Being an alcoholic in old-time Phoenix


Something that I've come to realize as I learn more about old-time Phoenix, is how common drinking and smoking was. And it certainly wasn't just Phoenix, the amount of alcohol and tobacco people consumed seems amazing to my modern eyes. Today I'm trying to figure out what would qualify you as an alcoholic in old-time Phoenix.

I was watching a documentary last night, and a celebrity was being interviewed and asked about his alcoholism. Then the interviewer asked a question that really caught my attention - how much? This was in the '70s, when alcohol still flowed much freer than it does nowadays, and the answer was, "three pints of gin a day". I went and Googled that amount to picture it better in my mind, and it's a quart-and-a-half of hard liquor every day. It blew my mind!

As I was listening to the interview I considered that this was a full-grown man, about my height and weight, and the thought of my drinking a quart-and-a-half of gin in any given 24-hour period hardly seems possible, and I certainly wouldn't be able to function. Apparently it just kinda slowed him down a bit, and worried his friends.

Sometimes I think of the men of my dad's generation, who could have a four-martini lunch, and then go win World War II. Or the men of the civil war, who apparently always carried a flask of whiskey.

If I time-traveled back to old-time Phoenix, even as recently as the 1970s, I would probably imagine that just about everyone was an alcoholic. Yes, of course there would be non-drinkers, but they would be as rare as non-smokers. And if I bought a friend a bottle of whiskey for Christmas I wouldn't be surprised to find it gone by January.

By the way, in case you're wondering, two shots of whiskey (about four ounces) will have me smiling stupidly, and not even thinking about driving, after four shots I'll start talking about old girlfriends, and anything after that will require you to carry me to bed.
History Adventuring on Patreon

 Click here to become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more