[dp0622]

I don’t drink anymore...wait for it...

[Spruce]

I Had a wife and a child both drink themselves to death.

[tflabo]

How much do they charge for those non-alcoholic drinks? Booze plus tax is quite pricey these days. Sugary non booze drinks at the same price are moneymakers for the bars.

[Gay State Conservative]

Being of Irish blood...having had an 18 year old niece killed by a drunk driver...*and* having worked in a big city ER for decades...taught me just how breathtakingly devastating alcohol can be.

And so often is.

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

” featuring nonalcoholic distilled spirits.”

What is that?

[DainBramage]

I only drink two hours a day. Then I go to bed.

[RoosterRedux]

I don't drink anymore and am shocked by how many hours there are in the day...and how nice it is to wake up in the morning with a clear head.

[Sir Bangaz Cracka]

Irish ancestry here. Father and mother teetotalers. Brother, retired Army Lt. Col., a teetotaler. I don’t touch the stuff, never needed it, never felt like I would benefit in any way from consuming it. Never touched drugs, pills or pot, never had a yearning for the stuff.

However, God bless the people who need that stuff in their life. You probably feel sorry for me because I am missing out on the pure joys of life. That’s ok. I’ve witnessed enough drunks, pot heads, dopers and meth heads to be thankful I never was drawn to that lifestyle.

[IndispensableDestiny]

Hanging out in a bar, drinking non-alcoholic drinks, is not for alcoholics.

[immadashell]

When I started going to AA meetings I was very fortunate to be matched up with an older gentleman who agreed to be my “sponsor”. We didn’t pay much attention to the 12 Step Program but saw each other almost everyday at meetings and became good friends. He volunteered regularly in the local community and was highly respected by all who knew him. A year and a half later he was diagnosed with throat cancer and went through all the chemo and radiation but couldn’t beat the disease. He died a year and a half later.

I went to his funeral in a large local church. The sanctuary was full to overflowing. His son gave the eulogy and spoke of his two fathers, one a heavy drinking father he grew up with and hated and the other who was sober for the last 17 years of his life and grew to love. Listening to him I couldn’t help but get the feeling that he felt he had been cheated out of so many years of a relationship he had wished for but had been denied him. That made a huge impression on me about what I had cheated my own family out of because of heavy drinking. I thought about how long 17 years of total sobriety was and how difficult that could possibly be.

Next Saturday, June 29, 2019 will mark my 17th year of being alcohol free. Thank you, Jim.

[sphinx]

"You know, alcohol is the only drug in which you have to give a reason for why you don't do it," he says.

Not really. Though this is a pernicious myth that should be exposed and retired. A third of American adults do not drink at all. A large percentage of the remainder are infrequent drinkers. Of the two thirds of American adults who do drink, a majority average less than one drink a week.

A majority of the non-drinkers are probably members of religious denominations with a temperance tradition. Some are in recovery. Some are simply very health or diet conscious, are athletes in training, or have demanding jobs that translate into a non-drinking culture.

In this as in so many other areas, American media projects its own values and practices as the norm. A clear majority of American adults are either teetotalers or very infrequent drinkers. Media culture is apparently very different with regard to drinking, as it is with regard to drug use and sexual behavior.

I used to drink. I took my last drink more than 27 years ago. It took a long time to get used to the idea that sobriety was normal, but it is.

[ModelBreaker]

“Now there’s a whole spectrum of sobriety.”

Not unless you completely redefine the word. There are a lot of non-pejorative words you could use to describe someone who is drinking less or not drinking for the month of September or whatever. But they are not “sober.”

So if a millennial identifies as sober with a cocktail in his hand, do I have to pretend he is not drinking?

[willk]

I have one martini or manhattan before dinner usually every night if I don’t have to drive anywhere. I think the liberals are trying to get us to stop drinking and turn to drugs like marjuana as part of their attempt to destroy our society. I have a theory that marjuana destroys the part of the brain that controls common sense. How else do you explain the way liberals are these days.

[TheNext]

SHARE IT, DO IT

If you have a spouse, here is a positive worthwhile activity that can replace the martini over time.

Buy a couple of non fiction books, one for you, one for your spouse, such as Erroneous Zones. Real books, not the ‘e’ stuff and get some pencils and highlighters. Reality is doing, not just watching.

Pick some chapter or select paragraphs. Read, write, talk. This is no big secret.

What you both are doing here is sharing new ideas, new stuff. The growth is boundless. Reality is cool. Give it time. Over a year or two, you are not the people you were.

You can later look back and say chemicals were okay but new ideas gave life pizzazz. They made life worthwhile.