Why do we drink?

This is my first post on my newest blog.  After being alone in this house for almost a week I've realized how much I need to see people to continue to function normally.  I see my coworkers at the bank but that isn't enough to get my friendly juices flowing.  I can't tell you how many times I've thought about doing something completely crazy and out of character just because I hadn't talked to anyone but the dogs.  I even thought about getting belligerently drunk but then I remembered what my dad said about how sad it is when people drink alone.  He was right.  It is sad.  I ended up not doing it but it brought me to my first simple question.  Why do we drink?

During high school I only drank a grand total of about 4 times.  Two of those times were with my parents so that doesn't even count.  The other two times were at parties and I was bored so I drank.  I didn't get drunk but I thought, "hey, what's wrong with a few sips of this disgusting low grade beer?"  Nothing exciting happened as a result of this "light drinking."  Not for me at least.

I'm pretty sure not everyone LOVES cake.  I know - crazy right?  Cake is so moist and delicious and covered in sugar and icing and whatever other fatty extras people throw on there.  How could anyone not like it?  Through this assumption I also assume not everyone loves beer.  Statistics say that 90% of high school students have tried alcohol.  This means 20% didn't.  In my high school experience, there were more than 20% of high school kids that were NOT partiers.  According to those stats, all the partiers and some others drank in high school.  I'm 21 now so I've had some drinks.  But teenage drinkers are limited pretty much to one drink: beer.  Personally, I'm not a fan of beer.  Even if all the cool kids were drinking it and everyone was telling me I should drink it, I don't think I would.  I'm an average person so I feel comfortable saying that not every teenager likes beer.

This is really cliche but if everyone were jumping off a bridge would you do it too?  If everyone cool decided it was ok to eat...glass...would you do that?  But people do it anyway.  Because of this disease called peer pressure.  When I was little I thought peer pressure was me holding a beer and standing in the middle of a large group of people while they all chanted, "Drink! Drink! Drink!"  Obviously that's not what peer pressure is but sometimes it can feel that way.  8-9% of these "drinkers" aren't even drunk.  They just pretend to be to get attention from the people that actually are drunk and therefore don't even notice or comprehend this fake promiscuity.

But wait!  Why would they fake being drunk?  Maybe because they don't want to drink?  Why wouldn't they want to drink?  Maybe because they don't like it.  Bingo!  I've seen people bear to take a few sips to instill the illusion...but I know for a fact that four or five sips of beer won't get a person drunk.  All this just reminds me how stupid we are as a group.  "Hey let's pretend to do something we don't like so people will like us!"

Sound familiar?  Yes.  Why?  Because that has turned into a daily action.  It's not just about drinking anymore.  We're changing ourselves for other people which totally negates the whole individual thing.  It's making us all the same.  You think "hey people aren't all the same when they're drunk!"  Actually yes, they are.  Drinking puts a very wide variety of people into 4 very distinguishable categories.  Happy, sad, horny, and disturbed.

It's sad really.  How we get drunk so people will notice us, or be with us, or so we'll feel different.  But in reality it makes us all the same.  Drinking eliminates the very thing we're hoping to become by drinking: different.