## 11 Dry yearly
Dry January is no more and nobody is speaking about a dry February or a dry 2024. Alcohol is something old in the history of Humans (in antiquity and maybe older) and many are talking about traditions to justify alcohol. But for me, it's not... My father didn't drink at home, just a good bottle for a particular moment, a celebration, a meal with the whole family. During many years, my grandfather used to drink a glass of wine at lunch...a bad table wine, cut with water, just as much alcohol as a beer, I think. Oh, yes, my father drunk beer sometimes, especially after a hard work in our country house. And that's all. My mother couldn't stand alcohol, as my grandmother. So, I'm not the perfect example of french people, wine connoisseur, able to recognize the year of a grape variety after a glass of wine.
Is it the only reason ? I don't know. If my father used to smoke during 35 years, he stopped it after my birth. I have tried once and didn't like it. That's the only other drug that I have tested in my life (except for sugar, ha ha). I don't need what we call «artificial paradise». The reality is sufficient for me and so difficult to understand. Why did I need to explore something else. During my teenage years, I had some friends who drunk a lot during parties and were proud of that, speaking of their exploits the day after. I was not in those parties and I didn't want to... It wasn't my interest or my personality. I've heard some psychologists speaking of the limits that the teenagers need to test... I've also heard some addictologists trying to treat those who have never found their limits. I'm a reasonable and reasoned person most of the time, and that's perhaps the reason of all that. I've never been drunk, just a little inebriated at the most. And never when I had to drive a car, of course.
But I have seen colleagues drinking too much and the consequences on their behavior. I had one colleague who drunk too much at each farewell drink. He had what we call «bad alcohol», becoming a bit mad and angry after everybody. He had problems with that in his career. Another colleague who was very kind and cheerful all the time, suddenly lost his son in a motorbike accident. He started to drink at home and became sad, closed and depressed, the opposite of what he was before. He started to drink at work and became unable to do his work. The human ressources offered him an early retirement and I never saw him again. Old-timers used to tell us about drinking pastis on assembly lines and the trolley that went round during the breaks. They used to tell us about the accidents and those who were killed by a stamping press. Times have changed and there are no more bottles of wine in the canteen at work. There are still some old colleague who drink secretly at work but they are fewer and fewer.
I have some bottles of wine in the cellar, but It's often gifts and not something I buy. Sometimes, it's used for a recipe ( the traditional sauerkraut...), and for a family meal. I've heard and seen many teenagers drinking strong spirits and becoming alcoholic. More or less than before ? I really don't know. Alcohol have maybe changed but behavior not really. It's how the society views these behaviors which has changed. With the increase of poverty, alcoholism is growing as drug use. I always see people taking packs of 8.6 beer or bottles of whisky each day at the supermarket next to council estate, always people between 40 and 60 years old, living alone and certainly jobless. I'm lucky not to have been alone and/or jobless. I really don't know if, despite all I've said before, I hadn't sunk into addiction in the face of despair. We can never predict that. But what we can do, it's not to fall in useless recreational abuse.
2Dɛ
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