Drunk U

Why do most universities allow students to drink?

Perhaps it's because universities are big business. Sure they're state run or nonprofit, but many faculty and administrators make comfortable salaries that they want to hang on to in the face of competition and falling college-age population. The chance to party and get drunk is a big draw for many college-bound teens. 80% of U.S. college students drink and half are binge drinkers. Most universities need to attract those students to stay in business.

Dartmouth College, an Ivy League school in New Hampshire, is in the news these days because its binge-drinking fraternity system is drawing criticism, but most schools are not far from it. My son went to Cornell where drinking was also rampant. 

Dartmouth is famous for its boozy fraternity system. Through hazing and alcohol use, fraternities foster multi-generational loyalties that help keep the college going. Would Dartmouth even exist without alcohol? I don't know but it's at least questionable.

Universities will tell you that their students are adults. Though technically true, it's a very loose definition of the term. They will tell you that they can't enforce rules about drinking, though they seem to be willing and able to enforce rules against offensive speech for example. The fact is, they pander shamelessly to youthful impulses.

Brigham Young University, the Mormon university in Utah, is the obvious exception. It prohibits all alcohol use on religious grounds and aggressively enforces that policy. Are BYU students better educated? No. Are they more successful? No. They are, however, happier.

I've known a number of Mormons in my life and they all seemed strangely happy. It's no mystery. It's not because they wear special underwear or believe stories about the Angel Moroni. It's because they don't use drugs or alcohol, not even caffeine. As a result, their brains function normally, and a normal, unpolluted brain is the first step to finding happiness. 

The goal of higher education, though, is not happiness, but success, and alcohol use can perhaps help you to be successful. So maybe it makes sense for schools to accept it as a cornerstone of the educational experience.

Universities want you to be successful and stand ready to help you on your way. If you want to be happy, though, you're on your own. Fortunately, you don't need a degree to find happiness because there's only one thing you really need to learn:

Don't use alcohol.

Alcohol Concern, Alcohol Justice

An organization called Alcohol Concern has campaigned in England for over 25 years against the harm caused by alcohol use.

Their stated goal is to create a new conversation about alcohol and change what they call the "alcohol culture" in the U.K. They don't advocate ending alcohol use, but I'm sure they're just being coy. They have perhaps concluded that they will do more good by advocating for restraint, but I think they're wrong. Saying that limited drinking is OK does no good because most drinkers think they're drinking "sensibly" already. If there is such a thing as "sensible" drinking, no one actually practices it.

AC may be moving in the right direction though. This year they promoted "Dry January", signing up drinkers to agree to live alcohol-free for a month. They got good media coverage, described on their website:

During the campaign, Alcohol Concern persuaded Daily Telegraph political commentator Peter Oborne to take part and write about his experiences in the paper. He also took part in media interviews on Sky, BBC 5 Live, BBC Radio 2 and on Newsnight.

They didn't ask people to "drink responsibly" for a month. They asked them to stop. Contrast that with the U.S. where there is zero public conversation about alcohol use. Here it's effectively a taboo subject.

Formerly known as the Marin Institute, the group Alcohol Justice is the only organization in the U.S. that actively works to counter the promotion of alcohol use in America. Their focus is on the alcohol industry, campaigning against claims of "healthy" alcoholic beverages for example.

A recent medical study showed that senior citizens in Greece suffered from less depression if they drank two ounces of wine with dinner. Well, maybe, but what do you want to bet that this news article was planted by alcohol industry publicists? And who drinks two ounces of wine? There's a ton of research that alcohol use at the levels practised by most Americans causes depression. It's not a cure for anything.

In the U.S., almost no one talks about the effects of alcohol use. So I'll say it again. Don't drink. It's making you unhappy.

Beer Goggles

"Beer goggles" is slang for the scientifically-proven warping effect that alcohol has on how we see the world. Specifically, it refers to the fact that we find others more desirable when we are intoxicated. In other words, if you're having trouble finding the "right person" to spend your life with, just hang out in bars and you'll be married in no time. Don't ever stop drinking, though, because with the "goggles" off, things may look different.

Beer goggles are good for more than just finding a life partner.  If you're choosing a career, trying to make a fashion statement, buying a house or deciding how to invest for retirement, the decision will go a lot quicker if you knock back a few. After you've signed up for the Marine Corps, got your tattoo, bought that fixer-upper and moved your life savings to Made-Offwidit Associates, you can kick back, turn on the television and pour yourself another cold one, secure in the knowledge that you're on course for a life of ease and comfort.

