“I try to be sober in everything, but I don’t always have to” – Picture of the Day – Kommersant

September 11 is the All-Russian Day of Sobriety and the fight against alcoholism. Kommersant asked entrepreneurs, public and cultural figures what they lack sobriety.

Alexander Tsypkin, writer, screenwriter:

– I really lacked the most ordinary human non-alcoholic sobriety. Therefore, I stopped my friendship with alcohol a year and a half ago. I began to feel differently, I had much more free time and energy. Do not believe it, even writing has become better and more. But I did it already at a conscious age, before that I gave my friend Dionysus a large number of years, none of which I regret.

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Dmitry Guberniev, TV presenter, sports commentator:

– Some of us lack sobriety in expressing words of love for the Motherland! Everything else is great.

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Yunis Teymurkhanli, hotelier, owner and general manager of the Helvetia Hotel:

– Since I live in a metropolis, alcohol does not bother me in any way. Petersburg and Moscow are not among the leaders in terms of alcohol addiction. If we talk about figurative sobriety, we still do not quite understand the scale of the situation in which we find ourselves in terms of economic pressure from outside. And in response to the bravura statement that there is no particular impact of sanctions, I would advise you to be sober in your perception of the situation and understand that this is a garrote that will slowly stifle us.

What we will come to is not yet clear, but we need to maintain a sober mind and adapt. For example, I was sober enough to understand that Netflix was gone. Therefore, I did everything so that I could have it at home: I made foreign cards, started a foreign account, set up a VPN on the router.

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Klim Shipenko, film director, screenwriter:

– Quoting Dovlatov, “I read so much about the dangers of alcohol that I stopped reading.” I always try to be sober in everything. But it doesn’t always work out. And it’s not always necessary.

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Andrey Kovalev, businessman, leader of the All-Russian Movement of Entrepreneurs:

– There are not enough sober, wise decisions of the government in business. From the outside, their activity looks like the behavior of a drunk person. If a person is sober, he speaks briefly, restrainedly and clearly. And when a person is drunk, he likes everything. He says how cool and cool everything is, and the next morning he wakes up with a headache.

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Pavel Gusev, editor-in-chief and owner of the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, president of the Russian public organization Hunting Club SAFARI:

– The responsibility of the drivers. Because of this, the most terrible and irreparable events occur that destroy the lives of other people and the drivers themselves. And it should be like most hunters: before – in no case, and after – almost always necessary. Even such a professional quality is developed that you don’t even want to before hunting.

Alcohol should give pleasure and make a person free, not embittered and gloomy. As a young man, I was deeply impressed by the fast-burning miners I worked with in the uranium mines. For many, life ended in torment, as they often abused before descending into the mine, and because of thirst, they drank natural, but very radioactive water from cracks in the rock.

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Vladimir Permyakov, theater and film actor:

“I have enough, but in people’s search for love and the path to God, I often see that they don’t. Without a spiritual core, we fall apart like Ancient Rome from debauchery. I even wrote a play about the inevitability of mistakes on this path and repentance.

Drinking comes from boredom and idleness. Such people do not find their place in life. Or maybe they don’t want to? You need willpower. I can occasionally support the company with a couple of glasses or glasses, but no more. I have been friends with sports since childhood, I run six to seven kilometers every day. And this year he swam until the last day of summer.

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Elina Denisovamember of the Russian and Moscow Sommelier Associations, Ambassador of Armagnac in Russia:

– In my picture of life, I have enough sobriety: in norms and forms, in reflections and reasoning. And for others – this is a personal choice of everyone in compliance with the current legislation. Otherwise, we are not the Inquisition to engage in moralizing.

It is in the Russian soul: to fall in love is like a queen, to squander is like a million. But I see the mission of my profession in translating from the wine language into human, teaching the skills to enjoy good drinks and distinguish them from low-quality ones. And then there is enough for everyone.

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Alexey Chesnakov, Director of the Center for Political Conjuncture:

– There is not enough sobriety in public assessments and forecasts. We live in constant informational stress, and in order to meet the expectations of the audience, which itself is not always sober, experts have to constantly look for a golden mean: on the one hand, regularly raise the degree, on the other – completely “do not go overboard”.

Group “Direct speech”