End Alcoholism -- Bomb Spain

Umm

Hmmm. Is this a joke? Maybe I missed the point. I'm a little confused as to what you're really trying to say. (Irony always escapes me. I'm a little slow)

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You go STANTON!!!

I completely agree with your sarcasm. It would be just to much for people to wake up and educate themselves and their children about responsible behavior. With all the religious nuts who try to scare children away from drinking instead of teaching responsible behavior including responsible drinking so that children are educated.

My husbands family allowed drinking when he was a teenager and we are not talking responsible drinking they seemed to approve and almost completely ignore their passed out son on the basement floor laying in puke and never taught him responsible drinking. Now he is a 43 year old struggling to over come his bad behavior with drinking.

Teach your children people that a glass of wine at dinner is totally different that 20 glasses of wine!!!!

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When I was in treatment, one

When I was in treatment, one of the staff members called my attention to my use of sarcasm. The word comes from a Greek word that means to tear the flesh. He suggested that my use of sarcasm was anger coming out sideways.

I was glad to find your blog because I found your book very interesting and helpful at a difficult time in my life. But you seem much angrier here than in your book.

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You are ignorant.

Hi,

I don't agree with you. You are attacking thousand of years cultures linked to moderate wine drinking. People in this cultures would teach you americans about peace and how to sanely enjoy life. You sure thinks is better for health drink coca-cola than a good spanish red wine at lunch?

Regards.

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Who's really ignorant?

Paco,
I suggest you look up both "sarcasm" and "satire" in a dictionary, then read the posting again.
Salud!

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lol

I laugh now with your sarcasm sharing with my little 16-year sister a big cup of red wine, she thinks wine is good for farting. Grapes will resist your radiactives nukes and next harvest I will send you a bottle..

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country variations

Although Europe invented alcoholic drinks thousands of years ago, many European countries have much lower levels of alcoholism than the US. There are many reasons for this. Because alcohol has been around so long, many people don't regarded it as a dangerous drug - it is. But it tends to get out of control in societies where there's lots of pressure. The big danger comes when someone starts using alcohol to numb negative feelings rather than enhance positive ones. In societies where many elements are telling people 'you're no good, inadequate, a failure, etc' the danger of resorting to alcohol is great. I leave it to you to conjecture which societies those are.

The pressure to succeed, perform, be attractive, etc has never been greater and it's killing us - either directly or through drug adiction. Some elements of society say that competition is good -well, yes, up to a point. But for many, that point was exceeded long ago.

People are losing sight of what makes them happy and are resorting to drugs - particularly alcohol - trying to get it that way. It never works because happiness comes from events in the real world, not changing your brain chemistry with drugs.

Combine this with genetic predisposition and you've got a big alcohol problem.

So the cure is - reduce the competitiveness of society so that more people feel better about themselves. Warn young people that alcohol is a dangerous drug and if you start taking it cover up negative thoughts and feelings, that's a very bad sign.

However reducing competitiveness means reducing greed and I'm not sure we'll ever be able to that.

These are my thoughts, Ian (a recovering European alcoholic)

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Taking Responsibility

What you focus on is what you get more of. The US is so focused on drugs and alcohol and the woes of both, that they keep digging a deeper hole than necessary. The issue is that US Americans don't take responsibility for themselves. It's the parents fault, it's the gov't fault, it's society's fault, blah blah blah. Poor me, pour me another shot....

Get over it and make your own decisions for your own life. Have an original thought for once. We hear something on Oprah or Tyra or in a commercial or in the paper, and then we keep repeating it until it is a truth for us.

We lack ORIGINAL THOUGHT !

And what I get from the article above is... Quit blaming outside sources... Italy and Spain did not hold you down and pour the wine down your throat, dingbat. If you react negatively toward alcohol, then make a decision and put it down for a while. And I was in "recovery". 4 years and then 7 years.

I now drink wine on occasion with dinner or social events. I don't drink at home alone or get into trouble or go into druken stupors anymore.

WHY? Because I make the decisions for my life and take responsibility for what I put into my mouth and for my SELF and what I do and for my behavior. Not anyone else's fault.

