Is drinking a sin?

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HOPEFUL_IN_UK said:
If you’re going to drive, it can be sinful to have even one stiff drink as it can put you over the limit.
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One stiff drink won’t put you over the limit. I’m a Deputy, and when we went to an alcohol class they had us drink and then take breathalyzers to see how high we were going so we got a feel for how many drinks lead to what alcohol level.

5 shots of vodka in one hour (admittedly with a full stomach) put me at .06 which is .02 below the legal limit.

Not that I’m advocating driving like that, but I just wanted to let you know that one stiff drink is highly unlikely to get you there.
 
AHapka said:
One stiff drink won’t put you over the limit. I’m a Deputy, and when we went to an alcohol class they had us drink and then take breathalyzers to see how high we were going so we got a feel for how many drinks lead to what alcohol level.

5 shots of vodka in one hour (admittedly with a full stomach) put me at .06 which is .02 below the legal limit.

Not that I’m advocating driving like that, but I just wanted to let you know that one stiff drink is highly unlikely to get you there.
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As a deputy, I am sure you know this, although I thought I would let others know also. You BAC can increase from the time you take a drink/shot up to 30 mins later.
 
This is an interesting thread…I am not a frequent drinker…sometimes, I like a nice glass of red wine. My husband will have a few beers now and again. I have a question, though…if a person is considered culpable for drinking too much, to the point where he/she could harm another, or him/herself–why wouldn’t people who have addictions to alcohol, also be considered sinning? I am not saying that alcoholism is a sin, but I believe that the Church’s teachings are such that addictive behavior can render one less culpable, and thus, it would not be mortally sinful to be an alcoholic,because one is addicted.

If a person ‘gets drunk’ now and again…why would that person be more culpable than the person who does it a continuous basis, out of addiction? Just trying to understand the difference, that’s all. :o I’m a little confused here.
 
Not exactly on the topic but could anyone tell me how long you must abstain from any alcohol before receiving Holy Communion.

Some say 1hr…others 3hrs and others even 12 hrs. I’ve always assumed it was like food = 1hr
or am I wrong?
 
Same as food.

Then again, in my family, no one drinks till five and we go to Mass before then.
 
AHapka said:
I think the sinfullness begins at the point where your judgement is impaired to the point where you are no longer in control of your actions. This is different for everyone, but most people know when they are hitting that point.
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This is exactly what a priest told me as well as when you make a lifestyle out of it.
 
I consider drunkenness a sin. When we drink to intoxication, we harm our bodies, which belong to God. It’s also very negative witness to our sense of dignity and discipline.

I can’t preach, however. In my youth I partied way too hard, and way too much. I gave it up in time, thanks be to God.👍
 
KingAlfred said:
I consider drunkenness a sin. When we drink to intoxication, we harm our bodies, which belong to God. It’s also very negative witness to our sense of dignity and discipline.

I can’t preach, however. In my youth I partied way too hard, and way too much. I gave it up in time, thanks be to God.👍
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I would like to cut it out completely but sometimes especially at sporting events it is easy to have a few to many and forget about life for a while. I guess it is a sin but I need to once in a while to escape. Probably a bad reason to drink. :confused:
 
AHapka said:
I think the sinfullness begins at the point where your judgement is impaired to the point where you are no longer in control of your actions. This is different for everyone, but most people know when they are hitting that point.
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I tend to agree with your summation… and add that drinking has the possibility to become “sinful” when you have reached the stage of “inebriation”…where your “inhibitions” lose their grip and you do things that you normally would not.

I can’t remember exactly where in the Bible it is…in the Book of Wisdom…I think…where it makes the point that “drinking to excess” is the sin.

I enjoy a good glass of wine or two…but I have learned that its best to “limit” the consumption…its safer that way…in more ways than one… 😃
 
RobHom said:
I tend to agree with your summation… and add that drinking has the possibility to become “sinful” when you have reached the stage of “inebriation”…where your “inhibitions” lose their grip and you do things that you normally would not.
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Such as laughing out loud and actually enjoying myself… :o
 
Occasional inebriation, in my opinion, is not a sin unless you drink to the point of being offensive. Remember that, at the wedding at Cana, the steward said, “Every man serves the good wine first; and when men have drunk freely, then the poor wine; but you have kept the good wine until now.” (John 2:10, RSV)

So the wedding guests were inebriated enough not to notice the quality of the wine.

