Nearly every weekend in my part of town, a bus stop shelter, a light pole, or a traffic sign is knocked down. In one curve in front of the Thermas Sports Club, the bus stop shelter was destroyed three times. The city finally moved it up the avenue.

Why is that? Drunk drivers. Between our neighborhood and downtown are a couple of nightclubs. At four and five in the morning, people stagger to their cars and rev up for the ride home. In their drunken stupor, they often don't make it. We've even seen upturned cars in the creek next to a major intersection.

That not to mention that alcohol is involved in most fights and murders between people who know each other. Bar brawls, nightclub fights, knifings -- alcohol loosens the tongue, raises one's arrogance level, and lowers inhibitions -- the fiery mix for trouble.

On top of that, Zig Ziglar writes:

"Authorities now know that approximately one person in sixteen who ever takes a social drink will become an alcoholic! How many of you would get on an airplane if before it took off you knew there was a 1 out of 16 chance that it would crash and destroy your life. Actually, the odds for a commercial airliner crashing are closer to 1 out of 1,000,000; but even with those odds some people will not fly. Yet many of these same people will take a drink!"

I'll take my chances with an airplane. But alcohol scares me silly. I stay as far away from it as I can get.