Perhaps the most pathetic aspect of alcoholism is how hard we work to get hooked. Fortunately, we can ease ourselves into it by starting off with sweeter tasting drinks like shandy, cider, port and sweet sherries. But we soon progress to beers, wines and spirits. It is not long before the beer tastes so normal that we wonder how we could have drunk kid’s stuff like lemonade. Of course we have to dilute the spirits with mixers to start with, but we soon learn to drink them neat. We feel really tough then, particularly if we can down it in a single shot, like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood, and if
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