Still Resisting Peer Pressure to Drink Alcohol

At a very young age, I decided that I will never drink alcoholic beverages or take those other drugs (ie cocaine, heroin, meth, tobacco, marijuana).

I have stayed true to those promises!

However, no matter how many times I posted on facebook about my non-drinking stance, no matter that I made a YouTube video against drinking, some idiots still insist I join them in getting drunk!

This happened during a reunion the other week! 

This was what I wrote in the reunion blog post
https://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2019/06/my-20th-year-reunion.html

I DO NOT drink alcoholic beverages and I take that stance very seriously. However, not every classmate got the memo!

During the event, others did ask me to drink alcohol beverages. I pulled 2 individuals on the side and told in a serious tone DON'T ever ask me about drinking alcoholic beverages ever again. They apologized. Because they sincerely apologized, their names won't be mentioned.

However, Patsaya Mounthongdy is a different story.

Me & Patsaya do have some similarities in that were both eccentric personalities who are the "lifes of the party".

The difference is that Patsaya has not matured since high school. He is an extremely extroverted person who still thinks everything is a joke.   He doesn't believe in personal boundaries. He still doesn't understand that sometimes, he needs to tone down his loud personality. He doesn't understand when to stop talking and when to leave the issue alone. He doesn't understand that as an adult, he needs to develop an introverted, reflective side too!  

After the rooftop was being cleared, I met up with Patsaya and told him that he needs to stop asking me to drink alcoholic beverages and that I take that issue very seriously.  He did apologize, but then a few minutes later, he said out loud that I was ruining the vibe of the night. I told him politely to drop the topic already.  This continued while we were in the elevator. The Other Guy #1 also told Patsaya to drop the issue. Patsaya still wouldn't shut up. Then I yelled at him "SHUT THE ____ UP" and pointed a pepper spray at his face. I pointed it in a self-defense stance but luckily didn't have to spray it! 

The Other Guy #1 continued to diffuse the situation. 

Patsaya then said "this is the last time I'm ever going to a reunion" 

Good! That's what I call "addition by subtraction". The great ambiance of a reunion is added when we subtract jerks (like Patsaya) who make other people nervous to come to the reunion!

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Yes, I have more to say about Patsaya Mounthongdy

He was already an extremely extroverted person and a class clown in high school. However, I never had a problem with him in high school. 

However, at the reunion, he was obviously drunk. 

Alcohol and an extremely extroverted personality are an extremely bad combination.  

It's bad enough he wanted me to drink alcohol, even worse when I told him to stop asking me to drink, he disrespected me and acted manipulative!


You can't reason with somebody like that! 

I know from past experience with bullies that if I just walked away, he would've followed me and continued to act like a jerk! 

This was why I pulled out my pepper spray and told him to SHUT THE F___ UP!

That's the only style of communication that he takes seriously. 

If he is disrespectful towards me, a man about a few inches taller, imagine how he is to women when he is drunk. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a #metoo story involving that guy!

Being that the #metoo movement exposed a lot of shady characters, it is IMPORTANT that I mentioned the person's real name, which as I mentioned earlier, is Patsaya Mounthongdy.


Those who had earlier run-ins with that guy would be inspired to expose even more about who he is, maybe even press charges or file lawsuits. It would also give a warning to whoever might have to interact with him in the future. 

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Also at the reunion is another chump Alan Vuong (owner of Salon Blanc) who followed Patsaya with this "ha ha, Pablo you don't drink", but he backed down when I got into his face and told him that I take this issue very seriously. Alan Vuong, as a CEO of an award-winning small business, is supposed to be a leader in the community, but that night just showed that he's just another follower who gives into to peer pressure, just like back in high school when his reputation was that of a wannabe gangsta.  He thinks being hardcore is about getting drunk, but really,  he's just too soft to resist peer pressure when it comes to alcohol! Alan was gone before I pointed a pepper spray at Patsaya. At least give Alan credit, he knows to back down instead of pushing the issue like Patsaya.

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The incident inspired me to post this on facebook. 

When people ask me to drink alcohol, and I tell them "I don't drink", some are so stupid to actually believe they can convince to me to drink! Who the hell do these people think they are talking to! I take my anti-alcohol stance seriously and anybody who tries to convince me otherwise will be deleted from my friend's list and publicly shamed on my blog posts! This is NOT a joke and you have been warned!

