Why is alcohol so available despite its negative consequences?

“Alcohol is readily available because it sells. If people didn’t buy alcohol, there would be no market for it. Good luck achieving that, right? It can feel as if there is nothing but alcohol in our culture: commercials during football games that make alcohol seem like the wheels to a social life, family life; the nights in bars when the man sends the women a drink—everyone happy and sexy! Someone lights a candle at a perfectly normal dinner and boom, you are at an Italian restaurant getting smashed on good wine. Or cheap wine. After a while, you don’t even care. As long as it’s drunk,” explained author Alle C. Hall.

Alcohol can have a substantial impact on people’s lives, and many people struggle with the overconsumption of alcohol. Alle’s main character in her novel, “As Far As You Can Go Before You Have To Come Back,” suffers from alcoholism. For Alle C. Hall, her personal experience was a source for her character’s experience with alcoholism. Now, she is sober, but it hasn’t always been easy.

“One thing that I don’t often see discussed is late-onset alcoholism. I stopped drinking in my 20s while studying the underpinnings of childhood abuse that led to addiction. After a handful of drunken events, I’d seen enough of my behaviors that I realized that if I lived long enough, I would start acting out in alcoholism, as well as food and love addiction. Twenty-seven years into sobriety, I drank. Out of the blue, a splash of Swedish Bitters in sparkling water seemed the logical way to vivify the drudgery of cooking dinner, of being a housewife when, before having children I’d had a job with “national” in the title; of not even being a good housewife. A year later, on a flight home from Asia, I had a beer—and I didn’t stop drinking for hours. I realized the quicksand I stood on: I had a surreal-supportive marriage and two healthy, happy children. I was flirting with losing it all. I went to my first meeting in years and have been sober since: four years!”

Alle C. Hall has worked as an Associate Editor at The Vestal Review, and as a Senior Nonfiction Editor for jmww journal. Currently she is a first reader for Creative Nonfiction Magazine. She has written and published numerous sh