On the other hand, if I choose not to drink, I create in my own small way the momentum of social change. If more people did the same thing, we could slowly change the culture of drinking in our society that clearly and obviously results in tremendous harm.
I'm sure you'd love to think that, but it's wishful thinking. Consider Saudi Arabia: a place
par excellence where alcohol consumption is frowned upon culturally and legally, being punishable by flogging ("about forty lashes") for a first offense, ranging up to the death penalty for repeat offenders. Yet strangely, one of the most dangerous stretches of road in the world is the causeway which connects Saudi Arabia with Bahrain. See, what happens is that Saudis drive to Bahrain, where alcohol is heavily regulated but not banned outright, get thoroughly tanked in the bar at the airport, and then drive back to Saudi. They aren't breaking the law in Saudi, because the Kingdom has no law against driving while under the influence; for how could you drink and drive in a country where you supposedly can't drink in the first place? The key word there, incidentally, is "supposedly." Strangely, Saudi supermarkets stock bulk containers of grape juice right alongside the industrial-sized bags of sugar and yeast. It's almost as if they expected their customers to have wine-making equipment, or even a still, set up in their spare bathrooms. But clearly that's impossible, right? Surely, in a place which exhibits such cultural disapproval of drinking as Saudi Arabia, nobody would even
think of manufacturing their own booze.
Then there's Iran. With the right connections, getting hold of booze is no problem, nor is ensuring the cops won't come and bust up your party on Thursday night, either, especially if you live in north Tehran. Most Iranians, however, don't have these connections, so drinking is a little harder to do in Iran. Since the penalties for being caught with a beer are as harsh as for being caught with a bottle of 40% ABV hard liquor, though, the latter is more prevalent than the former, since it's easier to conceal the amount of alcohol required to get a buzz going when it's in more concentrated form. On the other hand, heroin is cheap and plentiful, what with Afghanistan being right next door and Iran being the first stop on the trafficking route to Europe, and the number of heroin addicts in Iran is
staggering, despite heroin being considered as bad as, if not not worse than, alcohol.
Now, note that Iran doesn't have a substance abuse problem because it has "a culture of substance abuse"; it has a substance abuse problem
because it's Iran. And, in my experience, substance abusers don't have problem because they abuse substances; they abuse substances because they have a problem (even if the substance abuse may lead to
additional problems). I used to work at ICTY, and my first job there was analyzing witness statements to determine who (according to that particular document) did what, where and to whom, and entering that information into a relational database. The ten months in which I did that were the period in which I drank most heavily in my life. Significantly, I drank heavily Mondays through Fridays, after work, but significantly less (if at all) on Saturdays and Sundays. If, during that period, you'd told me, while I was cracking open my sixth beer of the evening, that I wasn't "doing myself any favors by drinking," my response would have been:
"Listen, I just spent eight hours today alone reading accounts of beatings, torture, rapes, murders, and how people lost everything and everyone they ever cared about. Alcohol will help me sleep tonight. Alcohol-induced sleep may not be as good as the regular thing, but it beats no sleep."
Significantly, when I moved to another job, my drinking dropped dramatically. Again, I didn't have problem because I drank;
I drank because I had a problem. If it hadn't been drinking, I'd have compulsively engaged in some other activity to distract me.
That's the flaw in Twelve-Step programs: they operate on the basis that the "addiction" to whatever it is that particular program is supposed to be treating is the problem, and that if the subject can kick the "addiction," that'll be the end of it. The fact is that, even in "successful" cases, all that happens is that the subject switches "addictions." An AA attendee who successfully weans himself off booze will, if his "root" problem isn't identified and dealt with, instead turn to cigarettes, coffee, even AA meetings themselves as a means of distracting his attention from what's really bothering him.
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