Isn't the world better off without alcohol?
On a sunny mid-July Sunday at 8:54 p.m., the clock struck eight-and-a-half. Abigail Parnas, a seventh-grader at Westlake Middle School, was walking home with her mother after seeing her grandmother. They were too busy playing on her new iPad to notice the speeding automobile. A 2018 Mercedes-Benz G-Class SUV mowed down both her and her mother. They all died at once.
Drinking two bottles of wine and then getting behind the wheel to buy a third bottle of wine was a 32-year-old woman's response to an argument with her husband. In the time it takes to say "Cheers," she had murdered them. There would be fewer violent crimes and vehicular manslaughter cases if alcohol were prohibited. And, most importantly, we'd still have Abigail.
Nearly 30 people die each day as a result of drunk-driving incidents (Wilson, 2019, p. 45). Every 48 minutes, someone new is added to this statistic. Someone will be killed by drunk driving in less time than it takes a Game of Thrones fan to watch the most recent episode of their favorite television show.
The likelihood of a high school student dropping out of school is five times greater if they begin drinking alcohol during their formative years (Perry, 2018, p. 13). As a result of the fact that alcohol has a tendency to decrease one's inhibitions, it might lead to even worse calamities, such as drug misuse and risky sexual experiences.
Drinking is a common way to mark joyous events around the world. After a long day, they want to unwind with a drink with their buddies. Wine and beer are popular libations for a variety of social occasions, including cooking, watching a movie, relaxing on the patio, having a picnic, going out to eat, and more. Isn't it up to us whether or not we drink? Is there a particular reason so many people enjoy it? Are more individuals reliant on others than they are aware of?
An estimated 17 million people in the United States are afflicted with alcoholism (Legg, 2019, p. 78). Alcoholism is a gradual condition, and not all heavy drinkers will become full-fledged alcoholics. Dependency grows in proportion to the amount of time someone relies on it both positively and negatively.
Just because certain people can't regulate their alcohol consumption, it's easy to say that everyone else shouldn't be. In other words, what would happen if the door to terrible decisions was shut? Alcohol, after all, is a highly addictive drug. What good would it do anyone to put it in their hands as a beckoning call to the grave? Alcohol has no beneficial effects on health, even for those who consume it in moderation. Participants are consuming ethanol, the same substance that is used to fuel automobiles, with each and every drink they take.
With only an hour's worth of sunlight, the 32-year-old woman went from living in luxury to serving time in prison. Unidentifiable meat at lunch and soggy potatoes at dinner are her staples. She has no visitors. In more than a decade, she hasn't seen her husband or children at all. Because she has imposed her own self-imposed quiet, prison psychiatrists are powerless to break her out of it.
Cirrhosis of the liver claimed the life of her father. He fell from the back of a pickup truck in a drunken stupor, cracked open his skull, and died before his legs hit the ground. Her father's father. As she lies in bed every day, she wonders when she will die, too. Without the influence of alcohol, she would no doubt have made lots of wrong choices, but she would not be in prison for the murders of her daughter Abigail and her devoted mother.