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Tuesday, December 29, 1992 Page: 1 & 5B QUICK WORDS: MADD, LUJEAN BAAB
Sobering thoughts
The holiday season is the perfect time to tie one onThat is, if the “one”
is a red ribbon and it’s tied to a car to signify support for the Mother’s
Against Drunk Driving (MADD) campaign.
With the increase in drinking and driving due to holiday parties, it’s more
important than ever to take responsibility for keeping drunk drivers off the
road. It’s not someone else’s responsibility, it’s yours. It’s mine, too. In
fact, drunk drivers are everyone’s responsibility, so we all have to figure
out what to do about them.
This is not always easy, especially at this time of year, when no one wants
to argue. And friends who are drunk will always have arguments in favor of
driving.
Ruth Ann Young, a victims’ advocate who handles the publicity for our local
chapter of MADD, pointed out that last year 23 Luzerne County residents and
681 Pennsylvania residents who probably thought they were OK to drive were
killed in alcohol-related crashes. She is careful not to call them accidents.
“Drunk driving is not an accident,” she said. “When you drink and get
behind the wheel of a car or into a car with a person who is driving drunk,
you make a deliberate choice. It is no accident.”
With that in mind, MADD offers some responses to handle the guests at our
parties who insist on driving drunk.
“I’ll just have some coffee to sober up.”
Wrong. Only time sobers you up. According to literature provided by MADD,
alcohol oxidizes at a rate of approximately one drink per hour. Four drinks
means four hours’ wait before being sober. This may be a good time to suggest
that your friend spend the night on the couch.
“I only drank beer!”
It doesn’t matter what you drink. Alcohol is alcohol. One 12-ounce beer,
one 5-ounce glass of wine or an ounce and a half of liquor contain the same
amount of alcohol and they all make you just as drunk.
“I live really close, I can make it.”
Statistics provided by MADD show that three out of four crashes occur
within 25 miles of a person’s home. You can kill or be killed just as easily
in your own neighborhood as you can be far afield.
“I’ve done this a hundred times and I’ve never been caught.”
First you should ask yourself how this person got invited to your party in
the first place. Then remind him or her that last year, nearly 41,000 drunk
drivers were arrested in Pennsylvania and the odds are definitely in favor of
being caught.
Young told me our state police always set up special checkpoints to
apprehend drunk drivers around the holidays. She occasionally visits these
checkpoints, and at first said that on a good night the police apprehend eight
or nine drunk drivers. Then she reconsidered.
“A good night,” she said, “would be to not catch any drunk drivers because
there are none on the road.”
Considering there were over 19,000 deaths caused by the more than 14,000
alcohol-related crashes in the nation last year, you could remind the friend
who wants to drive drunk that getting caught should be the least of their
worries.
“I need my car.”
That’s a legitimate argument, but a car won’t do you much good if you’re in
a morgue. If the drunk guest can’t afford a taxi, have a sober person drive
him home. It would be extra nice if another sober person could drive the drunk
friend’s car home but, if not, explain that you need your friend alive a lot
more than he needs a car.
Handling a friend who is drunk is never easy. Some people would rather die
than lose face. MADD suggests that the trick is to make the driver give up the
keys without giving up his pride.
Don’t make accusations or put the guest on the defensive. Try to make him
feel as if he’s in control. Use phrases like:
“Hey, it’s no problem for me, you’d do the same for me, right?” or, “Of
course you can drive, but if you get a drunk driving conviction on your
record, you know what happens to your insurance!”
You could also try persuasion through guilt or fear by saying things like,
“How could you live with yourself if something happened?”
Then remind your friend of the hundreds of men, women, and children who
won’t ever have another holiday party thanks to a drunk driver.
Three years ago, Young and her family lost her 17-year-old son to a drunk
driver. Hearing the pain and loss still present in her voice is a powerful
deterrent to driving drunk.
Actually, the best approach to the situation is not to have a situation at
all. There’s no fun in being drunk and it doesn’t have to be a part of your
holiday tradition. MADD offers some advice on how to stop it from becoming
one:
It’s your party, you set the limits. Choose a bartender with discretion and
serve plenty of non-alcoholic drinks.
If serving alcohol, always serve food. Push the food and not the drinks.
People are less likely to chug if they are chewing, and it’s difficult to
drink too much when you’re full of tasty tidbits.
Always have plenty of space to set drinks down and don’t rush to fill the
empty glasses. Divert your guests from drinking too much with conversation and
activities and never let a drunken friend be your holiday entertainment.
Stay in control by choosing a time for your party to end and stop serving
alcohol at least an hour before that time. Engage your guests in the clean-up
and encourage them to eat while they help put things away.
If the situation still arises, you can handle it. Whatever it takes,
promise yourself you’ll keep the drunk driver from driving. You may feel
uncomfortable for a while, but if you don’t, when something happens the guilt
will last forever.
And while you’re paying attention to the other guy, don’t forget yourself.
Be your own best friend and surrender your car keys when you’ve been drinking.
You really don’t need alcohol to enjoy the good cheer of this holiday
season. MADD offers the following recipes as proof that drinks without alcohol
not only are in better taste, they taste better.
Dandy Alexander
2 packages of powdered non-alcoholic Alexander Mix
1/3 cup cream or 4
tablespoons vanilla ice cream cup crushed ice teaspoon almond extract
Blend and pour into two chilled cocktail glasses. Sprinkle with a dash of
nutmeg.
Texas Sunrise
8 ounces chilled orange juice
3/4 ounce grenadine syrup
Pour orange juice into tall glass of cracked ice. Drizzle grenadine syrup
on top and allow to settle down through to the bottom.
Holiday punch
2 quarts sweet cider
3 cups apricot juice
1 cups fresh orange juice
3/4 cup lemon juice
One 28-ounce bottle soda water
Chill all ingredients before preparation. Pour all ingredients over ice and
blend. Garnish with red and green maraschino cherries.
Getting MADD
If you’re interested in joining MADD or supporting its campaign against
drunk drivers, you can contact the local chapter at 824-6233. MADD is offering
a complimentary booklet filled with salad recipes as a thank-you gift with a
paid membership.
MADD meets on the first Monday of every month at 7:30 p.m. at the John
Heinz Institute on Mundy Street in Wilkes-Barre.
Times Leader food columnist Lujean Baab’s column appears every other
Tuesday.
