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.