Dangerous: (adj) full of risk, perilous

You shouldn’t call something dangerous unless you really give a shit about people.

You shouldn’t declare some activity potentially lethal just to establish some sort of superiority over your fellow-travelers.

But every once in a while, there are dangerous things—maybe better phrased, dangerous tendencies or unhealthy trends.

I feel unqualified to speak on the subject (which I feel compelled to address) mainly because I don’t want anybody to think I’m drawing a moral equivalency or being judgmental about the issue.

I don’t drink. (I’ve established that before.)

I don’t think this does anything for me except eliminate a liquor bill from my budget and spare me a few morning headaches.

Yet I must be honest and say that there’s a dangerous complicity from entertainment all the way through religion and everything in between.

We have just made it too cool to drink.

Alcohol is too common.

It seems to have morphed from being an adult beverage into an elixir for depression, stimulation for fatigue and a truth serum to get friends and neighbors to open up.

It has also become the favored confidante of young females who portray that coming home to a glass or two of wine is the ecstasy of the day.

Unfortunately, alcohol is a drug.

Alcohol has a very bad history with humans—not that dissimilar from the Nazi Party. In the case of both, alcohol and Nazis, there is a great rally that builds up a wave of confidence, leading to faltering returns and ending up with self-destruction in a bunker of solitude.

Let me tell you what is dangerous:

• Alcohol is an intoxicant. As long as it’s presented in that fashion, it is completely permissible and even acceptable.
• Alcohol is not fun—that’s dangerous.
• Alcohol is not necessary. Once again, dangerous.
• Alcohol is not a cure for anything, but rather, the symptom of many devastating sorrows. Dangerous to the fourth power.

If I felt that young men and young women were partaking of alcohol for the purpose of social interaction, I really would have no case to make.

But alcohol is the only “spirit” I see being promoted in a faithless society.

We are heading toward forty- and fifty-year-old alcoholics, who thought they were socially drinking in their twenties and thirties until the realization of getting older drove them deeper into counseling with Jack Daniels—on a horrible cruise with Captain Morgan.