Or not.

Greedy, lazy, amoral people love it that you drink. It makes it so much easier for them to suck the life out of you. 

My father was a heavy drinker who spent half his free time in Harry's Bar in Mayfield Heights, Ohio. A stranger came into the bar one day offering to sell new televisions in unopened boxes out of a truck at a steep discount, the implication being that they might not be quite legal. The boxes were filled with telephone books. He sold them all.

I don't suppose the guy tried to sell them in churches and libraries. If you're a con, you want your marks loosened up.

My father never went anywhere without his beer goggles. I went to pick him up at the airport once when he came home from a business trip to Houston. I waited at the gate but he didn't get off the plane. Actually he did, but he didn't see me because he never saw me, and I didn't see him because he was dressed head to toe in a full Western outfit—cowboy hat, cowboy boots, fringed leathers, the works. Later he told me how that happened. He was killing time in Houston when he wandered into a Western outfitter's shop, just for kicks, with no intention to spend his modest means on anything foolish. The young woman there asked him if he would like something to drink. He said, "No thank you, I'm not thirsty." The woman replied, "You're not from here, I see. What I mean is, would you like a drink? We have scotch and Jack Daniels."

Would the world economy collapse if Americans stopped drinking? Possibly, but there's not much danger of that. You can stop drinking, though, without throwing someone out of a job. If you do, you won't have to win the lottery. By not letting yourself get hornswoggled all the time, you'll find you actually have enough of everything you really need.

And when you fall in love, it will be with someone you really want to be in love with.

The Song of Life

To be happy, you must know how to be happy. To know how to be happy, you must know what it is to be happy and realize that you may never have been happy in your life, or that it may have been a fleeting, elusive experience.

One word captures the true nature of happiness: harmony. It's the peace and tranquility that come from concord in our relations with others, with the earth, and with ourselves. It's what we feel when the song of life rings clear and true.

Alcohol distorts that harmony. Its song is a discordant clash of whining, grasping urgencies that tie us in knots and leave us desperate and isolated.

Poet Maya Angelou, despite her difficult early life, does not use alcohol, from all I can tell.  She said, "Love life, engage in it, and give it all you've got. Love it with a passion, because life truly does give back, many times over, what you put into it."

If you feel your life is out of tune, first stop drinking, then listen for the music all around you. Share in the song of life with a clear head and an open heart. Know what it is to be happy and don't settle for less.

Finding Love in Alcohol America

A recent film with Leonardo DiCaprio tells the iconic F. Scott Fitzgerald story of Jay Gatsby's doomed love for his Daisy, and it inspired me to pick up the novel.

There's a lot of alcohol in this story. Gatsby, who made his fortune selling the stuff, doesn't drink himself. Desperately trying to find the love of his life in boozy 1920s New York society, he ultimately loses hope and comes to a bad end.

Finding love in Alcohol America can be a problem, especially in a place like New York City where just about everyone drinks, but maybe there's hope. An alcohol-free disco has just opened, called "The Other Side", in Crystal Lake outside of Chicago. Other than that, though, there don't seem to be any other alcohol-free adult venues that offer a nightclub experience anywhere in the country. 

It says a lot about America that not drinking can be such a problem. At a party I went to recently, some found it disconcerting, and possibly even anti-social, that I don't drink.

You may need to make excuses. You can tell people you have a medical reason for not drinking, "stomach problems" for example. In fact, you're likely to get gastritis or pancreatitis from drinking, so it's not really a lie. If you feel the necessity, ask any doctor and they will tell you to stop drinking.

There's another problem though. If you're not drinking, your inebriated friends aren't going to be much fun, and you're not going to be much fun to them, especially if you start noticing what dopes they are when they've had a few. Probably you'll need to find new friends that don't drink. 

Where can you find such people? The web site meetup.com, a point of connection for thousands of social and special interest groups, hosts over 100 non-drinker social groups with 16,000 members. You'll find them at nondrinker.meetup.com. If there's no group where you live, it's simple to start one on the site. If you happen to live in New York, the group Smart Party NYC has 800 members who get together for parties, nights out and dancing. 

Or, you can get your friends and family to stop drinking. That's going to be hard to do, of course. I think that some of my friends have at least started to think more seriously about drinking since I started this blog, but it's a hard sell. 

If you're single, I guess you know I'm going to tell you that hooking up while drinking, or marrying a drinker, are two things that are pretty much guaranteed to leave you unhappy.  Take a lesson from Jay Gatsby. Don't drink, and don't fall in love with people who do.

