It's never to early to talk to Daddy about your drinking

I was driving Ian home from a late afternoon class the other evening, and suddenly a commercial that I had hear before came on the radio, where a nearby university was looking for people with a drinking problem for some clinical study. But they couldn't just say, "If you drink too much and you wanna make some extra money, call us." No - they had (presumably) an actress, from the perfection of the delivery, recite a confession, so to speak, about her own struggle with alcohol, followed by the recruitment plug for the study, followed, I think, by some final declaration of hope by the troubled actress. It was pretty dramatic, along the lines of "All my friends knew I drank too much" and "I could go a few days without drinking, but I'd always go back to it."

Apparently something in this commercial hit home for Ian, because it made him face up to a substandard pattern in his own drinking life, and after the ad, he finally came clean: he announced that he actually drank too little, rather than too much. He said he knows he's supposed to drink about four glasses of water a day, but he often drinks only one or two - something along those lines.

Although a little extra money is always welcome, especially for Ian, who likes to buy icons with his (which makes us very happy), I figured he probably wouldn't be a good fit for the study in question.

(January 4, 2011)