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First and foremost, I don’t want to come across here as some sort of puritanical killjoy. Having a couple of beers with friends while watching a great game, for those without alcohol problems, is one of life's real simple pleasures. Social, good-time drinking, in moderation is OK by me.

The numbers aren’t yet out, but using past Super Sunday's as a pretty good predictor, we know that yesterday more people died in alcohol related traffic accidents, more wives were assaulted and more people ended up overdosing on alcohol – than on any other day of the year.

Yes, watching the Super Bowl has become America's booziest event, with all the carnage associated.

And all this tragedy, far removed from any reality presented during outrageously expensive Budweiser ad slots, should maybe give us pause for thought.

Not that we were thinking, too busy between plays watching Anheuser Busch's estimated 25 million dollars spent on 10 beer-ad slots, with more than twice as many beer ads shown than for any other type of product.

And watching with us, an estimated 33 million kids – the future beer buyers of America, and for all the industry's talk of self regulation, a market segment they drool over.

Research has shown that kids shown beer ads report thinking about drinking in a more favorable light than kids not shown beer ads. Research also shows that more binge drinkers drink beer, by far, than any other type of alcohol.

Super Bowl parties embody excess, with over indulgence the norm; and when the clock ticks down and a new champ gets crowned, good-times transform (for too many of us) into something much much sadder.

Drinking is OK; binge drinking is not, problem drinking is not, driving drunk is not, beating your wife while drunk is not…

Twenty-five million dollars was not spent to entertain us – it was spent to have us drink more. It influences our children to drink earlier, and more, and it makes it awfully tough for those in recovery to stay true to their dreams of a better life.

Watching a bear drink beer amuses, watching an angry drunk drink beer doesn’t – and unfortunately, we know which of those scenarios happens every day.

The beer industry is quite happy to self-regulate itself – do they deserve such trust? Can they really want us all to drink as responsibly as they claim when that could only mean a great loss of profits? I mean, 30 million problem drinkers can drink a lot of Bud, and they're certainly "don't know when to say when".

Are beer ads what we really want?

About two thirds of all binge drinks consumed are beer, and the people most at risk to drive drunk, get hurt or get violent have more than likely gotten drunk on beer. Beer enjoys a strong and favorable misperception of its inherent dangers, and also enjoys very favorable legislation governing its taxation, marketing practices and lack of sales restrictions. Governmental policies that favor the sale of beer over other types of alcohol do not make any sense from a public health viewpoint.

A lot of people don’t consider that drinking beer is as serious or as harmful as drinking hard liquor, and this perception in reinforced by governmental legislation that allows for more intensive marketing of beer, for favorable taxation and for less regulation over its sale.

Of course beer is simply alcohol just like any other form of alcohol, and if you drink 7 beers, or have 7 cocktails…you will be just as drunk; and if you drink a number of beers with regularity, you are just as at risk for addiction as you would be if you drank only bourbon or vodka.

In fact, studies of binge drinking in America show that beer is the favored binge drink of choice, and because binge drinking creates such societal problems (drunk driving, violence, domestic abuse) and because binge drinking is a necessary stepping stone to dependency, it seems that beer is in fact the most dangerous alcoholic beverage consumed in America today.

The breakdown of binge drinking has beer accounting for 67% of all binge drinks consumed, with liquor a very distant second at 22%. The survey study, conducted by the National center for Disease Control and Prevention, illustrates how dichotomous liquor/beer laws are confusing the drinking public about the relative safety of beer drinking, and researchers conclude that preferential laws favoring beer make absolutely no sense from a public health viewpoint.

Researchers call for tougher beer control laws and increased taxation. They call for a limit on points of sale, and a reduction in marketing…particularly marketing directed at younger people.

I was a beer drunk, and I know first hand that the damage done by a case of beer sure seems a lot like the damage down by a bottle of whiskey; and it's too bad that a lingering misperception of the dangers of beer remains a part of out National consciousness.

Beer is alcohol, and it needs to be regulated in a similar manner to all other forms of alcohol. Why can we buy beer at a convenience store but not whiskey, when studies show that the people most likely to drink to excess, drive drunk, and have problems with the law or most probably going to have been drinking beer?