I Have a Dream

It's the 50th anniversary of the civil rights era March on Washington in 1963, and I, too, have a dream. I dream of a world in which people stop poisoning themselves with drugs and alcohol and live happy, generous lives.

How much unhappiness would go away if no one drank? I don't know, not all of it certainly. But half? Ninety percent? 

I first started thinking about this when I lived for a few years in Maldives, a Muslim country where almost no one drinks. They have their problems, to be sure, but mostly the people there are happy most of the time. You can't help being struck by it, coming from America where so many of us are unhappy even though we seem to have just about everything we could want or need, compared to much of the world at least.

Maldives is something of a paradise, of course—sun, sand, palm trees, ocean. Even so, if I imagine Maldivians drinking as much as Americans, it's difficult for me to see them so happy.

Only half of Americans drink, so what about the other half? Are they as happy as Maldivians? No, but I think the reason is that, even if you don't drink, you can't help living in Alcohol America. Family members, neighbors, co-workers and public officials drink, so there's no escaping it. 

I know how Quixotic it must seem to others for me to be writing this blog, but dreams do come true and they all start somewhere. If, like King, I dream a better world, will it come? I do know that it begins with believing it can. 

A Beer Can in the Woods

Our back yard faces a park where the neighbor kids, age 10 to 13, hang out. A couple of weeks ago, while doing some yard work, I saw an empty beer can there in the woods.

It made me sad, and it has haunted me ever since, thinking of the chain of unhappiness that starts with a can of beer in the woods and tightens its grip, perhaps for a lifetime, can by can, glass by glass, bottle by bottle.

I can't help thinking of a 13 year old with two lives ahead of him (I'm sure it's a boy), one where he uses alcohol and one without. How different those two possible lifetimes would be.

Without alcohol, a normal life, probably. Love, marriage, career, children, retirement—the normal highs and lows. With alcohol, perhaps great success, but along with it, broken families, loneliness, and many regrets, with the possibility of a long, slow descent into alcoholism. 

No one who has young children should drink. Children can be the greatest source of happiness, but if they're messed up, the greatest unhappiness as well. It's bad enough that you miss out on the life you should be having with your children, but what's worse, your drinking is teaching them to drink. One day, when you ask yourself how everything went so wrong, you won't have to wonder because I'm about to tell you.

It was the drinking.

Easy Street

If only I could win the lottery, I'd be happy. I'd be living on "Easy Street".

Easy Street is not like Main Street. You don't have to work, you can pay people to do everything for you, you can do almost anything you please, and everyone has to treat you just the way you want or you can just tell them to take a hike.

Sounds like bliss. This must be happiness.

Yet I've known people who live on Easy Street and none of them seem half as happy as the people on Main Street.

What's going on here? 

The magazine Atlantic has an article titled "There's More to Life Than Being Happy". It shows how confused we are about "happiness", which the article equates with self-indulgence, finally concluding that "givers" are better off than "takers". But what does that mean, "better off"?  It means happier, of course. Happiness must be the only goal of life, but it depends on what you mean by it. Most of us tend to think of happiness as getting what we want, but as it turns out, that doesn't make us happy nearly as much as simply thinking of others more and thinking about ourselves less. You can pretty much tell if someone is happy by looking at their eyes, and based on that, it looks to me like selfish, self-indulgent people tend to be unhappy while unselfish, caring people tend to be a lot happier.

Unhappy people drink and happy people don't, in my experience. Unhappy people may drink to be happy but it only makes things worse, and drinking is probably what made them unhappy in the first place.

Drinking is easy: pour, drink, bliss, repeat. 

But don't be fooled. The happiest people live a sober and fruitful life, nurturing and protecting those they care for.

Do You Want to Be Happy?

What a ridiculous question. If the reply is, "No, I want to be unhappy", it's almost certainly sarcastic. Of course we want to be happy. Whatever else we want, even if it involves great sacrifice, we want it because we think it will make us happy or will help us avoid unhappiness.

If I ask, "How happy are you?", most would say, "so-so." The few who would say "very happy" are the newly fallen in love, the recently-become-rich, the parents of newborns, some people in the "caring professions" such as medicine and teaching, and nondrinkers who enjoy good relationships with family and friends.

"Happy" is the way most of us ought to feel most of the time when nothing unusually bad or good is going on. A lot of us don't experience this though, and perhaps don't even know what it is. We are chronically unhappy from loneliness, bad relationships, excessive debt, poor health and selfishness, all of which can be brought on or made worse by alcohol.

