The social and behavioral effects of alcohol differ depending on cultural beliefs regarding the effects of alcohol.
What was wrong with it?
Yeah, I know. I forgot to add the “for me.” at the end of my first sentence. 
I am assuming that you are joking about this. Three people I know died from drinking this year. Two blew out their livers, one did a murder/suicide. For all three the direct cause was drinking. The two who killed their livers went back to drinking, one after 18 years sober. The 18 year sober guy lived about 9 months after going back to drinking.
The murder/suicide was a guy who was trying to get sober. Couldn’t do it. So he decided to take out his wife and himself. I was in an A.A. meeting with his Dad after the funeral. That was a rather hard meeting to be at.
As to the O.P., there are a lot of people (at a guess %10) of the population who fall into the heavy/binge drinker category without falling into full blown alcoholism*.
Slee
*Linky. I have no idea how good this cite is.
Well other than the fact that it was horrible, nothing. If you’d like to know what made it horrible, 1) it was made with vodka, and 2) there was bacon in it. I don’t want soggy bacon that’s been floating around in vodka. Such a cocktail is not worth drinking or eating. I mean, I still drank it and ate the bacon, but it wasn’t good at all. Mind you now, I say this as a very serious baconphile and boozophile.
I drink three beers one night a week, and occasionally two or three one or two other nights. Very occasionally I will go on a complete bender.
Sounds to me that this wonderful gentleman had other problems besides booze.
For you to blame alcohol is letting this asshole off the hook for his own behavior.
Yeah, but those years at the end of your life suck anyhow.
And yet for some reason, booze tends to be served at the occassions that are most fun.
On a side note, for some reason my college does not serve alchohol at this annual alumni career networking event they hold every year. All social alumni events serve alchohol and post other professional networking events seem to at least serve wine or something. I suspect the organizers feel if they served alchohol, no actual career networking would take place, and the attendees would just set up a Beruit table and get wasted.
The organizers are wise.
There’s a drink called the Ulitmate Black and Tan (or the Heaven and Hell, depending), it’s Dogfishhead 120 minute IPA and their World Wide Stout. Two $10, 18% Alcohol By Volume Bottles, together.
Once they’re open, they should be imbibed. There was no way the wife was going to help. Lemmie tell’ya, Heaven and Hell is an appropriate moniker. I’m sure it’s like Bacon-tini
Alcohol isn’t killing me, but a bacon cocktail just might. 2 great tastes that do NOT go great together. ::insert puking smilie::
Raises the question of whether use of alcohol ever should be used as an excuse for bad behavior, doesn’t it? I hear it frequently used, and accepted, that way.
But I don’t believe it’s as simple as either/or. Certainly there must be some people who probably shouldn’t encourage the habit at all because of “other problems.”
I’ve never been quite certain of the answer to that old debate on whether alcohol makes a person do things which they wouldn’t do otherwise. Is anyone?
Adult male children of familial alcoholics would be wise to abstain or use only occasionally. Same for diabetics. Those taking antipsychotics , muscle relaxers or tranquilizers. Imagine the list is considerable.
As with anything risky it is important to have sufficient information before making a choice and I don’t think this happens very often in the case of alcohol because of the common early age of first use.
In regard to the comments about cultural attitudes and effects of alcohol, I’m thinking that cultural attitudes toward use are also in play and many of them are in error from a health standpoint.
In my childhood and location where I grew up virtually no one under the age of their teens used alcohol. And use of it on a regular basis while one was underage would have been viewed similar to the way many view methamphetamine use today - as degraded and dangerous.
That seems drastic as far as length of time of development of addiction and safety of ingredients used. But it is safe to say that regardless of the substance the psychological consequences of addiction follow a generally predictable path in the life of the addict with matter of degree being the delineator. And failure to break the addictive cycle is deadly for most all.
I’ve heard more than one professional in the chemical health field make the statement that if alcohol had just been discovered today the FDA probably wouldn’t approve it for over the counter use because of the potential for harm.
And again, only a small percentage of drinkers use the lion’s share of the alcohoic beverages bought. The ones who probably shouldn’t be drinking at all are the ones who are marketed to and support the alcohol industry. Ironic. And a little scary from an ethics standpoint.
