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.