There is a well-worn aphorism which goes: if you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you need to do is stop digging. If I'm right in believing that alcohol is behind most of the world's unhappiness, then for most of us, "stop digging" probably means "stop drinking".

Know Thyself

The title of this post is a saying that's some 2500 years old—an inscription from the ancient Greek Temple of Apollo at Delphi.

A thousand years later, Socrates proclaimed that "the unexamined life is not worth living", and so chose death rather than submitting to censorship of his efforts to get Athenians to see the truth about themselves.

It's a problem known to history for a very long time. We tend not to know ourselves very well. Hold a mirror up to someone's shortcomings and you're likely to get an unpleasant if not violent reaction.

It's difficult enough for most of us to see the differences between what we want to be, what we think we are and what we really are. If you drink, it's that much harder. Achieving a state of comfortable self-assurance may be the most important benefit we seek from alcohol. Such delusions tend to lead to unhappiness though. Life usually serves up a gauntlet of unpleasant consequences for anyone not grounded in reality.

As the poet Robert Burns wrote in his poem titled "To a Louse, On Seeing One on a Lady's Bonnet at Church",

And would some Power the Giver give us
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us.

Man Cave

It's the latest thing. A place, usually in the basement, where a man can get away from his family, drink, sulk, and indulge his fantasies.

Your self-indulgent stupor is not happiness. You may as well seal the entrance to your sarcophagus. Just above you, life is happening, but you're dead to it.

If you're holed up in your lonely alcoholic cocoon, be like Jesus and roll away the stone. Resurrect yourself and rejoin the living.

The Pursuit of Happiness

Time Magazine this month features a thoughtful and wide-ranging cover story on happiness in America—how we pursue it and how we find it. A couple of points stand out:

• Money doesn't matter as much as we think, though being out of debt and being at the level we feel we belong are important. 

• Obsessing about what we don't have makes us unhappy. 

• Relationships, and especially marriage, difficult though they may be, rank at the top of what brings happiness.

• Material possessions deliver happiness only to the extent they contribute to rich, shared experiences.

It all seems to come down to this: don't expect a quick and easy path to happiness. You need to slog the long route through life and it takes patience, effort and persistence. Everyone always says this, of course, but it's taken a lifetime for me to appreciate the truth of it.

In the article's listing of what makes us happy or unhappy, though, not one word about alcohol or drug use is to be found. Perhaps the authors just don't know how it fits in or think it's irrelevant. A lot of people, it seems, are at least confused about the role it plays in our lives.

You know by now what I think. Alcohol is the quick and easy path to loneliness and depression. It harms or destroys what could make us happy—carefully nurtured relationships and the full enjoyment of life.

Look At Your Drinking

When I say that alcohol use makes you unhappy, I'm talking about the psychological effects of alcohol. A web site, lookatyourdrinking.com, has a page on that subject.

A few points taken from that site:

• Alcohol use is the principal cause of depression, so if you use alcohol to not feel depressed, you're taking the wrong medicine.

• Alcohol use can help overcome fear and anxiety, but normal fear and anxiety are necessary to keep us from doing things that will make us unhappy later, such as reckless sex or mindless spending.

• Alcohol at bedtime can help you fall asleep but results in restless sleep that leaves you tired in the morning.

• Over time, you need more and more alcohol to get any of the supposed benefits from it, leading to a downward spiral.

• When you stop drinking, it takes time for your brain to adjust to not having alcohol.

If you want to stop drinking but find that difficult, the site offers online help based on "cognitive behavioral therapy", a modern approach to psychology based on developing awareness of your situation and using exercises to change your habits. There's a free introductory course but a fee if you continue.

Alcohol may help you be President

Barack Obama is a moderate drinker and, in my view, a good President. George W. Bush, on the other hand, was a non-drinker and possibly the worst, but certainly the happiest, President ever. Floating cheerfully through eight tumultuous years as President, he was always 100% genuine George W. Bush, for better or worse, with no apologies. You have to admire that, even if he got mostly F's on his Presidential report card.

I think that drinking can help you to do some jobs better. Politicians, actors, salesmen, lawyers and executives in particular seem to perform better with a certain amount of lubrication. Perhaps it's because these professions demand at least a dash of dishonesty and  a dollop of egotism. If it's part of the job description, then yes, alcohol can help you be phony and self-centered.

You might be thinking now that alcohol use is not the main reason Obama is different from Bush. Well OK, I'm out on a limb here. But the premise of this blog is that alcohol has a lot more to do with who we are than we think. Shouldn't we mindfully consider whether we want to be drinkers? Do we consciously make that choice?  I suspect that most of us just stumble into drinking without giving much thought as to whether that's the life we want. 

