I assure you that the problem drinkers are drinking alone far more than when socializing.
ETA: But I definitely had friends where the only thing we had in common was drug use. And if there were no drugs there’d be no reason to hang out.
“It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of Sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.”
Dan Akroyd’s #crystalheadvodka.
Having tequila on Friday Nights with Bill Murray and the Duke…
I would absolutely expect alcohol to be served if I were going dancing or playing cards.
Yeah, among my friends, cards were just kind of an excuse to do something while drinking alcohol and catching up on things. Granted, we weren’t playing bridge, but we did play bidding trick-taking games like skat, ulti, and shafkopf which required a good bit of concentration, too.
Would you be sad if it weren’t served? Fwiw, I serve diet coke because guests used to ask for it. I never drink diet coke, and sometimes drink a glass of wine or a shot of whiskey.
When was the last time you went to a contra dance?
I do think norms around alcohol vary by dance form. I’ve never seen booze at a contra dance, and rarely at a square dance. (more often at the after party, if there is one) But people go to a club to dance, and that kind of club is basically a bar with music and a dance floor.
At any rate, the people I invited to the square dance go to a lot of dances that I go to, none of which serves alcoholic beverages. They certainly are a group of people who are happy to attend a dry dance. Some of the other bridge hosts serve wine, and a few serve harder drinks. So that’s more questionable.
My concern would be that anything - drugs, alcohol - affects my JUDGEMENT; we’ve all heard tales of people doing things they later regretted because it seemed like a good idea at the time. The handful of times I’ve had enough alcohol on board where this was an issue, luckily I was just happy, thought it was funny, and wanted to tell people how funny I thought it was (hint: I suspect I was not as hilarious as I believed).
All in all, anything mood-altering will affect your judgement and social filters - you might blurt out something you’d never dare say while sober, for example. And of course the effect on reaction time and other perceptions makes all of these substances a really bad idea if you’ll be driving a car or whatever.
Another aspect of “out of control” - that I’ve heard of but never experienced - is that you lose your sense of when enough alcohol is enough, and drink past the point of enjoyment and well into the “pray for death” and “maybe get your wish” stages of intoxication. There, you’ve lost your control over your intake.
Yeah, with the dancing, I wouldn’t necessarily expect it at a square dance or a contradance. I would expect a jug of moonshine labeled XXX at a hootenanny or hoedown, though. 
As I said, it happens but it’s a super tiny minority of every time a person has a drink.
For me, “out of control” just means “alcohol is affecting me, and I’m powerless to stop it.” When I was in college I drank a whole pint of cider over the course of an evening and was a little tipsy. I just remember feeling it, and being unable to do anything about it. It made me giggly, which made me feel like I was someone else. I don’t mind having a good laugh, but I’m not generally a giggler.
Giggling is not exactly a problem behaviour, but I didn’t feel like me, and it was out of my control. That feeling was very unpleasant for me, and it’s what I remember rather than any fun I had at the time. A lot of people just relax into that headspace and enjoy themselves, and good for them, but I really didn’t like it at all.
I admit that I didn’t know what a contra dance was until just watching a video a few minutes ago. It looks like a square dance to me but I’m sure there’s a distinction. Maybe it’s the costumes. There were more than a few people in Star Trek outfits or wearing hats with antennae. Like square dancing for nerds or something. Not my scene but they looked like they were having a blast and I am not surprised that it was a dry event.
I have never seen a contra dance with star trek outfits. 
There’s overlap between traditional square dancing and contra dancing. That’s not the style of square dancing I usually do, and the contra dances I go to don’t do many squares, but there are certainly dances that straddle both dance forms. The major difference is that square dancing is done in a group of 8 (a square of couples) and contra dances are done in parallal lines (couples line up). They feel very different, if you do both. But they have a lot of similarities.
Maybe this video is mis-named.
https://www .youtube.com/watch?v=wzsKFz4U-Do
No, that’s definitely a contra dance, and a fairly ordinary one in terms of the dance and music. It’s just that star trek costumes are not something I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been to a lot of contra dances. Prairie skirts, jeans, shorts, and “what you’d wear to a dance club” are all things that are somewhat common at the contra dances I go to. (And at many of them, it’s common for the men to wear skirts, as well as the women.) I think that one was a nerd-themed contra dance.
https://www/.youtube.com/watch?v=wzsKFz4U-Do
if anyone wants the link without needing to edit, I took out the extra characters.
What if you were in a controlled environment? What if you and the people you were with agrees in advance that you were not responsible for what transpired, and what if you did it in a place where it was safe to adjust your judgment and social filters, so you wouldn’t end up driving or doing “whatever”?
I ask that because for some people intoxicants are part of a creative endeavor, or an effort to address a problem or block by considering new ideas or perspectives.
A hootenanny, sure. But not a hoedown.
Maybe a shindig.
Concur. Same for card-game genres: at a boys’-night-out poker game, for example, I imagine it’s pretty much de rigeur for the host to offer beer and probably liquor as well. But I’ve never seen alcoholic beverages served at a duplicate bridge game, nor have I ever known a duplicate bridge player to complain about the absence of alcohol.
Fair enough. I don’t like the effects of alcohol either but consider out of control more along the lines of sleeping with a co-worker or buying a time share.
If i couldn’t stop giggling, i might feel out of control. I’ve never had any effect like that from alcohol. When i was really drunk i couldn’t focus my eyes properly, making it look like the world was spinning around me. And my reflexes were slow. And i felt sleepy. But i didn’t giggle, buy a time share, or sleep with the guy who brought me home. I certainly didn’t feel like not-me. That would be disconcerting.