Now I know not everyone in the world has a problem with alcohol but it’s widely accepted many people do. I think the way it’s portrayed in the media and in general where kids are susceptible to these things is pretty poor, take this sign below outside a local pub where kids go to the shop to buy sweets next door. I mean, this stuff just becomes the norm doesn’t it, alcohol solves your problems. I know it’s meant in jest but when I was 16 I thought it was cool to have adult problems and to drink and be miserable. That’s what men do right…
Yup, those signs make me angry. Most I hate when I’m at the grocery store at the check out and there are gummy bears, toys and nearby alcohol in tiny colourful bottles, vodka to go and other shit 
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I know they say alcohol is a disease, addictive personality etc but I know as a kid my parents used to get wasted with our neighbours on a regular basis. I was only about 9 years old but I thought this was as cool as shit, so grown up, I couldn’t wait to be old enough to drink. Even more so when I saw it in movies and TV shows like Men Behaving Badly (UK show about two early 30s men living together drinking beer every night).
I think I learned to have a problem with alcohol, this isn’t inherent for me it’s been instilled in me from a young age.
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Drinking is glorified in TV shows here in the US targeted for teenagers. It looks like the cool thing to do. I find it disturbing. Many commercials make it look like the only way you can have fun is to drink alcohol which I know now to be false.
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I appreciate your post! I am going to not go on a rant right now because I feel very strongly about this subject. Alcohol is poison. 
PERIOD. Legal poison. I have struggled with addiction for 20 years and have so many different views on alcohol throughout my life too. My parents drank heavily. My father has been sober now for over 20 years with the help of AA. My mother passed young from breast cancer, which no doubt was at least partly because of what she put in her body for many years (lots of research here and every year we see more and more how damaging alcohol is to our bodies/minds/lives).
I get frustrated when I see advertisements for alcohol in places that are not appropriate for children. The exposure is so great though on mainstream radio, television, movies, magazines, and at many social gathering where adults and children are both present like BBQs, etc.
Alcohol kills more than any other drug, yet it is glorified in our culture. So sad.
The past is behind me, but I have wondered what my life would have been like if my environment didn’t constantly consist of beer, wine, tequila, and vodka consumption around me growing up.
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Oh boy. I have quite a rant as well.
I’ve been think a great deal lately about the romanticization of alcoholism in the media. Particularly that no-fucks-given cool girl who drinks all night, sleeps around, does whatever she wants whenever she wants and faces little to no consequences while maintaining a successful career and thriving social life who seems to exist in various forms all over movies and TV.
While I can in no way blame the media for my deeply unfortunate relationship with alcohol, it did make me feel like my lifestyle was not only acceptable, but it almost gave me something to aspire to. I more or less wanted to be the life of the party, everyone’s go-to drinking buddy, cool, without care.
My reality was much less glamorous. I was an embarrassment, a mess, a burden and I was poisoning myself over and over every week-constantly hungover, sweaty, redeye and miserable.
I would like to see the media spend less time focusing on depicting alcohol consumption and addiction as a socially normal, fun or sexy way for people to interact/exist. If they must show this, for the sake of the impressionable and those who are denying the existence of their drinking problems, they should also make more of an effort to depict realistic consequences that result from the frequent, heavy consumption of alcohol: the crippling hangovers, weight gain, the overall decline of physical health, the destruction of personal relationships, the slurry babbling of nonsense, the anxiety and self-loathing all while feeling like it’s impossible to stop.
Alcohol addiction should not be shown as a desirable lifestyle when the truth of it is so ugly.
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I don’t know which direction it goes in… Does the media etc glamourise alcohol or does it reflect the way society is? It’s probably a bit of a feedback loop. I remember when Skins came out, that was like a reflection of me and my friends lives (not 
but close enough). Lad/ladette culture was also a big thing. Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps is back on the TV and looking at it now, I’m like no wonder I developed these kind of behaviours. I don’t know why it spoke to me but it was definitely something I considered aspirational.
But not everyone goes that way - some of us do seem to more drawn to that. And I definitely found myself with a group of people where excess and debauchery was normal rather than unusual. I don’t know if it was conscious or not but I feel like I sought that out. Even though it wasn’t at all glamorous, I stuck with it.
Like @AiJ I think what the media portrayal does is make problem drinking almost acceptable (or at least gives problem drinkers a pass on their behaviour, to the benefit of people profiting from alcohol sales!). But when people recognise their problem drinking as an actual problem it’s all covered under the rug - Alcoholics Anonymous. Like drinking is super glamorous until you’ve reached peak consumer and then it’s not represented anywhere and it’s something to be embarrassed about.
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Growing up as a young teenager in 90s Britain this was everywhere. It was your destiny, go out on a Friday and Saturday and get as wasted as possible because its the thing to do, it’s funny, you’re having a laugh and being one of the lads/girls. It was like a rite of passage. I remember 2 pints of lager on TV, and Zoe Ball and Sarah Cox on Radio 1 with their drinking ladette culture, that’s what young girls aspired to be like too, drinking like men essentially.
