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.