Summer time is a huge time for the alcohol industry. They sure do sell a lot of booze in the hot summer months. Our culture embraces the drinking lifestyle and celebrates our love for liquor. Raise your glass and have a toast but please do so safely and keep it under control. I have lost too many friends from drunk driving and seen too many friends lose their minds and jobs from that poison as well. There is nothing wrong with having an adult beverage or two but don't let it be part of your identity. There are much better things to be known for.

I gave up the bottle many many years ago and have never regretted it for a moment. I am out in the public constantly and people are always offering to buy me a drink. I politely decline and say thank you for the offer. I should say "no thank you but I will take the $4", I bet I could have a nice pile of cash. Even though I do not drink anymore, I am still an idiot, I just remember everything I do. I wrote a piece a couple of years ago explaining why I don't drink and thought I would share it again.

"I work in a format of radio and in a profession where drinking is celebrated in song and in lifestyle. I used to be really good at drinking. I could do shot after shot of Southern Comfort and fist-fulls of beer. I was a varsity level drinker. I thought that was what a country music loving broadcaster was supposed to do. One night me and couple buddies overdid it on Apple Pucker and beer, and I almost ended up in a diabetic coma. It was through that night of drinking that I found out I was diabetic. You would think that would have been enough to get me to watch what I was doing to myself alcohol wise but it wasn’t.

     I have not been a drinking man in nearly 15 years now. I will do my yearly shot of tequila but nothing more. I was not an alcoholic, but I sure loved to drink and it led me to many bad decisions. I think getting over-served with booze is very dangerous. You lose your inhibitions and no longer are in control of what you do or say. I don’t want to wake up explaining what I did the night before or trying to figure out what I did and apologizing to the proper people. I want to know what I say and everything I do. I don’t want to let anything control me but me.

      My moment of realizing I was too deep in the bottle came at a live broadcast about 15 years ago. I was boozing it up with a couple buddies and was getting quite hammered when a mother of a young lady came over and asked if I would play a song for her daughters birthday the next day. I said “Ssssssure I would.” She turned to my friend and asked if I would even remember the conversation or if I was too trashed. It was that moment that I realized I was projecting an image I did not want. I want people to look at me with respect and being publicly trashed was not the image I was after. I have wanted to thank that lady for 15 years now. She made a huge difference in my life, and I am a better person today because of her comments. I am all for having a cold one now and then, but don’t let it become your identity. Any dough head can be a drunk; it takes a brain to just have a drink."

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