Yes I relate to yr post.
We do grow up early to protect ourselves & others & we grow greater insecurities about who we are in the world. We do not get the training needed to know how to be or do in society to really be solid within ourselves & we are trained to watch out for others before ourself. We are martyred as children & the role can continue on in adulthood. I will attest that martyring for a lifetime is EXhausting!!!
I have been seeking selfihness for awhile now; I may look for healthier interactive skills someday ;-o

My parents were from the WW2 era & my father a lifetime Marine I only knew slightly. I have no idea if my stepfather had any military service;I doubt it. My stepfather was a pedophile amongst his sexual & abusive predilections. & evidently my mother was an alcoholic & nyphomaniac as well as bi-polar, which I only recently found out from other relatives. The fights & results will always be embedded in my mind as my mothers head was embedded in the kitchen wall once by my stepfather for her getting drunk before she got home from work.

There was a prevalence of partying as cool powerful society during & after the wars. Some people got caught up into it seriously. I often wonder "what my Dad saw in World War that made him change into a different person" but I know way too many Vets that did Not become alcoholics or drug abusers to just leave the responsibility at that. I think the individual is ultimately responsible for their behavior & control, their seeking to be as healthy as possible but I also 'blame' marketing & the companies they advertise for. People use to say that war brought prosperity & tobbacco & alcohol businesses flourished among all. The only picture I have of my parents together is the night of their marriage & they are smiling at the camera in a bar with drinks & ciggarettes in hand.

We can go back & view the movies & read the books of the eras to get a sense of how much the intake & use was impressed as ' a part of life'.
"The world might end tomorrow so let's get drunk tonight" "Got a ciggarette? sarge" "gimme ciggarette, gimmee chocolate bar"
Viet Nam changed things further when getting high with drugs became popular. For all us hippies thinking drugs would set us free & make the world love more, drugs were the escape from hell for the servicemen. Of course they were just an escape for us all; some of us just didn't know that or if we did we welcomed it with opened arms (entendre intended). In the 60s at least on the West Coast people who drank alcohol were looked at as good Americans as opposed to the bad getting high hippies & crazed drug addicts so certainly getting drunk got an approval that allowed for deeper indulgence which the alcoholic beverage companies sure liked.

Understand that prescribing drugs for depression, going faster going slower, losing weight, hormones, all kinds of things had really stepped up in the late 50s early 60s especially. I got my 1st drugs from my mother's perscriptions. I think the drug era was coming in on an unavoidable tidal wave fueled by industrialized alcohol manufacturing & relaxed advertising rules. Besides we weren't suppose to have sex so what were you going to do? The small town social was gone..... dancing was discouraged for teens