Zygoteville

Although some mystical dude in robes turns it into blood, first. :)

Besides that, a good Guinness or hefeweizen or two, or three, or four... does a body good after a good long week of battling blue screens and bombs!

It seems that alcoholic consumption is firmly embedded in human social interactions, for better or for worse. I mean, you gotta have your champagne for New Year's, your mysterious 60% alcohol content Chinese wine for the Lunar New Year, Guinness for St. Patty's Day, your choice of Mexican beverages for Cinco De Mayo, and so on and so on. We Americans'll take any and every opportunity to make up some excuse to get piss drunk and crazy.

I admit, I join in on the fun, too, but you gotta wonder just what it is about alcohol abuse, if not alcoholism, that makes it so attractive to our over-worked, over-productive, vacation-deprived souls.

Oh, wait... :)

mmm, not quite a daily staple yet, but we're getting close. i've become quite the lush since moving to NC. it's not heavy drunk-ass drinking the way it was in college though, at least not usually. (the evidence is that for all my casual weekday drinking, my tolerance level has barely budged - still a 2 beer party.) and it IS a little party every time i drink ... it makes everything a little more fun. sad, in a way, but it really is fun. :::shrug:::
i think andrew's comment about over-worked, vacation-deprived souls has a lot to do with the casual drinking that adults seem so prone to....we're doing the same bloody thing every day. the young professional life turns you into a creature of habit...not much happens day in or day out that's all THAT surprising. now, daily habits and rhythms certainly have their charms, but i think the part of me that's bored by professional adult life finds more sources of randomness and excitement when drunk.
shit, is that bad? it sounds kinda bad, huh. crap.

llllllllllllllllllllhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb

ah, liquid gold. alcohol plays a significant role in my life. reasonable consumption (i.e. nay blackout) can provide for some memorable bonding between friends quickly break down the social inhibitions between strangers. there are plenty of people who don't drink and even those who frown upon it, but a great deal of interaction occurs with it. i do agree that overworked people may use alcohol as a coping mechanism, which is not so good. but just like everything in life, too much of a good thing is not so good. i will say that americans tend to lag behind many countries in per capita consumption...people will often say that we are better at binge drinking. i think this is more semantics than anything else, since if you are british and drink 6 pints a night, continuous binging is the baseline...a whole nation of high-functioning borderline substance abusers...so as a whole, we tend to unwind a lot less with booze, which probably explains why we make so much money but have no time to spend it at the pub.

hi Emy
hao are you ?i saw you daily what happen to you and Billie ?can you tell me something ?

jesse

Purely a social beverage here. I rarely find that I drink alcohol on my own, unless I decided to try a white wine on a whim. I mainly like things that are sweeter, and not too dry, like rheinhessens, rieslings, and port.

But though I don't drink much, I eventually had to know, at the very least, what to order for people. As a guy, it's terribly easy to drop $100 on drinks in one night buying rounds. And it does no one any good if you order cosmos for guys and straight up vodka for girls, so it helps to know which is what.

My drinking habits are minimal at best. I tend to drink water or juice, mostly for thirst or taste, rather than health. But I did notice that I drank a hell of a lot more beer in Germany since it was cheaper than water.

funny you should ask this question because I just got back from Spain... Where I drank more than I have my entire life. ! I had to. I was told I simply could not drink orange juice with tapas. looks of horror on people's faces when i tried. if i did, they would serve me a teeny bottle of fizzy colored water. um, hello, that's not juice. so i figured i'd get more juice from that sangria, yah know what i mean?

another tip when you're in spain: if you want to be socially acceptable but not get wasted (as I do on one glass of wine) you can get these great things called tinto de verano. it's wine with soda! nice and sweet and yet alcoholic! also, the same thing but with beer is called a clara.

now that i'm stateside, i've gone back to my teetotaling, nonpork eating ways (oh, did i mention i also transgressed in the jamon and chorizo department? ...)

the greatest feat i have accomplished in my life is getting drunk on the local brew of eight different countries, in those respective countries. yes, the greatest feat. i say that in all honesty and without shame.

Without alcohol, life would be a mistake. People who drink wine with soda should not drink at all. So uncouth. Also, Amy is a nerd.

http://www.thebrickskeller.com/

If you found any of those 8 brews to be particularly tasty, you'll probably find it there. :)

I need to get back to DC sometime soon... gaw!

hi, my name is chris, and i'm an alcoholic

I've met an Asian German that drinks beer with coke.

Not liquid gold - liquid courage.

I've approached friends with brutal honesty, potential significant others with unabated assertiveness -- it's amazing how many moments I have used alcohol to get neighborly with people. Although sometimes that leads to awkwardness the next day...

Alcohol, since it flows freely from EVERYTHING in New Orleans, might be a daily staple for me. Unfortunately. And it quickly becomes a force of habit that you itch for when you're away from it.