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".