Taking inventory after the Holiday festivities.......

[LostInTyme]

 

[Tiki Tom]

Went to a doctors appointment earlier today. Going in, I was asked to fill out a routine questionnaire. One of the questions was “how many days per year do you drink five or more drinks?” Asked in that manner, I can’t imagine any answer sounding good.
Anyway, after looking at the above photos, I don’t feel so bad anymore! Thanks!

 

[LostInTyme]

Glad I could brighten your day, and your outlook Tom.

 

[Zombie_61]

Mad Dog 20/20? Seriously? I've always wanted to try it just out of curiosity, but the last time I looked the only place in the U.S. that sells it is a liquor store somewhere in New York City; that's probably a good thing.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Sharp eye, Zombie. (I didn’t get past the Harley-Davidson beer. That IS Harley-Davidson beer, isn’t it?) Never tried Mad Dog 20/20 myself. How did it get to be so legendary?

 

[LostInTyme]

Mad Dog 20/20? Seriously? I've always wanted to try it just out of curiosity, but the last time I looked the only place in the U.S. that sells it is a liquor store somewhere in New York City; that's probably a good thing.

I've had it for a overlong time. Purchased as a conversation piece, it now has so much sludge on the bottom,, I'm thinking of patching some cracks in my driveway with it.

 

[tonyb]

Went to a doctors appointment earlier today. Going in, I was asked to fill out a routine questionnaire. One of the questions was “how many days per year do you drink five or more drinks?” Asked in that manner, I can’t imagine any answer sounding good.
Anyway, after looking at the above photos, I don’t feel so bad anymore! Thanks!

There was a time when my honest answer would have been “at least 200, maybe closer to 300.”

Unlike too many former lushes of my acquaintance, I have few regrets about how I lived then, not the drinking, anyway. (The cigarettes, on the other hand … ) It was mostly a good time. I never lost a job over it, never went to jail over it, never got in a barroom brawl.

Sobriety is not my religion, and I’ve long been skeptical of the disease model of addiction. Which is not to say that I haven’t known people who couldn’t get through a workday without a couple-three or four drinks along the way. A couple old coworkers got the shakes every few hours, before excusing themselves to “get something from the car,” or “check in with the wife,” or some other code for knocking back a shot or two or guzzling a beer. Another workmate was more transparent. He often said he’d be having a “hydraulic sandwich” for lunch. (I doubt such workplaces exist anymore, not many of them, anyway, for various reasons, some better than others.)

Alas, most of my drinking pals are gone now, all at too early an age. But that’s also true of too many of my cleaner-living friends and associates. That’s what happens when you live well into your seventh decade and beyond.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Mad Dog 20/20? Seriously? I've always wanted to try it just out of curiosity, but the last time I looked the only place in the U.S. that sells it is a liquor store somewhere in New York City; that's probably a good thing.

When I lived in Santa Barbara in the early 80s, the Thrifty Drug on State Street offered a full line of bumwines -- 20/20, Night Train, Thunderbird, Wild Irish Rose, etc. -- in six packs of mini bottles. You had to pass a gauntlet of derelicts on the sidewalk out front to go in to buy your 15 cent ice cream cone.

 

[tonyb]

When I lived in Santa Barbara in the early 80s, the Thrifty Drug on State Street offered a full line of bumwines -- 20/20, Night Train, Thunderbird, Wild Irish Rose, etc. -- in six packs of mini bottles. You had to pass a gauntlet of derelicts on the sidewalk out front to go in to buy your 15 cent ice cream cone.

I was never so in need of alcohol as to choose fortified wine, which is what the above-mentioned are.

This is not to say that I never sampled them. But even in my high school days, when some of my contemporaries drifted toward Mad Dog (shorthand for MD 20/20), I pretty much stuck to 3.2 beer, which was easy to procure back then, and bourbon, which was somewhat less so, seeing how the state held a monopoly on retailing distilled spirits and the clerks were far likelier to ask for ID.

 

[belfastboy]

When I lived in Santa Barbara in the early 80s, the Thrifty Drug on State Street offered a full line of bumwines -- 20/20, Night Train, Thunderbird, Wild Irish Rose, etc. -- in six packs of mini bottles. You had to pass a gauntlet of derelicts on the sidewalk out front to go in to buy your 15 cent ice cream cone.

I long for those good ol days when the hardest part of navigating the other side of the tracks were avoiding the somnambulent whinos. Now it is much scarier proposition getting past the fentanyl zombie apocalypse.....at least in my town....that and the $4.50 price of gelato.

 

[Zombie_61]

...You had to pass a gauntlet of derelicts on the sidewalk out front to go in to buy your 15 cent ice cream cone.

Around here it was that way at nearly every liquor store or 7/11 within 5-10 miles of our house back in the late-70s and early-80s. They'd usually ask me to buy them something because the clerk(s) had cut them off. The local police departments finally decided to crack down on that loitering, probably because of complaints and/or crime, so you rarely see anyone doing that now.

 

[tonyb]

Around here it was that way at nearly every liquor store or 7/11 within 5-10 miles of our house back in the late-70s and early-80s. They'd usually ask me to buy them something because the clerk(s) had cut them off. The local police departments finally decided to crack down on that loitering, probably because of complaints and/or crime, so you rarely see anyone doing that now.

In Seattle there were (are?) what’s called Alcohol Impact Areas. The stores in the districts where the chronic street inebriates (as they were called) hung out (and passed out) were prohibited from selling the low-cost and/or relatively high alcohol content products, such as fortified wine and 40-ounce bottles of cheap beer.

