This past week was pretty typical: a beer while grilling during the week, one with dinner on Friday, two after a long run in the middle of the day and one after dinner, and one while listening to baseball this afternoon. If I drink past nine it can mess with my sleep, so I don’t do it.
Hearing everyone talk honestly about past history with drinking brings the following to mind, so in honor of the thread, enjoy!
(sorry for the extra click, we’re still having the ongoing Youtube link issue)
I love that song, and that video!
I like the comedian who says that you know you have an alcohol problem when the doctor asks, “How many drinks do you have a week?” and you have to use multiplication.
My doctor always asked me “per day.” He didn’t start expressing concern until I hit four a day over a period of a few years (I think the first time I started seeing him about 10 years ago I was at 1-2 a day, on average.) I do also live in a part of town that is probably more hard-drinking than average.
Well, this comedian is Canadian, so hard-drinking is part of the culture, at least comedically.
My parents had a cocktail every night (mom sometimes had two. Mom had some issues). Normally kids didn’t get any. For holidays where the adult got wine kids had the option of a teeny tiny glass of same - seriously, this was literally the size of a thimble. That was from around 6 or 7 up to around 12, when the kids were allowed something like half an adult serving. The rationale was that a little person got a little glass and as you got bigger you could get more. Basically, as a kid you got a taste. As a teen you got slightly more. Always served with dinner in a social context.
When there were family/friends/a party and dad made his whisky sours the kids could have a similar taste, and likewise for beer on special occasions.
It did take a lot of the mystery out of it all. Mostly presented as something you did in a holiday/social context. Adults could have their daily cocktail because they were adults, but manhattans and martinis were not some mystery.
When I went to France with a group at 17 there was a permission slip regarding whether or not we’d be allowed to drink in France, which had (and probably still has) a lower drinking age. My parents signed it without a problem and so I got to enjoy some of that with dinner in France a few times.
Although I have always liked some alcoholic beverages from the first taste I was never a heavy drinker because I don’t like feeling drunk, or even very tipsy. My sisters were the same. Alcohol was never a big deal, but not something you’d slam down before driving somewhere. No drinking to unconsciousness or next day hangovers or black outs or whatever. Even my mom, who definitely had a drinking habit and probably some psychological dependence on it, I don’t ever recall seeing drunk and she was the heaviest drinker in the family.
My family had its demons but alcohol wasn’t one of them.
I’ll have at least one drink every night (it’s red wine! It’s good for your heart!). Usually that’s it, sometimes 2-3, sometimes a bit more. Somewhere upthread it defined “binge drinking” as having more than 5 drinks at a “session”, which might happen once a month or so. But somewhere else specified 5 drinks in 2 hours, which never happens. It’s been years since I’ve gotten what I would consider seriously drunk (i.e. at risk for passing out and/or vomiting).
I just ran across this quote from Dashiell Hammett (the godfather of the two-fisted detective novel):
I distrust a man that says when. If he’s got to be careful not to drink to much it’s because he’s not to be trusted when he does. -The Maltese Falcon
Or Frank Sinatra:
I feel sorry for people who don’t drink. When they wake up in the morning, that’s as good as they’re going to feel all day.
Kasper Gutman says this after giving Sam Spade a drugged glass of booze.
I feel sorry for the people who were in Sinatra’s presence when he’d been drinking. He was a mean drunk.
I feel sorry for anyone who has to drink to feel good. That’s a horrible situation to be in. I certainly don’t always feel good. And I’ve had to take an antidepressant to feel good. But life is better when your can wake up feeling good.
I’m told i got very drunk when i was a toddler and walked around an adult party saying “sip please”. But i didn’t get drunk again until college, when i did it on purpose to find it what it felt like.
We were always allowed to have small quantities of whatever the adults were drinking. Usually, that was water. But my father liked to have a beer after he came home from playing tennis, or after working in the garden. And he’d offer us a taste. And we sometimes had wine for Friday night dinner (with the ritual blessing) or at restaurants (without a blessing). I guess at when my grandmother hosted family dinners we’d start with cocktails, and the adults got booze, and the children were only offered soft drinks. But that was almost the only time we were offered soft drinks, so getting to drink bubbly ginger ale (my favorite) was a treat.
