To be a little bit...doubtful about the way wine and alcohol are worshipped on MN?

[TheSpokenNerd]

I probably am going to get slated here...I drink now and then...maybe a bottle of wine a month with DH...there are SO many threads where people say

helps!

and "Is it wine o clock?"

and it seems like a real enabling kind of culture here...."Oh 4.30's not too early for wine!"

and that kind of thing.

AIBU to think that it's an unhelathy atitude?

[ducks]

I'd love some! Did much the same with my dcs easter eggs
don't tell my dr

Venus Because it fit with the tone of the thread when it was posted, and MN post everywhere. Simply because you've not seen it, doesn't mean we haven't, or it doesn't happen.

NonAstemia I happen to think that for a lot of posters, is the MN equivalent to a hug, and it's proffered to support the other poster.

That was a very honest and touching post though NonAstemia, sounds like you are doing well with cutting down

OP here...this has come on a lot hasn't it? I don't judge in a "judgy" way...I'm more of an interested onlooker...i'm not saying I'm perfect and habit free for goodness sake....I just wanted to start a bit of a debate and then the DCC got in my way....

I did find this on MN though wich was interesting

But Lemarch and Tapir that's kind of the point... the normalisation of drinking wine as a consolation, pick-me-up, cup of tea equivalent etc etc. It certainly wasn't the case a generation or so ago, and much as I love (and I really do) to think that it's fine to apply a wine-shaped salve to all motherly ills, it does now make me wonder whether making a so ubiquitous as a cure-all isn't a bit of a dangerous idea. Y'all are saying that the emoticon isn't a literal glass of wine, but it's perpetuating the same ideas, isn't it?

Fucking hell, I'd love it if I could just enjoy like [tea] and . I still do, more than I should, and can't imagine my social life/life in general without naice wine making it naicer. But I've never denied the obvious evidence before my eyes that it doesn't always work like that, and have watched my self become increasingly preoccupied with what time I can call wine time.

The point of the thread is the normalisation of drinking, and I think that's a valuable thing to think about.

What if there is an emergency and you need to get your children out of your home, illness, fire etc. one or two glasses of wine makes you incapable of driving

Last time I looked I could walk out of my house rather than drive out! And if its that much of an emergency Im sure I could manage to dial 999. Somehow though, in all the 19 years my DS1 has been here, 10 years for DS2 and 4 years for DS3 Ive never had to, so that would have been 19 years of wine I would have missed out on!!!

And this I see threads about drinking all the time on here...I'm not SAYING I'm perfect...I smoke about ten cigarettes a week....one or sometimes two in the evening.....I also used to get stoned a lot as a twenty something....I DO think it's an issue with many people though..drinking I mean.

I think you are seeing too much into this, tbh. MN is the equivalent of gossiping over the garden fence, or chatting around the kettle at work.

is an emoticon, and just an emoticon - which is used with great frequency here to mean everything else but .

As for the generational thing - it may not have been normal in your experience, but the same does not hold true for everyone else.

OP - 37 threads about drink? What were your search parameters please?

I have never had to take a child to hospital either duck and my eldest is almost 20 mine usually wait till im sober and we are going somewhere important to take ill or break something

I don't drink every night and I hope most MNs don't either.

Wine o'clock is just time to relax after work, cleaning, toddlers or whatever's been stressing us out.

In this house it's often the last cup of coffee of the day as it's generally gone 10pm before any peace reigns here (older DDs, watching football at the moment).

Tapir I agree that talking and doing are two different things. However, why would people be having conversations about drinking and hangovers if they weren't actually happening- it doesn't make sense. I'm talking about the sorts of conversations where people are quite amused/celebratory about hangovers and binge drinking. I just think it's a bit of a dodgy attitude and a very British thing.

We have a lovely friend who is a problem drinker. His pissed antics (falling over and breaking furniture, falling asleep at the dinner table, stripping) have often been met with the same sort of reaction Oliver Reed used to get when he turned up pissed on chat show, ie regarded with a great deal of amusement and encouragement as a sort of clown. I realised a while ago that it made me feel really uncomfortable (at about the same time I realised I was a problem drinker, unsurprisingly) and I no longer take part in the casual reinforcing of his behaviour by laughing it off. His is quite an extreme example but, in my experience, many friendship groups have someone a bit like this who is known for always having one too many. For a while it was me and I don't want that to happen any more.

