A recovered alcoholic’s thoughts on alcohol | quit drinking
I’m a recovered alcoholic who did thirty years research into alcohol. Mostly drinking it. Here’s some of my thoughts and conclusions about alcohol. My goal isn’t to tell you what to think and my thoughts shouldn’t influence you too much.
On an alcohol journey you must make up your own mind and take your own decisions. You must do that for every walk of your life. It took lots of emotional struggles to make these conclusions and accept them as reality. They are logical facts I wish I’d accepted and made peace with a lot sooner than I did.
1. Alcohol is here to stay. In western society most adults drink alcohol. We use this drug in almost every social gathering or occasion, and our belief is we exercise free will in consuming it. Maybe we do to start with, but likely not even then. We use it because our conditioning is to think we need it to enhance whatever the occasion is. It makes us relaxed, and once relaxed we can enjoy ourselves more. So, we give it a key central role in most of our important occasions. It’s entrenched deep in society and individuals.
Rice wine has been available in China for 9,000 years. India developed their version 5,000 years ago, and Mead was the preferred drink in Ancient Greece. Mead was also important in Norse mythology. Buckfast Wine has been around since 1880. Carlsberg Special Brew since the early 1970s. White Lightning was available from 1990 (until its demise in 2009).
Go open your fridge door, at eye level you’ll have a wine rack facing you. It sure isn’t for bottles of soda because they don’t fit into its design. A wine bottle slides right in like you are putting on your favourite pair of jeans.
At budget time most people’s focus is on increases in tax on beer, wines, spirits, and cigarettes. It’s the first item on the news. Mr. Average gets interviewed to deliver the line “they want to kill our enjoyment.” This is because in western society drinking alcohol is a given. It’s intertwined with, and inseparable from, relaxation and enjoyment.
There are people who abstain, but we see them as strange creatures, viewed with a judgement which asks, “are they normal?”, and “can I trust this person?” This is one of the first things people judge you because of base survival instinct. In the old times poisoning each other’s drinks was a common method of murder. People drinking alcohol would toast each other by hitting their glasses together. This action caused some alcohol to spill from glass to glass. You could then trust your fellow drinkers weren’t poisoning you. Next time you order a non-alcoholic drink, check if it affects the other person’s ability to trust you. Do they seem to relax quicker with those drinking alcohol or with you? Do they like clinking glasses with you?
2. Alcohol is everywhere you look, whether you’re aware of it or not. We are bombarded daily with positive alcohol propaganda. Adverts proclaim it is the elixir of life. Those adverts are becoming even more focused and targeted. They pervade all the social platforms we consume. Next time you’re out and about for even the shortest time try to take notice. Or when you switch on the TV, PC, laptop, or mobile phone. According to a UK Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) report on “Children’s Exposure to Age-Restricted TV Ads” (dated 19th December 2019) we see an average of 6.3 alcohol ads per week. (https://www.asa.org.uk/resource/children-s-exposure-to-age-restricted-tv-ads-updated.html).
They reference “the trend in children’s exposure to TV ads for alcohol products tends to follow that of adults.” There is no watershed time in the UK for alcohol adverts, so they can show them at any time.
Can you imagine an advert for another drug of choice rather than alcohol? For example, cocaine. We’re used to seeing someone clunk two ice cubes into a crystal tumbler, followed by a generous pour of a spirit. Instead, we’d see a polished mirror on a Scandinavian style table. A pile of sparkling clean white powder sits on it. A platinum credit card appears, held by a manicured lady’s hand. The hand separates some powder and chops it into two nice white lines. A crisp rolled 50 note hovers over one line and hoovers it up. They hand the fifty to another manicured hand and the same action ensues. The camera zooms out to show the whole mirror, with the rolled up fifty laid down next to the remaining powder. An alluring female voice says: “Columbian marching powder, the purest hit you can enjoy with friends.” Would you let your children watch that?
