alone all day with a bottle of vodka or a bottle of red and the marriages that just collapse in ruins because of alcohol related screaming and shouting and crying and storming out and all the people that are killed on the roads by pissed up cunts that are too selfish to get a fucking taxi home and the violence in our city centres on saturday night after closing. the wreathes just keep mounting up outside every towns civic centre and all the surrounding bus stops and all the broke fucking people drinking themselves further and further into debt drinking beer in pubs that sometimes have near a sixty percent mark up and all the cool rockstars with their jax and cokes and their heroin habits........................................................perpetuating the ice cool image of a man elegantly wasted and worldly wise.

i stepped out of the loop and this is the first time i've told anyone about what i've seen for myself over the last two and a half years of being a clean headed righteous fucker. and i'm not telling no fucking person here there or anywhere how to live their lives but i can assure you ... i can guarantee you that stopping drinking is by far the greatest, most wise thing you'll ever do bar nothing.

my life now is like a fucking executive jet ride of grown up mature feelings and righteous ambition for all things good to happen to my family and mates. and i know that at any time day or night i'm fucking on it if i need to be, i'm there for whoever needs me.

i'm reliable. for the first time ever in my forty three years i'm reliable and do you know what? boring and straight as that sounds IT FEELS FUCKING GREAT XXXXXXXX

sermon over

That's an eloquently argued point, shelby, but I disagree. The vast majority of social drinkers are neither able nor willing to give up,
and as for long-term alcoholics are concerned, where would they be? Dead from an alternative and equally desctructive source such as as heroin or benzos probably. Substituting heroin or coke for booze is fairly common in AA clients and vice versa, from what I've been told by folks who work with recovering alkies. For me the urge to get wasted from time to time is as fundamental the urge to have sex or eat.

The unpalatable truth is - life is monotonous and dull for most people without at least the occasional escape valve of a few drinks or a spliff, so if people are going to be effectively weaned off those things the the NHS has to provide folks with a viable alternative.

Moreover, I drink at least the recommended 28 units per week and I'm still reliable. Minus the booze and hash still be reliable, but also terminally bored.