Alcohol Explained

by William Porter

All we need to know is that the relaxing effect of a drink is soon replaced by a corresponding feeling of anxiety.

There is in fact a very clear connection between depression and alcohol, and self-harm and suicide are much more common in people with alcohol problems.

This is one of the key strands to understanding alcohol. It relieves the depression and anxiety caused by the effects of the previous drinks.

This is why so many alcoholics believe they are a breed apart; they are not happy no matter what they have in life, and the only thing that can truly take away their misery is a drink.

Really, what more powerful factor could you need to create a chronic addiction than a substance that takes away a depression that you suffer from no matter how happy you ought to be?

Very simply put, if you have a problem, drinking will not solve it. In fact, it can only make it worse. Things that are genuinely awful but manageable can transform into the genuinely awful and unbearable if you factor in the depressing after-effects of alcohol consumption.

It is the craving that creates the mental agony we encounter when trying to give anything up.

You need to get this straight in your mind: alcohol ruins sleep. If you are tired the next day, this is as a direct result of the previous night’s drinking. Even one drink will interrupt the natural sleeping pattern, and there is no safe amount to drink which will allow you to escape the ill effects of drinking as it impacts sleep.

You may wake up feeling what you think is fine, but the inescapable fact is that you would feel that much better had you not drunk the night before.

Any food or drink contaminated with the amount of acetaldehyde that a unit of alcohol produces would be banned as having an unacceptable health risk.

So if you drink red wine now but when you started drinking you would drink cold white wine, or if you can drink neat whiskey but would never have been able to do so when you started drinking, all that has happened is that you are less able to detect the poison within the drink that your body is naturally repulsed by.

Being a chemical depressant, alcohol inhibits the working of the limbic system with the effect that drinking affects both our long-term memory and our emotional state.

The fact is that whoever you are as a drinker, it is not the real you. It is a poor quality you. It is a tired, irritable and overly emotional you. Essentially, it is not a very pleasant you.

This is what happens when we are constantly taking a drink to take the edge off our feelings whenever we experience anything negative. We are anesthetising feelings rather than facing them with the result that we never learn to deal with them.

When you drink you are literally making yourself more stupid. It is this effect that leads to some people to drinking out of boredom.

Alcohol doesn’t make things interesting; it makes your mind stupid so that things that would otherwise have bored it are suddenly enough to occupy it.

If it does, then congratulations! You have just proven that you have the building blocks to make yourself into a chronic alcoholic!

Over our drinking years, every time we drink when we are not feeling 100% due to alcohol consumption this will register on our subconscious mind. The more this happens, the more our subconscious learns the lesson and the more deeply ingrained this becomes. Eventually our instinctive, subconscious reaction when we are feeling less than 100% due to drinking changes from being repulsed at the thought of drinking to wanting a drink to get rid of the unpleasant feelings.

Essentially, that is what alcoholism is. It is when we get to the stage that we instinctively or subconsciously know that the ill effects of drinking can be removed by drinking more. Rather than feeling repulsed by alcohol when we have had too much, we actually start to crave it as we know it will end all the unpleasant feelings we are suffering from.

Every drink I managed to consume was another brick in the wall that would eventually form a prison, a mental prison known as alcoholism.

In this way, and over time, alcoholism will develop in the binge drinker. The process is accelerated because the binge drinker’s body and brain will get used to large amounts of alcohol being imbibed at every session, so (as dealt with previously) whenever a drink is taken, the brain will release an amount of stimulant far in excess of the first drink or two, and this is turn makes it even harder for the binge drinker to stop drinking midway through a binge; when they start, they will carry on to the bitter end.

The alcoholic is not a bad person. He is just someone who has found himself in an impossible situation and is trying to make the best decisions he can under the circumstances. Unfortunately, because of ignorance and misunderstandings about alcohol generally, he invariably makes the wrong decision, which is to keep drinking.

This is the main transition stage from non-alcoholic to alcoholic. Over time, and with repetition, we change from being repulsed by alcohol when we have drunk too much, to being able to drink through a hangover when we have to, to being happy to drink through a hangover, to wanting to drink when we are hung over, to having to drink when we are hung over.

The final stage is that of constant drinking, usually triggered by taking the morning or middle-of-the-night drink. Either way, it means that as soon as we wake up, we take a drink. This very quickly leads to the stage where the person’s subconscious conditioning is such that, coupled with the craving process, they simply cannot function without a drink; indeed, they will give up everything and anything just to get another drink.

This is because they believe that, miserable as life is when they are drinking, it is marginally better than when they are not drinking.

My point is that if you have stopped drinking, don’t fall into the trap of thinking you can go back to how it was. Once it sours, it sours. Once you see the defects you can never unsee them; like many things in life, you cannot turn the clock back. But this isn’t a reason to be miserable; on the contrary, like any change for the better it is something to enjoy and celebrate.

An alcoholic is really just someone who knows more about the effects of alcohol on both a conscious and subconscious level than a non-alcoholic. The alcoholic knows, subconsciously, that the ill effects of drink can be relieved by another drink; the non-alcoholic does not.

This is the main view that society needs to change, the main fact that it must accept, if it is ever to start to win the war against alcoholism: that any person who drinks too much or drinks irresponsibly over a period of time will end up an alcoholic. No one is safe.

With the subconscious triggers and the spiral of craving it is impossible to put a time frame on it and it can last forever.

The craving is worst when we cannot envisage how we can cope in a certain situation without a drink. When we have got through such a situation without a drink, and if for a brief period we have actually started to enjoy ourselves (or ceased being miserable), the next time the craving is slightly less potent as we are not coming at it from the point of view that we cannot imagine how we can cope without a drink, we are coming at it from the point of view that we can cope and even, for brief periods, actually enjoy ourselves.

You can enjoy life without alcohol; in fact, not only can you enjoy life without alcohol, but it is far more enjoyable.

Don’t just let the thought of having a drink float there unattended: pin it down and be realistic, see the whole picture and not just part of it.

The key to defeating addiction is not overcoming a desire for something; it is removing that desire in its entirety.

the key to defeating addiction is to explode the myth that there is any benefit or pleasure in whatever drug the addict is seeking to quit.

Alcohol takes too much credit. It takes credit for situations that it has contributed nothing too, or has even actually detracted from.

Alcoholism is not a genetic condition. Anyone can become an alcoholic, it just takes a few years of drinking, and if you drink heavily or irresponsibly then the process takes place that much quicker.