I grew up believing alcohol was how people connected. Every family gathering revolved around drinking long before anybody spoke honestly with one another. Beer coolers were opened before emotions were discussed, and bottles became the mechanism through which people laughed, argued, celebrated, and avoided difficult conversations.

My father drank heavily for most of his life, and alcohol eventually helped destroy his financial well-being and family life. By the time he began trying to get sober near the end of his life, the damage had already spread through every relationship around him. It is good to know that he tried to get sober before his passing, but that sobriety came too late. Watching that happen forced me to understand that many families do not use alcohol to enhance connection. They use it to avoid vulnerability while sitting in the same room together.

That lesson followed me into adulthood because American social life rarely offers another blueprint. I attended a school famous for its party culture (Go Hoosiers!), where nearly every social ritual revolved around drinking. Sporting events, house parties, networking, dating, and even casual friendships all seemed to begin with alcohol. Non-drinkers technically had options, but the message was obvious. If you wanted to belong, you were expected to participate.

Years later, after stepping back from that culture, I realized college was simply a concentrated version of a larger national habit. Alcohol is embedded in restaurants, airports, concerts, weddings, office events, grocery stores, and gas stations. The expectation follows people from adolescence into adulthood until drinking stops feeling like a choice and starts functioning like a social requirement.

The scale of that normalization is staggering. More than 220 million Americans reported consuming alcohol at some point in their lives, and approximately 1 in 10 Americans suffered........

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