Alcohol

Personally, I don't drink any more, not since mid-94 or so. Here's why:

• History of alcoholism in my family (which led one of my grandmothers to commit suicide).
• Personal embarrassment at the painful and bleary recollections of too many drunken orgies in college.
• My complete inability to keep secrets when I was drunk.
• The total incompatibility between being a self-defense instructor who gets kicked in the head, and the fact that alcohol accelerates brain cell loss (the first warning they gave me in training was not to drink alcohol 24 hours before teaching, or else risk brain damage).
• Dismay at the hypocrisy inherent in the "alcohol and drugs" mindset of the media -- c'mon, alcohol is a drug.
• Alcohol is also a poison. It slowly destroys your liver and many other organs, bit by bit. Your body reacts to it just like other poisons, by passing it from your system, by vomiting it out of your system, by making you pass out if you are still trying to inject alcohol into your body.
• The movie Leaving Las Vegas. I had already given up alcohol at the time I saw it with my friend Ellen -- but it certainly renewed my commitment to not drink.
• I don't like the feeling of being out of control. And being around painfully drunk people can be very annoying. So's cleaning vomit and urine out of my carpet.
• Plus alcohol's expensive and all.

And: I get all confused trying to order wine at restaurants. Is it red wine with lobster or white wine with biscuits and gravy? Is it the 1987 Çhâtéäû Lâ Pôïssón red chardonnay that's good, or should we try the 1993 Boozy Monk Brothers' Gerverstrameenieminymoweiner? I never remember. Easier for me just to skip it.

I never really liked the taste of alcohol anyway. (Except Kahlua, I sort of miss that.)

I've always thought alcohol sponsorship of sporting events was particularly reprehensible, along with targeted alcohol billboards in poor neighborhoods.

No judgments here. Most of my friends drink; I don't make a moral judgment about it if you drink. It's just a personal thing.

(This page is a condensed version of a longer and harsher page I made in response to an alcohol maker giving one of my pages an award.)