Chronic alcoholism appears to be a common theme with my roommate's ex-husband, who drank himself to death and a co-worker's mother who brews her own booze but denies being an alcoholic.
These are two separate stories, and not uncommon.
In actual fact, even social drinking masks the chronic alcoholic, turning him into a funny party animal that mass media morphs into marketing propaganda for liquor sales.
Nations make money off social drinking, yet leaves us with the bromine, "Drink responsibly."
As sober people, we should stigmatize alcoholic consumers as "drunks" and conjure up the annual family story of misery and tragedy, rather than perpetuating the trope that social drinkers almost never become alcoholics.
A beer a day is indeed the beginnings of alcoholism. Weekend binges and the parties are not coming-of-age material but alcoholism.
Anyone who does not feel a buzz from one beer are most likely an alcoholic.
As long as we live in denial about the dangers of regular drinking of alcohol, one day drink will affect us in ways that we would never imagine.
For my name is Stephen, and I'm an alcoholic.
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