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David McElroy

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My teen hijinks were silly fun, not alcohol-fueled drunken groping

By David McElroy · October 1, 2018

I try to imagine a Senate committee looking into my past and trying to find problematic episodes in my teen years that would disqualify me from holding a position of public trust. What would they find?

Well, they might find out about the time that my best friend and I had to sneak a coffin — an actual used casket — out of our church basement to sneak it back into a funeral home. We had borrowed the coffin for a Halloween horror house, but I lied about already having returned it. One thing led to another until Larry and I managed to sneak the coffin out of the church basement and into the funeral home without anybody seeing us. It was like something from a bad movie.

Or they might hear about the time I was trying to find a way into our high school on a weekend and the assistant principal caught me and threatened to call the police. But I talked him into calling the principal at home so that he could give me permission to go into the school — on the pretext of getting something from the newspaper office — so we escaped unharmed. Instead of getting to call the cops on us, the fuming assistant principal had to escort us inside and let us get what we wanted.

Or it’s even possible they’d hear about me trying to stuff myself into this mailbox on a church trip to North Carolina. In fact, they might hear a lot of silly or ridiculous stories. But they wouldn’t hear a single allegation of actual misconduct such as the ones that have started dribbling out about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Why? Were we better people than he and his friends were? Not at all. I simply ran in a culture of kids who didn’t use alcohol or other recreational drugs. We were sober and immature. They were drunk and immature.

I don’t have any opinion about Kavanaugh or whether he ought to be confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court. If you understand my political philosophy, you might understand why. (I don’t want anybody in such positions, but that’s another subject for another time.)

As Republicans and Democrats argue about Kavanaugh’s past, his history of teen alcohol use — and what he might have done while drunk — have become a focal point. It’s framed in terms of sexual assault, but the truth is that it’s impossible to ever really know the truth about what happened. Not only are these clouded memories from decades later, but the bigger issue is that these stories involve teen kids who were routinely getting drunk and doing things they almost certainly don’t remember.

Do you think we would be hearing these accusations if there had been no alcohol involved? It’s theoretically possible, of course, but it seems to me that the big villain here is an American culture which treats drinking alcohol and intentionally getting drunk as a reasonable and normal part of life.

I knew people who lived like that when I was in high school and college, but I intentionally made a very different choice. I looked around and saw what alcohol did to many of the people who used it and decided that it wasn’t a smart choice. For me, it wasn’t a religious or moral issue. It was an issue of risks and culture.

The people in that Senate committee wouldn’t have dared to make alcohol use the issue last week, though, because pretty much everybody in politics — Republican or Democrat — lives in the same alcohol-fueled culture. When I worked in politics, I saw it constantly. Campaigns and party organizations were awash in booze. You were nobody if you didn’t get wasted with the rest and do things you would regret in coming days. (I knew one woman — later elected to statewide office here — who would get drunk and start taking her clothes off. Her boyfriend would constantly tell her to “cover your beaver, dear.”)

Alcohol is an accepted part of culture, simply because it always has been. The medical evidence is compelling that no amount of alcohol is safe for you to consume, but the bigger issue to me is that this drug compels people to destroy their lives and take others with them.

I know men who’ve been drunk and had sex with drunken women, wondering later whether what they did might have been rape. I know women who have been blackout drunk and become conscious to find they had been raped while they were conscious or semi-conscious. This is a routine part of the culture, whether most people want to admit it or not.

Few people will behave this way when sober. But when they’re drunk, their inhibitions are down — and people do whatever feels good in the moment.

I don’t want to use law the ban alcohol. I don’t want to use the force of law to ban any sort of recreational drug, but I wish serious and responsible people could have honest conversations about the tradeoffs involved in the use of this dangerous drug — and I wish they could see what they’re teaching their children about what it means to live a normal life.

I have no doubt that I would have done some stupid things along the way — dangerous things — if I had used alcohol. But one of the best decisions I ever made was to stay away from the stuff.

This culture would be hard to change. The evidence against alcohol is compelling, but it’s so hardwired for people to believe that alcohol equals fun. I heard a conversation a couple of weeks ago among some local teens that illustrates that.

An attractive teen girl said something about getting some alcohol and one of the boys in the group said he didn’t drink.

“And that’s why you’re no fun,” the girl said to the boy, leaving him looking embarrassed. “Anybody who wants to get with me has got to party it up.”

They left soon thereafter and I’ll never see them again, but the odds are strong that this boy is going to tell himself — at some point — that he has to start drinking alcohol if he wants to be part of that girl’s crowd. And another kid will be pulled into a life that will leave him doing things that he will almost certainly regret.

It’s your decision about whether you want to be a part of that culture or not. I don’t want to make the decision for you. But don’t pretend that there’s no choice. Just because it’s always been the path of least resistance for those around you doesn’t mean you have to choose that path for yourself.

I hope you’ll consider that maybe it’s a smarter choice to stay away from it and to teach your children why it’s a bad idea.

Some people won’t consider you “fun” anymore. And your silly stories might be less memorable. But you might live a saner and healthier life.

Alcohol is the real villain in the Kavanaugh story. Unfortunately, nobody was there to stop those kids from drinking themselves to oblivion — leaving all of them wondering years later what really happened.

Note: I’ve written before about the medical evidence against alcohol and there’s been more evidence to come out since I wrote that.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: addiction, alcohol, culture, teen culture

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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