“Alcoholics go to meetings.”

“I just go to happy hour.”

Most of us have heard some version of that joke.

Most of us have laughed.

That’s the strange thing about alcohol. Long before it destroys a life, it often entertains a room.

We laugh about the friend who always orders one more round. We tell stories about impossible hangovers. We admire someone who can “hold their liquor,” as if drinking more poison than everyone else is somehow an accomplishment. We joke about blackouts. We laugh when someone cannot remember the night before. We shrug when a person insists they are “fine to drive.”

Looking back, I realize many of the moments that should have made people pause instead became stories everyone enjoyed telling.

Not because anyone wanted me to become an alcoholic.

Because that is simply how our culture has learned to talk about drinking.

Here in Park City, alcohol is part of many of the moments that bring people together. Après-ski. Outdoor concerts. Summer festivals. Backyard cookouts. Watching a football game with friends. For most people, alcohol stays exactly where it belongs, as one part of an enjoyable occasion.

But sometimes the occasion quietly becomes an excuse to drink.

The change is gradual.

You start looking forward to the drinks more than the event itself.

You wonder whether alcohol will be available before deciding to go.

Friends expect you to drink the most because that has become your reputation.

Everyone laughs.

Nobody worries.

Neither did I.

People laughed when I blacked out.

They laughed when I forgot conversations from the night before.

They joked about how much I could drink without appearing drunk.

I laughed too.

Today, I hear those moments differently. They were warning signs that nobody, including me, recognized.

That does not mean everyone who drinks too much at a wedding or a ski weekend is headed toward alcoholism. Most are not. And this is not an argument against responsible drinking.

It is simply a reminder that alcoholism almost never begins with catastrophe.

It begins with ordinary moments that become so familiar we stop noticing them.

The jokes.

The stories.

The nicknames.

The expectations.

The excuses.

Years later, my drinking cost me my legal career, my freedom, and relationships that mattered deeply to me. None of that happened in one terrible night. It happened through hundreds of ordinary moments that felt harmless at the time.

That is what makes alcoholism so difficult to recognize.

Its earliest warning signs rarely look frightening.

They look funny.

The next time someone jokes that they cannot remember how they got home, maybe it really is just a joke.

When someone proudly claims they can outdrink everyone else, maybe that is all it is.

Most of the time, it probably is.

But sometimes those moments are the first pages of a story that ends in addiction, broken families, prison, or death.

The hardest part is that you usually cannot tell the difference while you are living it.

Neither could I.

Maybe we do not need to stop laughing.

But perhaps we should become a little more curious about what we are laughing at.

Sometimes the first symptom of alcoholism is not denial.

Sometimes it is laughter.

Jay Werther lives in Summit County and is the founder of The Fair Identity Project, a public-interest initiative exploring recovery, identity and second chances.

The post The warning signs of alcoholism we laugh off appeared first on Park Record.

In Utah, there is no shortage of messaging about alcohol. In many communities, the message is simple and clear. Do not drink. Stay away from it. Avoid the risks.

That message is well intentioned. But it leaves something important out.

It does not explain what actually happens when things go wrong.

It does not explain how consequences unfold in the real world, inside legal systems, professional systems, and everyday life. It does not explain how long those consequences last or how difficult they are to reverse.

For years, I did not understand that myself.

I was a practicing attorney with a stable career and a future that made sense. I was not reckless in the way people imagine. I was functioning, until I wasn’t. The consequences did not arrive all at once. They built over time, and when they came, they were far more severe than I ever expected.

I went through the criminal justice system. I served time in a military-style prison program in New York known as Shock, where discipline and structure are used to break you down and rebuild you. That experience alone is something most people never imagine for themselves.

But the part that changed my life most did not end when I left that program.

Afterward, I entered a second system. The administrative one. The one that does not operate like a courtroom and does not necessarily account for what you have done to change.

I lost my driver’s license. Permanently. Not a suspension. Not a few years. A lifetime revocation based on prior offenses, applied automatically under state regulations.

I lost my license to practice law.

