[Weitz]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

I smoked dope daily in high school, drank to dangerous excess from 18-21, and tapered down to getting drunk a couple times a week through my 20s. That became a couple times a month in my 30s. Now on a typical week I have 2-4 drinks and get hammered maybe 5 or 6 times a year. I smoke dope in occasion, usually to mellow out the hyper effect alcohol has on me.

But booze flows freely at all of my social events. Family, friends, co-workers. I'm still close with a group of 8 or so guys who I've known since junior high and high school, and some have succumbed to self-destruction. In the last year or so I've pulled back from the excesses when the boys cut loose, trying to keep it to no more than four or five beer. It's taken me decades to recognize that the last few drinks add little to the fun of an evening, and only make the next day all the more punishing. Or at least it took me decades to demonstrate the willpower to say no.



Or 40 years ago. My parents would get together with friends for dinner, cards, or putting records on and dancing a couple times a week, and the rye and cokes flowed freely. They were the generation who installed bars in the basement rec rooms of half the houses in Calgary's suburbs in the 70s and 80s. Someone crashing over a coffee table while pissed was considered high spirits. But drinking alone was a taboo. I never once saw either of them have a drink when they didn't have company over.

The difference is people just stopped waiting till the kids went to bed so they didn’t have to stay up till midnight to have a drink.