No, it was never forbidden fruit. I discovered fairly young that i don’t like to feel tipsy, let alone drink. It might have worked out differently if I’d liked to drink. Although, one of my brothers drank a great deal in high school and college, and then grew up and stopped doing that.
What really affected how i raised the kids, though, was that my MIL was a recovering alcoholic. She endorsed letting the kids have wine for Jewish holidays, but my household was much more cautious about alcohol than my parents’ household had been. We didn’t even cook with wine if Baba was visiting, and made sure to hide all the booze. (Her preference, she didn’t want to see it.)
But, as i said above, apparently my son grew up thinking he was allowed to drink wine at Passover, and my daughter thought she wasn’t. In a similar “different worlds” experience, someone mailed me a pamphlet on “internet safety for kids” when my kids were just the right age for that, and i thought it was good, so i read it to my kids, with one child on each knee. When i was done, my daughter said, “i don’t ever want to use the internet”, in a worked voice, and my son said “can i have my own account?” Literally. Same pamphlet, same reading. They heard very different things.
(And yeah, my teenage son played with chat roulette in the basement when that was a thing, and my daughter didn’t discover the joys of the internet until college. Now she lives online.)
I feel good, but find alcohol and cannabis make me feel even better.
Every time I see the title of the OP, I recall my past answers woulda been, “As much as you’ve got!” 
Then i take joy in your happiness. And I’m glad the laws changed, so it’s easier for you to get your cannabis.
Slightly off topic, but i voted to legalize cannabis in my state. And after the law passed, one of our police officers wrote an impassioned op ed piece in the local newspaper, about how he thought people didn’t understand what they were voting for and had somehow accidentally legalized weed. And…no. i knew exactly what i voted for. I don’t use the stuff. But shit, the penalties were a lot worse than the impact of cannabis use. And hey, nothing bad has happened since it was legalized, unless you are really offended by billboards advertising it.
I wouldn’t encourage anyone to drink (or take any inebriate) if they hesitate to do so, or if I believe they have an addictive personality or certain medical problems. Obviously, alcoholism and drug abuse are big, debilitating problems. I’ve seen plenty of lives ruined, or lost due to drugs and drink, including a few friends. I don’t want to contribute to that by encouraging their use.
I’m a bit paradoxical in that I do have an addictive personality, but I know when enough is enough, or too much, and I have no problem quitting. Not everyone can do that. Frankly, I don’t understand how I can.
I drank and smoked a lot of weed in college, but I quit cold turkey upon graduation. I smoked tobacco (2 packs/day) for ~2 decades, but one day I decided to quit cold turkey, and it was easy for me to do so. I haven’t smoked tobacco for at least 25 years.
Now, in my Golden Years (yeah, right 
), I enjoy drinking alcohol, but limit myself to 2-3 drinks/day (not every day) and smoke a little weed (legally, with card 
), no more than 2 vape puffs a couple times/week. I don’t need or want any more than that to feel good.
I discourage my daughters from drinking alcohol, but I’m ok with them having a little weed (not that they would heed my advice anyway).
Sure, I could do without alcohol and weed, but I enjoy them and believe they do me little to no harm in the amounts I use them. I could live without bacon, too, but that ain’t gonna happen. You’ll have to pry that pig from my cold, dead hands.
When my kids were teenagers i told them that the legal penalties for using weed were potentially incredibly damaging, and if they wanted to try it, they should do it someplace it was legal.
I’ve long been a strong supporter of legalization of ALL substances, and was previously a HUGE fan of the wacky tobacky. But I gotta admit, at my current stage of life, I’m not entirely convinced that it is a societal improvement to have as many stoned folk around me all the time. More stoners driving, more obviously stoned sales clerks, etc. And - more silly - the illicit/counterculture aspect of pot always contributed somewhat to the appeal. Knowing so many suburban old farts and housewives who get baked somehow makes it less appealing - even tho I am now a suburban old fart.
Just kinda weird how getting what I had long advocated for has somewhat changed my perspective.