Running a search on “alcohol internet ads” or “alcohol internet”, “alcohol YouTube”, or “alcohol Netflix” on the ASA website (asa.org.uk) gave me the result “No results were found to match your search item.” Yet “In 2019, UK digital advertisers will spend almost £15 billion ($20.00 billion) on digital ads. This will equate to almost two-thirds of the total ad market” (https://www.emarketer.com/content/uk-digital-ad-spending-2019).
The regulation of online alcohol advertising is much harder to police. We cannot stop the exposure of unhealthy content to children all the time. Yet this is where the eyeballs are going in increasing numbers. Advertising and marketing budgets follow the eyeballs. We consume these adverts on different media devices today. We are always online, so the number of weekly ads we see for alcohol is likely much higher than 6.3.
A joint investigation by the Guardian newspaper and the Danish Broadcasting Corporation found Facebook’s advertising tools flagged a million under eighteens (minors) as “interested” in alcoholic beverages. A Facebook algorithm monitors user activities. It generates their “interests” and then exposes them to targeted ads.
“According to The Digital 2019 report from Hootsuite and We Are Social, we spend on average 6 hours and 42 minutes online each day. Half of that is spent on mobile devices. That figure sounds like a lot, but it’s astronomical when spread across an entire year. It equates to more than 100 days of online time every year for every Internet user” (https://thenextweb.com/tech/2019/01/31/study-shows-were-spending-an-insane-amount-of-time-online/).
We spend ONE HUNDRED days a year online.
FIFTY days per year online is via our smartphones. Imagine dedicating ten percent of that time to educating yourself about alcohol.
When a significant event happens to us it dominates our thoughts. We become more sensitive and aware of things that trigger thoughts about that event. After death in the family, we see a murder in a movie. Or expectant parents see adverts for nappy or children’s toys everywhere they look. As a society we’re saturated by alcohol exposure. Go to a funeral and we take a drink at the wake for the deceased. We wet the baby’s head. We toast the married couple. We drink the blood (communion wine) of the Lord (Jesus) during the Christian church communion, and so on. Alcohol is part of all the celebrations and important occasions of our lives.
Imagine something you don’t like but know it will never go away. Like a sports team, a ubiquitous TV celebrity, a political leader, or an annoying relative. Well that’s alcohol, but alcohol is on a much bigger scale. It is entrenched deep in the collective subconscious mind of our society. It accompanies our emotions so much our belief is we are incapable of experiencing those emotions without it.
Advertising never pushes the negative feelings it brings. Such as anxiety, despair, or depression. It tells you the wine has a fantastic bouquet, not that you’ll have wine breath, or a stinking hangover. The positive message of alcohol is everywhere, and you can’t avoid it. You must search for messages of alcohol negativity. It’s an unbalanced seesaw.
Recently my wife and daughters were watching a singing competition on TV. Following the elimination process a presenter interviewed one of the winners. The absolute first thing he did was to stick a glass of sparkling wine in her hand to congratulate her success. Whether she wanted it or not, it was going in her hand. She was going to hold it, on camera, and look happy she’d got it. Behind her on a table to the right, as if by the coincidence of placement, was the brand of sparkling wine she was drinking. It was in full view of the camera. Perfectly normal. Ahem. And what do my kids register about this in their subconscious? “Alcohol good. Alcohol special. Alcohol reward. Alcohol happy.”
3. We all know someone who has a problem with “the drink.”
According to UK government studies “in Great Britain 9.6% of adults (around 4.9 million people in the population) drink alcohol on 5 or more days.”
And in the US “According to the 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH*), 15.1 million adults ages 18 and older (6.2 percent of this age group) had Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD).” (https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-facts-and-statistics)
Note “Alcohol” is part of the drug survey in the US, it isn’t in the UK.
Splitting those UK and US percentages gives 7.6% of people abusing alcohol or have a problem with Alcohol. The average Facebook user has 155 friends, 7.6% of 155 is 11.78 friends.
In a social class in senior school the teacher once announced to us that by age 30, ten percent of us would be dead. The class comprised about thirty fifteen-year olds. This struck immediate deep fear into every one of us. It meant three of us would be dead within the next fifteen years. We all looked around the room trying to figure out which three people it was going to be. Because we were damn sure, gripped by fear, that it wasn’t going to be us.
