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Before I was sixteen I had hardly ever seen alcohol used - it just wasn't something I ever observed. If I mimicked some inebriated person, as a child as children do, it would only have been because I saw a comedian do the same thing on television. I never saw anyone drunk in real life.
My own venture into the world of alcohol began when I was sixteen and I took to it in the same way a lot of young people do, going into pubs, public-houses, mainly. I could more or less be accepted as of legal age, 18, by then, at least I was the right height if not much else.
On and off over the years since then, four decades of them in fact, I have sometimes been a total absteiner and other times I have been an inbiber.
Currently I haven't touched any 'drink' since September 2005 apart from a night out with a friend I hadn't seen for two years.
In fact at that time I was worried a little that I might get back into it but that's not the way its turned out.
It really has no grip on me. I seem to be able to take it or leave it. How can that be, some of you may be asking, especially if you are having a problem managing your own 'drinking' habits.
My own personal view regarding people who have what might be called an alcohol problem is that they have an underlying state of affairs within themselves that needs to be attended to and that the alcohol problem sits on top of that underlying state and gets all the attention.
In that regard it is little different from the problem with eating that people have who are desperately overweight.
And the problem which, for want of a better term, encapsulates that state-of-affairs, that inner state, is that the awareness, the diagnosis if you like, and the appropriate treatment for it, are both somewhat lacking in our current western societies.
I don't just believe that because of what I see when I look at people with that kind or a similar kind of problem but also by looking at my own life.
Why for instance do I not seem to have any kind of problem of this nature? I think I have always been introspective and self analytical. This means that if, when, I have some kind of inner problem I get to realize it more directly, without so much 'outer' facade to conceal and confuse it.
So what can anyone make of this who does have a problem?
I think it is all about attending to one's own attitudes to life, oneself and to others.
It isn't enough to acknowledge that you have got it wrong; you also have to change the attitude that is wrong too. A key problem with what used to be called alcoholics is that they don't want to hear a word about their own shortcomings and steadfastly refuse to shift from blaming others. That is the attitude of a spoilt child. Maturity is about accepting responsibility and not simply and conveniently off-loading it onto others. I do not believe there is any point in arguing with such a person as they have a huge investment in making absolutely sure that no one else is going to expose their own inadequacies. That is not meant as a cruel judgement but simply a realistic one which I am not forcing anyone to accept if they don't want to.
And it's not a case of being superior and looking down on others who have terrible personal problems although it definitely is about not being pulled into any - and that is something that alcohol seems to do a lot. It tends to make it very easy to heap the blame for any and all of one's problems onto anyone and everyone else all except for oneself.
A person has to come to this realization and start to overcome such problems by recognizing that not only does the answer lie within themselves but that is really the only place it can be found.
Everyone has the ability and the strength within them to break away from alcohol if they choose to do so and choosing to do so is what happens when you realize that it has no really useful place in your life. That is actually why I don't bother with it.
For many years, more than a decade at least, I used to buy at least a bottle of red wine each week and this increased so that my longterm habit was most of a bottle, about 500ml, on most nights of the week. When I stopped I hardly ever gave it any thought and whenever I did think of having a drink I just thought of how I would end up unable to think clearly and, you know what, being able to think clearly doesn't require more in the way of drink than a glass of water a few times a day. The single word that sums up why I stopped? Boredom. I think I just got bored with the routine of it.
I have a little saying I made up that you may also find amusing which is a sort of witty response to the one you may have already heard before: "I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me that a full frontal lobotomy". My version is: "I'd rather have clarity of mind than clarety of bottle". It's that word clarity and more especially clarity of mind. If you have an alcohol problem then I would ask you to consider why you don't share that preference with me because I recommend that to you; nothing really beats it.
Alcohol, for all it's seeming blessings is a little signal to yourself that you don't really want to face up to something in your own life that probably, if you actually did face up to it, is not really half as terrible as you imagine it to be. My name is Paul E. Coughlin. If you found my article interesting or helpful to you or someone you know or if you would like to read more of my articles or my blog then please visit my web site SaneThinking.com
Finally, the blog call for this article was entitled "Alcohol and relationships" so I offer this: Which do you prefer, your relationship with alcohol or your relationship with yourself?
Paul E. Coughlin, 19th March 2007
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