If you want to know what point **not **to get to, read this:

Who has woe? Who has sorrow?
Who has strife? Who has complaining?
Who has wounds without cause?
Who has redness of eyes?
30 Those who tarry long over wine,
those who go to try mixed wine.
31 Do not look at wine when it is red,
when it sparkles in the cup
and goes down smoothly.
32 At the last it bites like a serpent,
and stings like an adder.
33 Your eyes will see strange things,
and your mind utter perverse things.
34 You will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea,
like one who lies on the top of a mast.
35 “They struck me,” you will say, “but I was not hurt;
they beat me, but I did not feel it.
When shall I awake?
I will seek another drink.”

Prov 23:29-35 (RSV)

Ruthie
 
I asked this question in confession after a few episodes of 2-or-3-drink tipsiness. The priest said that if you reach the point that you feel your inhibitions are lowered even a little in a way that could lead you into sin (speaking imprudently, lack of temperence, entertaining sinful thoughts or actions), you’ve drunk too much. He added that one drink is his personal limit based on the above guideline. I’ve also adopted his philiosphy and rarely have the second drink. If I do, it’s spread out over some time and based on a feeling that I can handle it without beginning to act imprudently.
 
whatevergirl “Quote” This is an interesting thread…I am not a frequent drinker…sometimes, I like a nice glass of red wine. My husband will have a few beers now and again. I have a question, though…if a person is considered culpable for drinking too much, to the point where he/she could harm another, or him/herself–why wouldn’t people who have addictions to alcohol, also be considered sinning? I am not saying that alcoholism is a sin, but I believe that the Church’s teachings are such that addictive behavior can render one less culpable, and thus, it would not be mortally sinful to be an alcoholic,because one is addicted.I

You bring up an interesting notion here.

Where does the shame and guilt come from for the alcoholic? As such, it is a ‘Moral’ disease, affecting the very soul… as well as the intellect, reason, will and body in many ways.
The pre-alcoholic is ‘flirting’ with the ‘Occasion of Sin’ rather then the sin itself. And once there it makes h a s h of their soul (spirit).
Where does the occasion stop and the sin start? And should one be ‘flirting’ with it at all? Even if the Will up front is to have one, but 2 or 3 or 4 later the Will (judgment) has been nullified, is the beginning OK but the ending not? How many warnings does one get from the Good Lord? And thinking that once one is Hooked, that it is not a sin anymore (as the Will is not functional), yet, up front one knew this would happen. So in this case it would tend to be, in the beginning a sin but the ending OK? How can it be both ways in different situations?
 
Michael David:

Have you considered a genetic predisposition to alcoholism or other substance addictions? How does one charge a blatocyst with culpability? Or sinfulness?

marietta
 
Ah… marietta, genetic predisposition is also nice.

As such, would that mean that every drink (even to excess) along the way to becoming an alcoholic is then lacking culpability, and not a sin? Do we dare add all the stupid, foolish and hurtful things while done under the influence (as a direct result of it), would also not be sins?

My own morals will not let me go along with that.

We could say that ones genetic predisposition to anything (7 Deadly Sins), would not be so by culpability. Alcoholism was only a disease of late… perhaps the rest of the sins people commit are also genetic predisposition, or will be in the future. That would mean there are no sins since genetic predisposition made one not culpable. Try and tell my conscience that!!!
 
Michael David:

First, I’m not trying to tell your conscience anything - it was just a question.

If one inherits Cystic Fibrosis and spews lung secretions onto the Oriental carpet, can s/he be faulted? If one inherits an allergy to alcohol and finds s/he is addicted to it and vomits on the Oriental carpet, can s/he be faulted?

The culpability lies in the vomiting or the elbow-bending or the spewing - not in the inherited trait.

Do I understand that you do not believe that alcoholism can often be traced to a genetic predisposition, i.e., a specific allergy to alcohol?

Believe me, no one understands better than a recovering drunk the implications of nature vs. nurture, the alcoholic home, the mind games, the behavior patterns, etc. My question here addresses the biophysical/biochemical nature of the disease.

Every drink along the way to full-blown alcoholism is full of the alcoholic’s culpability in that nobody is forcing us to drink. We are doing the heavy lifting all by ourselves. And yet the craving phenomenon is in motion even before Tuesday’s session begins (mainly due to the insanity from Monday’s session) and round and round we go, until conviviality turns to vitriol or deliberate recklessness or any number of other lovely thoughts and behaviors.