We didn’t believe that teacher. Who’d want to believe they’d be dead by age 30? But his prediction came true. I know of four people from that classroom who passed before or around age 30. Two by suicide (both young male’s). One in a road traffic accident (young male). Another through a terminal illness (young female).
It’s not hard to imagine that almost 12 of the average Facebook user’s friends have a problem with alcohol. We all know a friend, relative, or a colleague who has an issue with alcohol abuse.
4. Alcohol is addictive. An addictive substance is something you think you need to feel normal. Its effects alleviate the withdrawal symptoms it caused in the first place. As physical and mental addiction to alcohol worsens, dependency on it ensues.
The Harvard Mental Health Letter How Addiction Hijacks the Brain explains this. Its publication date was July 2001.
“Addiction exerts a long and powerful influence on the brain that manifests in three distinct ways: craving for the object of addiction, loss of control over its use, and continuing involvement with it despite adverse consequences. While overcoming addiction is possible, the process is often long, slow, and complicated. Today we recognize addiction as a chronic disease that changes both brain structure and function.”
So, if you are an addict you suffer a chronic illness. It takes time to recover from a chronic illness. Especially one where you are responsible to make the diagnosis. As you’ll see from the rest of these points the recovery is mostly mental, rather than physical.
“Almost one in 10 Americans (23 million) are addicted to alcohol or other drugs. More than two-thirds of people with addiction abuse alcohol.”
That’s twenty-three million people in the US who abuse alcohol. That’s like the total population of Australia, or Taiwan. Projecting the one-in-ten figures onto a UK population size of sixty-five million, gives a little over 4.3 million people. That’s about every-other person in London abusing alcohol. Or everyone in New Zealand, or Ireland.
“Addictive drugs provide a shortcut to the brain’s reward system by flooding its pleasure centre (the nucleus accumbens) with dopamine (a neurotransmitter). All drugs of abuse cause a particularly powerful surge of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens. Dopamine also plays a role in learning and memory — two key elements in the transition from liking something to becoming addicted to it. Repeated exposure to an addictive substance causes nerve cells in the nucleus accumbens and the prefrontal cortex (the area of the brain involved in planning and executing tasks) to communicate in a way that couples liking something with wanting it, in turn driving us to go after it.”
So alcohol stimulates pleasure in our brain and we learn this lesson very quickly. We all want more of something pleasurable. “Addictive drugs provide a shortcut, flooding the brain with dopamine and other neurotransmitters.”
To protect ourselves and keep us in balance our bodies build up a tolerance. “In a person who becomes addicted, brain receptors become overwhelmed. The brain responds by producing less dopamine or eliminating dopamine receptors.” The result is “dopamine has less impact on the brain’s reward centre.” This means we have to take increasing amounts of the drug to get our high. “At this point, compulsion takes over. The pleasure associated with an addictive drug or behaviour subsides — and yet the memory of the desired effect and the need to recreate it (the wanting) persists. It’s as though the normal machinery of motivation is no longer functioning.”
(https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/how-addiction-hijacks-the-brain).
I don’t know about you but reading the facts from that article and letting them sink in was sobering.
Bottom line. Alcohol is addictive, and the highs become lows.
5. Alcohol is a poison, meaning it will cause death, injury, or harm to organisms. A pint of “Snakebite” anyone? At a small festival local to my home region I once came across a cider called “Suicider.” Not funny, and they had to change the name. It didn’t fit in with the positive message about alcohol. Here’s what happens when a poison is inside our bodies:
It gets into the blood which carries it to the whole body.
Some poisons are metabolites, so they get changed by the body into other chemicals in the liver. The change makes them easier to remove.
“Alcohol metabolism happens mainly in the liver. It produces by-products, one of which is Acetaldehyde. This is a carcinogenic, meaning it has the potential to cause cancer” (https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa72/aa72.htm).