Why can Budweiser sponsor a Super Bowl halftime show, when a great many football fans watching the game are very likely drinking beer, and when Super Bowl game day is one of the riskiest days of the year for alcohol fueled domestic assault?

Prohibition is never the answer, and I don’t think that we can or even should deny responsible adults the right to purchase and consume beer or any other alcohol in a moderate and reasonable manner. But giving preferential legislative treatment to beer simply because it enjoys a misperception of safety (huge lobbying dollars???) is damaging and nonsensical.

Why can’t they see what their drinking or drugging is doing to them, and to us? For family, few things frustrate like the seeming inability of the addict or alcoholic to recognize the extent of their self destructive behaviors. What seems so obvious to us seems not to register with them, and if losing a job, career, family or health won't convince a using addict to change their ways – what possibly can? Addiction changes the mind, it is complex and pervasive, and no single phenomenon fully explains the influence it exerts over thoughts and behaviors; but understanding confirmation bias takes us a step closer to understanding the realities of addicted thinking. Confirmation bias refers to a cognitive process in which we selectively and unconsciously assign more weight to stimuli, information or events that seem to confirm our preconceptions or world-view. We all unconsciously use confirmation bias; it is simply a psychological streamlining for informational processing. When we read a political editorial that matches our world-view, it resonates more profoundly and influentially than when we read an editorial that opposes our notion of the world – even if both are factually accurate. We are the choir – and we like to be preached to! Addicts unconsciously use conformational bias as a way to preserve activities (drinking or drugging) that are important to them. It is conformational bias that allows addicts to disregard or minimize negative information that might force them to question their behaviors, and over-emphasize positive information that convinces them to continue their use behaviors. An addict or alcoholic might process information on a night's events such as this: Pros: HAD A GREAT TIME LAUGHING WITH BUDDIES GOT A PHONE NUMBER FROM THAT CUTE/HANDSOME BARTENDER Cons: Vomited in the bar bathroom Was asked to leave Performed badly at work the next day, and was noticed for being hung-over Alcoholic thinking=A good night's fun. Most of us would call such an evening a lesson against excessive drinking, but an alcoholic will assign much more weight to the positive parts of the evening, and gloss over any negative aspects that don't align with alcoholic thinking. Alcoholics maintain denial through unconscious conformation bias internalization; thinking that keeps them sure that although drinking may cause a few minor headaches…on the whole it brings more happiness than pain. Addicts are not purposefully obtuse when they fail to recognize how much their use hurts them, it's a psychological process, and one an addiction hijacked brain makes full use of in defense of its consumptions. Eventually, if it gets bad enough, most alcoholics and addicts will concede that they have a problem – but it can take a long while and some pretty overwhelming (and often tragic) evidence. Understanding why addicts and alcoholics continue to drink or drug even as things get bad helps family and friends to enact better and more successful interventions - Helps them to realize that just letting an addict see the problems abuse causes won’t necessarily be enough to induce change. Rock bottom can motivate, but rock bottom is sad; and there is no need for it. Although an addict may not come to an internal conclusion of a need for change, family and friends can help them along, and can help to change their thinking. Interventions work, and they can get some pretty reluctant addicts into treatment. You can wait for an addict to see it on their own, but with conformational bias…it may take a long, long time.