One such woman ruined “Wine Time” for me. WT was an informal, floating get together of mothers of young kids in my town. It was held on Friday afternoons. You got a sitter, unless your child was younger than 3 months-if they were at all mobile, the kid was not welcome. Everyone brought and appetizer and a bottle of wine and from 4:30 pm, till whenever, we chatted, had adult conversation, enjoyed some truly gourmet food etc. It was very nice and a sanity saver with 2 kids under the age of 4.
And then Amy wouldn’t leave me alone. I did quite a bit of binge drinking in college and I swear I got all that out of my system. I have no more desire to get drunk or shit faced or whatever than I do to have root canal. I would go to the wine times and maybe have one glass of wine, if that. I went for the company and to get out of the house. Everyone was fine with that, except Amy. She even went so far as to point out to me that it was called “Wine Time”, so I HAD to drink something.
I shot back that I had always thought it was “Whine Time” and that’s what most of us were doing (up all night with baby; husband not supportive; not using that advanced degree; whatever etc)
She didn’t like that. I stopped going shortly after that (and my kids were now in school, which changed everything about Fridays for me). But I still remember Amy the Asshole. She divorced, dyed her hair blonde, quit her job as an accountant and became an actress. I lost track of her, but as far as I know, her acting career is less than impressive. IMO, she had a problem and I hope she got some help.
But this thread isn’t about them.
I have two thoughts on the matter: Prohibition worked well. We’re already seeing the edges of relaxed enforcement on Marijuana use, for better or worse.
No more so that the Cigarette industry, who was willing to jettison BILLIONS in a one-time settlement. Makes you wonder how many MORE Billions they had in the bank. The world is full of shades of grey. But that’s not what THIS thread is about.
You are correct. I’ve added additional information.
Is alcohol problematic? I think, reading the responses from people who are concerned about times when it has been forced upon them and caused unpleasant interactions with others it’s safe to say that wherever alcohol is served in any abundance there will be problems. The least of these are prickly social interactions.
It’s a problematic beverage and has the ability to damage us and our envirionment even when we ourselves abstain or are moderate in use. Our state spends about a billion and a half in unnecessary expenses due to cigarettte smoking. Contrast that with the four and a half billion from alcohol use.
I chatted with a police officer one day after he dealt with a couple of unruly drunks smoking in a city park. My observation was that it wasn’t their smoking that had caused the problem and that seventy-five percent of his work was alcohol-related and he laughed. “More like 95%, lady.”
Do you know that you can use that 75% figure for much that plagues our country? Divorce, domestic abuse, murders, accidents, lawsuits, name it. Hard to believe but true and verifiable with a quick google or two.
Considering that our state made a special law to serve alcohol after hours while we hosted a political convention I’m guessing that alcohol abuse may also play a part in our current deadlock and various hijinks of polititians.
We have people going after the tobacco industry but not the alcohol industry. Why is that? Does our society have an unhealthy and strong attachment to alcohol?
The OP asks if alcohol abuse is as big of a problem as some people seem to think and my response is some ideas of why I suspect it may be even bigger.
But, no. I’m not, as some antismokers are, prohibitionist. Education is the way to go, I think. And modeling healthy attitudes and use.
It’s with us. It’s hurting us and we need effective ways to deal with it.
Does that clarify or am I missing the boat? If so, what needs to be addressed?
First you fixed my dysfunctional parking problems and now this … If you’re ever in Germany let me know, the first few are on me!
If we’re going by responses on this board, then everything is problematic. Everything. From teasing your kid, to driving a car, to parking a car, to eating, to picking flowers, to being slightly rude to someone at some point in life, to using the word “pansy” to having a nice lunch at the park on a lovely summer’s day. Everything is a big, traumatic event around here. *Breathing *causes problems. Can you please knock off your buzzkill and take it to one of the million other SDMB whining about alcohol being eeevvvvviiiil threads?
You know, people on this board are always offering me drinks, but none of them live near me. 
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The OP’s effort was to be the single, stalwart, post that said ‘Hey, not everybody has problems with Alcohol.’
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Society has a STRONG attachment to Alcohol. The the unhealthy part that’s up for debate.
Alcohol is okay, for very certain, well-defined, categories of okay.
I, for one, am pissing my life away, and alcohol is a big part of the process.
And there are sober people pissing their lives away, too.
I chatted to an English copper a few years ago about drunk drivers. He said they made up something like 60% of road accidents (80% of statistics are made up on the spot!) and that with them we knew what the problem was and were able to make some in roads into reducing the occurrence or at least explain it. His point was - how do we get the other buggers off the road?