Getagrip

Morning all :-)

This has nothing to do with being sober but i am just curious,

I was thinking about why i think my drinking is so much worse than it used to be and 1 conclusion is the way that most supermarkets and shops are 24 hour these days, whereas before if i ran out on a binge i would have to stop, now its go get more and carry on no matter if its 3 in the morning.

I see a lot of you are from america and just wondered if your shops had always been 24hr or is it a newish thing too?

Also is it 21 you are legal to drink from? We are 18 here in the uk, which i now think is a bit young

Bit random, but random questions in my head :-)

TroyW

Ohhh, come on, what kind of alcoholic are you? You're supposed to know every store that sells alcohol within a 10km radius, operating hours, employee shift schedules, and more. This lets you plan your binges out properly.

Sorry, little too much caffeine today I guess, and just joking. But yeah, you may be onto something there. Then again, there is the argument that having alcohol openly available to you from an early age may decrease your chances of alcohol abuse as an adult (assuming the adults you're around aren't abusing it). Everyone wants what they can't have, right?

Who knows. I know it never made much difference to me what country I was in.

Rio97

Many 24 hour stores in my area, I've made many late night beer runs. I don't remember exactly when that became so common, seems like since I can remember. You can buy till 2am here, but that varies by state.

I'm in the states, 21 legal drinking age pretty much everywhere. I've always thought if you can fight for your country, you should be able to have a drink. But I guess with rampant alcohol problems, I may have to rethink that.

FarToGo

Hi there from fellow UKer.
We also have extended pub hours now, no longer a 10.30pm last orders.
BUT, growing up in the 70's there was always a drinks cabinet full of spirits and all sorts in our house, all never used and gathering dust for years.
I'm not sure it's all down to availability and marketing, but can't help either can it?
Drinking in a public place (park, walking along on the pavement ect...) became illegal in some cities the last few years.
Dunno............... interesting though.

Getagrip

All very good points

Im not blaming the country for my actions by the way but i also think the smoking ban forced people to drink more at home too

I know with my crowd, friday or saturday nights were going to pubs, but then with the ban we starting drinking in the house 1st then going to the pub, then that turned into forget the pub, lets just get smashed in the house, can get more for your money and can smoke when i like

mecanix

My drinking got worse because i'm an alcoholic .
If alcohol wasn't available for a period of time i'd get a stock in , buy a case of wine , a "french 5 euro barrel" or one of those cardboard cartons .

The blame , the cause always laid within me , trying to alter or forget how i felt by using substances .
In a way i am the result of my culture so it helped construct who i am .

For me the conjecture or hypothesis was of no use in getting sober , i found there was no magic answer after which it all made sense .

Life is better with sobriety tucked under my arm and by living in the day not worrying over a future that hasn't happened or trying to reanimate and wring the truth out of the corpse of a past gone by .

keep on

m

Dee74

There's no alcohol in supermarkets or what you would call gas stations here and liquor stores (bottlos) were open from 10-8pm most days, 10-6 Sundays.

I always managed to have enough to drink tho.

Never underestimate the resourcefulness and forward planning skills of an active alcoholic.

D

saoutchik

Another Brit here.

I have to agree with what most people have said viz-a-viz availability of booze. I can remember the time before the licensing laws were changed - it just meant you couldn't drink in bars or pubs really.

I am curious as to the thinking behind the legal drinking age limit being raised to 21 in the States. It seems (at least to my way of thinking) designed to invite criminality amoung your young people. Presumably it was put through on the back of those people who think there are easy law enforcement based answers to everything instead of the long term but more effective approach of information and education

Telling a 20 year year old woman she is not responsible enough to buy a glass of wine does not seem designed to inspire respect for the law especially given the easy availability of other intoxicants ( not to mention things like firearms)

Getagrip

All very true, i was just thinking out loud really, my brain does wonder sometimes lol

Have a good day all :-)

Jake1961

History of why the drinking age in the U.S. is 21. Short version, law passed in 1984 that reduced federal highway funding by 10% if a state did not change the laws about selling alcohol. Why is the Drinking Age 21? | Mental Floss 21.

As to hours, in my state retail alcohol sales stop at 9PM or 5PM on Sundays. When Sunday sales started I changed my drinking planning and no longer had to worry about running out on a Saturday night. I have found better use of the time and energy that used to go to planning alcohol purchases.

Nonsensical

In the US, liquor selling is controlled by the individual states, so it varies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoho..._United_States

2WheelsGood

This. When I lived in Illnois you could buy vodka at Dominicks (supergrocer) at 2AM on a Thurday. In neighboring Indiana it was only at state run stores and never on Sunday. Here in Ohio it's beer and wine everywhere (we have drive-thrus!), but distilled spirits only at state stores after noon on Sunday. In Utah it's only 4.0 beer or less on tap, liquor only at state stores that close at 8PM, etc. Even Utah is changing.

But yeah, we do have a 24/7 mentality in the US. It started in the early 1990s. I blame the Evil Empire, WalMart.

LBrain

where I live you can only by booze i a state run store with very strict hours, beer can only be bought at a beer distributor or some bars.

it was only the past year or so they allowed beer sales on Sunday. Liquor stores I think started opening on Sunday too, maybe. Or just special days like the superbowl or something.

We had no 24 hour way to get drink.Somehow we managed to still get drunk.

bookmaven

My state: no alcohol sales after 9 pm. Except there are a few gas stations that sell beer as late as midnight. I'm not sure why that is because most places stop at 9.

