What's the World Coming to?

This morning I heard a radio ad for the National Traffic Safety Board. The punchline to the ad was, "Driving buzzed is driving drunk."

This tag line implies that there are some people out there who believe that it is OK to drive with an alcohol/drug buzz and that this is not actually driving drunk. I had never heard this before, and I run across quite a few excuses for using alcohol and other drugs in my line of work. It means that some people have so cleverly deluded themselves into believing that they can alter their consciousness to a certain extent and not run afoul of the law...therefore, they do not have an alcohol or dug problem. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth, and I can make the argument that any person who has to go to that length to justify drinking has a bigger problem than many people who drink and drive.

I think it's all part of the changing mores in America that allows certain kinds of behavior if that behavior can be defined in a certain way. I think the most egregious example of this was in the 1990s when then-President Bill Clinton emphatically told the American people..." I did NOT have sex with that woman." He defined sex differently than most people do and this, to him, justified his behavior to have certain kinds of sexual experiences with a woman that did not fit the definition of what would ordinarily be reprehensible behavior for a President.

I think it also goes for young people today who frequently define sex as only sexual intercourse and engage in a raft of behaviors that are sexual, but that are not technically (to them) a violation of some weird moral code. I also think it goes to the growing argument since the old 1960s civil rights days where today people who have no genuine civil rights concerns assert their civil rights to defend all kinds of behaviors. I think of reverse discrimination claims and the gun nuts who will kill in order to protect their civil rights.

This is too bad. It is really unfortunate that we not only allow this to happen, but that most of us sit idly by while these perpetrators of revisionist definitions of key human principles are allowed to get away with this in the public discussions of alcoholism and other social problems. We allow right wing conservatives to define marriage the way they want and we accept that their insane thinking is on a par with common sense. We allow people who have a religious axe to grind to define when life occurs, what stem cell research ought to be, and even what the term rape refers to.

I feel the need at times like this to stand up for common sense. Drinking while driving is a problem! It makes no difference if your blood alcohol level comes in a .79 - just below the legal limit. You have a problem that needs to be dealt with if you go that far to justify your compulsive behavior. It speaks to the overall ignorance of most people about what the illness of chemical dependency is and feeds into the notion that it is a moral problem - I can change the morality if I simply define it away. It is not a moral problem...it is a biological brain problem. Moreover, it is crystal clear to most rational people that this biological problem has changed the way the brain works to the extent that one might foolishly try to justify something as stupid as drunk driving.

Too bad we need a public service announcement radio ad to tell people the truth.

Roger W.