Seven myths alcohol advertisers want you to believe.

Absolut Magic" proclaims a print ad for a popular vodka. "Paradise found," headlines another. "Fairy tales can come true," says a third.

All these ads illustrate the major premise of alcohol advertising's mythology: alcohol is magic, a magic carpet that can take you away. It can make you successful, sophisticated, sexy. Without it, your life would be dull, mediocre, and ordinary.

Everyone wants to believe in happy endings. But as most of us know, the reality of alcohol for many people in our society is more like a horror story than a fairy tale. The liquid in the glass is definitely not a magic potion.

1. Drinking is a risk-free activity. Ads featuring copy like "the joy of six" imply that it is all right to consume large quantities of alcohol. Light beer ("great taste") has been developed and heavily promoted not for the dieter, but for the heavy drinker. It is "less filling," and therefore one can drink more.

Ads like these tell the alcoholic and those around him or her that is all right, indeed splendid, to be obsessed by alcohol, to consume large amounts of it on a daily basis, and to have it be a part of all of one's activities. At the same time, all signs of trouble and any hint of addiction are erased.

There is no unpleasant drunkenness, only high spirits. Certainly alcohol-related problems such as impaired driving, broken marriages, abused children, lost jobs, illness, and premature death are never even hinted at.

2. You can't survive without drinking. "It separates the exceptional from the merely ordinary," is how a Piper Champagne ad puts it. By displaying a vibrant imbibing couple against a black-and-white nondrinking background crowd, the advertiser contrasts the supposedly alive and colorful world of the drinker with dull reality. The alcohol has resurrected the couple, restored them to life.

3. Problem drinking behaviors are normal. Slogans presenting drinking as "your own special island" and "your mountain hideaway" capitalize on the feelings of alienation and loneliness most alcoholics experience. Such ads seem to encourage solitary drinking, often one of the classic indicators of trouble with alcohol.

4. Alcohol is a magic potion that can transform you. Alcohol advertising often spuriously links alcohol with precisely those attributes and qualities--happiness, wealth, prestige, sophistication, success, maturity, athletic ability, virility, and sexual satisfaction--that the misuse of alcohol destroys.

5. Sports and alcohol go together. Alcohol consumption actually decreases athletic performance. However, numerous ads, like a Pabst Blue Ribbon poster showing a speeding cyclist with a bottle of beer on her basket, wrongly imply that sports and alcohol are safely complementary activities. Others feature sponsorship of a wide range of sporting events or endorsements by sports stars.

6. If these products were truly dangerous, the media would tell us. Most media are reluctant to bite the hand that feeds them. The alcohol industry spends $2 billion annually on advertising and promotion.

Although many media feature occasional stories about alcoholism, they usually treat it as a personal problem and focus on individual treatment solutions. Reports that probe alcohol's role in violence and other chronic problems are rare, while the role advertising plays in encouraging its use is almost never discussed.

7. Alcoholic beverage companies promote moderation in drinking. Most of these programs are designed to encourage young people not to drive drunk. Although this is a laudable goal, it is interesting to note that few of the alcohol industry programs discourage or even question drunkenness per se. The tragic result is that many young people feel it is perfectly all right to get drunk as long as they do not get behind the wheel of a car.

One of the chief symptoms of the disease of alcoholism is the denial that there is a problem. In general, as a society we tend to deny the illness and to support the alibi system of the alcoholic. Advertising encourages this denial.

We must become fully engaged in the struggle to solve alcohol-related problems. We must stop supporting the denial that is at the heart of the illness that alcohol advertising both perpetuates and depends upon both in the individual and in society as a whole.

What can be done? We can investigate the extent to which the media are influenced by their dependence on alcohol advertising. We can consider the possibility of further restricting or banning all alcohol advertising, as some other countries have done. We can insist on equal time for information commercials in the broadcast media. We can raise the taxes on alcohol and use the extra revenue to fund programs to prevent and treat the illness and educate the public. We can become more aware of the real messages in the ads and work to teach their implications and consequences to those we love and care for.

Excerpted from the spring/summer 1991 issue of Media & Values magazine: "Deadly Persuasion," published by the Center for Media Literacy, Los Angeles.