I never wanted a high-flying lifestyle. What I wanted was simple happiness, but didn't find it until I stopped drinking.  As a drinker I wasted my life in sad, chemical self-indulgence, going nowhere. With my fantasy mistress, Miss Ethanol, I dreamed away the days and nights in a magical world where I was always good looking, clever, witty, gifted and important, without even trying.

Life is harder now in the real world, but I'm happy now and I wasn't then. Real life has 100% more active ingredients than a life of alcoholic self-importance. If happiness is more important to you than fame and fortune, you need to live alcohol-free.

Alcohol America

After serving two terms as President, General Eisenhower, who as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe defeated the Nazis in 1944, warned America against what he called the "military-industrial complex"—a powerful alliance of the military and defense industries that drives ever-increasing spending on expensive weapons systems.

There are other such "complexes" of interest that have a hold on American society. The "alcohol-industrial complex"—a combination of government and business interests that benefit because we drink—is one.

Federal, state and local governments collect $40 billion a year in direct taxes on the sale of alcohol—as much as 40% of the price you pay is tax. Alcohol businesses sell $140 billion of products and pay additional taxes. Then there are the businesses that piggyback on the alcohol trade, such as restaurants, sports and entertainment. The total contribution to the U.S. economy comes to $400 billion per year. Finally, because drinking makes you foolish and unhappy, drinkers spend more and more in the mistaken belief that happiness is just a card swipe away.

Alcohol use damages your relationships and makes you selfish, lonely and unhappy, but you won't find anyone on television carrying this message. The media get a billion dollars a year in alcohol advertising and it's not smart to bite the hand that feeds you. If you're going to rescue yourself from the effects of alcohol use, you need to figure out on your own what it's doing to you.

How do you know if alcohol makes you happy or unhappy? Don't rely on beer commercials featuring actors who are paid to pretend that drinking is making them happy. They don't drink when they make those commercials and they may not drink at all. Go someplace where people really drink, a bar for example, and look at the people there. Ask yourself, do these people look happy? I believe you will find that the answer is no.

The U.S. economy depends to a large extent on unhappy people spending and spending in a hopeless struggle to cure their unhappiness with money.  Alcohol use fuels that vicious cycle by making sure we remain unhappy and deluded. 

I certainly don't want to hurt the economy. I need my job as much as the next person.  I'd be more worried about that if I thought very many people were reading this blog and acting on it, but since I no longer drink, I have no such delusions. I feel sure that eventually we'll evolve into an alcohol-free society, but why wait? You can get off the merry-go-round now and start living the life you deserve. It's enough for me if a few of my friends and family who drink are inspired to find a better way to live.

Happiness Is

Drinkers believe that using alcohol makes you happy, but I believe the reality is it makes you unhappy. 

How do you know if you're happy or unhappy? It sounds like a ridiculous question. If you're happy, you must know it, right? And if you're unhappy, you must know that as well. But my own experience with alcohol, and what I see in those who drink, leads me to the conclusion that alcohol does exactly the opposite of what we think it does.

You can think you're one thing and actually be something else. You may think you're smart and actually be not so smart, for example. Studies show that many people think they're taller, shorter, thinner, fatter, nicer, meaner, or either more or less attractive than other people would describe them. It's our nature that we just don't know ourselves very well. 

And if you drink, your ability to know yourself is further impaired because alcohol exaggerates the normal tendency to misjudge yourself. So it should not be surprising if in fact drinkers think they're happy when they're not.

"Happiness Is" is the title of a documentary by director Andrew Shapter about "the pursuit of happiness" in America. He finds that happiness comes from "connections and service to others". It follows that a mother and child must be the epitome of happiness, at least so long as the child is safe and healthy. The rest of us are happy to the extent we also have loved ones to care for. After spending most of a lifetime chasing happiness in all the wrong ways, this simple truth astonishes me.

Try this experiment. Search Google for "images of mother and child" and look at those pictures to see what happiness looks like. Then look at photos of yourself, and ask, do I look happy? If you're a drinker, I believe the answer will probably be no.

Alcohol tends to make you self-centered and damages your relationships. When you drink, your focus becomes more selfish and your capacity to give and receive love is impaired. The result is a lonely ride on the carousel of self-indulgence.

If you're on that carousel, probably you're a drinker. All those colored ponies look a lot more wonderful through an alcohol haze. The only thing drinking does is soothe the pain you feel from having sold your happiness for a few laps to nowhere.