Now, I actually got tons of positive responses to my post!


I'm not going to show the names of people who wrote them, but I will definitely show the messages

Response #1

• Right on Pablo 👍

  1
• --------------------------

 Response #2

•  Yeah Pablo!

  1

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Response #3

•  Much respect, bro. I stopped drinking, but I'm grateful that no one tries to peer pressure me. Stand your ground and they should respect your decision. People can have fun and be fun without alcohol too. Aloha, my braddah.

  3

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Response #4

•  As a non drinker myself, I deal with this too. While my true friends accept and support my choice not to drink, every now and then someone new joins the group and almost seems to make it a challenge to “break me.” You best believe they aren’t invited back to the next get together!

  1

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Response #5

• 
  
•  Respect ♥️

  1

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Response #6

• Booze is poison.

  1

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Response #7

• I drink occasionally, Pablo, but definitely agree that you don't need friends who disrespect you. That's what "friends" are doing if you let them know and they're still trying to push you. 🤷

  1

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Response # 8

• I got respect on your decision and yes no one should force you to it.

======================


A few days later, I saw this wonderful meme!  

SUMMER DRINKING TIP: When someone says they're not drinking/refusing the alcoholic beverage you're offering DO NOT ASK WHY.
Just offer a non-alcoholic option instead and move on cuz whatever the reason it it's always none of your business

Or better yet, people should STOP offering an alcoholic beverage!

If someone wants a beer, they could go get it themselves. 

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Now, let's go over some recent articles about the negative sides of drinking alcoholic beverages. 


This one on the serious health side effects of getting drunk.



Sirin Kale, “Binge-Drink Britain: How One Weekend Bender Can Ruin Your Life,” Guardian, May 30, 2018, 
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/may/30/one-weekend-bender-can-ruin-your-life-pancreatitis

“You can get pancreatitis after a single binge,” says Dr Sarah Jarvis of the campaign group Drinkaware, although she explains it’s more common to develop it after repeated binges.

The pancreas, a small organ behind the stomach, plays an essential role in digestion. Pancreatitis occurs when it becomes inflamed, usually as a result of too much alcohol. Individual binges can lead to flare-ups of acute pancreatitis, from which the patient can recover after a few weeks. But continued drinking can turn this into chronic pancreatitis, meaning that the pancreas can be permanently damaged, and may fail entirely. Between 70% and 80% of cases of chronic pancreatitis are caused by alcohol abuse, according to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice).

After the sudden death of the Swedish DJ Avicii, pancreatitis is becoming better known. He had been afflicted by the condition after abusing alcohol during exhausting world tours and, after his death, his family issued a statement saying “he could not go on any longer”. His death has forced us to pay attention to a condition we would perhaps rather ignore.

skipped paragraphs

 “My friends are drunk all the time and they’ll be in the club buying me drinks,” Lawrence says. “They don’t realise the severity of my illness because they don’t have to live with it.” Charles gets angry when she sees people being peer-pressured. “People will taunt someone who isn’t drinking,” she says. “It’s like: you’re a weirdo if you don’t drink.” 

This is why I take peer pressure on this issue VERY SERIOUSLY!  

This peer pressure isn't light-hearted fun, this peer pressure has VERY DANGEROUS CONSEQUENCES!

That's why I tell people to don't ever peer pressure on this issue ever again. 

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another article from The Guardian, this one by Adrian Chiles, a former alcoholic who is cutting back on his alcohol consumption.

Adrian Chiles, “What Happened Next? ‘Drinking for the sake of drinking. It’s Madness’: How Adrian Chiles Cut Back On Booze,” Guardian, December 13, 2018, 
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/dec/13/what-happened-next-drinking-for-the-sake-of-drinking-its-madness-how-adrian-chiles-cut-back-on-booze

I have many hunches about things, which usually turn out to be wrong. But this year my hunch turned out to be right – that almost all coverage of alcohol issues failed to get to the big problem. Always the focus was on the extreme cases, the Pernod-in-the-morning type drinkers, as my friend Frank Skinner referred to himself. So the rest of us would look at the classic “alcoholic” waking up in a shop doorway or emergency ward and say to ourselves: “Oh, that’s not me, therefore I have no problem, I am fine.” Well, I don’t think we are fine. It turns out that there are many drinkers like me, quietly putting it away without, superficially, doing any great harm, when, actually, we could do ourselves some real good by drinking significantly less.