Anyone who quits drinking or drugging, no matter who they are or how determined they are, comes to a point in recovery when the cravings to use or drink just seem overwhelming. And a lot of people (when they hit this point) do take a drink, or ten or 50 - For a lot of people, this is the end. The urge to drink or use drugs can consume us, and when it gets bad, we can think of little else. It feels like these urges will never end. We doubt we'll have the strength to fight them for long, and since we feel like we'll never succeed in the end, we can think of nothing else but using and we feel a craving so strong it's almost physical – a lot of us just give in to what feels inevitable anyway. One of the hardest things about overcoming an addiction is dealing with the weight of a lifetime of sobriety. Forever feels like a long time, and when things are hard, forever feels way too long. And it is for this reason, that there is real truth and strength in the AA mantra of one day at a time. Forget about staying sober for life, juts worry about today. Stay sober for today, and that's good enough – and the great thing is, add enough of those "today's" together, and it just gets easier after a while. When relapse threatens, when you’re having a really tough time, and when you're two seconds away from taking that drink…even staying sober for the rest of the day can seem an impossible goal. Break it down! You don’t need to worry about staying sober for the rest of the say – just think about staying sober for the next 10 minutes! Anyone can delay a drink for five minutes. Distract yourself, make yourself a sandwich, walk around the block once, do ANYTHING BUT DRINK. Urges, even the strongest of urges, are transitory things, and they will pass. There may be another one coming down the pipes, but deal with it when it comes, just as you dealt with the last. If you can wait 10 minutes, you will find that more often than not, the urge subsides, and things seem a little less crazy. Things get easier in time, and we all go through a rough patch every now and again. Don’t worry about tomorrow; think only of the here and now. It seems too easy, but it works!

Remembering the good times… We all do it, when we look back, we always seem to remember the good times; and those tough times (although remembered) don’t seem as vivid as those happy memories and good experiences. Parents remember those first few toddling steps with greater intensity than those sleepless nights, and we remember the friends and excitement of high school more than we do the social insecurity. It's human nature, and for the most part, it's a good thing. But for recovering addicts or alcoholics, this kind of nostalgic thinking gets us into trouble. Relapse can happen for any number of reasons, but at the root of a lot of slips are a combination of overconfidence ("I've got this thing beaten now…a few drinks won’t hurt me anymore") and reminiscent thinking. Remembering all of the good times we had while drinking, all of the fun and laughs, and minimizing the negatives. Truly a dangerous mental combination for anyone in recovery! If you quit drinking or drugging, you did it for a reason, probably a pretty good one. People don’t, as a rule, quit drinking or drugging until the negatives start to outweigh the positives, and outweigh them by a lot. And while it's true that getting drunk or high with friends, hitting the club or a sharing a bottle of good wine with dinner were sometimes very enjoyable, for those of us with substance abuse problems, there were terrors lurking beneath the surface, and we do well to remember these. Most of us don’t quit until we feel the pains of our addiction. We all have our personal reasons for making a change and change isn’t easy, it usually takes some pretty strong motivation to overcome our using inertia. What made you stop? Now write it down. Seriously, if you are in recovery, write down what made you decide you needed to stop. Make a list of the harms that your drinking or drugging was causing, the things that finally forced you to concede of a need for abstinence. And whenever the past starts calling, whenever those good times start to outweigh the pains in your mind's eye, take a look at your list - and remember. Here's my list: 1…People were obviously losing respect for me, to my face, and that was very painful - especially painful because I knew that they were right to think less of me. 2…I was 60 pounds overweight, looked 10 years older than I was and every day I endured a terrible hangover. I was on pace for an early grave. 3…I was useless for my family; too hung-over in the day to play with my kids, to busy getting drunk at night to help out. 4…My business was suffering. I didn’t have the energy to make it better. 5…My kids were starting to notice what their dad was. And there's more of course, but that's enough for me. I've got it written down, and whenever I start thinking of the past through rose colored glasses, I just have a quick read of my list (I've got it in my wallet!) and I remember. It's uplifting too! Remembering the truth about how bad things were makes me truly grateful for how things are now – and it keeps me very motivated to never go back to what I was, and what I did. Don’t fall into the trap. Make a list (and check it twice!) - You are better off now than you were when you were drinking or drugging. Don't get fooled - stay sober, and stay happy.

I was a drunk…and I had a fat ass. Seriously, I drank heavily for years, and when I look back at pictures of me in my drinking days, I can’t believe that I belong to that pudgy face looking blearily back at me. When I quit drinking, within a year I lost 70 pounds. No exercise, no diet…just no beer, and within months my clothes hung loosely on my shrinking frame; and I stopped sweating so profusely on relatively cool days!

