Has your use of alcohol changed?

[JustDave]

I enjoy my wine....red wine is good for you. The doctor told me that

In college on one of our weekend trips to the liquor store, my buddy picked a leaflet put out by something like the American Wine Industry. I can't remember the name of course. There were a stack of them on the counter extolling the virtues of wine, while pointing out than many doctors recommended a certain amount of wine every day to help something or other.

But what we laughed about for days was the picture on the leaflet of some guy propped up in his hospital bed while a nurse next to him was setting down on his bedside table a silver tray with a bottle of wine and and elegant wine glass. Both were smiling broadly like it was a fine restaurant and the patient was about to get blotto for the afternoon. I've been in hospitals a few times, but I can't remember that ever happening to me.

 

[Paladin1950]

I stopped drinking beer, actually German beer (never liked American beer) in 2013. I don't need alcohol in my life. I don't miss or need it.

 

[Fyrefox]

I came from a drinking family. I can remember as a child going with my father to buy a case of beer almost weekly which they always had with dinner, and with lunch as well over weekends. A glass of beer in the evenings wasn’t uncommon either, with my mother drinking more than my father. She tried to make me a beer drinker, but failed. I never liked the smell or the taste of it.

I came to recognize my mother as a borderline alcoholic when she wouldn’t be satisfied with any restaurant regardless of how good unless they served alcohol. If they had a BYOB arrangement, that was ok with her.

My mother’s friends knew that she drank heavily, and this increased even more after my father’s death. In her 80’s, she expressed outrage that a bartender once cut her off and refused her service at a bar she frequented. She once vomited up her false teeth at a senior’s gathering from drinking excessively.

So you see, my use of alcohol hasn’t changed. I haven’t even done wine or a mixed drink in years. My mother was quite the negative example, and I didn’t want to wind up like her…