Unusual Dui, But Dui Just The Same

I caught a glimpse of an unusual traffic stop on the news this last weekend. It seems a man was ticketed for DUI one evening for driving drunk…on his lawn tractor. He was spotted driving erratically on the sidewalk. The behavior wasn’t anything new, it just that he got stopped while on a tractor, doing no more than 10 mph. The news had some fun with it.
Along with an interview with the driver, who of course is going to get a lawyer and fight the ticket, there were the obligatory talking heads weighing in on the situation in a whimsical way. They were trying to be funny, but the driver himself had the best comedy line of the piece, and he was dead serious. It went something like, “I was driving the lawn mower because I was too drunk to drive the car.”
He said he used to have problems with drugs, but that he was in group therapy for that issue. However, he added, “but I like my beer.” Is alcoholism the lesser of two evils when compared to drug addiction? Of course, there are a lot of people who don’t necessarily see beer drinking as being anything to cause a fuss. After all, it’s just beer. The problem is, you get just as drunk on a few beers. I really don’t know how beer got put in a lesser category than other alcoholic beverages. Maybe it’s some macho mentality that men aren’t supposed to get bombed ion beer and drive lawn mowers on the sidewalk.
I knew a guy who used to plan his walk home from the local tavern to avoid any encounters with the police, who routinely ticketed him for public intoxication. From his prospective “drinking was never the problem, but the police were out of line and harassing him.”
It was only beer with him too. When he really had a snoot full, he would get belligerent with the officers and recite some libertarian ideology. He never got it. It was always someone else’s problem when he got fired from several jobs, because he wanted to have a few beers.
The DUI on a lawn tractor has a comical element to it, but at the same time there is an underlying sadness to seeing a man get ticketed time after time for the same activity. Otis, the town drunk of Mayberry, came into the jail on an episode of the Andy Griffith Show, riding a cow. He drink of choice was moonshine. The humor made Otis loveable, but his problem was anything but loveable.
They could have done an episode with Otis on a lawn tractor, putting funny patterns on people’s lawns, or side-swiping bushes. Otis got a pass. It was funny. The guy on the news will fight for his rights to be a drunk. It’s his RIGHT to drive a lawn tractor when he’s too drunk to drive a car.
Even when it creates comical situations, alcoholism is not funny. Left unchecked, alcoholism will eventually ruin his life, create serious health problems and sooner or later, his habits will injure or kill somebody else. Alcoholism is not the lesser of two evils. A few beers is just as dangerous."http://alcoholism-support.org/alcoholism-intervention.html">

Ned Wicker is the Addictions Recovery Chaplain at Waukesha Memorial Hospital Lawrence Center He author’s a website for alcoholism support: Alcoholism-Support.org Learn when and how to do a Alcoholism Intervention

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