TresSugar

Flashback: Rehab, 1929

TresSugar — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 01:00:00 -0800

For $2, you too could have rid yourself of that pesky moonshine and opium problem, or "no pay." Maybe it's just the nostalgia, but this makes me want a moonshine and opium problem!

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Cheers? 1 in 20 Women Never Have Had Sex Sober

TresSugar — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 07:00:00 -0700

About 64 percent of TrèsSugar readers say they worry about how they look during sex. Apparently similar concerns are driving women to drink before they hop in the sack.

A new UK survey reveals that one in 20 women never have had sex while they were sober due to insecurities about their bodies.

Some other stats (which range from obvious to eye-opening):

75 percent of the women said it's easier to go wild after a couple of drinks.
40 percent of the women said they were always tipsy when they slept with someone for the first time.
Almost 50 percent said they enjoy sex better after a few drinks.
14 percent of women in relationships said they cannot sleep with their partner unless they've had a couple drinks.

Do you think alcohol and sex go hand in hand?

Britain to Impose Booze-Ban on "Antisocial" Drunks

TresSugar — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 10:00:00 -0700

Starting today, anyone who behaves "antisocially" while drunk can be banned from pubs, bars, and other public places in England and Wales for up to two years.

Many people in Britain believe that drastic policing like this must be used to change the culture of heavy drinking. But not everyone is on board with the latest crackdowns - or booze antisocial behavior orders (ASBO). One civil liberties activist says:

It will be jelly bean ASBO for sugared-up kids next. Surely it's time to call last orders on endless new legislation.

While this is the first time antisocial behavior orders will be handed out for public drunks, British courts have been using them to curb other bad behavior for some time now. So what else counts as anti-social behavior in the UK? Earlier this month, a man was given an animal ASBO after bees from his hives repeatedly stung the neighbors. The beekeeper was ordered to move his hives. And a magistrate judge gave another Brit an ASBO for throwing shopping carts outside a supermarket two or three times per week. The ASBO makes it criminal for the man to throw shopping carts going forward. That sounds about right.

Do you think this sort of targeted justice is the best way to solve societal problems like excessive alcohol consumption? Will telling a drunk that he can't go to pubs and bars for a couple of years change anything?

30 Percent Increase in Women Getting DUIs

TresSugar — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:00:00 -0700

Although men still outnumber women in drunk driving arrests by four to one, a report by the FBI for the National Highway Traffic Safety Commission shows that in the decade ending 2007, there has been a 30 percent increase in women getting arrested for driving while intoxicated.

Are women under more pressure for being the sole breadwinner in a he-cession? Are television shows encouraging them to drink more? Does motherhood drive them to drink? Maybe we'll see more PSAs about women and drinking, especially after the horrific accident recently in which a woman who was found later to have been drunk, drove her minivan the wrong way down a freeway, crashing into an SUV and killing eight people.

Laura Dean-Moody, president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving and a widow because a drunk driver killed her husband in 1991, thinks there should be stricter enforcement of drunk driving laws. More than 2 million drivers who have multiple DUI convictions will be on the road this upcoming Labor Day weekend. Moody doesn't think they should be able to keep their licenses: "These are people who have proven not once, not twice but three times that they are not worthy of the public's trust when it comes to operating a vehicle."

Should people with multiple DUI convictions lose their driver's licenses? Why do you think there's an increase in women and DUIs?

Marijuana vs. Booze: Between Pot and a Hard Place

TresSugar — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 04:00:34 -0700

When Michael Phelps partied at the University of South Carolina last November, he was reportedly slamming beers and acting obnoxious. But it was smoking marijuana out of a bong that got him suspended from swimming and dropped by sponsors. In the forthcoming book Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?, authors Steve Fox, Paul Armentano, and Mason Tvert wonder if our country has it all backwards.

You can read an excerpt from the book, which comes out in September, on Alternet. In it, the authors point out that the Phelps bong photos hit the web on Super Bowl Sunday, as millions of Americans were drinking beers and watching beer commercials on TV - activities that are expected and encouraged.

Marijuana Is Safer looks at the laws governing both substances and attempts to shatter many of the myths associated with marijuana use. When you consider alcoholism and drunk driving, not to mention revenue that legalizing marijuana could bring, do you think our country has it backwards? Which substance do you think is safer?

Have Cafe Novelists Replaced Boozin' Writers?

TresSugar — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 08:30:07 -0700

In the past, the writer's life was often a lush life. Many great American novelists - including Ernest Hemingway and John Cheever - were notorious drunks. In fact, according to an article by Tom Shone in the new issue of More Intelligent Life, five of America's seven Nobel literary laureates were alcoholics:

In America William Faulkner and Scott Fitzgerald were the Paris and Britney of their day, caught in the funhouse mirror of fame, their careers a vivid tabloid mash-up of hospitalizations and electroshock therapies.

Rehab wasn't something people did back in the '30s. Neither was recovery-centric memoir writing. When F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a story for Esquire chronicling his struggles, Hemingway told him to cast his "balls into the sea-if you have any balls left."

Ever since rehab went mainstream in the 1960s, Shone observes, the boozing writer stereotype is less typical. Both Cheever and Raymond Carver came out of rehab and kept writing; Stephen King got sober after an intervention. So where have all the overindulgent writers gone?

Ewww! Anti-Drinking PSA Works Hard to Gross Us Out

TresSugar — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:00:00 -0700

This Belgian anti-drinking PSA tells young people not to delude themselves into thinking that drinking too much is going to give them the night of their lives. Warning: it's gross. Don't say I didn't warn you!

Nothing Goes Together Better Than Guns and Alcohol

TresSugar — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 06:00:00 -0700

As of yesterday, patrons of alcohol serving establishments in Arizona and Tennessee can exercise their second amendment rights while downing a cold one. How . . . American.

The new laws allowing registered gun owners to carry concealed guns into bars and restaurants that serve alcohol are part of a trend of loosened gun control laws. Ironically, right after the election last November, gun shop owners reported record sales, suspecting that customers feared that a Democratic federal government could curtail the right to bear arms.

Complaints by Arizona and Tennessee's business owners that the new law would hurt business went unaddressed. (Hurt how you ask? You know, when "1 or 2% of would-be Dirty Harrys," as one restaurant owner plaintiff put it, decided to mete out vigilante justice.) As for critics who point to recent public shootings, proponents of the new laws say that the violence shows the need for private citizens to protect themselves with firearms.

Wasted Women Frowned Upon More Than Messed Up Men

TresSugar — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:00:00 -0700

Breastfeeding moms looking to avoid jail time might want to switch their kids to bottles if they're hitting the bottle themselves. A mother in North Dakota was arrested recently for breastfeeding while intoxicated. Police said that they could have arrested the drunk mother for endangering her child even if she wasn't breastfeeding, but is it really fair to arrest a mom for being drunk? Perhaps there's something more going on here.

A visibly drunk woman seems to violate deep-seated expectations of how a "lady" should be well-behaved, fragile, or conventionally maternal. For example, the insatiable fascination with misbehaving starlets and their clubbing antics isn't extended to their male counterparts.

Do you think you judge drunk women more harshly than men who overindulge in alcohol?

Source: Flickr User nyki_m

That's One Hearty Soup

TresSugar — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:06:41 -0700

I guess this is what they mean by "liquid lunch."

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