THE "ONLY A BIT" AND "ONLY TODAY" FAMOUS EXCUSES

"Wine is a mocker, strong drink is a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise. (1)"

The alcoholic drink ingestion issue is an old concern. In Luke's Gospel it is read that "For he [John the Baptist] shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink…" (2)

Alcoholism is one of the most serious social-medical problems of the contemporary world. Specialists strive to try to find the matrices for the reason of the problem, and, among many other factors, the huge influence of well-produced advertisements released by media, especially in television, is pointed out. The messages are very strong appeals for the ingestion of drinks, and they become impregnated in the subconscious mind of viewers who are careless to the rules of balance.

Victor Hugo remind us that "when drunk, the patient's rearrangement is very difficult, demanding him/her great effort to regain his/her sanity. Obsession, through alcoholism, is more common than it seems. In a permissive social context, the vice of ingestion of alcoholic drinks becomes an expression of "status", attesting the decadence of a slow and painful historical period."(3)

As the "Spiritualist World" records it, regarding alcoholism in spiritualist cycles, there are some spiritualist "leaders" who usually justify their "draft" in the wicked glass with "baseless arguments, such as: everybody drinks; only some sips do not do any harm; I only drink socially; (...) drinking moderately is even good for one's health..."(4)

Despite the damages alcoholic drinks provoke in the physiopsychosomatic structure, there are those "specialists" who allege that the physical body needs small amounts of alcoholic drinks. Mere illusion! This is vehemently contested by Doctors Edgar Berger and Oldmar Beskow, in the book called: TWENTIETH CENTURY SLAVES.

Alcoholic not only is a destruction agent in itself, it is also a vehicle of the darkness, a living bridge for the ruining evil bridges. Joanna de Ângelis teaches us that under the pretext of "commemorations, parties and decisions, let us not commit ourselves to the habit of drinking. The ocean is made of water droplets, and beaches of uncountable sand grains. Let us free ourselves from the "ONLY TODAY" cliché, and when impelled to harmful commitments, let us not adopt the famous "ONLY A BIT" excuse, inasmuch as a bite that injects lethal poison, notwithstanding the small dose, produces immediate death."(5) (our highlight)

The permissive rhetoric of the "harmless" drink shall be buried and never, under no allegation, should be exhumed. Although everything begins with the first sip, later comes the need for the second, for the third and so on. Also on the editorial of the "Spiritualist World" if the spiritualist "knows and pretends s/he does not know, s/he is irresponsible and shall suffer the consequences of the omission in his/her deep conscience."(6)

For psychoanalyst Luis Alberto Pinheiro de Freitas, author of "Adolescência, família e drogas" (Mauad Publishing House) (Adolescence, family and drugs), the liberality of many families with alcohol is one of the biggest problems for prevention: - There is the myth that marijuana takes the young to other drugs. But it is alcohol that plays this role. And it is the family itself that stimulates consumption. I have patients who started drinking when their fathers, proud of their sons who became men, called them for some drinks. (7)

In the last five years, indexes grew from 25% to 30%, according to psychiatrist Frederico Vasconcelos (8) "research on alcohol consumption among the youth, by the Centro Brasileiro de Informação sobre Drogas Psicotrópicas (Cebride) (Brazilian Center of Information on Psychotropic Drugs, of the Federal University of São Paulo, Unifesp". For him today's youngsters have many difficulties with limits, and the age group of excessive alcoholic consumption diminished. Ten years ago, the 40-year-old alcoholic had started drinking when 17 or 18 years old. Today, they start at 12 or 13 years old. This means that, in 10 years, we will have serious alcoholics only 35 years old, at the height of their productive lives.

Vasconcelos affirms that "alcohol generates a disease of long evolution (ten years on the average) and its excessive consumption among youngsters is leading them to more dangerous drugs: - One of them is the Ecstasy, found in two types of tablets: The MA (methamphetamine) and the MDMA (methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine), the latter with hallucinogen properties and both sold at R$