I felt better, I looked better, and I was all of a sudden far healthier. Weight gain is one of the very obvious and externally visible symptoms of alcohol abuse, and the internal and mental damage, although unseen, is far worse; but it's hard to describe how great it felt to be enjoying sobriety, and also looking so much better just by cutting out 12-15 beers a night on the couch.

There are two kinds of drinkers, fat ones and skinny ones…and it's actually bad to be either. The fat ones get fat through the enormous intake of calories within the daily consumption of alcohol needed. The skinny ones are arguably worse off, as they are drinking just as much but since they don’t gain weight, their gastro intestinal tracts are either damaged to the point that they no longer effectively process consumed food, or they just don’t eat much beyond liquid meals, and are at a fantastic risks for vitamin and nutritional deficits.

The calories in different alcoholic drinks are:

Beer 1 regular bottle = 150 calories

Liquor 1 ounce, not including mixer = 65

Liqueurs 1 ounce = 188

Red wine 1 glass =80 calories

Dry white wine = 1 ounce 75 calories

1 martini = 140 calories

1 margarita = 168 calories

1 cooler = 150 calories

Even people who drink nothing close to the amount I did will still gain weight from regular drinking. Teenage girls who drink a 6 pack of coolers 3 times a week would gain 3 pounds of fat a month unless they either compensate by eating less (nutritional deficits) or spent an awful lot of time on the treadmill (1 six pack = 1.5 hours of hard running).

A 3 pound gain a month becomes a 36 pound gain over a year, and starts to become a very noticeable, unattractive and unhealthy sign of drinking too much.

Perhaps as a part of teenage prevention plans we need to show people what heavy drinking starts to look like after a year or two, and see how many teens always concerned about their appearances still want to binge drink on a regular basis.

Obesity is a major health risk, and heavy drinking is one of the quickest ways to an unhealthy weight. Obesity may also be something that teens can understand and relate to as a real and imminent danger of heavy drinking, whereas the dangers of addiction and long term health problems don’t seem to truly register with teens living in the here and now, with middle age seeming a thousand years away.

People drinking Red Bull cocktails benefit from stimulant effects of the energy drink that mask many of the perceived depressive effects of the alcohol, and a recent study reports that almost 20% of these same people are not using designated drivers after a night out, and are simply choosing the person who appears least drunk to drive the party home. Energy cocktail drinkers don't feel drunk, but they are, and they may very well be the people piloting the car home after a night of drinking. Two recent studies, one Canadian, and one Brazilian, when taken together paint a slightly ominous picture of current club culture, and its implications for impaired driving. The first study, out of the Federal University of Sao Paulo, investigated the effects both perceived and actual of mixing alcohol with energy drinks (such as red bull)…which are popular cocktails throughout the world's bars and clubs. The stimulant nature of the energy drinks seem to reduce perceptions of some of the alcohol's depressive effects, and people consuming red bull cocktails reported feeling less tired, less un coordinated, and stronger than those people who had consumed normal alcoholic cocktails. Popular for inducing an ability to dance all night, these cocktails seem to mask some of the perceived symptoms of intoxication, and people drinking energy drink cocktails underreport their level of intoxication as compared to people drinking conventional alcoholic drinks. But when university researchers compared the reflexive and physio motor reactions of both the energy drink consuming and regular cocktail consuming groups, they found that although the energy drink group reported feeling less intoxicated, they performed equally poorly on measures of coordination and reactions times. The second study, out of the University of Alberta, examined designated driver practices and compliance amongst young bar going people in the province. The study found that although many people do use designated drivers responsibly (rotating between members of a group) a significant percentage of bar goers do not; and fail to plan for the drive home before entering the bar to drink. The strategy employed by almost 1 in 5 is to simply select the seemingly least impaired person to perform the driving duties, whether actually impaired or not. When you combine the results of the two studies, you seem to have a group of people drinking alcoholic energy drink cocktails, who do not realize how drunk they truly are, and these same people too often simply selecting a designated driver who appears most competent at the moment…a recipe for disaster to be sure. But what’s to be done? I don’t think that anything but enforcement carried much impact over drinking and driving behaviors, and to that effect law enforcement need to continue policing the late night roads, on the lookout for people who may be a lot drunker than they think they are. If you drink red bull or other energy drink cocktails, be aware that the stimulant effects of the energy drinks mask some of the depressive effects of the alcohol…but they do not lessen the physical effects of consumed alcohol, and you may be in worse shape than you think you are. Use a designated driver, call a cab, walk…don’t take foolish chances that can end a night of fun in tragedy.

