When I was in high school during the late 60s the drinking age was 18 years old in New York and New Jersey. Every one of my friends was a big drinker; some of them even drank in my neighborhood bar, in Craig's Meadows, just North of East Stroudsburg, PA and a hair South of Marshall's Creek. The bar owner's sons were both in high school then too! It was unbelievable how much booze these kids could consume. I witnessed kids drinking a case of beer in one night, others drinking pitchers of mixed drink, and still others drinking booze right out of a bottle.
I myself would have a few beers occasionally, but my real drinking didn't start until I was about 25 years old. By the way the girls in high school used to go crazy for the guys who were called the big drinkers. It seemed like the prettiest girls were impressed with a guy who could drink a pitcher of beer without coming up for air. Drinking was common place in the late sixties. Then all of a sudden you would hear about a group of teenagers who were killed in an alcohol related car wreck. Many of us made weekly runs over the border to Port Jervis, New York. I used to take orders from my friends, tack on a small surcharge for my gas and time. I would have my trunk loaded with all kinds of alcohol related beverages, and pray that I didn't get stopped going through the toll booth at the border. One of my high school classmates was one of the casualties of the Rte. 209 Booze Cuise. The person driving coming back from Port Jervis was drunk, and drove his car over a cliff. The driver survived with only needing 54 stitches in his face, but his best friend died at the scene. How do you live with that!? I never actually drank when I made the Booze Cruise, because there was always at least one other person with me. After the previously mentioned tragedy, everyone laid low for a while, and didn't drink or at least didn't drink and drive.
After one too many of these alcohol related accidents, the laws and the penalties got stiffer. The parents who had one of their children killed because of a drunk driver started to organize and formed the group Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). The students who had their friends killed in accidents formed Students Against Drunk Driving (SADD). Police task forces were organized and were trained to identify people who were driving a car under the influence of alcohol. The word designated driver took on meaning. This was supposed to be the person who didnt drink at the party and could drive everyone else home who was drunk. It started to be less and less fashionable to be drunk at a party, and heavy drinking was starting to become taboo.
"I spent about 10 years of heavy drinking myself between the ages of 25 and 35. I decided to quit when my daughter Sarah was born, and so I stopped all alcohol consumption. This was probably the best thing that I ever did for my own health, and for the welfare of my kids. Sarah will be 17 soon if you do the math, I haven’t been a drinker for almost 17 years. Sarah even commented to me on more than one occasion, Dad I am so glad that you don't drink. She has been around some of her friends’ parents who are big drinkers and she has seen some behavior that she didn’t like. I felt very proud that I heard this from my daughter, until I discovered about 100 beer cans in the cellar of her house from a party that had gone on there about one week earlier. I started to wonder if she was going to take my place as the family lush. When I questioned her about the beer cans she said, Oh yeah, dad can you take them to your house to get rid of them? Mom doesn't want to put them out at the curb here because she thinks it might look bad. I said to her, You're damn right it looks bad, it'll look bad no matter where you put those cans. I asked her why she was drinking. She responded with, It helps you get loosened up. Loosened up for what? I said. She finished the dialog by saying, Dad I'm shy, and it makes it easier for me to have conversations with other people." Quoted from an anonymous blogger
The alcohol related problems that have occurred in society today, like people getting killed in auto accidents, or the health related issues like a rotten liver due to heavy drinking, are widely publicized by the media. Kids are told that they cant drink and drive. But it doesn’t stop them.
"I only have to go back to my daughter’s comment to find the reason why she was drinking: Dad I'm shy and it makes it easier for me to have a conversation with other people. Why is this comment she made so troubling to me? Because if the booze helps her with her shyness, then when will she ever develop the skills to talk to people without the booze?" Quoted from an anonymous blogger
When young people make it a habit to drink in order to deal with problems they have socially, this causes their emotions to go dormant at the age that they started to drink, which then prevents them from maturing emotionally. Drinking becomes their social and emotional coping mechanism. These young people do not experience the natural growing pains that must be gone through where they learn how to interact with others on their own, without using the alcohol to help them. Natural growing pains that are part of the maturing process should not be avoided or salved by the use of alcohol because the alcohol will only retard maturity or cause it to never be developed.
Young people who drink become extremely one dimensional. They do not become interesting people. They don’t develop a wide variety of interests or hobbies. They have desire to hang around with anyone who seems different, so they really limit the kinds of things they talk about or do. They basically stay stuck where they are at the age they started drinking. This whole thing reminds me of a book I read by Robert Bly called The Sibling Society. This book talks about a society with no vertical vision. The only gaze that the people have is a horizontal one. This means that people can see only those who are in their immediate view.
As we now go through yet another generation of alcohol abuse it's time to realize what alcohol is really doing to our young people who have to learn how to be emotionally mature, but won’t if they continue to drink. We can't rely on the media to communicate this societal problem. The media without fail covers stories about stars who have alcohol and drug abuse related problems. What comes across to young people is that these stars enter a rehabilitation program for drug and alcohol addiction, and then they come out waving to the public looking perfectly cured. The only message that gets conveyed is that there are no really bad consequences to drinking.
"I think the thing that troubles me the most is the observations that I have made of my own life. At 25 years old I was a heavy drinker and I really didn’t know why I drank the way I did. Often I would go the refrigerator for a beer and ask myself the question, am I thirsty or depressed? I really didn’t have the answer then. I believe that I do now. The reality is I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin. Social situations made me uncomfortable, a few drinks did the trick and I became more adept at holding conversations with other people and interacting in a group. When I was 35 years old my daughter Sarah was born and I made the decision to quit drinking so that she would never see the damaging effects of alcohol. My daughter started to drink for the same reason that I did which frightens me to no end. I guess I am going to have to go through some growing pains now at 53 years old, along with my daughter who is almost 17. I wish that I had been through this process 30 years ago. I wonder who will grow up first, my daughter or me. Time will tell. " Quoted from an anonymous blogger
This author's own personal experience involves my best high school buddy. He always seemed as if he could hold his liquor better than anyone else. After he graduated from college he moved away from the Poconos to Conneticut and we lost touch. After several years of no contact, I came home from work one day and found a note from him in my mailbox with his phone number (before cell phones) in Stroudsburg. I called him and made arrangements to meet him in Stroudsburg, had dinner at his house, met his fiance', and did much celebrating which included a lot of drinking. I got pretty wasted, and slept overnight in their sleep sofa. We started hanging around a lot between his place and my place in Harleysville, but no matter where we were, he always seemed to need to have alcohol (and now it was hard liquor -usually bourbon).
This went on for awhile, until one day I received a call from his fiance' asking me if I could come talk to her in private. When we met, she told me that an intervention was in the making, and she wanted me to be a part of it. Over about 6 weeks, we had several meetings with a professional interventionist, myself, and several family members. At the end, we were given instructions on how everything would work. Myself and my buddy's father went to his workplace, essentially kidnapped him, and told his boss what was happening. After successfully getting him to the intervention, we all told him how his alcoholism was affecting him, us, and his relationships with other people. At the end he agreed to go into rehab, but only if I would be the one to take him. I successfully got him checked in, and things seemed to be going well, but at 14 days he checked himself out, called me, and told me he could complete his treatment on his own. I told him, that was very unlikely, and if he was not going to complete his treatment, it would not be in my best interest to continue allowing him to be around myself and my children. He fell over dead in his workplace parking lot at 49 years old.
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