Know if you're happy or not. If not, find out why. If you drink, that's probably the reason.

To be or not to be...

Shakespeare's Hamlet lacks the will to take charge of his life and it ends badly for him. Shall we wander aimlessly through life in a fog of indecision? Or make clear-headed choices about our happiness. That is the question.

A lot of things we once thought might do us some good, turns out they're bad.

• A century ago, using opium may have seemed like a good thing but unfortunately it turns you into a zombie.

• The original formula for Coca-Cola contained cocaine, which is quite a pick-me-up but leads to anxiety, paranoia and hallucinations.

• For 40 years after its discovery, radioactive radium was added to face cream, lipstick, tonic water and even suppositories. Maybe it had some benefits but it also caused a variety of cancers.

• Cigarettes: pleasure, focus, emphysema, cardiac failure, cancer.

But in the pantheon of wonderful things that turn out to be not so wonderful, alcohol is king. About half of us use it. We think it makes us happy. It doesn't.

If I worked on Madison Avenue, here's the ad I would write for alcohol:

Life just too hard? Things not going your way? Can't get no respect? Not having enough fun? No need to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Pick up a bottle of tasty, nutritious ethanol. Just one sip and you'll be smart, good looking, rich, important, and sexy, and having the time of your life. The fast and easy way to a full and rewarding life!

Sounds ridiculous when you say it that way. What halfway-intelligent person believes that happiness can be bought bottled or canned at the corner store? Yet we drink because we believe exactly that.

Just because you think you're intelligent, attractive, powerful and happy doesn't mean you are. Alcohol puffs you full of delusions that, among other things, warp your judgment about alcohol itself. But if you drink, perhaps there's a part of you, a ghostly voice, telling you that something is rotten in Denmark, if you will only listen.

Don't end up like Hamlet. Act now. Stop drinking away your happiness.

An Uncomfortable Truth

Writing this blog makes me uncomfortable. Maybe reading it makes you uncomfortable.

What if you had a long-time friend that you trusted and relied on for many years. Suddenly you realize that this friend has betrayed you, abused your trust, cheated you and those you care about out of the good life you deserve. What an awful feeling! You've let yourself be duped, played for a fool! In the face of all the evidence, you want with all your heart to believe that your friend could not possibly betray you that way. You just can't accept it.

For me, alcohol is like that trusted but abusive friend—the Bernie Madoff of beverages. This blog is called "Our Unfaithful Friend" because, just like the investors whose life savings disappeared in Madoff's Ponzi scheme, I still find it hard to accept that something I trusted so much could be so treacherous.

How could I have been so stupid, especially since I thought I was so smart? Well, of course, alcohol use makes you less smart than you are, all the while making you think you're more smart than you are. 

What a prescription for disaster! A cocktail of impaired ability to choose wisely, shaken or stirred with a jigger of reckless confidence.

It's terribly difficult to admit to yourself that you've been wrong about something and accept the loss you've suffered from it. But you have to make that break so you can go on. 

You need to mourn the death of that dream world. I still yearn for it sometimes, but it's dead to me. In a world painted in pink champagne, everything is pretty but nothing is beautiful—craving without love, being without living, indulgence without happiness.

Yesterday was my 65th birthday spent happily with my lovely wife on a short, alcohol-free fugue to Montauk on Long Island. I look at the photos we took and I see no trace of the chronic sadness you would find in photos of me when I was drinking. 

My whole life could have been like that if I'd never used alcohol, but at least I'm free of it now. Better late than never.

A Satisfying Sadness

I've been trying to find better information about the effects of alcohol use and came across something called the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, a comprehensive study of the lives of some 10,000 individuals from 1994 to 2008, including consumption patterns and level of satisfaction with life. According to the survey, people who drink report greater satisfaction with their lives than non-drinkers.

It's probably true. Ask a homeless alcoholic if he's satisfied with his life, he might very well reply that he is. Alcohol, I think, makes us satisfied with less. In particular, it makes us satisfied even though we're unhappy.

But if you're satisfied, isn't that the same thing as being happy? No, they're different things. Satisfaction you can have by yourself, but happiness comes only from sharing your life with others.

In Aldous Huxley's famous novel "Brave New World", everyone takes "soma", a drug that keeps them satisfied in an emotionally bankrupt future society that discourages "inefficient" feelings. Inhabitants of that lonely world are satisfied but not happy.

