The Impact of Alcohol On Our Lives
The Impact of Alcohol in Our Lives
Everyone knows having fun and/or celebrating in our culture is almost always associated with alcohol. Hey, someone just graduated or got a new job, let’s open a bottle of wine and celebrate. When single men or women want to meet someone, where do they go? It’s almost always suggested that can happen at a bar. I never perceived meeting the woman of my dreams at a bar, but that’s just me.
The relationship between alcohol and fun is a concept almost everyone accepts as perfectly normal. But I never understood why people think like that. I’m one of those rare Americans who never consumed a single drink, and I don’t believe having fun or celebrating means alcohol is an integral part of the process. I never had a glass of wine, I did taste beer once on very hot day, and I never tried whiskey.
There’s a prevailing myth that a small amount of alcohol, such as one glass of wine a day, is good for you. More on this later in the article. But let me start with a boyhood experience which helped formulate my lifelong attitude towards drinking.
When my brother and I were growing up in Brooklyn, we literally lived in the schoolyard, where we played basketball and football every day. When I was about 13 years old, I remember going to the schoolyard on a Sunday morning to play basketball. There was a guy named Billy, who was about 19 years old, and he wasn’t playing with us as he normally did. Billy was sitting on a park bench looking miserable. I asked the older guys what was wrong with him. They told me Billy went out drinking Saturday night and had a hangover, that’s why he doesn’t feel like playing basketball.
I then asked the older guys, if drinking gives you a hangover and makes you feel miserable, why do people do that. Of course, I never received a good answer. Many decades have passed since that boyhood experience, but I still vividly remember the visual of Billy looking like a zombie. After all these years, I still don’t understand why people do that to themselves.
Thankfully, I never had any desire to smoke or drink. When I was a young guy in his early twenties, I would go to dance clubs or parties and have tons of fun dancing and laughing. I always wondered why so many people felt the need for alcohol in order to relax and have fun. When I was at those dance clubs or parties, I often saw one or more people, who were drunk, slobbering over themselves, acting like an imbecile. As an impressionable young man, I would ask myself why someone would do that to themselves. Of course, I never came up with a good answer. But I knew that I would never become one of those fools.
It’s essentially the same mind-boggling question I ask about cigarettes. If smoking causes cancer and an array of serious health issues, why do people smoke?
I regularly watch real life murder mysteries [Dateline, 20/20, Investigation Discovery, 48 Hours] and I’ve seen so many stories about people who are murdered, and alcohol played a major role. Family members of the murdered victim often describe alcohol as a major factor. Sometimes if she was lucky enough to be a survivor of an attack, the wife or girlfriend would tell us the relationship with their husband or boyfriend was normal, unless he was drinking. Of course, the boyfriend or husband was almost always drinking. That’s when the verbal and physical assaults started, and often led to murder.
Putting aside murders, how many marriages were destroyed because of alcohol?
Many murders are committed by a perpetrator who is under the influence.
We know, or you should know, that DWI motor vehicle accidents cause over 10,000 deaths annually in America. In addition to fatalities, how many serious injuries and/or property damage accidents are caused by drunk drivers every year? I’m sure the number is huge.
We become very righteous when it comes to illegals drugs, but we accept the negative impact of alcohol as a routine part of our lives. Yes, I realize I’m talking about people who take it to an extreme, but it’s still something worth thinking or talking about.
Just as with the health issues caused by smoking, I read many articles which discussed the impact of alcohol on your body. I remember reading several research articles which talked about liver and brain damage as a result of routine drinking. Man, even if I had a desire to drink, those articles scared me so much, I would never consider it.
My father, who was not a heavy drinker, enjoyed having a few beers after he came home from work every night. He died at a relatively young age, primarily from cirrhosis of the liver. Mom, who was not a drinker, was 22 years older than dad when she died. Was there a correlation? If there is, would you want to live an additional 22 years?
There’s been a medical myth being spread for over 2 decades that a small amount of alcohol was actually good for you. One of the myths was moderate drinking helped protect you against heart attacks. I never believed it and now we know that isn’t true! For more than two decades, I’ve been reading health and fitness research articles from a guy named Dr. Mirkin. His summary of the latest scientific research on the relationship between smoking and liver damage, destroyed that myth. If you want more info, visit his website at https://www.drmirkin.com/ where you will find a wealth of articles on medical research reference health and fitness.
Finally, nothing I said in this article was directed at anyone who enjoys an occasional drink. Come on, virtually everyone I know has a glass of wine or a beer when they go out. I’m not criticizing somebody who derives pleasure from an occasional drink. If you enjoy a glass of wine or an occasional beer, go for it. I just want people to think about alcohol and how it negatively impacts our lives in so many ways.
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