ALCOHOL & NICOTINE
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time,
but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time”
When it comes to drinking alcohol and cigarette smoking, the producers and advertisers think they can fool all the people all of the time and they are very successful at it.
Everybody is free to choose and do what they want, but if you are looking for optimum physical mental, emotional and spiritual health and more freedom, then maybe you should review your habits? Or if the alcohol and/or nicotine are starting to get the better of you and affecting your daily functioning and goals and people around you, then again it might be better to drop those two elements from your lifestyle.
Funny enough in this day and age, the only drug on the planet you need to excuse yourself for not using, is alcohol... It used to be like that with smoking as well but that perception has already changed in the last few years and smokers now actually do have to excuse themselves for using their drug around other people.
We all know the negative effects of alcohol and nicotine, I don’t need to repeat them here, but if you want to do something about it then I would like to help as a facilitator. If you decide that you want to drop a habit that we all know is damaging to both physical and mental health, then I would like to help you to change your perception to make it easier to stop and then to move on feeling free and happy about the change.
There is historic evidence of alcohol and tobacco use from as far as 5000-6000 years BC and drinking and smoking has been, and is part of cultures all around the world. But as time has gone by our relationship with those substances has changed as well. Originally alcohol and tobacco had medicinal uses and benefits. For example, in the past alcohol brew was made with a mix of yeast strains and became useful as a medicine and a yeast-cultured probiotic drink. Nowadays alcohol is made out of one yeast strain only and has nothing medicinal about it anymore and has become a poison to our body system. Same with tobacco; originally it was a sacred substance with medicinal benefits, but modern tobacco only has about 35% dry matter tobacco left and the rest is made up of about 4000 deadly chemicals. Equally, alcohol is a deadly poison to the body, drinking a glass of pure alcohol would result in a person to die of it instantly.
By its nature nicotine really is a poison. In the tobacco plant it acts as an insect repellent to protect the plant to kill any insects trying to eat it. Alcohol is in fact fermented rotten fruit which instinctively we would turn away from, but when it is nicely packaged and with a masked taste then we think it is fine...
We can discuss about the perceived benefits someone gets from taking these poisons or not but the fact is that generally speaking the most wide spread devastation in people’s lives in society today is caused by overuse of alcohol and smoking, directly or indirectly…. Some people may say that the use of alcohol and nicotine is great for them. Others may say it’s destroying them. Again others may perhaps be confused about it and some simply don’t care what is happening or where they are going….. I have made my choice, what about you?
If you feel that drinking and /or smoking does not benefit your life anymore and would like to stop, or you simply would like to know more about it, then read on.
As a former drinker and smoker myself I believe that a drinking / smoking problem should not be approached as a disease but as an “addiction habit” that has taken over in subtle ways and can be changed successfully. For the biggest part an addiction is based on mental entrapment, it makes you believe that it relaxes, gives encouragement, gives pleasure and so on, but it all is in fact the opposite in the long term. It is fooling the brain and will eventually leave you empty handed and disillusioned.
A drug is a “substance” which creates its own need for it. It is the substance, - which creates the hole, the lack or the emptiness, - which people then want to use again to try and fill up that hole, lack or emptiness. Using the same substance that is creating the issue in the first place can only result in an endless downward spiral...
Allen Carr has a great example about smoking for example; it is like walking around in shoes all day that are painfully too small, just so that you can take them off at the end of the day to feel the relief…A relief other people have all of the time with the common sense to use proper-sized shoes that are comfortable all the time. The way I see it is that; every time you take a cigarette, you give in to the nicotine craving so that in fact, you temporarily can “go back” to the feeling which you once had before you ever took up smoking. This is a feeling of being in a normal, calm and natural state without cravings. At least you try to get a bit of that feeling back for as long as the cigarette lasts...
It is a bit similar with alcohol, you create your own need for it and eventually it almost becomes a natural part of the “Body Mind” system.
All smoking and drinking is learned behaviour, the first time you tried it you probably did not even like it and your body’s natural defences reacted against it until you got persistent and your body gave in. As soon as any drug use has become a regular pattern, then it is already an addiction. I think for the most part an alcohol - smoking addiction is for 90% mental and 10% physical. Alcohol and nicotine works in a very devious way, altering your natural ability to feel good and to feel confident, basically altering and abusing your central nervous system, functioning as a replacement agent. Therefore you could say it is a 100% addiction in your ability to - be able - to “feel good” or not.
Alcohol has a very subtle way of destroying and manipulating your central nervous system, your natural ability to feel good, to sleep and to have a sense of pleasure and motivation. It infiltrates as an imposter and takes over, at some point no celebration feels complete without the drink, or you can only get motivated or deal with a situation after a drink. Every emotion, feeling or ability will eventually be ruled by a subconscious alcohol consciousness.
These processes to feel good, to sleep and to get motivated include hormones and neurotransmitters such as serotonin, melatonin and dopamine. Your body works like a chemical factory, where different combinations and quantities create different outcomes. Once you introduce alcohol and nicotine, they become the dominant factor in all chemical body processes and more and more is needed to create any physical or mental state, hence an addiction grows. The alcohol and nicotine take charge of that “chemical factory” so to speak, but ask yourself, who’s in charge?!
Once you stop drinking and immerse yourself in wholesome foods, protein rich natural plant-based foods then you can restore the balance and inner production of hormones and neurotransmitters such as serotonin, melatonin, dopamine and naturally deal with highs and lows in your life without the alcohol imposter in your central nervous system. Basically you set yourself free of the dictatorship rule of those addictive substances.
“Free as a bird”
Seagull photographed on the coast of Youghal, Ireland
My message is to drop the smoking and drinking alcohol to feel good naturally. Helping people to stop addictive behaviour is part of my mission, which I can cover more directly in my coaching sessions. The most difficult part is usually the build up to the point of a real decision to stop. Quitting itself becomes easier once you have changed your perception and belief system.
Dropping an addiction opens up for more possibilities in life and it might even create a positive “addiction” of wanting to experience more and better health & vitality once you get the taste of it. There are a lot of fears around stopping a behaviour that you have had for maybe a big part of your life and in the beginning a new behaviour might feel unusual and un-satisfactory, but it will gradually change for the better. All depends on how you approach and deal with an addiction.
Life changes can be done more easily when motivated by pleasure and I like to help people with doing just that. Review how useful your drinking or smoking is to you in your life and what it really is doing to you or not? Then just stop or ask for help through a coaching session and I will be glad to help.
I started this chapter with mentioning how well the alcohol and cigarette companies are in selling their addictive products and wanted to close this chapter on a related note. Over the years there has been a lot of controversy relating to the tobacco industry and now it is interesting or better stated, “scary”, to see a shift in the cigarette producers industry that many have moved into the packaged food industry to become major players operating under different names. The main question I now ask myself is:
“From what point of view, do then these companies (owned by, or linked to a cigarette company) approach their food sales”? Is that in the same way as in which tobacco is being sold as an addictive, health destroying consumer product that kills one in two long-term users for the main purpose of making profit? Or is there now a more health-conscious approach to selling food products? It is good to look at what we buy, where it comes from, what is in the product, what company and philosophy is behind the product you use to feed yourself, to replace your cells, to build your central nervous system, to create your wellness, basically to feel at your best every day.
Please go out and take a few deep breaths of fresh air and realise that the basis to feel good naturally, is naturally inside of you…