Once you take on that responsibility, you can do or be anything you want in life. Because know one else can stop you from that once you quit blaming them for your failures, you can take all the credit for the successes. So just get smart and quit whining.

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I am shocked by what I just

I am shocked by what I just read!
That article was decidedly prejudiced (and even bordered on racist in certain parts) against European people. I agree with Anna's post, it is utterly senseless to blame any of the problems you mentioned on entire nations and years of culture and tradition- take some responsibility!

On top of this, I am all for opinions and obviously this is yours. However if you're going to mouth off about Europe the least you can do is get your facts straight. I don't agree with anything you have written in this article, however from your point of view if you wished to attack European drinking habits so vehemently why have you not mentioned the UK, which has the highest levels of binge drinking amongst young people in Europe???? And I also totally disagree with your statements concerning the Irish nation's opinion on alcohol, they are a nation renowned for their excessive drinking habits! I don't think anyone could ever count the number of Irish themed bars all over the world! You lack understanding and insight into this subject and your article is more offensive than enlightening.

I was also very surprised at what you said about your daughter drinking wine...oh no! How terrible! An ADULT drinking what was probably an incredibly small amount of alcohol! Your daughter is now an adult and you should allow her to drink all the alcohol she likes- if you think you've done your job right as a parent she won't have to be controlled by you and will decide to consume alcohol with caution.

People who live in the European countries you have mentioned lead vastly healthier lifestyles than many Americans, and I am in total agreement with Paco. You also neglect to venture a counter arguement to your own and the fact that red wine has been proven to be beneficial to ones health when consumed in small amounts.

But of course all this coming from a 19 year old British university student (of British/French heritage) who regularly drinks won't matter to you at all, I need to 'get with the programme', I'm just too 'dumb' to understand.

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Overreactions!!!

Ok! I am an European here, and I must say I am not offended at all with your statements. Please, all the Europeans forgive me for this unpatriotic act!!!

All my training was in Portugal and in Spain, I actually grew up in those countries we should explode and all that bla bla bla, and I am actually offended with the narrowed mind some people here have.

Fact: my friends got drunk when they were 14!!!
Fact: I don't drink and I almost was put aside by them!!!
Fact: not even in college they were able to accept that I dont want to drink.
Fact: Europeans tend to difficultly accept some framework outside their conceptualization

So what is the problem here? Arabs created alcohol (found it out) for medicinal purpose and European decided to drink it (not so lineal as I put down here, I know). Cultural? There were cultures who killed and ate other people. Bullfight is cultural! Offending others is cultural! Homeviolence is cultural (from the point you tend to learn from your parents, when you were assaulted by one or both of them. Anything called culture is not necessarly a synonim of accepted and good! We, Europeans, should learn that!

The only thing I don't get, is how come with all these alcoholic problems in the Iberican Peninsula, we are the lowest of the rate?
I am sorry not all people commenting here were interested in thinking about it.
Two analysis were made, and I must incline to agree with the: lack of responsavility and too much competitivity.
When we have to many competetivity among people, when coordination and friendship go to second place and runing over the other becomes the objective, we get into an emptyness in our lives, we start noticing (even in some less conscient level) that we are lacking of sense of meaning/purpose. So what could we do on that? Southern Europeans are cooler in everything (I once made a 200km trip to my classe -- since I lived far from it and went every week there, by bus, through the night -- and when I got to the place, it was, simply, closed. When I asked people why they didn't tell me upfront, they smiled and said: so what? we forgot!) and this is how they get on. They don't worry, they keep on, they are what they are and are gooooing... So, maybe, they are too calm to stress with competition and are too cool to go into alcohol, as often as others would, to carry on their lives.

On sarcasm, well, if we disagree: we shouldn't be sarcastic ourselves ;)

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You're ALL ignorant.

Kidding. :)

"many European countries have much lower levels of alcoholism than the US" thank you Ian!

Ok first of all I would like to say I like how Europeans raise their kids, giving them access to alcohal. This way, they won't abuse it.

Like ok, the more you don't have acces to something, the more you want it. When its there its normal. Take for example milk or something. Im not gonna go crazy with it; because its always there.

Kids nowadays like to experiment around, so its better to let them have it at an early age...15 or so.

Thats my opinion. And im 15 =]

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