StevenPreece
Old Salt
How many of your oppos continue to drink the same way after they leave. Who tells them to switch oFF.
Cheers
Steve
Cheers
Steve
StevenPreece said:How many of your oppos continue to drink the same way after they leave. Who tells them to switch oFF.
Cheers
Steve
John_Charity_Spring said:Depends what they're doing with their lives.
Most move on...more or less; and drink less than they did in the army.
Unfortunately 'less than they did in the army' may still be more than is good for them.
Most ex soldiers seem to readjust to civillian life and make a go of it. At heart they are probably a bored and unsatisfied and at heart despise civy ways even if they know better than to say so. They miss the intensity, insanity, cameraderie and physical challenge and certainties of army life but adapt to a routine and are realistic enough to get on with things. Everybody who chose to leave the army did so for a reason.
When you are no longer 19 and physically fit it becomes progressively harder to scrape yourself out of bed after a night on the urine. Hangovers get worse and bosses don't find them funny the way some NCOs did.
The first surprise of civy life is paying bills. Instead of food and accomodation being stopped at source- and it wasn't much- you now have to pay all the household bills, rent, and buy food in Tescos. Money is no longer 'beer tokens' but 'money'.
If you live on your own or with a partner you are no longer sharing a block with up to fifty other lunatics whose raison d'etre is the manic consumption of alcohol. You are not posted to Germany or Cyprus away from your family and thrown upon your mates for company 24/7 with little in the way of non alcoholic recreation. Other interests and priorities fill your time.
Ex squaddies usually calm down drinkwise within a couple of years of leaving the service but still drink more than civies. For some there is only a downward spiral and the booze kills them or ruins their lives. Whether this would have happened to them anyway, even if they hadn't served, is anybodies guess.