Quote:
Originally Posted by Minnie
I have to agree, I really don't get the disconnect here. Alcoholism is defined as a disease, certainly. But there is still a choice between driving drunk and calling a cab - we rarely drink and if we do, we make arrangements for a way there and a way home or we walk to one of the pubs within 4 blocks of us - it's really not a hard thing to figure out and make concessions for. Had this argument yesterday with someone over a different case, wherein she was calling the driver, who in this particular case, killed people (but he walked away, of course), a victim of "bad choices."
Yeah, NO. He's not a victim. He knew he was going out partying. He easily could have made prior arrangements to get to the party - Uber, conventional taxi, a friend, the bus, crawled there on his hands and knees, whatever. He didn't. He drove there, got plastered and made the choice to drive home. He isn't a victim. A victim has no choice in the circumstances that occur (accident/crime/whatever) that either kill them or affect their lives so completely as to change them forever. The drunk driver that kills or injures someone is many things but victim is not one of them.
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This is getting pretty far from the point of this thread, unless I missed the update that said that Ray Bourque is an alcoholic...
Nevertheless, it seems pretty weird to accept that alcoholism is a disease, which in itself is still debatable, but then turn around and say that an alcoholics choices are not driven by their disease.
It is also very odd to me that we expect people whose decisioning process is too impaired to vote or consent to sex or sign a legal contract or drive etc, yet we expect them to know not to drive. Basically we recognize that their judgement is poor in all areas, except in one of the most important areas, deciding to drive.
That being said, this looks even worse on Bourque because even though his judgement was no doubt awful at that point in time, I have a hard time believing he had 20 drinks (or whatever) randomly and couldn't have made plans to get home when he was still sober or even just a couple of drinks in. Also, as usual we hear nothing about where he was or who he was with. I doubt he was getting slammed by himself and his companions bear some of the responsibility for not making sure that he was gonna get home safely.