Don't buy Grandpa a bottle of drink for Christmas

Here we go again: campaigners are are urging young people not to buy their grandfathers a bottle of drink for Christmas. Why are they bothering with this nonsense? A huge majority of the population know that if you drink too much then you can damage your physical and mental health.

It is patronising, in the extreme, to both young and old that they should  should be persuaded to change their behaviour in this roundabout way.

Christmas is a time for sharing and it is quite likely that your grandpa will share out the bottle of wine that you have brought with you. Most grand parents are not alcoholics who hide away their bottle of gin or whiskey. They are just as entitled to drink a glass of wine or a shot of whiskey over the Christmas period as anyone else. What are they supposed to do? Sit down and drink a glass of fruit juice whilst everyone else is enjoying some sociability with a bottle of wine?

Some people drink too much for a number of reasons and if they are affecting their health by boozing too much then they should be helped; not patronised or nagged.

One of my best friends was an alcoholic and he smoked too much as well. This ultimately led to his early death from throat cancer.  We spoke about and discussed his addiction a number of times. He was an intelligent man and knew what his addiction meant. He chose not to seek treatment. Would any nagging and patronising from me have made any difference to his predicament? No: it would not have.

The agencies which try to nudge us in a particular direction should consider carefully what they are doing.  We are being bombarded with blandishments that we should not eat particular types of food and that we should not drink a glass of wine with our dinner. Most of their recommendations fall on deaf ears but if we were to follow their path we could end up leading unsociable and miserable lives.

We are all going to die and there is nothing that the health authorities and drink aware etc. can do to stop this. If sharing some rib of beef and drinking half a bottle of wine with it, every now and then, results in me dying six months earlier then so be it.  Life is about balance and making the correct decisions to protect your well being whilst you are alive. It would be better if we all all made an effort to assess the facts rather than rely upon blandishments to behave one way or another.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dont-buy-grandpa-drink-for-christmas-plead-campaigners-wq8krwmjq