IN THIS CHAPTER
•WHY WE START DRINKING •THE VOID •MISLEADING INFLUENCES •THE MONSTERS WITHIN •TRYING TO GET HOOKED •THE FUTILE PURSUIT OF FULFILMENT •THE ILLUSION OF PLEASURE
Why are we drawn to alcohol in the first place when we know it poses a threat to our health and happiness?
Let’s begin by examining why we start drinking. Everybody knows the disastrous effects alcohol can have. Nobody is under any illusion that, even in so-called “normal” drinkers, it debilitates all the bodily functions, in particular the senses and coordination. Listen to the way young people talk about drinking and it appears that these are the very reasons they do it.
“I’m going to get off my face.”
“I want to get legless.”
“Let’s get paralytic.”
As children, with relatively little knowledge, we content ourselves with innocent games. As adults, with more knowledge, we deliberately put ourselves in the way of harmful pursuits. Why?
It’s a paradox caused by a psychological condition that affects everyone to a certain extent, an emptiness that opens up during our development, starting from birth. I call it “the void” and it affects all of us to different degrees.
It works like this. The shock of birth leaves us desperately seeking security. We reach for our mothers and they protect us. Our neediness and vulnerability continue through childhood, when we’re cocooned from the harsh realities of life in a fantasy world of make-believe.
But before long we discover that Father Christmas and fairies do not exist. Worse still, we discover that life isn’t forever. Consciousness of our own mortality is frightening. At the same time we’re forced from the safety of home, to school and a new set of fears and insecurities. As we enter our teens we look more critically at our parents and it begins to dawn on us that they’re not the unshakeable pillars of strength that we had always thought them to be. They have weaknesses, frailties and fears, just as we do.
The disillusionment leaves a void in our lives, which we tend to fill with pop stars, film stars, TV celebrities or sports players. We create our own fantasies. We make gods of these people and start to attribute to them qualities far in excess of those that they possess. We try to bask in their reflected glory. Instead of becoming complete, strong, secure and unique individuals in our own right, we become followers, impressionable fans, leaving ourselves wide open to suggestion.
In the face of all this bewilderment and instability, we look for support, for a little boost now and then. We instinctively look to our role models and, quite naturally, copy the things they appear to be doing for comfort and relaxation: drinking, smoking, gambling, etc.
CELEBRITY ROLE MODELS
How often do you see celebrities campaigning to raise awareness of the dangers of alcohol? Certainly not as often as you see them endorsing it. Drinking is as much a part of high society lifestyle as it ever was and amongst women it has increased dramatically. Whereas, in the early days of showbiz stardom, it was deemed unladylike for a woman to be seen drunk, today the sight of a female celebrity falling out of a nightclub and into a car is a weekly occurrence. Do you think this dissuades impressionable young girls from drinking? On the contrary, it reinforces the myth that drinking is “the thing to do”.
Another major influence is our circle of friends. Regardless of what we might think privately about alcohol, when all our friends are drinking we come under immense pressure to join in. Alcohol, after all, is perceived as the sociable drug, the drug we take in groups so we can all get drunk together. Anyone who stands aside from that accepted norm is seen as a party pooper.
It’s fair to say that among adults, drinking is considered normal behaviour and those who don’t drink are regarded as the exception. In this respect alcohol is unlike any other drug. So not only do we have the influence of our role models encouraging us to drink, we also have the pressure of our peer group. We want to fit in, so we continue to drink, and all the facts we know about the harmful effects of alcohol get buried at the back of our minds.
In fact, because of peer pressure, our knowledge of the harm alcohol causes can actually become a reason to drink. As young adults we want to prove that we can handle danger because we perceive that as something adults do.
When we’re children, our parents protect us from danger by putting themselves in the way. They make our lives easier by bearing the brunt of life’s hardships. Therefore, as we approach adulthood ourselves, we take on the behaviours that we perceive to be adult. Handling danger is seen as a grown-up thing to do, so much so that grown-ups show off by demonstrating just how much danger they can handle.
No wonder we copy that behaviour when we first start drinking together in groups. It’s a case of no one wanting to be the first to blink.
There is another way in which the negative messages we’re given about drinking and other harmful activities can actually influence us in favour of them. Why is it not enough for us to know that alcohol can cause huge damage? Why do we continue to drink as if it is the greatest thing on earth?
The answer lies in the way we’re brainwashed from birth. During our teenage years, we discover that some of the things we’ve been warned against are actually pleasurable. This sows a seed in our minds: we suspect that this might be the case with everything we’ve been warned against. Then we see people we admire enjoying those very things and our suspicions are confirmed.
Rather than take the warnings at face value, we look for a hidden message: “If people are doing it in spite of all the dangers I’ve been warned about, there must be something great about it.”
The simple truth, which we’re never told, is that all those influences – the celebrities, the friends, our parents – are drinking because they too have been brainwashed and now they’re in the trap.