One strand of twisted thinking I often hear is: “So what if I die a bit younger? Who wants to live for ever anyway?” As one doctor put it to me, it’s not a choice between living a good, long life or a good, slightly shorter life; it’s about making your declining years as bearable as possible. And drinking too much before you get there isn’t going to help you.

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Now, people are putting on events that provide alternatives to getting drunk

This article starts off about an alcohol-free bar in St. Louis, Missouri, a city known to be the headquarters of a large beer company. 


https://abcnews.go.com/Health/alcohol-heavy-culture-people-booze-free-spaces/story

Pop’s Blue Moon bar, a fixture of this beer-loving city since 1908, has joined an emerging national trend: alcohol-free spaces offering social connections without peer pressure to drink, hangovers or DUIs. From boozeless bars to substance-free zones at concerts marked by yellow balloons, sober spots are popping up across the nation in reaction to America’s alcohol-soaked culture, promising a healthy alternative for people in recovery and those who simply want to drink less.

“We evolved as social creatures. This is a good trend if you want the experience of companionship and social culture but don’t want the negatives,” said William Stoops, a University of Kentucky professor who studies drug and alcohol addiction. “It can help people make better choices.”

skipped paragraphs, to an alcohol-free bar in Austin, Texas

Chris Marshall, who founded Sans Bar in Austin, Texas, in 2015, got sober in 2007 and was working as a counselor when a client shared how difficult it was to navigate the social world without alcohol. The client’s relapse and subsequent death was his call to action.

skipped paragraphs, this one on  how alcohol-free events are helping the LGBT community which once found refuge only in bars.

In Washington, D.C., members of a growing sober LGBTQ community organize dry reading groups and rafting trips and alcohol-free nights out instead of hitting gay bars. Tom Hill, a vice president at the National Council for Behavioral Health, who is gay and in recovery, said those activities create a “sense of socialization and camaraderie to replace what they had.”

Nationally, sober raves such as Daybreaker morning dance parties have caught on, fueled only by dancing.

 skipped paragraphs, now back to Saint Louis

At Pop’s Blue Moon, Jaclynn Rowell, who reads tarot cards for customers, said the health benefits of no-booze nights are a big draw. And many are happy to avoid awkward questions about religion, pregnancy and sobriety that can arise at regular bars when someone asks why they’re not drinking.

Stephanie Keil, 39, spent two hours with friends there on a recent Saturday night and said she’d love to see more boozeless bars.

and the article also mentioned those side effects to an alcohol-filled life

Research links excessive alcohol use to fatty liver, cirrhosis and cancers of the breast, liver, colon, mouth and throat as well as heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, dementia, anxiety and depression. Nearly half of murders involve alcohol, according to studies. Drinking kills about 88,000 people annually, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. Such diseases and social ills cost the nation an estimated $249 billion a year. 

So yes, I made the right decision when I was a kid to never drink alcoholic beverages. I am proud that I have kept my promise to myself.

And I hope you can join me in leading an alcohol-free life! 

BONUS:

My YouTube video from 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1wRPNB3N4I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1wRPNB3N4I

"I don't need alcohol (and neither do you)"

Emotional Sunday

(note: this post is not about yesterday, but about the previous Sunday).

So much emotions in the last few weeks.

Last month marks 2 decades since graduating high school.

There was nostalgic feeling about the fun times, and of course, we had a 20th year reunion to look forward (which I wrote about it at
https://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2019/06/my-20th-year-reunion.html )

However, there were other feelings too!

The high school years were also years in which I have become distanced from my parents, mostly due to their decision to buy a house in the other side of the island a few months before high school started. 

My grandmother stayed in the same community I grew up, and I used her address in order to attend the same high school as my friends.  I would've preferred to stay in my grandma's place 24-7-365, but it wasn't to be

However, I had to spend time commuting between my parent's home in the other side of the island to my high school. The stress of the commute, plus people knowing that I wasn't a full-time resident of my grandmother's address (and therefore not eligible to remain in the high school of my peers) took a toll!