While I've always been suspicious of pharmaceutical company health advisories, the recommendations against alcohol consumption with opiate type pain medications should be taken very seriously. The concurrent consumption of alcohol and pharmaceutical pain meds greatly increases the addictiveness of the pills, can increase bodily harm, and ultimately increases the risks of a fatal overdose. A lot of people using and abusing pharmaceutical pain pills and sedative hypnotics tend to occasionally or more than occasionally consume alcohol concurrently to maximize the intoxication effects of the drugs. We all read the warnings that come with each and every package of pills, and since almost all of them seem to dictate an avoidance of alcohol; I think that we become complacent as to the real risks of concurrent alcohol and pharmaceutical consumption. I was always suspicious as to the real risks, and since pharmaceutical companies seem to include just about everything under the sun within the fine print, I always thought that they just saying to avoid alcohol to cover their collective "butts" in the event of rare disaster and resultant legal responsibility. It generally starts with pills and one drink, and when nothing tragic occurs, that one drink can become two, three and more. Unfortunately, research has shown that the dangers of alcohol and pain pills together are real, and when taken together there is an increased risk of addiction, overdose, and toxic effects. Basically, the pharmaceutical companies aren’t just kidding around when they warn of the dangers of concurrent alcohol and pharmaceutical consumption. The dangers are essentially three fold. There is an increased risk of dependence and addiction, there is an increased risk of overdose, and there are increased risks of bodily harm. 1 Greater addiction Whenever the intoxicating effects and perceived pleasures of a high are increased, the psychological addiction to that substance increases. A lot of people use alcohol to increase the potency of the pills and to get a more intense and pleasurable high. This unfortunately accelerates the risks of dependence, and when dealing with already very addictive substances like prescribed opiates, doing anything to increase the risks of dependence should not be considered wise. Additionally, once addicted, the detox off of opiates and alcohol together is far worse than the very difficult detox off of opiates alone. Opiate detox is torture, and I can’t imagine going through an intensified version. Don’t mess with alcohol and pills unless you’re prepared to pay a very high price come detoxification time! 2 greater health risks Addiction to both alcohol or opiates results in cognitive declines and an increased risk of psychiatric conditions, but these risks are exacerbated when there is a co addiction. Additionally, the danger to the liver, already taxed through a single addiction, increases when there is the co consumption of two drugs simultaneously; and since so many of the most widely abused opiates contain high amounts of acetaminophen, the risk of liver failure when taken with even moderate amounts of alcohol increases substantially. Basically, taking alcohol and pills together amplifies the harm of either substance and accelerates the bodily damage. 3 Risk of death Because both opiates and sedative hypnotic prescription medications are central nervous system depressants like alcohol, there is a very real risk of accidental overdose and death. When too much of a central nervous system depressant is taken, the brain can slow to the point at which basal respiratory and cardiac functioning's are curtailed. It's just a very bad idea to take pills and alcohol together. The temptation to increases the potency of a limited supply of opiate type pills increases the temptation to co abuse alcohol, but the potential price of this co abuse is very high. I've been addicted to alcohol and pills, but not together, and I feel for anyone that needs to tackle these two dependencies concurrently. Since the detox is so tough, a supervised rehab and detox should probably be considered as the best bet. If you are taking or abusing pharmaceuticals, don’t fall into the trap of adding alcohol to your problems. The effects of both addictions compound the damage of either, and the resultant poly drug addiction is even more difficult to break free from. I'm not too trusting of pharmaceutical companies, but it seems that when reading the warnings against alcohol consumption with opiate type drugs, they're telling the truth at least this once.