When I first devised my method I focused exclusively on smoking but I always knew that it could be applied to alcoholism and other addictions. Although the drug may vary, the principle remains the same.
The addict is deluded into believing the drug provides a genuine pleasure or support, when, in fact, it does the opposite.
As alcohol leaves the body, the withdrawal creates a feeling of unease and emptiness, like a niggling itch. I call this feeling the Little Monster. The Little Monster is created by consuming alcohol. It feeds on alcohol and when you don’t give it what it wants, it begins to complain. The feeling is barely perceptible, and the real problem is that it creates another monster.
This second monster is not physical but psychological. I call it the Big Monster and it’s created by a combination of the Little Monster and the brainwashing that drinking provides a genuine pleasure or support.
The Big Monster interprets the Little Monster’s complaints as “I need or want a drink”, and so you end up trying to satisfy the craving by doing the very thing that caused the craving in the first place.
When you consume alcohol it temporarily quietens the Little Monster, creating the illusion that the drink has made you relaxed and happy. In fact, all it has done is taken you from feeling slightly uptight and restless to feeling OK. Before you created the Little Monster you were OK anyway, you didn’t need alcohol. Now you will need it again and again just to get you back to a level where you feel OK.
In fact you never quite get back to where you were before you started. The body builds up a tolerance to all addictive drugs, so you never completely relieve the withdrawal even while you are drinking, and so the tendency is to increase your intake. The longer you go on trying to satisfy the Little Monster with alcohol, the lower your wellbeing sinks and the more dependent you feel on the drug.
Drinking never makes you feel fulfilled.
Alcohol is an anaesthetic, and an anaesthetic is a drug that kills feelings and sensations. Most people would agree that alcohol can temporarily dull unpleasant feelings. If that is so, how can it possibly enhance pleasant feelings? If it dulls the negative feelings resulting from unpleasant experiences, surely it must also dull the positive feelings resulting from pleasant experiences.
But drinkers will believe anything. We somehow convince ourselves alcohol is some kind of smart bomb: that it wipes out trouble and woe, but miraculously leaves pleasant experiences intact – or even enhances them! It cannot possibly work like that. Alcohol deadens the brain. If you consume it to try to reduce your awareness of your cares and worries, there’s going to be collateral damage: it will reduce your appreciation of genuine pleasures as well.
Wouldn’t you prefer to be fully present for every human experience?
WHY NOT SHOW UP FOR THE ONE LIFE YOU’VE GOT?
What’s so great about being drunk, or “out of it”, as the expression goes? In fact the terms we use for drunkenness are very revealing. Many are references to bodily functions: for example “bladdered”, along with others I could mention; or they refer to the fact that alcohol impairs every one of your faculties: “blind drunk”, “legless”, and “paralytic”; or the images are of violence, destruction and death: “bombed”, “hammered”, “blitzed”, “slaughtered”, “smashed”, “trashed”, “mashed”, “annihilated”, “wrecked”, and most telling of all, “wasted”.
My medical dictionary uses slightly different language. It defines the effects of alcohol as: “deterioration of intellectual and motor functions; lengthening of reaction time; dulling of higher mental processes; impairment of judgment, attention, self-discipline, coordinating skills and visual acuity; and decreasing sensitivity to sensory stimuli”.
I came across this medical definition of the symptoms of alcohol intoxication about the time my cat died. She took a while to go, and it struck me the definition could equally apply to the symptoms of dying: she seemed confused and her reactions became slow; we took her for a final walk in the garden and her legs buckled under her; her senses were obviously going – her eyes started to glaze over. The most important point is she was obviously not enjoying herself – it was clearly quite scary for her.
We’ve all been programmed to believe that alcohol is marvellous, but imagine what its effects would be like for someone who has never heard of it; who has never been brainwashed or warned about those effects, who hasn’t built up a tolerance to them, and has no physical withdrawal or mental craving to try to relieve. Imagine they were tricked into consuming a large amount, and suddenly found themselves unable to think, move, see or talk properly!
Do you think it would be relaxing?
Do you think it would be pleasant in any way?
No. What do you think it would be like for such a person suddenly to find themselves extremely inebriated?
But perhaps you feel non-drinkers are just goody two-shoes who wouldn’t know a good time if it slapped them in the face. That’s an opinion shared by many drinkers – at least while they’re still drunk.
Is that how you feel when you’re sober and someone else is smashed?
When you see a drunken lout reeling around in the street, do they look like they’re enjoying themselves?
When some drunk on the night bus is dribbling down their shirt, do you think: “I wish I was drunk right now!”?
When do you think you’re more likely to see inebriation for what it really is: when your judgement has been impaired by a drug, or when you’re on the outside looking in?
I’m sure most of us have had this experience at some point in our lives: you’re enjoying a relaxing night in and your friends phone you from some bar, drunkenly urging you to join them. Do you want to?
OK, your friends probably think they’re having a better time than you. But what would they know? They’re out of it!
