When the going gets tough, the tough start drinking

I watched all I could stand of Ken Burn’s PBS “Prohibition.” A PBS special certainly that contained all the elements of a good Ken Burns documentary. Done quite well with all the quotes, voice-overs, music, sound effects, and photos. Patently Ken Burns.

However, the real issue before, during, and after Prohibition is still with us. Alcohol consumption and alcoholism. You can bury your head in the sand about this issue but it’s still with us and seems to be getting worse. I will have to admit the era in history known as Prohibition was obviously not needed and created more problems than it solved. Possibly making things worse.

Nonetheless, what to do about alcohol? It is everywhere and affects many of us. Teen alcohol binge drinking is real. Real as car crashes killing teens due to teen drinking. A horrible fact if you are a parent or grandparent or just a friend of the teen victim.

It needless to mention how alcohol has affected many families, marriages, employees, servicemember, truck drivers, train engineers, airline pilots, doctors, pastors, teachers, and the list is horrifically endless. Alcoholism has left social devastations and broken hearts in its long wake. Seemingly never to be stopped.

The Ken Burns PBS special may be historic and interesting but does not solve the problem of alcoholism. Mostly because we Americans are not educated enough on the subject. Laws and prohibition don’t seem to do the trick. Legislating drinking age or where and how it is sold is not enough to solve the problem.
Churches and schools are not involved, as they should. It almost seems that almost all social institutions have missed the boat on solving this huge social dilemma. And the problem is made worse by the glorification of drugs and drinking at the movies, on TV, music, and even in what we read in books and on our text readers.

So, what’s the answer? I don’t know.

Maybe we should ask ourselves, why do we need to get stoned? Why do we need to get High? Why do we need to get a good buzz? Why do we need to escape reality with alcohol? Somewhere in there lay the answer.