Essay on Alcohol Addiction

We live only once, many of us believe. And therefore some say let us eat, drink and be merry. Surely we must eat, drink and be merry now that we believe that we live only once, but must live like men and women, free from health hazards, free from unnecessary cares and worries. So, eating and drinking is alright as long as we know what to accept and what to avoid. Unfortunately many of us do not have discrimination. Like the notorious Epicurus, we mistake one for the other and do not know what we do. So we substitute that fluid which nature provides us so bounteously with something else and invite ills unspoken of and live like wrecks, with untold miseries.
The urban elites drink to the health of their friends and fall of their foes. They drink for old times, to ring out the old year and to ring in the New Year. They drink when they set out to negotiate for a big contract as a good omen, drink during negotiations and drink again when they win it as a token of joy and success; and yet once again, to win more such contracts. When they welcome their friends, or bid them farewell, when in company for the sake of company, when alone to end the monotony of loneliness, before dinner as an appetizer, after it as a digester, it is a must. No time frame, no time schedule, any time is drink time. No prohibitions, no inhibitions.
His counterpart in the village or the slum dweller in the city is not far behind. He may sometimes worry about his next meal, but nothing of the type as far as his drink is concerned. In fact, it is to drive out his worry that he often drinks. But it is the country liquor that he drinks. In the evening, on his way home, he stops on the way to gulp his favorite drink, to drown the fatigue of his day long labour; unfortunately his weak under nourished body cannot tolerate the intake and it rebels. His legs wobble, his mind