It's like 'Mad Men,' with consequences

Where would Don Draper be without his drink and his smoke?

Last night I watched a movie which really got me thinking - "The Days of Wine and Roses." It was released in 1962, and stars Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick as a devoted married couple who also happen to be a devoted pair of alcoholics.
Watching it, I was struck again and again by how our culture downplays alcohol use and alcoholism.
Very few films deal so honestly with the horrors of alcoholism as this one. In one scene, Lemmon's Joe returns, drunk, from a party and shames Remick's Kirsten for no longer drinking with him. Kirsten, who is nursing their baby at the time, pleads that the doctor says it will get in her breast milk and Joe spits at her "you're going to lose your shape" and other cruel comments until she reluctantly drinks.
In another Joe is so desperate for a drink that he tears apart his father in law's greenhouse looking for a bottle he stashed there. As he whines, "he stole it, he stole it," it's hard to look at him, he is so pathetic.
I couldn't help but think of Betty Draper from "Mad Men," sitting there glamorously with her cigarette and glass of wine, pregnant and then with baby Gene, or Don, coolly sipping his scotch, never seeming to get very drunk. Sure, their characters are not supposed to be a full blown alcoholics, but the relationship with alcohol for the characters on "Mad Men" is almost played for laughs on the show, and this movie takes place at the exact same era. It's almost as if 40 years of culture enlightenment have left us more in the dark as to how to deal with alcoholism.
Freddy Rumsen, the one character on "Mad Men" who was singled out as having an alcohol problem, was played off as a joke. Meanwhile, the other characters clearly use alcohol to hide from their problems, especially Betty, who drank to excess constantly while pregnant this season, and it is not addressed at all. Was it really that normal? In the film, Joe was fired from his job, and he and Kirsten lost everything because of their alcoholism.
I love "Mad Men," but it's clearly supposed to be a cool show. And whether we like to admit it or not, we certainly live in a culture that treats adults who don't drink as weirdos. I'm just raising a question.