Who would choose to live this way? Who would deny his or her spouse and children and job and security and love and even God for just one more drink? If that’s not insanity, what is? Addiction is not a choice. Recreational use may allow for choice, but even then one flirts with life on the outside of reason. There is no lonelier, sicker, more desperate scrap of humanity on this earth than the addict or alcoholic who has convinced himself that he still has it all together, even though everything he ever may have cared about is gone.

I had a choice when I was 12. I just didn’t know I also had the disease.

marietta
 
Marietta,

Nature vs nurture; inherited traits; biophysical/biochemical; allergy or genetic predisposition… none of these singly hold up to the inner truth inside the alcoholic. And even as a combination, it then becomes a full life/living situation eliminating any single cause.

It’s like the ‘forbidden fruit’ in the Garden of Eden. Looking over that story, the fruit was not poison (physically), yet Adam/Eve were told to leave it alone. There was plenty enough other fruit to eat, that was not the last tree with fruit on it. Yet they did eat of it… what happened?
Was there a genetic predisposition (the way God made them) that made the ‘forbidden fruit’ irresistible? And the zeroing in on that one tree’s fruit with more mental time then was given the rest of the Gardens ‘beneficial’ bounty. All in all, was the effects of that “Original sin” only physical? Or mental (insanity)? Or Spiritual (Sin)(and the resulting being removed from God’s good Graces)? Did Adam and Eve have an ‘allergy’ to that fruit? Did eating it give them a disease?
Let’s get down to the ‘one’ trunk of the tree here… the root’s are hidden (inside) underground, and the branches do not tell the whole story… just the effects.
And in all this, isn’t that why Christ had to come down? To show us with allergies, diseases, bio-this and bio-that, genetic whatever… the way back to HIS Good Graces.
Tell me it is not a Moral (disease) (allergy) (predisposition) (inherited) one more time… I may start to rationalize that, but deep down it will still not jive.
 
Michael David:

Your response clearly illustrates a failure to recognize alcoholism as a disease of obsession and compulsion. *“Nature vs nurture; inherited traits; biophysical/biochemical; allergy or genetic predisposition… none of these singly hold up to the inner truth **inside the alcoholic,” *you claim. “And even as a combination, it then becomes a full life/living situation eliminating any single cause.” On the contrary: no single cause has been eliminated; in fact, each cause has been exacerbated by the others. What you are evaluating, from what sounds like a non-alcoholic viewpoint, is an impression of alcoholism; and from this you conclude, erroneously, that alcoholism is no more than willful misconduct which should easily be corrected through choosing God’s grace.

Adam and Eve’s having partaken of the apple in the Garden of Eden (and I interpret this “anecdote” metaphorically) was allegedly a decision made after God instructed them not to do so. Conversely, God did **not **instruct Jesus not to drink wine, which the NT shows that Jesus did; so if Jesus was not sinning in His drinking, then neither are we. Drinking alcohol which escalates in frequency and intensity is not always alcoholism; that is, there may not yet be an obsession or compulsion driving the behavior. The individual who indulges in this pattern is considered only to be a heavy drinker. S/he still has a choice as to when and how much to ingest. The alcoholic, on the other hand, has lost all choice; the body, mind and spirit have been completely hijacked by the addiction. Yes, the grace of God is still available to that individual, but can s/he see it or regard it as something valuable or as a solution to this problem? First the alcoholic has to admit that he or she even has a problem. This is where so many, many alcoholics fail to admit their powerlessness and are too sick to allow for the possibility that there may be a better life than the one which has them shackled to a substance.

“And in all this, isn’t that why Christ had to come down?” you ask, “To show us with allergies, diseases, bio-this and bio-that, genetic whatever… the way back to HIS Good Graces.”
Do not discount the great number of alcoholics and addicts who find their way back to productive, fulfilling and redemptive lives without the intercession of Christ or of any God at all. (And did Christ have to come down? Or did he choose to come down? Or was he instructed to come down? Curious, that.)

You have referred to “the inner truth inside the alcoholic”. What do you suspect is the “inner truth inside the alcoholic”? This will be fascinating reading for any of us in recovery and also for those who, through serendipity, despair, or hope, happen across CAF in search of an answer to the enormously perplexing and frustrating problem of alcoholism.

marietta

(P.S.: I would’ve used the word “jibe”, not “jive”, but that’s just me . . .)
 
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