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Sample Student
Essay—Cause-Effect—Viewpoints essay “Binge Drinking is a Normal
Impulse”
“I bet you can’t
have just one”
If
you found yourself walking the streets of Britain amidst friends at midnight
and wanted to grab a pint of beer at a local pub you would be unable to do
so. Before 2005, Britain’s pubs closed
down at 11 P.M. sharp. A national
debate arose when New Labour’s regime, a left democratic socialist party,
proposed the liberation of pub hours while suggesting a policy that allowed
for 24-hour drinking. Britain’s
judges, police, politicians, and other influential groups balked at the
policy fearing binge drinking would increase. In Jennie Bristow’s essay “Binge
drinking is a normal impulse” she asks the question, so what? “An occasional binge, however, is a good
way for people to their inhibitions and escape – for a short time—from their
everyday lives” (263). Bristow feels
the occasional drinking binge is normal and even harmless for people in
today’s society. In her argument she
brings up the point “For all the government’s dire warnings about the rising
rates of liver cirrhosis and general alcohol-related health calamities, we
should remember. . . we are living
longer and healthier lives than ever before” (263). While I sometimes agree, appreciate and
even admire the honesty of her opinion, I don’t believe she is entirely
correct. I think we are living longer
and heather lives, not because alcohol is harmless, but simply because of the
technological advancement and increased accessibility to health care. I also think her stance that binge drinking
is a normal and harmless activity is due to overconfidence in the
intelligence and self-control possessed by the average person and undermines
the significance and consequences of alcoholism.
Why do people
drink? “Not because they think that wine goes better with dinner than Rinena {a British fruit drink}; not because they want to
relax a little after a hard day’s white collar work; not because they believe
the studies about a glass of red being good for their hearts. . . but because they want to get off the plane of existence
that is normal, humdrum, everyday life, and into that parallel universe of inebriation”
(264). This is not a new concept.
Research suggest Mayans often took hallucinogenic mushrooms before creating
artistic paintings, the Egyptians were quite fond of the nicotine and coco
plant while writing hieroglyphs, the
ancient Chinese were among the first civilization not only to culture but to
also admire the effects of cannabis and it’s no secret the Greeks regarded
wine a sacred substance considered an everyday necessity. Life is a mysteriously dark adventure,
sometimes so unbearably beautiful our minds find it unable to comprehend and
therefore we find a way to dull this unfathomable existence of ours. All cultures have historically sought and
used substances to escape or to further explore this profound experience of
being alive on earth.
Unfortunately it
is in our time, our current society where the words “addiction” and “abuse”
are associated with drug use. It’s not
hard to understand why alcohol is today’s drug of choice. And make no mistake, alcohol is a drug.
Maybe even the smoothest, devilishly, see through poison there is that’s
attributed to stoke, heart disease, liver cancer, dementia, memory loss, and
even brain shrinkage when abused.
Unfortunately what makes alcohol now more appealing than the others
today is it is legal. The Webster
dictionary defines legal as In conformity with or
permitted by law. A person can drink
alcohol without suffering the legal consequences or shame. Healthcare professionals, educators,
politicians and parents alike can partake in the much needed inebriation, yet
abiding by all the rules of society, still consciously or unconsciously
portray a role-model existence. I guarantee at this moment there is a
population of previous disco dancers, who are now lucrative lawyers, snorting
lines of cocaine and writing briefs while listening to “Can’t you hear me
knocking” by the Rolling Stones. There are many reformed hippies, now
responsible educated English teachers, who are smoking a joint and listening
to “Listen to the Music” by the Doobie Brothers in
the comforts of their backyards. But unfortunately today the even safer bet
to escape the absurdity of everyday life is to just pour a little booze on
the rocks. Drug tests need not apply.
Alcohol leaves your system faster than any other drug and if pulled over with
a fifth a Seagram’s still in a brown sack, you are free to go. You can sit on
the couch and watch T.V. nursing your third scotch on the rocks and when a
disturbing meth public announcement comes on say to yourself “wow those
people are messed up.” Life is not easy and even
those who possess the envied genes which are incapable of addiction, may
crave an alcoholic beverage after a boring yet ironically entertaining 3 hour
experience at the D.M.V. Some people
drink, some people do drugs and some people eat but we all have some way in
which we escape our little worlds but for Bristow to say these little binders
are harmless was a mistake.
I respect
Bristow’s viewpoint that since alcohol is legal then the government shouldn’t
be able to someone when and how much they can drink; however, I believe she made the
mistake of not once acknowledging the harmful effects of alcohol. “For the rest of us, for whom the odd
bender is not a political statement but a welcome fact of life, we should
resist the temptation to buy into the cult of ‘responsible drinking’ and
remember what we are doing in the pub in the first place” (265) In this
sentence Bristow is speaking for the small population whom rarely get drunk,
and therefore tells them its ok to not buy into the
responsible drinking all the time. But
does she really know the effects these people may face? The consequences could be marital problems,
DUI’s, domestic abuse, or maybe even closet addiction these people may
experience. Has she herself experienced any negative effects of alcohol first
hand? She makes the mistake of
assuming most people have the self-control to manage occasional binders--that all people were born with perfect brains capable of
resisting addiction and are equipped with the tools to, after a long night of
drinking, carry on as sober responsible adults. This is not the case for many people and
many people’s families.
