The First Step Is Admitting You Have A Problem

Now, we know that Bill Daley’s wine column in the Tribune is about helping people with their alcohol issues, but sometimes, the issues are issues, and that’s where we come in. Take, for example, the first question in yesterday’s column:


Q. On an average evening I probably imbibe three or four glasses of wine (mostly white) without any feeling of intoxication … just a need to relax and sleep. However, I’ve noticed lately the alcohol content in some of the popularly priced wines has grown to 13 or 13.5 percent. Therefore, can you suggest several 12 to 12.5 percent wines that don’t come in half-gallon jugs?


Daley’s answer, while noting that the quantitative differences between a 25-proof wine and a 27-proof wine are minimal, dances around the real issue at hand: the questioner’s incipient alcoholism. Oh, this may be alluded to in the column’s title (“12 percent solution won’t help much”), but it’s not really Daley’s place to moralize.

Fortunately, we have no such compunctions. If you’re drinking a bottle of wine every night to chill out and you claim you can’t feel the effects of the booze anymore, something is wrong. Yeah, you’re not drinking half pints of domestic vodka before work every morning, but you’re heavily habituated to alcohol and you’re not doing your liver any favors, either. You may be able to sustain this level of addiction indefinitely, but you’d almost certainly be better off without the sauce. Maybe switch to pills! And if nothing else, give in and buy the jugs - they’re much cheaper.

12 percent solution won’t help much [Tribune]

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The First Step Is Admitting You Have A Problem