Hungry Joe
SINNEN
It's very sad because he was a decent person until he started drinking alcohol. Once he became an alcoholic, every thing went completely insane for him. His biggest problem was how he always argued how alcohol is safe unlike all the illegal drugs. That was his excuse to keep drinking and sadly the denial ripped apart his family too.
Aye, sounds familiar. On either end of the alcohol vs cannabis / other drugs debate things tend to be unrealistically polarised. The drinkers in denial will say what your acquaintance said, the hard core stoners etc in denial will argue that their drug of choice is the lesser of the available 'evils'. I've flown close to the sun on both counts in the past, as have many of my friends, and the damage done on both sides is fairly proportionate in terms of psychosis, depression, suicide / early death, families and lives torn apart. Probably the one consistent difference is the propensity for violence with some alcohol abusers not being mirrored with other drugs in the same numbers, although there are plenty of exceptions to the rule there too. Abstinence or moderation is the way I think.