But it doesn't seem to really matter. There's a bar or tavern always nearby, lots of them right next to each other.

What else would you expect for the home of the Brewers MLB team?

nyala

Get your poison by 7pm latest or go thirsty. Oh, and absolutely no alcohol sold anywhere on a Sunday here

Except the odd trendy deli or sparsely located private supermarket with an inexplicable exception to this rule.

Of course, I like every other alcoholic, knew exactly where they all were and planned my Sunday journeys as necessary.

bookmaven

Bernie Brewer, team mascot for the Milwaukee Brewers, used to slide down into a big giant mug of "beer" after home runs. Now he just goes on the slide and dances around.

Venecia

Good question.

As others have noted, my individual alcoholism meant that I had a tendency to plan around the limitations placed on access to alcohol to make sure I had it. Not always, though, which meant that living in a state with comparatively tighter laws governing sales occasionally kept me involuntarily sober. Sad, huh?

How this impacts us as individuals does have the cumulative affect of defining us collectively. In recovery -- and I'm a week away from my two-year anniversary -- I've grown more interested in the societal outcomes of public policy on alcohol. Much of my work life has been intertwined with pubic policy so I'm a bit of a geek along those lines.

I grew up in Wisconsin, a state renowned for its "drinking culture." Home of the Brewers, as Bookmaven notes, and the Green Bay Packers, our NFL team that, football lovers will tell you, is America's team. Beloved. Here's a good anecdote. While still in my home state, the city council in the place I lived then debated allowing liquor to be sold -- and it can be purchased in many retail settings -- earlier on Sunday mornings. The city councilman sponsoring the earlier hours premised his local legislation on the fact that -- and I'm not making this up -- that it was really hard to get to the store in time to pick up booze after church in time to make it home for the opening of the Green Bay Packers' games. Yes, by invoking God, the Packers and beer, the measure was passed easily.

Individual states here in the U.S. have legislatures, which are bestowed with significant to power to enact their own laws. This often results in a crazy quilt of laws from state to state, which stand unless the U.S. Supreme Court determines that the state has exceeded the boundaries established by the U.S. Constitution and as interpreted by existing precedent.

The Court also can hold that the federal powers given the U.S. Congress -- ones that compellingly represent the nation's populace, regardless of the state where they live -- can supersede a state's whims. This is why, as Jake correctly noted above in 1984, federal highway funding for states would be cut 10 percent for states that didn't increase the drinking age -- an interesting chapter, considering the administration at the time invoked "state's rights" regularly, but that's a different story.

Wisconsin had to be dragged kicking and screaming into raising the drinking age (first to 19, eventually to 21). If I remember correctly, it was the last state to give in to raising the drinking age.

On a state level, liquor interests -- most notably the tavern owners lobby, but including others, too -- wields immense power. At least back in the day when I spent a lot of time at the state Capitol, the liquor lobby was known as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the four interests forceful enough to successfully kill, or champion, legislation they either opposed or wanted codified into law. As Jake correctly notes above,

Conversely, I now live in Minnesota, a state with fairly restrictive laws governing access to alcohol. It can only be sold Monday through Saturday in liquor stores, though legislation enacted during the last session expanded that some by permitting sale of "growlers" from microbreweries sprouting up everywhere. Efforts to create Sunday sales failed in the last legislative session for a variety of reasons, none of which had anything to do with public policy regarding alcohol. There was one lone voice in the Legislature asking why we're not talking about alcohol; he earned my unwavering respect that day. We've certainly had that evolving debate about smoking. The difference, of course, is that there's really no such thing as a moderate smoker so that's one reason, I think, there's been insufficient will to examine alcohol and public policy. After all, most people can drink a couple, no problem.

Alcoholism is, of course, an individual struggle. We don't talk much about its role with regard to health care, public safety, its impact on education, the judiciary (courts), prisons and much more. In my state, though we restrict alcohol access fairly well, we've shown little interest in funding treatment. There have been some good innovations in the courts with regard to veterans and addiction, though.

I shared some of this in an earlier post, linking to an investigative series in Wisconsin's largest newspaper about the state's "drinking culture." It's interesting stuff. When you start looking at the numbers and the human toll, it gets you thinking.

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...one-state.html

One of the things I love about SR is that we're truly international. We've had some observations already on this thread. For others, what is the culture like in other countries? What are alcohol laws where you live, global friends?

Rio97

Interesting post, Venecia. A lot of good info there.

benice

Nice stuff Venecia.

Here you can buy alcohol 24/7. What I find must annoying is that you have to walk through the wine section of the grocery store before you get to the groceries!

The drinking age of 21 does indeed create a culture of knowingly circumventing the law. College administrators face tremendous battles.

saoutchik

Thank you Jake, Nonsensical and Venetia for those links, it was interesting to read about the evolution of drinking laws with regard to age.

It seems strange to write this but we probably have a less restrictive environment now in the UK than in the US - I live in London and it is basically available 24/7, which has not, historically been the case.

Ironically, in part due to the increase in the numbers of people who are prohibited from drinking alcohol by their religion, alcohol consumption has been falling in London for about 10 years and has just started to fall amoung young people in the rest of the country. Hopefully it will continue

As for smoking it is almost impossible to smoke in a public place now (as an ex smoker I notice that we tend to be the least tolerant of other people smoking)