today is national wine day and i’m seeing girls as young as 18 joke about being “future wine moms” with their besties and while this is cute and seems funny it also reminds me how normalized overconsumption of alcohol is in our society. it’s a tough thing to talk about because these convos sometimes lead to full out shaming of people who engage in this behaviour. on the other hand, the complete acceptance and normalization of this kind of behaviour is extremely harmful. we live in such a pro-alcohol society that alcohol consumption is even pitched as being “heart healthy” when antioxidant benefits of the grapes in wine don’t even come close to outweighing the destructive properties of alcohol. we have to learn how to discuss substance “vices” – because, let’s face it, drinking, smoking etc are literally always going to be apart of the human experience and will always be apart of our community and our lives – without promoting their absolute acceptance or absolute dissolution. the trend of aggressively shaming people into quitting cigarettes without addressing why specific demographics suffer certain addictions more than others is not beneficial in the grand scheme of limiting self-destructive habits.
we gotta approach a model where we can discuss appropriate limits for all substances without shaming people and using holier than thou rhetoric, but also not making such behaviour marketable and neutralizing its harm with cute memes etc.
AGAIN
can yall stop comparing alcohol to drugs??????????
no amount of cigarettes is good, a moderate amount of alcohol IS
i get your point is alcoholism vs drug addiction but you need to say it as. and stop this shit of comparing the actual objects, theyre not the fuckin same
1. alcohol is a drug
2. i wasn’t comparing alcohol to cigarettes in their effect, i was talkin about our culture of shaming poor people without recognizing why they use what they use
3. no amount of alcohol is good for ya. there’s no health benefit of the structural compound alcohol is comprised of. it is always harmful. any proposed benefit (for example in wine) comes from the antioxidants in the grapes/berries
One of the reasons alcohol is removed from the conversation about drugs is that having an honest conversation about alcohol would include acknowledging that it is more physically harmful, more addictive and far more likely to kill you through overdose than most criminalized drugs.
Alcohol is also what makes other drugs more dangerous because alcohol has dangerous or lethal interactions with over a dozen other drugs. Rule #1 of safer drug use tends to be ‘don’t drink alcohol while on drugs’.
We need honest conversations about the wide diversity of effects and risks of drugs, the circumstances that create addiction, how we can help addicts (step 1: stop criminalizing them) and how we can build a world where there is space for all the pleasure drugs can bring and care for the consequences.
And one of those conversations needs to be about the fact that our go-to party drug, alcohol, is actually pretty shit.
FWIW, I almost died because of the “Alcohol and Drugs are bad” rhetoric of the 1980s.
See, they said, “Alcohol is bad and only Bad Girls drink at parties.”
No-one ever said, “Yes, like any substance, alcohol does have a lethal dose and because it is a drug, that lethal dose is a lot lower than, say, water or chocolate bars.”
I HAD NO IDEA that yes, alcohol had a real and for true lethal dose. I have a distressingly high tolerance for alcohol (mother’s side of the family runs high to drunks), had been getting drunk at parties and found out what a full night’s sleep felt like. Up until the first time I got drunk in college, I’ve never been able to sleep more than a couple of hours at a stretch. Hangover? Hell no. I felt AMAZING the next morning. I figured alcohol was like the stuff of the GODS, and that it was a bunch of puritanical idiots who just wanted me miserable for the sake of the damn Southern Baptist Convention or something.
At one party someone bet me fifty bucks (about $110 in today’s money) I could chug a 750ml bottle of vodka.
I don’t accept a bet unless I am quite determined to win.
I did, which shocked and horrified my friends, then a buddy of mine said, “Okay, Noel, time to go to the bathroom and throw up now.” I tried to fight him and he told me that if I didn’t he was going to stick a toothbrush down my throat because if I didn’t, I might die. (I weighed around 140 at the time)
I did finally throw up and was told to drink a lot of water. The next day a couple of friends sat me down and gave me the straight deal. Yes, it really does have a lethal dose.
So yeah, alcohol is a drug.
But… that rhetoric hasn’t changed.
See my son got the “Drugs are bad m’kay?” stuff without facts when he was in school, too. (I know teenagers haven’t really fully developed judgment, but I don’t think scare tactics instead of facts really helps develop the judgment muscles). So he comes home telling me about his day in school and how about drug addicts are a drain on society.
I look him right in the eye and say, “I just got one of the biggest contracts in my life, cupcake, and I’m a drug addict. Just how am I a drain on society? I pay more in taxes than our neighbors and we’re about to buy a celebration flat of canned goods to take to the food pantry because of this contract. So… How am I a drain?”
He asks me how it is possible I am a drug addict.
I hold up my coffee cup with my eyebrow cocked. “Son, caffeine is a drug. You remember that time we were traveling and I didn’t bring caffeine pills and we couldn’t get a cup of coffee, and I had a migraine until we could find a Starbucks? That’s what drug withdrawal can look like. I am absolutely an addict. I’m just addicted to something that is cheap for me to obtain and legal. Because of that, it only interferes minimally with my life.”
We do not teach FACTS to our kids. At best it gives the kids asshole attitudes (My son got the point immediately. He’s not an ass), and at worst can put people’s lives in danger.
gayfeline 