When I was 16 my parents bought me 4 bottles of Smirnoff Ice for my birthday. Sickly sweet alcohol in a bottle, basically alcohol for kids who didn’t like beer. How depressing.
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This is something that has weighed on me pretty heavy before I ever even decided to get sober. It’s annoying how our culture will make light of alcoholism. Thank you for bringing it up!
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This has been posted before but it is relevant for this thread.
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I read an article the other week about generation Z drinking less than any other generation. Alcohol culture is so interwoven into the very fabric of Western society that it’s seen as just being normal to drink and will probably take some time to undo. As we all know alcohol is such a powerful and noxious substance, totally agree that it will probably be viewed like cigarettes in years to come.
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And yet we have multiple threads here about what our favorite drink used to be 
I, for one, do not blame the booze, advertising, or anything else for my alcoholism. That’s just who I am. And I’m happy bc of it. My past created my present and I absolutely love who I am today. Hell, I’d be lying if I said my drinking days were all bad bc they weren’t. Sure there’s lotsa stuff I’m not proud of, but that doesn’t mean I can’t laugh at it today.
There’s plenty of people who can have a beer or two and be fine. My mom runs marathons and occasionally afterwards she goes and has a drink with her running club. I can safely say that she does not suffer any health problems from drinking.
Alcohol is an industry, like anything else. Millions of people rely on alcohol to pay the bills, from bartenders to people who work distribution plants.
I still find beer commercials to be amusing. And advertisement never made me drink and it’s not going to start now.
Instead of worrying about billboards we should be concerned with educating children on the dangers of excessive drinking.
How many people a year die from heart disease and diabetes? Are we going to tear down all the McDonald’s billboards too? Of course not.
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Yep it was everywhere. Although a lot of the people I used to go mental with did actually fall out of the bad habits and into more ‘normal’ drinking patterns. Not all of them, but most. I guess those of us with a drink problem hang on to those ‘role models’ more than others to help normalise our behaviour. And based on hospital admissions etc as per @Legacy’s post it sounds like there are lots and lots of people doing the same!
My family aren’t big drinkers but I ended up spending lots of time at friends houses who’s parents were. Definitely went to loads of house parties where Smirnoff Ice was put on by parents when we were 16. Not that it stopped me drinking vodka beer 
I really do think the drinking culture can make it hard for people to accept they have a problem. Like in the link from @DrunkNoMore - I struggled to identify as an alcoholic because I didn’t drink every day, no arrests, good job etc. Plus drinking is such a normal part of life for so many people it’s hard to untangle it from celebrations, commiserations etc. But not impossible! We will get there 
True, but then you can’t take credit when they’re not alcoholics for your teaching. Works both ways.
I’m not actually blaming anyone or anything, including myself. I’m merely pointing out how society in the UK normalises drinking. See the below
The main point from the article I’m making is this
“It will be a huge shift, because drinking in the UK has a spirited history, stretching back thousands of years – jugs for fermenting alcohol go back to the stone age, past Hogarth’s Beer Street and Gin Lane in the 1700s through to the peak modern drinking period of the 90s and early 00s. This was the Britpop era: a wasted Jarvis Cocker mooning at Michael Jackson at the Brit awards in 1996 and the hideous proliferation of garish alcopops with brand names with no vowels. That period also saw a breakdown in the social taboos around women’s drinking that led to an explosion of alcohol being marketed to them. Witness the birth of the ladette and girlfriends drinking boyfriends under the table. Witness a massive overall rise in consumption.”
So, I’m not looking to place blame anywhere, this is just how society sees drinking. I wasn’t really up for a character assassination
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Education is probably only part of the answer. We had the drink/drugs are bad mmmkay talks at school and it didn’t seem to make much difference.
I think the wider societal norms have a big part to play - same with food and health generally. Advertising, government intervention, education, individual action and more that I am probably not even aware of. But without going full blown communist/authoritarian state I’m not sure how that works in practice 
Well said.
I understand what you are saying here now. I am on 3 days and 34 minutes. Still learning… still have a crazy mind in detox stages. I do remember after the Las Vegas marathon all the runners would check into hotels and celebrate with beer and fatty fun foods. Just because I cant control my drinking, doesnt mean that everyone cant. Thank you for continually teaching here, you have helped me alot. 3 days in Being sober I have to learn to think and feel before I speak too. 
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You should have seen me at 3 days lol. You would have had me institutionalized lol. My brain was working at about 1% at that time. I would scream at the nurses in rehab bc it was their fault I was going through withdrawal (seriously).
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The media is a pawn of big alcohol.
The only way I can change the world is by changing myself.
I have a similar rant about pornography. But when it gets me into a tizzy I tell myself the above mantra. Then I go about my recovery and be grateful I’m where I am.
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