Those are not temporary consequences. They do not fade with time. They do not reset when a person stops drinking. They reshape everything that comes after.

Try rebuilding a life without the ability to drive in a country built around driving. Try applying for jobs with gaps in your work history and without the credential that once defined your career. Try doing that while also trying to stay sober and move forward.

These are the realities that are rarely discussed.

In many places, including here, the focus is on prevention. That matters. But prevention without explanation leaves a gap. It assumes people will simply comply with the message without understanding what is truly at stake.

Young people are often told what not to do. They are not shown what can happen if they ignore it.

They are not shown how a series of decisions can lead to consequences that extend far beyond the immediate moment. They are not shown how systems can continue to impose penalties long after the behavior stops. They are not shown how difficult it can be to rebuild once certain thresholds are crossed.

And they are not shown how easy it is to believe, at the time, that none of this will apply to them.

This is not about fear. It is about clarity.

If we are going to talk honestly about alcohol, especially with teenagers and young adults, we need to move beyond general warnings. We need to explain the structure of consequences. Legal consequences. Professional consequences. Practical consequences that affect daily life for years, sometimes permanently.

Parents, schools, and communities already invest time and effort into these conversations. The next step is making those conversations more real.

Not more dramatic. More specific.

Because the truth is not abstract.

It is a set of outcomes that can follow someone long after the drinking stops. It is a set of barriers that make rebuilding harder than most people ever expect.

People deserve to understand that before they make decisions, not after.

Jay Werther lives in Summit County. He writes about mental health, recovery, bureaucracy and modern systems.

The post What we don’t tell kids about alcohol appeared first on Park Record.

Emotional intelligence is supposed to be a good thing. We are told it means empathy, self awareness, and the ability to work well with others. In theory, it sounds like progress.

In practice, it has quietly become a way to judge, label and manage people who do not fit a narrow emotional script.

Somewhere along the way, emotional intelligence stopped being about understanding others and started being about emotional performance. People are expected to regulate themselves perfectly, respond calmly at all times, absorb stress without visible strain, and remain agreeable no matter the circumstances.

If they fail at any of this, the problem is no longer the environment. The problem is them.

This shows up clearly in modern workplaces, including those common in Summit County. In industries like hospitality, tourism, service work, health care and public-facing roles, workers are often expected to manage high-pressure environments with constant positivity.

Long hours, seasonal instability, staffing shortages, and demanding customers are treated as normal, while any visible frustration is framed as a personal shortcoming.

The language used to describe this sounds neutral, even caring. Someone is told they need to work on emotional awareness or manage their reactions better. But the effect is silencing. Concerns about workload, scheduling, burnout or unfair treatment are redirected inward, away from systems and onto individuals.

The trap is subtle. Emotional intelligence is framed as a skill, but it often functions as a standard of compliance. The emotionally intelligent employee is calm, flexible, upbeat and never disruptive. They adapt quietly. They process privately. They do not make others uncomfortable.

In other words, they help systems run smoothly even when the system itself is the source of strain.

This creates a culture where emotional expression is tolerated only when it is convenient. Anger becomes unprofessional. Frustration becomes instability. Sadness becomes weakness.

Meanwhile, relentless positivity is rewarded, even when it borders on denial. People learn quickly that appearing well adjusted matters more than actually being well.

The burden falls unevenly. Workers juggling care-giving responsibilities, health issues, financial pressure, or the physical demands of service work are often judged not by the quality of their work, but by how gracefully they carry invisible weight. Those who struggle silently are praised for resilience. Those who speak honestly about pressure are told to work on themselves.

Emotional intelligence was meant to help people understand one another better. Instead, it is often used to individualize structural problems. When workloads are unreasonable, people are told to build resilience. When staffing is thin, employees are told to manage their reactions. When systems fail, emotional intelligence becomes a way to shift responsibility away from institutions and onto individuals.

None of this means emotional awareness is unimportant. Empathy matters. Self regulation matters. But a culture that demands constant emotional polish leaves no room for reality. Humans are not machines. We have limits. We get tired. We react. We struggle. That is not a failure of character. It is part of being alive.

