Epigraph:
They ask thee (Muhammad) concerning wine and the gambling. Say: ‘In both there is great sin and also some advantages for men; but their sin is greater than their advantage.’ (Al Quran 2:220)
Michael Phelps a decorated athlete
Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times
I just read the news, in USA Today that Olympic champion swimmer Michael Phelps was arrested for driving while under the influence early Tuesday morning, according to police.
Phelps, 29, also was charged with excessive speed and crossing double lane lines within the Fort McHenry Tunnel on I-95 in Baltimore, the Maryland Transportation Authority Police said. Police say he was driving 84 mph in a 45-mph zone.
According to the police statement, when an officer stopped Phelps’ 2014 white Range Rover just beyond the toll plaza, the 18-time gold medalist “appeared to be under the influence.”
A world class athletes must have had tremendous self discipline over the years, otherwise he or she is not likely to get to the Olympic scene, especially when we are talking about phenomenal success like that of Michael Phelps.
If he is vulnerable, I believe, every one is!
It made me think that more than an individual’s short coming, indulgence in alcohol or any addiction, is a fault of a society, a permissive culture, which condones alcohol use under the label, ‘moderation,’ which is a concept hard to sustain if we look at the statistics of binge drinking in colleges, traffic accidents, domestic violence and drinking during pregnancy.
I will present some of these statistics for readers to make up their own mind.
According to the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the prevalence of binge drinking and heavy drinking in 2012, was 24.6 percent, among people ages 18 or older, in the past month.
College presidents agree binge drinking is the most serious problem on campus.
In 1999, Harvard University’s School of Public Health College Alcohol Study surveyed students at 119 colleges. Here are some of the findings:
44% of U.S. college students engaged in binge drinking during the two weeks before the survey.
51% of the MEN drank 5 or more drinks in a row
40% of the WOMEN drank 4 or more drinks in a row
Alcohol use in pregnancy is a major public health problem and the focus of widespread media attention. Despite being clearly established as a teratogen since the 19th century, alcohol is used by approximately 15% of pregnant women, with rates as high as 20% reported in recent decades.
According to the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, approximately 17 million adults ages 18 and older (7.2 percent of this age group) had an alcohol use disorder in 2012.
Driving Under the Influence (DUI) is one of the biggest dangers facing motorists today. In 2003, 1.4 million Americans were arrested for DUI, and alcohol-related crashes produce an estimated $45 billion in damages every year. On average, a person is injured in an alcohol-related car accident every 30 seconds. From 2000 through 2005, 103,213 people were killed in alcohol-related car accidents in the U.S. alone.
Just like in the West in the last few years, we have started marginalizing cigarette smoking, we can do the same to beer and other alcoholic beverages.
Let us start off with Surgeon General’s warning about harm of alcoholic beverages and their addiction potential.
Additional Reading
Switzerland: Alcohol abuse linked to domestic violence
Binge Drinking: moderation is a myth hard to sustain
Alcohol: moderate use a gateway to alcoholism
An international repository for alcohol related problems
Categories: Addiction, alcoholism, Americas, Utilitarian value
Seriously, is this article for real?! One man gets arrested for driving under the influence, and you question whether it is a “wake up call for western civilisation”?! What, the whole of western civilisation?!
With all due respect, I think you might be over-stating the significance of this event, but thanks for the laugh.
Did you read the article? It is a 45 billion dollar issue, “alcohol-related crashes produce an estimated $45 billion in damages every year.”
From 2000 through 2005, 103,213 people were killed in alcohol-related car accidents in the U.S. alone.
Approximately 3000 people were killed on September 11, 2001, very tragic though, but contrast the numbers here with alcohol deaths, which keep recurring every year and do some math.
You think this article is for “laughs?”
No, I think your headline is for laughs, not to mention misleading. You didn’t write “103,213 people were killed in alcohol-related car accidents in the U.S. between 2000 and 2005: A wake up call for the US”, you wrote: “Michael Phelps arrested on DUI charge: A Wake Up Call for the Western Civilization”. It’s the kind of sensationalist headline a tabloid would come up with.
I also take issue with “If he is vulnerable, I believe everyone is” in the article itself. There’s no logic to that statement. This guy happens to have been a very successful swimmer, that’s all – he’s not held up as the benchmark for moral behaviour by “western civilisation”.
I just noted in the Wikipedia page about alcoholism, “The World Health Organization estimates that there are 140 million people with alcoholism worldwide.”
To me that is enough evidence for vulnerability of a large proportion of humanity and given the right circumstances I think every one is vulnerable. Look at the binge drinking statistics in colleges, going up to half of the students in colleges.
Let me now quote a paragraph from Wikipedia page on alcoholism:
To be fair, I’m not disputing what Wikipedia says, or that alcoholism or DUI are problems; I took issue with the headline of this piece and some of the article.