I wanted my parents to abandon their home on the other side of the island and return to live in my high school district. Little did I know, my parents signed a 30-year mortgage, a contract that locked them into one location for that long! 

Add to that, most relatives defended my parent's decision. Cause a strain on family relations? That's an understatement.  It caused me to have a severe high level of hatred towards most of my family!  It inspired a lot of suicidal & homicidal thoughts in my mind!

Add to that, my father was an alcohol drinker and could be very cruel when drunk, and he was set in his ways.

I used to look up to him as a child,  used to have a lot of loving memories with him during my childhood years, but his decision to move house during my adolescence, plus his alcoholic ways caused a major rift! 

In my senior year, my mother finally listened to my concerns instead of just brushing it off as "just another teenage complaint". Communicating my grievances to my father? He just wasn't ready to listen. So all my communication was with my mother.  It was only after I lost control of my emotions when communicating with my mother and punched a few pillows did my mother finally decided to ask my grandmother to stay in her home 24-7-365.  This was when 4th quarter of my senior already started. That's 15 out of 16 quarters done! That's as if a fire already burned 15 floors and approached the final 16th floor! 

So yeah, I finally moved to my grandmother's home (which I requested 1st quarter, but only got when 15/16 quarters already done). Yay, I got what I wanted ........... when it was pretty much too little too late.

Having 15/16 quarters burned through isn't something that is easy to get over! That's 15/16 quarters that are filled with missed opportunities due to commuting and the fear of people finding that I wasn't a full-time resident of the school district.  If it was only 3 quarters that was burned, it wouldn't be so major. But it was 15 out of 16 quarters burned! I CAN'T GET THAT TIME BACK! You can't make up for 15 quarters within just one quarter! 

These missed opportunities (school activities, more time to expand my social circle) caused a resentment in me that could never die!

College and career success could NEVER fill the emotional hole caused by having those 15 out of 16 quarters of high school burned! 

I've been to multiple psychologists/therapists/etc. Couldn't stick to one due to changing health insurance or that the ones I used while in college were only available if I was attending college.

Back in 2014, my parents and I met with yet another psychologist. I was lucky in that I was a graduate student at UH-Manoa at the time, so I was eligible for free services.  I was able to discuss a lot of grievances with my parents in front of a trained professional. It did wonders. My father was much less defensive then than he was when growing up. However, when his next Mexico trip came up, he said this therapy session was his last one.  He might've been burned out by all those sessions. 

Fast forward 5 years to 2019. I appreciated my parent's honesty in the 2014 sessions but there were still things I wanted to clear up! Plus, being that 2019 was the 2-decade anniversary since high school, all the anger about the missed opportunities from the 15/16 quarters burned came right back!

I spent months writing a letter of my grievances that I didn't have time to share in the 2014 sessions. I kept delaying sending ... wait until after Mother's Day, wait until after Father's Day, wait until after the 20th year reunion.........

..... actually, I mailed that letter to my parents the week leading up to the 20th-year Reunion.  

Sending that letter was a major relief in that I let out all my emotions.

Now I had to wait for a response. 

That came the Sunday (the day after the reunion).

The reunion came with mixed emotions. I was happy to see a lot of people, however, after the event, I had a conflict with a drunk who hasn't grown up since high school. Not just any conflict, but one in which I told him to "SHUT THE ----- UP" while holding a pepper spray in his direction! 
(read part 3 of https://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2019/06/my-20th-year-reunion.html)

My dad actually scheduled breakfast for that Sunday, the day after the reunion. The thing was, when my father scheduled that breakfast, he called a few days earlier when he was on another island. When he called, he was unaware that I sent that letter to my parents.  But now he was aware!

So on that Sunday, me & dad discussed a lot of things, mostly about our misunderstandings about each other. He said he didn't know some of the things I was going through and I admit I could've explained it better back then. He talked about his situation, I talked about mines. This was the first time I ever saw my father cried!  He described how he tried to be a devoted father, but also he made some mistakes. He then told me that back when I was a teenager, he didn't understand my grievances, but now he understood.  I broke down too, saying that I used to look up to him as a child, but that many things have gotten in the way over the years! We then hugged, as my father was ready to go home!

I still get emotional thinking about all this! It will take time to process it all!