Living in the heart of downtown as I do (within earshot of FIVE bars and two package stores) I see the results of heavy drinking every day and every evening. Happy drunks, morose drunks, weepy drunks, quarrelsome drunks all take their turn through my eyes and ears and heart. They have told me their story, have shared their pasts and their aspirations, and their belief that they won't last another winter. Indeed, some of them have died.

Some- most - of them come from heavy drinking families; one man told me, awestruck, that *one* sister of his never drank. NEVER drank, he repeated wonderingly.

Another told me that the first time he got drunk was when he was 7 years old- and his parents thought it was so *cute*.

I don't know many 'genteel' drunks.