“Unchanged poisons leave the body in the urine, faeces or sweat, or in the air that a person breathes out. The movement of poison from the blood into urine takes place in the kidneys. The movement of poison from blood into breathed-out air takes place in the lungs. Poison in the faeces may have passed down the gut without being absorbed into the blood. Or it may have been absorbed into the blood and then passed out into the gut again” (http://helid.digicollection.org/en/d/Js13469e/4.1.5.html).
If we drink too much our bodies make us vomit to expel the poison. We vomit because our bodies cannot cope with digesting more poison. Vomiting is the involuntary, forceful expulsion of the contents of our stomach. It’s horrible, but the consequences of not doing it are much worse than horrible. It’s not making more room for drinking more, even though this is how serious binge drinkers view it.
6. Alcohol metabolism produces Acetaldehyde. This is a known carcinogen. I know this is one of the bullets above, but it’s an important one to highlight. It gets its own point, so you get the points point.
“Most of the ethanol in the body is broken down in the liver by an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase. This transforms ethanol into a toxic compound called acetaldehyde, a known carcinogen.” (https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa72/aa72.htm).
“Acetaldehyde is the most abundant carcinogen in tobacco smoke. It is reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen.” (https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Acetaldehyde).
7. Alcohol is a (legal) drug. Drugs have a biological effect on the body, and alcohol’s effect is as a depressant (sedative). Mind.org.uk state depressants “make you feel relaxed, chilled out, and mellow. Possible paradoxical effects — anxiety, nightmares, aggression. They are dangerous at high doses. They are addictive.”
In the UK Alcohol is not currently controlled by either the Medicines Act or the Misuse of Drugs Act. These are where you get Class A, Class B, and Class C from. Instead specific alcohol laws cover it, which can confuse whether alcohol is a drug or not. Make no mistake, alcohol is a drug.
On social media I recently saw a post from a community group from an outraged mother. She had found a small bag of cannabis in the street whilst walking her kids to school. The post showed a picture of the bag with outraged comments. They were aghast how someone could leave such a dangerous substance in the street. What would have happened if her kids found it by themselves? The post warned about the danger of drugs, the misery, and heartache they bring. It also stated how common and omnipresent they are becoming in society.
The post attracted lots of comments from others with the same viewpoint. The language used was strong and clear about drugs. The profile picture of the poster showed them in a relaxed pose, smiling with a glass of wine in their hand. Some of the profile pictures of the other commentators showed them in a similar pose. Lots of them were clutching a glass of alcohol. My view is they were trying to portray they were happy, content, and relaxed people. They were not expressing they rely on a drug to make them this way. But this highlighted how we accept alcohol in our society and don’t see it as a drug.
In their houses there is likely a separate cupboard or drinks cabinet. It serves as the adults special tabernacle to house their drug of choice. Their children are aware of this place. They’ll also be aware, like I was, that it contains something forbidden to them. Something for adults like mum and dad, but not for children. So, it becomes very curious and alluring to a child who takes examples from their parents. In our children’s minds we are reinforcing that alcohol is special.
They can’t wait until they are old enough to be home alone. Because where do you think the first place they’re going to be exploring is?
Later in the same community forum, I came across a picture of a man resting in the street at night. He looked rather tired and emotional. I recognised him as whenever I visited my old local pub he’d be there. Every time. What I could deduce from the picture is that someone had found him unconscious in the street. He was on his way home from the pub. He was unconscious because he’d drunk too much alcohol. Because of my experience I’m fairly good at recognising people with drink problems. His signal beeped loud and clear on my radar.
The picture actually looked like a drug addict collapsed unconscious in the street. Which actually was the scenario. There was a marked difference in the comments posted about this picture compared to the “drug” one. Was this because some commentators knew the man? The original post comment was something like “found poor old xxxx asleep on his way home from the pub. Shouldn’t have had that “one for the road” ha ha.”
Other comments on the post were softer, lighter, and accepting in tone. There was a real understanding this happens to us all now and again. None of them mentioned the dangers of drugs, or the misery and heartache they bring. Or how common they are becoming in society. They were jovial as though the situation was funny. The commentators related with the experience. They were able to recognise themselves within it. After all, who hasn’t drunk too much alcohol from time to time?
