Booze…The Fact That It Seems To Be Everywhere Is Extremely Distressing
In my life, I have gone through three phases with drinking.First there was the high school/college phase of excessive drinking for no apparent reason other than to get pissed and do all kinds of stupid shit.
This is OK when you’re young and strong and hangovers weren’t a free ride through the ninth gate of hell. It was also OK because everybody was doing it and it was a great way to fit in. Which is a sad excuse I know, but it is also pretty much the only excuse most young people offer.
Phase 2 came later on in my advertising career. I call this the Drinking With Clancy phase.
Michael Clancy, who was my partner for several years on and off, was Irish and did not shy away from an anything with alcohol in it. Neither did I at the time.
The time we spent together socially was fueled by our third partner Jose Cuervo and his tequila.
Tequila, while technically a form of alcohol, is very much its own dog, so to speak. The head space you got into with it was very intense and the conversations followed the same path.
And because it didn’t take much tequila to get you really blitzed, the hangovers were relatively mild, but definitely not non-existent.
Phase 3 of my drinking experience was the “Nothing Is More Irritating Than A Reformed Alcoholic” phase. This came in the early 80s and was brought about by the arrival of my two kids and this instinctual understanding that childhood was over and that I must put away childish things.
I had quit smoking cigarettes a decade earlier, and the phasing out of weed and tequila (which was pretty much all I drank, besides the odd beer at lunch), I spent the next few years becoming Mr. Clean.
Contrary to the name of this phase, I never lectured anyone on the perils of alcohol. This was mainly because I had escaped without any real symptoms of withdrawal and didn’t believe that this business as usual for anyone trying to quit any addiction.
I owe this to my own experience with smoking, where instead of quitting “Cold Turkey”, I phased it out of my life over about a 6 month period.
I did the same with booze and when I was ready to call it quits, the feeling was that I really wasn’t leaving all that much behind.
What I Know About Booze
• Getting addicted to alcohol is one of the easier things to do in our society. Booze is everywhere. Hell, you can even buy it at Loblaws now.
• Peer pressure is still peer pressure. All you have to do is put a group of people together at a bar or pub, and suddenly you have a subtle or not so subtle drinking contest.
• Your ability to ‘hold’ your booze, is in some strange way, associated with your strength of character. This is something I always found odd because your ability to hold booze only has to do with your metabolism, over which you have no real control.
• Booze is and has pretty much always been ubiquitous in our society. It is part of every TV show and movie out there. People in these media are always drinking, in need of a drink or drunk but still highly functional. This creates tonnes of subliminal influence that has made the booze industry extremely successful.
• Booze advertising, of which there is always a lot around, is usually asperational. Like being a drinker of whatever product is being advertised imbues you with some special status. It’s also associated a lot with pro sports where all the wild and crazy guys and gals tend to be.
• The booze industry, for reasons unknown to me, has been able to get the laws regarding their marketing slowly and steadily loosened over the years and being a professional in the communications industry, I can tell you that its effect on the culture is extremely powerful.
The Liquid Paradox
Now I don’t have any problem with people drinking. Mainly because if I did what would it matter?
My problem is that a lot of people don’t have whatever they need to really control their drinking, and end up doing a lot of stupid shit while their judgment is impaired.
This causes a great deal of irreparable damage and grief for a lot of innocent people.
But it’s really kind of a Mobius strip because the cause facilitates the effects. To wit: When people have drunk enough to actually be considered drunk, they are, for the most part, unaware of just how dangerous they have become because their judgment is impaired.
So a lot of them will simply get in their cars and go, and quite a few find out the hard way, either through an accident that can injure or kill other people and the criminal charges that come with it…or an impaired driving charge and the hefty fine and suspension that comes with that… or the physical damage that somebody can inflict upon others or have inflicted on themselves as a result of their drinking bringing out repressed anger and resentment and other negative emotions.
None of this is pretty and it goes on all the time everywhere in this society.
Is There An Effective Solution?
I have thought about this quite a bit and my opinion is that there isn’t.
The booze, marketing and social media industries have created a huge predisposition to alcohol through marketing, product placement and making it an almost integral part of the way society behaves.
It very much appears to be one of those things that we are stuck with.
Sure, you can try and educate people about the dangers they pose to themselves and others when they have had too much to drink. But the odds are that that will be the last thing on the mind of a person who is plastered.
As the holiday season approaches, we are going to see a serious uptick in the number of fatalities and injuries and domestic violence that will be directly related to excessive drinking.
My hope for you is that you are not unwittingly on the giving or receiving end of any of it.
If your business has reached the point where talking to a communication professional would be the preferred option to banging your head against the wall or whatever, lets talk.
Download my free ebook, Small Business Communication For The Real World, here:
https://onwordsandupwords.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/small-business-communications-for-the-real-world/
All my profile and contact information can be accessed here:
https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/this-post-is-my-about-page
All content and pics copyright 2016 Jim Murray, Onwords & Upwords Inc.
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Comments
John Prpich
7 years ago #15
That's what people who don't understand addiction say all the time. The addiction is to the feeling and we are all wired differently, this is what most that have never had an addiction or admit to their addiction say. The worst thing that anyone with an addiction want's to hear is self-righteous rhetoric, it's the same with mental illness.
Randy Keho
7 years ago #14
John Prpich
7 years ago #13
Paul, I don't believe you understand addiction, it's not that simple. It's no different than being a workaholic, they're all addictions. There is also a strong connection to mental disease as well.
John Prpich
7 years ago #12
Jim Murray
7 years ago #11
Thanks for the insight @Nicole. I love your comment "not only do I not miss it, but I don't like how it makes me feel'. That's exactly the way I feel about drinking, smoking and weed.
Jim Murray
7 years ago #10
Thanks @John Prpich. I think there is a little bit of additive tendency in all of us. My current addiction it to Nutella.
Jim Murray
7 years ago #9
I would never have guessed you were a mean drunk, Brian McKenzie. You're normally such a pussy cat.
Jim Murray
7 years ago #8
Cory Galbraith...thanks for the insight. But you have to admit that removing them from your life is one thing. Getting gunned or run down by them is another. One is contollable, the the other, not so much.
Jim Murray
7 years ago #7
Paul Frank Gilbert...Maybe it's because I am Canadian, but when I said capitalism, I really meant free enterprise. Canadians don't necessarily link capitalism to government. I guess we have too much socialism here to think that way.
Mohammed Abdul Jawad
7 years ago #6
John Prpich
7 years ago #5
Susan 🐝 Rooks, The Grammar Goddess
7 years ago #4
@Pascal Derrien, I find that if I'm holding a glass of anything, no one will ask what's in it. And for the one or two who might, I just say I have to drive later . . .
Susan 🐝 Rooks, The Grammar Goddess
7 years ago #3
Pascal Derrien
7 years ago #2
Mohammed Abdul Jawad
7 years ago #1