Alcohol use is like soma, trading the happiness that is possible from love of friends and family for mere "satisfaction". When I was in school, "satisfactory" was not a good report card, at least not in my family. You shouldn't accept a grade of "satisfactory" for your life.

Can you measure happiness scientifically? I said in an earlier blog that I believe I see sadness in the eyes of drinkers, what I call "alcohol eyes". The psychologist Paul Ekman specializes in the study of facial expressions.  His work is the basis of the recent TV series "Lie to Me", and he consulted on the 2001 BBC series "The Human Face" hosted by John Cleese. He coined the term "micro expressions", meaning subtle clues about a person's emotional state that are revealed in facial expressions and which you can learn to read, to tell if someone is feeling suppressed anger for example, or is lying, or, I suppose, bluffing at poker. I believe that if a person is chronically sad, you can learn to see that if you pay attention. 

Sometimes it's very profound and easy to see, sometimes it's more subtle.  I suppose it depends on how much a person drinks and how long they've been drinking.  What's truly revealing though is to look at the eyes of non-drinkers. If you move mostly among drinkers, the non-drinkers will stand out.  They look like they're not from this world.  They have a "puppy dog" happiness about them that may seem bizarre. 

"Happiness is a warm puppy," according to Charles M. Schultz, the author of the Peanuts comic strip. It's spending pleasant moments with people (or animals) you love. Drinking diverts you from that, substituting sad self-indulgence for the simple joy of loving those you care for.

Under the Influence

In most states, you're driving "under the influence" with blood alcohol of 0.08%. (There's a proposal to reduce it to 0.05%.)

Most people understand that being drunk is bad. Causing accidents, blowing the rent money, reckless sex, going into a drunken rage, waking up in a pool of vomit—you don't need me to tell you this is bad. But most people don't go to such extremes, so what is the harm in drinking in moderation? 

I'm convinced that even moderate drinking destroys your happiness and the happiness of those you care for. The emotional changes caused by alcohol sabotage your relationships even when you're not actually drinking. The psychological damage persists. If you're a drinker, you're always "under the influence".

Statistics show that the amount of alcohol consumed predicts the rate of divorce. An increase of 20% in the divorce rate for every liter of ethanol consumed per year implies that drinking just one drink per day means a near certainty of failed marriage. 

It's logical. If alcohol use makes you less responsible and more selfish and delusional, then that is going to result in unhappiness that leads to divorce. Love of alcohol displaces your love for those who could make you happy. 

It's my interpretation of my own life experiences as well as what I see in the research on alcohol use, and I could be wrong of course. But what if I'm right? What if, instead of being a harmless source of pleasure, moderate alcohol use turns out to be the main reason people are unhappy? If that's true, we need to know that and stop poisoning ourselves.

I suspect that most drinkers believe alcohol helps them enjoy life. They believe that it helps them it to be happy, to enjoy social events, to endure hardships, to fall in love, and so on. But what if that's all wrong? What if it's not doing us any good at all, but instead we drink, we're unhappy, we drink some more, we're still unhappy. Does that sound like you or someone you know?

My father was a heavy drinker, but when he saw the video of my son's wedding reception, which was alcohol-fee (he was too sick by then to attend), he became very emotional, and burst out with, "I would never have believed that you could have that much fun without drinking." His face showed his genuine amazement. His whole life he believed that he needed to drink to be happy and suddenly he saw how wrong that is. Despite his often extreme and appalling self-indulgence, he was not a happy man, not even on the golf course. The only times I ever saw him happy were after he was forced to stop drinking.

If you drink, it may sound unbearable to you, life without alcohol—sober, dull, bleak, morbid. But once you get out from being "under the influence", it's not like that at all. An alcohol-free life is blessed with the joy of being alive.

When I dredge up the memories of my life with alcohol, and contrast that with how I see things now, I can't ignore the unhappiness it caused. I think of myself as I was back then and ask, how could I have been so uncaring? How could I have been so selfish? How could I have been so irresponsible? How could I have been so untruthful? At the time, I never imagined myself any of those things. Quite the opposite—I thought of myself as a good, even a wonderful person. 

I was not. With alcohol your life becomes a web of conceit. Just have a drink or two and you are magically transformed into everything you ever dreamed of, without even trying. Never mind the inconvenient facts that contradict your alcoholic self-importance. Evidence to the contrary is easy to ignore or rationalize when you've had a few.

Alcohol is not the loyal friend you imagine. Being "under the influence" will leave you lonely and sad. I believe it's the main reason for most of the unhappiness that afflicts us. Stop drinking now and start enjoying life.