People who wonder if they may have a problem with alcohol often seek reassurance from consumption guidelines, but as with everything related to use and dependency, nothing is concrete, and what may be safe for one, harmful to another. The best way to know whether your drinking has become problematic is simply to try taking a good long break from alcohol. When people search for information about alcoholism and problem drinking they universally desire concrete and hopefully reassuring facts…unfortunately, as with seemingly everything surrounding substance use and abuse, everything is relative, and what may be safe for one, completely dangerous for another. The National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism recommends no more than two drinks per day as a safe amount, and that for certain groups, such as pregnant women and people taking medications…and of course recovering alcoholics, abstaining is the only sound policy. These are very cautious and surely safe guidelines, but I'm not sure how helpful they really are to people wondering about their levels of consumption. People wondering about their drinking are very unlikely consuming two or less drinks in a sitting, and yet they may very well not have any real problem with alcohol. I don’t think that issuing a quantity based consumption guideline offers much assistance to those trying to evaluate the level of their usage, and I think a far better criteria is simply, if you are wondering if you have a problem…you very likely do! People who consume alcohol socially, and rarely think about drinking or feel a need to drink, do not have an alcohol problem, regardless of how many drinks they may or consume in a sitting; and people who do crave alcohol, drink more than they had intended to, or drink even when they suffer consequences because of that drinking, do very likely do need to cut down or quit altogether. I've tried the whole cut down to moderation thing…didn’t work for me, but for many simply evaluating drinking behaviors and making a conscious effort to reduce consumption greatly reduces the risks to use and of developing addictions. My advice to anyone wondering about their drinking is simply to take three months off. If you can abstain for three months without undo difficulty, then you very unlikely have anything to worry about…but if you find yourself drinking for whatever reason before that three months has passed, take a good hard look at yourself, and consider whether treatment may be needed. If three months off sounds too hard…then you really need to take a good long break. Treatment help is always easier and more effective when accessed earlier rather than later, and if you are wondering about your drinking, it's time to take some steps to ensure that you're OK, and if not, to get help.

A University of Minnesota study looking at underage access to alcohol reports that almost one in five young men will buy alcohol for a stranger when approached to do so outside of a liquor store. Although this is illegal, obviously if so many will do this for complete strangers, then the threat of arrest is not much of a deterrent. Education and enforcement are needed, and we need to protect our kids better from such easy access to alcohol. I almost hesitate to write this, as it's almost a how to manual for kids looking to buy alcohol, but as follows is very telling of our society and explains in part how easy it is for our kids to buy alcohol. A University of Minnesota study looked at underage alcohol buying, and wanted to know just how easy it was for underage drinkers to secure alcohol by propositioning buyers about to enter a liquor store. The University researchers had under age looking subjects approach people about to enter a liquor store, and these subjects explained that they had forgotten their I.D. and asked the shopper to buy them a 6 pack of beer. Researchers found that only 8% of the population when approached in this way would buy the beer for the subject, but when examining specific sub groups, it was found that males who appeared to be between the ages of 21 and 30, when approached had a 19% likelihood of buying the beer. When almost one in five young men are willing to buy alcohol for underage strangers, it's not surprising that our children seem to have little difficulty getting the alcohol they want. So what's to be done? In addition to educating the public about the greater risks to teenagers who start drinking earlier, I think that we need to tackle this problem as an enforcement issue. It is currently against the law to buy alcohol for minors, but if one in five are willing to do it for a complete stranger outside of a liquor store, obviously the threat of penalty is no deterrent to the behavior. If police actively enforced this illegal activity, and published both the consequences of this crime as well as publicized successful "sting" operations on adults willing to do it, I believe that our kids would be a lot safer from easy access to alcohol. It's not the ultimate solution, but by making access more difficult, you might just save a few lives from dependency, and you'll probably save a lot of young lives from the ultimate consequences of drunken driving. If you're approached…don't buy it for them, you're not doing them a favor by buying them beer, you're doing them a favor by not. To law enforcement…please take this seriously, and please punish offenders and make the consequences well known. It may be perceived as a relatively innocuous crime, but in reality it's anything but harmless.