It's human nature, I think, how we can all read different things into our world on SR.
I didn't join the first time I encountered SR. I saw posts about broken teeth, jail, marriages threatened by alcohol. I thought "I couldn't be that bad."
In retrospect, it's pretty clear that my addiction was calling the shots. I'm sure I was mentally cherry-picking what resonated with me as a way of avoiding doing anything about my alcoholism.
I got sober on my own about three months later. Two months after that, I was struggling mightily and decided to revisit "that" website. Turns out, I saw a lot of me in the posts I read that night.
I've reached an age where I'm sensitive about my age. Suffice to say, it takes more than five fingers to count the number of presidents elected in my lifetime. And I spent too much of my life either drinking (and more than a "normie") or transitioning to alcoholism, the latter lasting somewhere between 12 and 15 years.
And while I still feel we all have more that unites us than categorizes us, I've actually felt differently about what needs arise at certain ages as I've read the posts from the younger alcoholics among us. Those at a time in their lives when bars and parties are what young people *should* be able to enjoy. Those for whom the emphasis on alcohol in colleges, which I'm convinced is worse than ever, has resulted in addiction.
While I continue to believe we all have more in common than not, I've occasionally wished there was a thread, perhaps something similar to the Weekenders, for the young alcoholics.