Amatuer Night!!

New Years Eve! A night when the vast majority of Americans feel the irresistible need to get trashed in order to sufficiently celebrate the end of the year. The accepted, and even expected, norm in this country is that tonight is THE most appropriate night to use and abuse recreational alcohol. What will often happen is that a ton of people that do not normally drink will overdo it and end up completely wasted. The true alcoholics will look at them as amatuers and scoff.

I have never been one to imbibe and even I feel the pressure to do something "special" to commemorate the event. Of course, the problem is finding something worthy to do on such a night. The easy and unimaginative answer is to consume alcohol along with millions of others in the country. Kind of pathetic that we, as Americans, cannot come up with something more original and interesting than getting trashed to celebrate the changing of the calendar.

My challenge to everyone is to be original. Find something better to do.

Scary People Out There!

I think that there is one obvious thing that criminals have in common: they are all lazy. They do not want to work for a living and are always looking for the easy way. Muggers tend to look for the weak and unprotected to attack. Burglars look for the house with no alarm system. When you are impaired by alcohol you are weak and often easy prey. Unfortunately, there are those in our world who will specifically look to find and take advantage of someone in a weakened state. Clearly, this is no secret. So why would anyone intentionally make themselves a potential target of the bad people that are out there?

Another huge part of this notion is that there are unscrupulous men who cruise bars for especially drunk women. Tragically, this is not at all uncommon and is almost condoned in a lot of ways by our society. Even worse, it is very common practice by some guys to take women out to specifically get them drunk for the purpose of taking advantage of them. Why in the world would a woman want to be seduced in that manner? Ladies, protect yourselves better and avoid the alcohol in social situations. You will make better decisions and less of a likely victim if you do.

Liquor before beer, in the clear? Beer before liquor, Never sicker?

OK. So there is this catchy phrase to help you remember whether to start drinking beer before or after you start the "hard liquor". The thing is that if you drink enough you will most likely get sick. Some claim to "never"get sick when they play the recreational alcohol game but there is always the first time for everybody I have ever known personally to drink too much. Very perplexing decision to consume something that has a very good chance of making you sick.

My thought is, of course, why bother in the first place. If and when you do get sick you will certainly regret being so foolish. Nothing sadder or more of a turn off than seeing what would normally be a very attractive person yacking their guts up behind the bar. Or even worse, IN THE BAR. I can assure you that a soft drink has never impacted me that way.

41% of accidents are alcohol related

According to the the ads I keep seeing from the Tennessee Governor's Highway Safety Office, 41% of all automobile accidents are alcohol related. Even more frightening the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimated that 32 percent of all traffic deaths from 2007 occurred in crashes in which at least one driver had a BAC at or above 0.08 percent and that some alcohol was present in 37 percent of drivers involved in all traffic fatalities. Thirty-five percent of pedestrians killed in crashes also had BACs at or above 0.08 percent. Such statistics do not mean that a third or more of all fatal crashes are caused solely by alcohol, because alcohol may be only one of several factors that contribute to a crash involving drinking drivers.

Impossible to ignore the data that indicates that alcohol truly impairs your driving ability and makes it a very risky activity. Why bother to drink and drive? Why bother to drink at all?

Drunks are NOT attractive!

"Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others." - Samuel Johnson

This certainly works both ways for men and women. Alcohol may make you think you look great and give you some false confidence. At the end of the day/night, someone that has slurred speech, beer breath, cannot walk straight or even say their ABC's is just plain unattractive. The only people that would be attracted to a drunk are predators or other drunks. Why would you want to get involved with either of those options?