I can’t say if it was effective in any appreciable way. I can’t say if it wasn’t, either.

Those truly hardcore street drunks are few, but they’re quite visible and impose a waaaay disproportionate strain on the fire department medics and the ER’s and the detox center.

Now there’s a “wet house,” where these guys (and they are overwhelmingly men) can get blotto in a warm, dry place with staff to monitor their condition. Harm reduction, they call it. Others might call it enabling. I’m in the former camp. These people will drink, period. They’ll die drunk. I don’t wish that to be true, but I fear it is.

 

[tonyb]

And …

Some might at least moderate their drinking. And if they do die drunk, they’ll croak in clean clothes and in a bed. Beats the gutter.

 

[Hurricane Jack]

Used to be a woman who could be seen sitting on the curb at QT every morning until they finally got her run off. She wore the same dirty pair of coveralls full of holes every day, with a gender neutral embroidered name like "Joe". If anyone hassled her about sitting there she always claimed she was waiting for her ride to work, but she always seemed to be there long after the morning rush was over.

Every morning she would buy a tall boy can of Red Bull & a pint of vodka. Once she sat down on the curb she would pour out half the can of Red Bull & pour in half a pint of vodka. Once she got woke up from that & drank that down she poured in the last half of the pint. Keeping the vodka bottle hid somewhere in her coveralls most people would just think she was drinking Red Bull.

 

[Harp]

[QUOTE="Tiki Tom, post: 2883445, member: 36339"]Went to a doctors appointment earlier today. Going in, I was asked to fill out a routine questionnaire. One of the questions was “how many days per year do you drink five or more drinks?” Asked in that manner, I can’t imagine any answer sounding good. [/QUOTE]

A similar questionaire got pushed over the opthalmic surgeon office counter at me. I told the clerk last time
I really hung one on occured years back when the Cubs and Nationals engaged a post season knockdown
brawl game. A bottle of Maker's Mark and the next soldier was Jamison-surprising for an Irishman, Celtic
piss tastes poisonous, so I seldom wander outside Kentucky. Made an exception that nite. Drank the poteen
and glad for it. Oddly enough, I can go a year without a drink, but when serious slugfest happens like
a World Series or post season knockdown dragouts, I can imbibe. Never drink and drive. So I hailed a
cab that night and Jesie the barkeep runs out, screams 'Tom are you okay?' I wave and dropped off
at a local hotel, where next morning woke up, fell out of the shower, hit the commode which sprung
a leak. Quickly dressed, phoned the front desk, told them to have maintenance sent to my room.
When the man arrived, grabbed trench and briefcase and fled.

 

[Zombie_61]

Went to a doctors appointment earlier today. Going in, I was asked to fill out a routine questionnaire. One of the questions was “how many days per year do you drink five or more drinks?” Asked in that manner, I can’t imagine any answer sounding good.
Anyway, after looking at the above photos, I don’t feel so bad anymore! Thanks!

I somehow missed this post the first time through this thread. My honest answer would be "zero". I've never been much of a drinker, and I don't think I've ever actually had five drinks containing alcohol in the same day; if I have, it would have been in my very late teens when drinking was almost mandatory when I was hanging out with "the guys". Now...well, I can't remember the last time I drank alcohol. I'm not morally or otherwise opposed to it, and I'll have a drink or two if I'm in the mood, but it's just not that important to me.

 

[belfastboy]

I somehow missed this post the first time through this thread. My honest answer would be "zero". I've never been much of a drinker, and I don't think I've ever actually had five drinks containing alcohol in the same day; if I have, it would have been in my very late teens when drinking was almost mandatory when I was hanging out with "the guys". Now...well, I can't remember the last time I drank alcohol. I'm not morally or otherwise opposed to it, and I'll have a drink or two if I'm in the mood, but it's just not that important to me.

I too had a similar questionnaire to fill out recently. My first thought was: seriously? I have had 5 or more drinks in a day and even though it was long ago I remember the crap feeling the next day and no longer want to wander down that road. Now we do have boxed wine on the counter of our kitchen and a few times a week will have a small glass with our dinner. Or a pint of beer with a buddy.....but FIVE...I don't think so.

 

[tonyb]

Bumper sticker on a cooler door at the Green Lantern Tavern …

“24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence?”

 

[Tiki Tom]

Meh. As is well known, spent the last 18 years living in a wine growing village (Grinzing) just outside of Vienna. Heaven on earth. In a wine growing village, a meal without wine is called “breakfast”. Wife and I could easily do 2 glasses with lunch and 2 glasses with dinner and maybe an extra . No drunken haze; no loss of functionality. As Americans call it: Alcoholism. As Europeans call it: “what? Americans call that alcoholism?!” (Drunkenness is really frowned upon in Austria. My office cafeteria openly sold wine at lunch, but no one ever abused it.) Puritanism or La Dolce Vita? Cultural context, to a degree. Topless sunbathing at public pools and “honor system” on public transit were also the norm. Shrugs. Oh, well.

 

[LostInTyme]

In Los Angeles, California, people are raiding container trains, both moving and stationary, ripping them open, throwing the contents on thee ground and absolutely shredding everything just too find something to resell or keep. The USA is quickly becoming a nation without morals. Forget an occasional glass of wine or two and polite society, these animal types will kill you for the pennies in your pocket. No honor system here of any type.