Smiling Mouth, Crying Eyes

Happy hour isn’t happy, it’s sad.

I thought I drank because it made me happy, but it didn't. Alcohol makes you think you're happy even though you're not.

How can that be? If you believe you're happy, you are, aren't you? Well, no, not necessarily. Just because you think you're Napoleon doesn't make you Napoleon. 

Look carefully at the people you encounter in your daily life. Look at their eyes. Do you often see a sadness there? It shouldn't be hard to find, because about half of American adults drink. The sadness you see in drinkers, I call it "alcohol eyes". If you want to see an example of what I'm talking about, look at the photos of the actress Helen Hunt at IMDB. I don't actually know if she drinks or not, but she has those sad eyes.

There are some among us who don't have this sadness. Search Google for pictures of Jim Carey, Warren Buffet, Jennifer Lopez or Natalie Portman. Look at their eyes. What do you see? They're space aliens!

Actually not. They're all non-drinkers. What you see in their eyes is happiness. 

But wait, maybe they're happy because they're rich and famous.  So look for pictures of any other rich and famous people you can think of. The rest of them are pretty much all drinkers. What do you see? Sad, alcohol eyes. Even when they're smiling, the eyes are crying.

When I look at my old photographs, I can see that I used to have those eyes, but since I've stopped drinking, the sadness has gone away.

I loved alcohol, but I've ended that toxic relationship. Maybe you love alcohol. Do you? We love alcohol because it short-circuits the nucleus accumbens, the part of our brain responsible for pleasure, diverting us from the happiness that non-drinkers enjoy.

What is it makes us happy? Rick Foster and Greg Hicks, in their book How We Choose to be Happy, list nine things that extremely happy people do. Alcohol use affects three of these in particular: accepting responsibility, giving, and truthfulness. Alcohol makes us the opposite. It makes us irresponsible, self-centered and delusional.

Let’s take them one at a time. Think of a time when your family or friends depended on you for something and you came through for them. How did you feel? Probably you felt happy. Now think of an occasion on which you failed them. How did you feel about that? Probably you felt crappy. Alcohol makes us neglectful of those we care about. Neglecting our family and friends makes us lonely and miserable.

Now think about giving. Try to think of an unselfish act. Did it make you feel good? You see someone on a street corner, fumbling with a map and evidently confused. You go up to them and offer to help. You take a few minutes and go out of your way to guide them. How do you feel? It puts you in a good mood, though you gain nothing but the pleasure of being helpful.

Drinking, on the other hand, inhibits thoughtfulness towards others. How much happiness do we throw away by being ungenerous to our family and friends? When you drink, everything becomes all about you. People who are overly into themselves are chronically unhappy.

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty…” So said the Grecian urn to the young John Keats. Is it so? Recall the telling of a lie, yours to someone else or theirs to you. Were you happy? Someone talks about events in his life, but later you find out it's a lie. It gives you a feeling like drinking sour milk. 

Alcohol is a fountain of lies. If you don’t know what’s real and what’s not, you’re not in the game of life. Happy people love truth, wherever it may lead. They are alive in the world as it is. Drinkers, on the other hand, stumble through life like zombies, lost and bewildered in a maze of warped perceptions.

If you drink, this may be difficult to see. Alcohol is a jealous lover who demands your loyalty. She wants you to see the world her way, through the bottom of a glass. You need to put the glass down to begin to see her for what she is.

Welcome to a new blog about alcohol use.

Welcome to a new blog about alcohol use.

I call it "Our Unfaithful Friend". Alcohol has been a friend to myself and to many of the people I have known for most of my 65 years. We have put our faith and trust in it, but it has repaid us with deceit and betrayal.

I was a moderate drinker for about 40 years beginning about age 20, but I don't think anyone would have called me an alcoholic.

I never missed work because of alcohol. I was never stopped for drunk driving, though there were a few occasions when I should have been. I had a few pretty good binges but never became violent or had blackouts. I consider my alcohol use to have been fairly average.

About six years ago I stopped for various reasons, including health considerations. Time passed and I began to reconsider the effect alcohol has had on my life and those I cared about. I've had good times and bad in my life, but I cannot escape the conclusion that alcohol has robbed me and those I cared about of the full measure of happiness we might have enjoyed.

So I'm resolved to write on this topic. I want to show that alcoholic happiness is a pale shadow of the real thing, that it poisons our relationships with those who might bring us joy, and that, quite simply, no one should ever drink, ever.

If you are ready to openly consider the role of alcohol in your life, I invite you to join me on this journey.