A healthier understanding of emotional intelligence would allow space for discomfort. It would recognize that strong emotions are often signals, not defects. It would treat honesty as information, not insubordination. It would ask not only how people feel, but why.

Right now, emotional intelligence is often used as a soft tool of control. It sounds supportive, but it enforces silence. It rewards those who absorb pressure quietly and penalizes those who name it. That is not intelligence. It is convenience.

If we truly value emotional intelligence, we should stop using it to police behavior and start using it to examine systems. It should make workplaces more humane, not more performative, and help people understand one another, not teach them how to hide.

Jay Werther lives in Summit County and writes about modern work culture, mental health, and how institutional systems shape everyday life.

The post The emotional intelligence trap appeared first on Park Record.

Park City is known for innovation, wealth and progress. But there is a quieter reality playing out just beneath the surface, one that many families here recognize immediately once they start caring for an aging parent.

We are building a society that older Americans cannot easily live in.

Almost every basic task now requires digital fluency. Health-care portals. Online-only insurance forms. Banking apps. Prescription refills. Employment paperwork. Government services. Password resets with two-step verification. Uploading documents. Clicking links sent by email or text. All of it assumes comfort with technology that many older adults simply do not have.

We call this progress. For millions of seniors, it feels like exclusion.

I am living this first hand with my mother, who is 74 and experiencing cognitive decline. She still values her independence fiercely. She lives alone. She insists she is managing. But nearly every interaction with the modern world now requires skills she never needed for most of her life and cannot reliably use today.

Try asking someone with memory loss to navigate a health-care portal. Try helping them reset a password that requires symbols, capital letters and a verification code sent to a phone they cannot locate.

Try explaining why their bank no longer sends paper statements or why insurance documents now arrive only by email. Try distinguishing a legitimate alert from a scam designed specifically to exploit older adults.

These systems are not neutral. They reward those who already understand them and quietly punish those who do not.

This problem is not limited to health care. Employment has moved almost entirely online as well. Even basic jobs now require navigating third-party hiring platforms, identity verification software, and remote onboarding systems.

If something goes wrong, there is often no local person to speak with. Just an automated message telling you to check your portal.

If this is frustrating for younger workers, it is often insurmountable for older ones.

We hear constant talk about labor shortages, yet we continue to build systems that screen out experienced, reliable older workers before a human ever reviews their application. The irony is that many of these jobs do not require advanced technical skills at all. They require showing up on time, following instructions, and doing the work. But the digital gatekeeping happens first, and many never make it through.

Here in Summit County, where the population skews older in certain areas and seasonal work is common, this matters. We rely on older residents as volunteers, workers, caregivers, and community anchors. When systems quietly push them out, the entire community feels the loss.

Families step in where they can. Adult children manage accounts, reset passwords, upload documents, and spend hours on hold trying to fix problems their parents did not create.

But not everyone has someone who can do that for them. Many seniors are isolated. Many are afraid to admit they are struggling. They pretend they understand because the alternative feels like losing control of their lives.

Technology was supposed to make aging easier. In many cases, it has made it harder and more dangerous.

This is not an argument against technology. It is an argument for designing systems that recognize how people actually age. Cognitive decline, vision problems, arthritis, anxiety, and limited income all affect how older adults interact with the digital world. Pretending otherwise is not progress. It is neglect.

There are solutions. Health-care providers can offer simple non-digital options. Banks can maintain paper statements and in-person services without penalties. Employers can provide local human contact for hiring and verification. Government agencies can staff phone lines with real people instead of chatbots.

Most of all, we can stop blaming older Americans for not keeping up with systems that were never designed with them in mind.

A community that prides itself on inclusion should not require seniors to disappear behind passwords and portals. Aging should not mean becoming invisible.

If Park City wants to remain a place that values people at every stage of life, we need to make sure progress does not leave our elders locked out.

Because right now, too many of them are being quietly pushed aside, not by policy or intent, but by design.

Jay R. Werther is a Park City resident.

The post When progress leaves older residents behind appeared first on Park Record.