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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]JFC this board is so ridiculous.

Normal - wine / cider / seltzer at an afternoon game
Not normal - getting bombed / hard alcohol / 9 am drinking
[/quote]

NP. The word "normal" is doing a lot of work there.

I think it's probably not-uncommon, depending on your social circle.

Normal? That's another question. Normalized, I guess.

A lot of people are saying we don't NEED it, we just LIKE to do it, we are just CHOOSING to do it. But when you choose to do something that has to be concealed (when it does run afoul of a rule)-- whether or not you think it should have to be concealed-- you are betraying either a need or a very strong desire that overrides a rule that at least has some logic behind it.

I am not a teetotaler BTW. I'm actually someone who struggles with problem drinking, though a lot of people would probably think I don't drink that much because the amount and occasions upon which I drink are "normalized!" Even before I had what I consider a problem-- when I'd drink a half bottle or maybe one bottle of wine over an entire week, not even every week, and no more than 1-2 glasses at a time-- I would happily have partaken in something like this. Because it's just social, or makes things more enjoyable, or whatever. Right?

But IME MOST people who do this don't just do it occasionally. They may not feel they are heavy drinkers, but if you drink even 1-2 drinks at every game, that's unlikely to be the only time you drink, or only one of 2 times a week, or whatever. It's unlikely that you're counting a 7.5% beer as 1.5 drinks, which it is. And so on. I posted here before about how many drinks I witnessed fellow PTA board members drinking on a Tuesday night-- just an observation-- and was told I "obviously have a drinking problem" (yes? I said that?) if I was counting every drink other people had. Defensive? Maybe a little. It was easy to count up however many bottles of wine/beer it was... I can't remember, but something like an average of 3-4 drinks per person on a Tuesday for a PTA meeting. Which is not horrifying at all (everyone walked), and not even problematic in a vacuum. It's just that it's not in a vacuum. But lots of people like to pretend it is.  *shrug* (And no, I'm not implying everyone there drinks 3-4 drinks every night, or that if they drink that much on a Tuesday night at a PTA meeting, they must get blackout drunk on weekends. But yeah, of course, it still adds up for most people.)

I think it's interesting that the PP I'm responding to said that 9 am/hard liquor/getting wasted are problematic, but not wine/beer/etc. in the afternoon.

The only thing on either of those lists that's [i]obviously[/i] problematic is "getting bombed."

But there's no difference in terms of kind of alcohol or time of day except social conventions. So all PP is really saying is that as long as you're following social conventions, you're fine, right? Except that every culture and microculture has its own social conventions, and what might be acceptable to one might be extreme to another, in either direction. But none of them have anything to do with health, safety, psychological welfare or anything even a little more objective. Smoking only on weekends, or smoking a pack a week, used to be a completely moderate thing to do. Now it's not at all considered extreme to literally never smoke a cigarette. Nothing actually changed. Just social conventions. Social conventions as affected by scientific understanding? Sure. Partly. But social conventions, just the same.
  [/quote]

Wait. Do you think drinking a half a bottle of wine over the course of the week is problem drinking? That’s not true by any definition.[/quote]

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