Bristow contends
that “what we . . . have is a society in which sometimes, and for a variety
of reason, people like to get drunk” (264). While many families today are
plagued with severe drug addiction, such as meth, and experience the horrific
consequences of abuse, poverty, dissociation, and regret. I myself was lucky enough to be born into
a family of seemingly intelligent, caring, hardworking, prosperous,
functional alcoholics. Stemming from
my great grandparents, both sets of my grandparent, as well as my parents,
have the claws of alcoholism deeply embedded in them. In my family the use of alcohol equates to
a fun and carefree lifestyle that you are fully expected to participate in
yet you are also assumed to be a maintaining, law abiding, and productive
member of society. All negative
experiences and memories associated with alcohol are not to be discussed and
are to be swept under the rug. As I am the only child, I have no benchmarks
in which to judge my success or failure regarding my own personal love affair
with alcohol.
I received an
MIP a “minor in possession of alcohol” ticket when I was twenty and the police
called my mom who worked for the police department to come pick me up;
perfect. As she hypocritically scolded me the whole way home, I realized she
was not worried about her only daughter’s alcohol consumption or abuse she
may well have contributed to. She was
only worried about her reputation and how it might affect her as a member of
society and employee of the Coeur d’ Alene Police
Department. Five years later I received a much more serious DUI “driving
under the influence” citation. My
mother found out by seeing my mug shot posted up on the wall the next morning
at work among the other drunk drivers the night before; perfect. She refused
to talk to me for days and then finally showed up at my house with the police
report and a few attorneys’ phone numbers. I wasn’t the first in my family to
receive this citation and as always the causes are not to be discussed but
the consequences minimized, dealt with and forgotten about. It was chalked up
to I’m young, young people make mistakes, it’s normal behavior and it was
never mentioned in my family that I might have a little bit of problem. Never
underestimate the power of denial. I accept the cause and often excitedly
participate in lapses of inebriation, but I know all too well the effects of
“occasional binge drinking” and let me tell you, it is anything but harmless.
Thankfully I was
never physically or sexually abused as many like me raised in an alcoholic
environment probably have been; I do however know firsthand the bone crushing
anxiety as well as the emotional abuse that accompanies being a child raised
by an adult who sufferers from alcoholism. I have seen up close the severe
personality changes associated with alcohol. Parents can be responsible
loving adults most the time but at any moment can become a child
themselves. Both of my parents drink
almost a half case of beer a night. My dad will sometimes drink even
more. I was raised by him without my
mom around. I remember being in the fourth grade and having to learn how to
drive a stick shift because my dad was too drunk to be able to do so. I remember him passing out on the couch and
somehow, understanding the importance of him showing up at work in the
morning, bringing his alarm clock from his bedroom to reset the time on the
coffee table by his head. I was in the fourth grade. I was far too young and
should have been mentally incapable to experience the anxiety and stress I
did, but I did and I did it alone. “What is it about getting drunk that
today’s society finds so hard to handle? It isn’t as though we live in a
nation of feckless alcoholics, too sodden to pour themselves out of bed and
into work in the morning (263). I know
by Bristow’s words she has never personally experienced the negative effects
of alcohol as a young girl. I did. This conjoined affair my parents have with
alcohol, while neither one to this day would ever admit it, led to my
parents’ divorce. I refer to it as an “affair” because they both love alcohol
more than they loved each other; they love it more than they love themselves,
and as much as I hate to say it, sometimes love it more than they love
me. I am an only sometimes lonely
product of this love and while my conclusion is conflicting and unknown, it
is most importantly unresolved.
Personally my favorite definition of
“unresolved “is: If a problem or difficulty is unresolved, no satisfactory solution or
conclusion has been found to it. I believe
this definition expresses hope and leaves the opportunity for a solution to
be found. From reading Jennie Bristow’s
essay I find myself left with three complete conflicting thoughts. One, let us entertain our civil liberties
as individuals and exercise our right to eat, drink and be merry. Two, this
woman is completely ignorant in her ramblings of alcohol abuse, and while
condescendingly yet wittingly remarks about mild drunkenness, has never seen
the full eclipse of its darkness. “So
let’s leave the official preoccupations with when we drink, how much we drink
and why we drink to the medics, judges, politicians and policemen, and carry
on drinking as we choose” (265).
Amen lady. But third, if it wasn’t for the politicians, policemen and
judges, who would care to control or investigate the effects and consequences
of alcohol abuse? While I continue to rebel against them, I find myself more
and more respecting this New Labour’s Regime for
their passion and optimistic strive to develop a society in which no
inebriation is needed. In another life I imagine myself a Greek goddess
wearing only the finest deep green silk dress and holding a goblet of perfect
red in my attractive arm exuberantly decorating thick gold bracelets as I quietly and gracefully dangle my perfectly delicate feet
into the finest bath. I could have
been a beautiful Egyptian woman gazing admiringly at the outstanding
hallucinogenic colors of an Egyptian sunset
but in contrast to the pale sand continue to be even more captivated
still by my husband’s handsome ability to draw and forecast the tide of the moon.
Since I was born to be neither of these girls, I guess I’ll just play
is safe and continue to maintain my sullen sanity or insanity by occasionally
pouring a little booze on the rocks.
Bristow, Jennie “Binge Drinking Is A Normal Impulse.” Viewpoints.
Ed. W. Royce Adams, 7th ed. Boston, Wadsworth, 2010. (262-65)
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