BARRY NOREEN: DA contest might help sort this out
There's a new rock band in town with an extended engagement at Oscar's.
They call themselves Johnny Brewsome and the Bar Association.
Go, Johnny, go. Because if you drink the equivalent of 11 cans of beer in five hours, you're going to be going quite often.
Last week, District Attorney John Newsome made what must pass for an apology after hidden television cameras caught him chain-drinking beers.
"I'm sorry I put myself in this situation," Newsome told The Gazette.
That is entirely believable.
Newsome also stuck by his story that after quaffing enough to drown a bowling team, he was not impaired by alcohol as he drove home.
That is not believable at all.
Eleven beers and he wasn't drunk? Quick, somebody call the Guinness Book of Records. We've got a contender.
Not funny? OK.
Then let's talk about binge drinking, because that's not funny at all.
The definition of binge drinking is recited on the Nemours Foundation Web site: "The term refers to the heavy consumption of alcohol over a short period of time . . . Today the generally accepted definition of binge drinking in the United States is the consumption of five or more drinks in a row by men - or four or more drinks in a row by women - at least once in the previous 2 weeks."
"It is a pattern of drinking," said Beverly Hawpe, owner of Beverly Hawpe and Associates, a Colorado Springs counseling firm. "It would consist of someone drinking for a period of time. It could be a weekend, it could be a month."
Consuming 11 beers in five hours?
"Someone who is able to do that has built up a tolerance," Hawpe said, adding that casual drinkers who imbibe infrequently wouldn't be able to ingest 11 beers so quickly.
No, it takes practice to drink as much as Newsome put down. It's not for beginners. Newsome didn't deny chugging down the amount he was reported to have consumed.
He shrugged off drinking the equivalent of a six-pack of beer before going back to his office, then drinking more later on. You'd be hard-pressed to see a more classic example of a drinking man in denial.
True, the city's watering holes are frequented by journalists, construction workers and students, but none of them swear an oath to uphold the laws. They don't send drunken drivers to prison for vehicular homicide.
Voters have a tolerance level, too. Unless a political opponent emerges, it will be hard to gauge the tolerance level of voters in El Paso and Teller counties.
If they had the chance, maybe the message would be something like "Go, Johnny, go."
Contact Noreen at 636-0363 or noreen@gazette.com. He appears every other Friday on KOAA's Comcast Channel 9 at 4 p.m.