Yes, DD2 waited until just before her SATs and the day before we were about to fly off on holiday respectively to break her wrists.

dd has a broken foot we go camping in 2 weeks

Tapir you're right...I probably mad my critera too narrow. In the first link I kept to AIBU and sed the term "Drink wine" and only in thread titles...not in convos....so this one was again only in AIBU and I only used the word wine...and again only in thread titles....so.

Understandable waterlego - but I've found that words on a screen and RL are two different things. People do it because they can, because they can appear to be things that they are not, for better or worse.

As I said before and wine o'clock are euphemisms/substitutes for other things. I can see however, how people who are struggling with this IRL would be more sensitive to it on MN.

I did wonder OP.

I searched under various criteria; alcohol came back with 37,000 for entire site (including abstinence support threads), drink returned with 113,000 (including pregnancy what not to do threads), drunk returned 35,500, wine 68,600.

The searches were for full threads, not just titles, so there will be a lot of posts included in all four searches.

I then compared this with a search for child. This returned 623,000; dog returned 75,000, cat returned 69,000, brother 91,600 and sister 121,000. Again, full threads were searched, and I can imagine a lot of crossovers between posts.

So yes, we do talk about alcohol, drinking etc here, but not as much as it appears.

Tapir do you really not see how and wine o'clock (I don't like that phrase, it's always wine time for me) perpetuates that whole normalisation and making winding down with a big glass of wine the done thing? Why on earth would you say it if you weren't going to do it?

Oh and the generational thing... I'm 39 and my father was a functioning alcoholic, my mother drank and drinks very little. I was meaning more that a couple of generations ago, noone could afford to drink so much and while it was expected that men would go to their 'clubs', women weren't expected to drink at all, generally. I mean that it changed drastically in the last 60 odd years and it became acceptable for everyone to drink at home, and then we have this 'middle class mum' thing where you seek solace from the monotonous --hell- joy of child rearing by hanging out for a big glass of wine whenever you feel the time is right. I did it, many of my friends do it. I just found that it really stood out to me how much people wanted to defend that that behaviour is totally normal on this thread. That's fine - I really don't give a fuck how much people drink - I was just making the observation.

Lemarche why would you use that if you weren't giving a nod to the fact that it's a popular and effective (in the short term) way to relax and destress?

I totally get what you're saying NonAstemia. I think it makes sense and I do find this culture of celebrating drinking quite odd. Almost as if we're kids who think we're hard.

Most other countries don't seem to do it. When I lived in Germany, I was ALWAYS the pissed one amongst my friends - and I don't even drink a lot.

Wine o'clock marks the end of the working day, and the start of the "grown ups only" time, it's a convenient shorthand for people to use.

Why on earth would I, a total non drinker, think to myself, "I don't drink, therefore I mustn't use wine o'clock" or , or that because I don't partake I must use instead?

With regards to the generational thing - maybe it's more of an equalisation of the sexs thing. Women were seen in a not so nice light if they drank, whereas it was a normal, even expected thing for men.

Not everyone drinks for the same reasons as you have posted - some do actually enjoy it, and drink for the sheer pleasure, rather than the effect.

Drinking alcohol is not abnormal - drinking too much is.

I agree NonAstemia re the wine emoticon. No, it doesn't necessarily mean everyone who uses it means it literally, but it does reflect what I see in RL as a tendency to see booze as a way to destress after a day with the kids. There's an idea that it is 'deserved'. No-one needs to deserve alcohol. If someone wants a drink, they can have one, why should it have to be justified as something that is deserved? What I see on MN wrt 'wine o'clock merely reflects what I see daily on FB and hear at the school gates from other mums. It is certainly regarded as normal to have 1 or 2 glasses of winevents nights of the week. There are doubtless worse things you can do to your health but it really isn't ideal. 1 or 2 glasses can easily escalate if you are that way inclined, and IME, we don't always know if we are 'that way inclined' until we're in the thick of it.

tapir, I take your point that those of us who've had ishoos with it may be more sensitive than others.