“oomis: when i say drunk, i dont mean stinking drunk as you so kindly called it. i mean drunk. not plastered off your head, not wasted completely, not smashed out of your brains,and i cant think of any other synonyms right now. there is a difference between being drunk and being stinking drunk. you had many valid reasons as to not get stinking drunk but what comes out is that you think its ok to get ‘normal’ drunk as long as you give your car keys to someone else. please correct me if im wrong “
When it comes to yeshivah (and other) boys, there is no difference whatsoever between drunk and my expression. They get plastered. I live next door to a choshuveh yeshivah, and I have seen more than I would ever want to. There is absolutely no mitzvah in what I have observed for the last 22 years here. I do not really ever think it is ok for underage boys to believe they should drink to excess, car keys or no car keys. You have to be 21 to drink like that, and a 21 year old who gets irresponsibly drunk (and please don’t try to tell me they don’t), is also showing a lack of good judgment. But wait – that is precisely what getting drunk does to you. As I said before, when our chazal suggested that this is a great mitzvah, no one had cars, no one left the shtetl or neighborhood he lived in on Purim, and no one endangered anyone else. We do not live in those societies anymore. Nowadays, just walking down the street while intoxicated, can result in an accident, i.e., a fall on concrete. The boys think they are very cool when they are drinking, and that is their motivation, not the fulfillment of a mitzvah.