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I'm a graduate of the "School of Drunkenness". This is a training course from a bar in Berlin, where you get served different drinks and learn something about the history of alcohol. At the end there is a written exam. Whoever passes them will receive a testimony. I have one and I'm a bit proud of it.
As a certified drinker, I look forward to the Advent season every year. I like it, when in December decent Christmas parties are pending - or "year-end food," as my politically correct circles. In recent years, I observe more and more often that people resort to ginger tea or apple spritzer. Meanwhile, I often hear, "I have to get out tomorrow morning" or "I'm a little struck". The number of affirmative drinkers around me is decreasing. This is confirmed by the statistics: Since I live, alcohol consumption in Germany has dropped.
It was time to end the romantic transfiguration of alcohol
Somehow that bothers me. Just the Christmas time, I can imagine hard without champagne and liqueurs. For days with relatives in confined spaces, mountains of packaging waste as in the Loriot sketch - who wants to stay sober all the time? We are the people of drinkers and donors.
But my unease about the declining drinking culture is probably only because I've never really dealt with ethanol and its consequences. That changed recently when I read an essay in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. The author writes (like others before her) that it is time to stop the romantic transfiguration of alcohol. It is incomprehensible that the substance in Germany can still be consumed almost unregulated and already sold to 16-year-olds (in many countries, this is only from 18). Their conclusion: Just as with cigarettes, the consumption of alcohol must be more restricted. The respectable care breaker cause "unbelievable suffering".
Why? Drinkers are not only harmful to themselves: they cause traffic accidents and sometimes become violent, which is sometimes the responsibility of the family. It also makes alcohol sick and increases the risk of cancer. You may be wondering now: What about the studies that say a glass of wine is good for the circulation? They are apparently sponsored by the alcohol lobby and not as credible as studies that say the opposite: alcohol is harmful, from the first drop.
Since the nasty reading it rattles in my head. Secretly, of course, I already knew before that the new abstinence movement is justified. Germany lags behind in international comparison when it comes to regulating drinking. But the truth is, I do not care. At the thought of alcohol prohibition I feel like some old, white men with the stimulus word "women quota" - I do not want that, no matter how meaningful it is.
Abolish a cultural asset such as alcohol for a few comasers?
Actually, I think it's good when something changes. I could do without cigarette smoke in restaurants, I do not need an SUV in the city and domestic flights, I do not have to have meat often, and I find political correctness as progress. I like to join in when it comes to sustainability and considerate cooperation. But everything in me is reluctant to do away with a cultural asset like alcohol for a few comrades.
At the weekend I was in my old hometown of Nuremberg on the Christkindlesmarkt and had lunch at noon a mulled wine. Around me: collective drunkenness. The month of Christmas is a frenzy in Franconia. The rest of the year, too. Maybe because I'm from there, maybe because I've taken the "fit-you-on" requirement to migrants too seriously, or simply because I like it: But I felt very comfortable there.
When I read the plea against alcohol, I quickly sought a moral argument that would help me to continue my life as before. If you raise the price by taxes, for example, it just harms low earners, I thought. But is perfume and escapism really things that I want to defend as social justice? Then I thought, what has been practiced for millennia, can not be so wrong ...
For the first time I could understand what goes on in old white men when they cling to absurdities.