Originally Posted by
johnso29
I will say this. My experience at NWA/DAL is that the heavier drinkers are retired military. Not saying that is the current military mentality, but I see trends among them.
Old school military was most certainly a heavy-drinking culture, I caught the tail end of that and my uncle (retired BUFF driver) died getting a liver transplant. But they phased that out over the last 25 years. A DUI is an automatic career-ender for any officer and essentially any enlisted. We all have annual alcohol awareness training. The Navy (and I think one or two other services) now does random breathalyzers when you come to work. Alcohol has been removed or severely constrained at many formal social and ceremonial occasions.
We still have our moments I suppose, but it's well contained these days. If your ship stays on deployment for longer than the standard 6 months, you get two beers
Hell, the navy recently fired the leadership of a warship for getting drunk during a port call...in Russia! NOT getting drunk in that circumstance probably would have created a diplomatic incident
OK, there's always "that guy"... we're at Al Udeid for a few weeks, so this guy borrows ID cards from folks who aren't going to the bar, (like 5 or 6) so he can use their nightly quota on top of his own. The officer in question is good though, he's on track for flag (or the brig, one of the two).