wpainterw

Sorry about tormenting you all with another thread. I don't want my endless weaving of threads to sew discord. (Pardon the pun!)
Alcoholism is not a joke. It used to be back when I was a kid. Those were the days of W.C. Fields ("Who's been putting lemonade in my 'lemonade'?"). Drunks were comedians. Fields went around kicking his nemesis, "Baby Leroy" (I could identify with some of that, at times disliking Shirley Temple (excessively "cute") and her English counterpart Freddy Bartholomew (self righteous spoiled brat, although he did come around in the end when he got Spencer Tracy as his Higher Power in "Captains Courageous").
But the alcoholic comic tradition continued on even to more recent times, what with Dudley Moore in "Arthur", whose Higher Power was his butler, John Gielgud.
In my youth, Alcoholics were thus because they had been "bad". If they would only pray to God, repent, they would be forgiven and would have their sins removed. Then they could drink like "gentlemen" (women were not supposed to be alcoholic but they were sometimes known to sample the sherry in the kitchen pantry). One hoped that alcoholic members of the clergy were not the Higher Power of parishioners unless they had some sobriety.
It's no joke. Yet again, I did identify with W.C. Fields' alcoholic paranoia, particularly his paranoia about inanimate objects, such as in "The Golf Specialist", where he tries to demonstrate golf while getting his club all tangled up in newspapers made even more challenging by slices of apple pie. Also one of my favorite movies, "The Dentist". Mustn't focus on that. I'm due at the dentist tomorrow. He won't give me laughing gas unfortunately.

W

Tonymblue

I agree. I hate how alcoholism is portrayed. "just pathetic people that like to live like that." trust me i dont. I am a good person, like the rest of you. I just have a disability.

OklaBH

no...its not funny at all.

Steve123123

I wholeheartedly agree. I wish everyone could sincerely respect each other's difficulties, even if they don't fully understand them. Someone could easily come along with some brand new disability and I feel like many people would embrace a social propensity to call it a "tick", "insignificant", etc.

wpainterw

P.S. Also, when I was young (back in the 1930's!) they had a song about a fellow who, Prodigal Son style, was a drunk and ended up sleeping in the pigpen. The pigs got up and walked out to avoid him: It went like this:

"You can tell a man who boozes
By the company he chooses!
(But the pig got up and
Slowly walked away)
Yes the pig got up
And slowly walked away (hic!}
HE SLOWLY WALKED AWAY!"

MythOfSisyphus

I think there's a much better awareness, generally, of alcohol abuse nowadays vs decades ago. When I was young (70's and 80's) a DUI/DWI was still basically a joke, something few took seriously. And when my dad was young if you got pulled over driving drunk as a skunk the cops told you to "go straight home"! It wasn't even illegal until, what, the late 50's? Early 60's?

Tang

W.C. Fields makes me sad. People still quote him in context of being "the funny drunk.". I actually had a famous quote app on my phone and his quotes about his love of drinking would come up frequently. It saddens me people still hold him up as the funny drunk instead of a serious alcoholic.

paloverde

I remember my grandmother, who passed away decades ago, hated drinking. She called anyone who drank a "rummy". "He's nothing but a worthless rummy!" Anyone who drank at all was a rummy. Guess she had her reasons.

DoPerdition

I think there has been a real change in how alcoholism is portrayed in movies. Flight (with Denzel Washington) was very well done I thought. Although he had a terrible problem, he was still very good at his job and still a good person at heart. I also thought Leaving Las Vegas (with Nicholas Cage) was a more accurate portrayal of the consequences of alcoholism. I like them both because they both show good men who are very sick, aware of their disease and both show the powerlessness that happens when you are deep in the throes of end-stage alcoholism.

Stephen King also struggled with alcoholism as a young man and what he has to say about it is very interesting. He considered himself a "fun drunk" but talks about how the alcohol gave him dark thoughts and eventually led to a period of writer's block. I've always been inspired b King's honesty with his struggles. His addiction issues are one thing he admits that he has never had the courage to write about yet. I think that says a lot about the truth behind alcoholism.