Of all the drinks you have in a session, with which is there the greatest perception of pleasure? Which is the one that really gives you that “Aaaahh!” feeling: the tenth drink, the third drink, the sixteenth drink, the fifth, the first?
Isn’t it the first? And which drink is the one with which you are the least inebriated? Again: the first. That’s the one where you hardly even notice the inebriation.
So if the greatest feeling of pleasure is when you are least inebriated, doesn’t that imply that it’s not the inebriation that creates the feeling of pleasure?
With which drink of the evening is there the least perception of pleasure?
Isn’t it the last? Isn’t that the drink where there’s little if any pleasure? In fact it can be decidedly unpleasant, when your head is spinning or you’re throwing up in the gutter. And with which drink of the evening are you most inebriated? Clearly the last. So the greatest perception of pleasure is when you’re least inebriated, and there’s little if any perception of pleasure when you are at your most inebriated. In fact when you are at your most inebriated it can be very unpleasant.
So, it’s not the inebriation that you’re enjoying.
If it were, it would be the other way around: there’d be little if any sense of pleasure with the first drink, and a great sense of pleasure with the last.
If you think the second or third drink is in fact the most pleasurable, that’s because you’ve developed such a high tolerance that you need more than one drink to have any real effect on the Little Monster – in much the same way that a chain-smoker needs to wolf down several cigarettes in the morning to feel any relief. Remember also that it takes around seven minutes for alcohol to reach the brain so that it’s perhaps not until your second or third drink that the alcohol from your first reaches your brain and suppresses your withdrawal.
We’re confusing two completely separate things. We think the so-called pleasure and the inebriation are one and the same. They aren’t. We think it’s the inebriation that gives the sense of pleasure. It isn’t. We’re mistaking the mere relief of our craving for a pleasurable effect of the drug. We experience that mild inebriation at the same time as the partial relief of the physical withdrawal, and shortly after the relief of the mental craving. So, it’s not surprising that the inebriation seems pleasant by association with the relief. We confuse the relief of withdrawal with the inebriation. We think the inebriation and the feeling of pleasure are one and the same thing. They aren’t.
There is nothing genuinely pleasant about inebriation. It may seem pleasant but only because you experience it at exactly the same time as the withdrawal relief.
Most drinkers would claim the sense of pleasure comes from the effect of the drug – from the inebriation. They would claim, in fact, that the sense of pleasure and the inebriation are one and the same thing. Let me prove to you they are two completely different things.
You can feel one without the other. I’m sure you’ll agree you can feel inebriated without any sense of pleasure: your first ever experience of alcohol, for example, and presumably many occasions since: when you’re throwing up in the gutter, there’s not much pleasure then, is there?
Or let’s say you’re hammered and you start arguing with your partner – well that’s not exactly pleasurable, is it?
So you can be inebriated without any sense of pleasure.
You can also experience the perception of the pleasure of inebriation without being inebriated. In fact you can experience it without having consumed alcohol at all. There have been numerous clever experiments with placebos that demonstrate people will experience the illusion of the pleasure of inebriation from a soft drink they believe to be hard, but will not experience it from a hard drink they believe to be soft. Such is the power of the Big Monster.
We start drinking out of curiosity, peer pressure or because we believe it must be enjoyable. We’re not sure what that pleasure is but we don’t want to miss out, so we try a drink. Most people remember that their first drink tasted foul. If we had that drink without any of the brainwashing that came before it, we would spit it out and never go near it again. But we don’t, we persevere. Against everything our instincts are telling us, we continue to drink this foul poison until we’re no longer sensitive to the taste. The effect is even more unpleasant as we feel dizzy and the room starts to move and we get a headache and become dehydrated.
It’s an extraordinary process, yet 90 per cent of adults go through it. If, as I say, we perceive no genuine pleasure in those first drinks, why do we continue to do it? Why is that first experience not enough to put us off completely?
As children we perceive adults to be resilient and strong-willed. They don’t give up easily. If they think something’s worth fighting for, they’ll fight for it. If we’re to be perceived as adults we need to follow suit. “Acquiring a taste” for alcohol may be a revolting ordeal, but we’re not about to give in at the first hurdle. We shall overcome! We’re convinced that there must be some amazing pleasure to be had from drinking because we see it throughout society. If we didn’t experience it the first time, well, we’ll just have to try harder, won’t we?
So we drink again and we drink more. We’ve wandered into the trap.
I call that goal fulfilment. To begin with, you believe there is some wonderful pleasure to be had from drinking and until you experience that pleasure you feel unfulfilled. Over time, however, drinking does seem to become pleasurable, but by this stage you’re in the trap. The only reasons it seems pleasurable are because you have built up a tolerance to the foul taste and have also developed an alcohol addiction, which seems to be relieved by each drink. However, as with all addictive drugs, the body builds up a tolerance not only to the taste but also to the drug itself. This means that you never completely relieve the withdrawal, even while you are drinking, and therefore you remain constantly dissatisfied and unfulfilled.
The tendency is to increase your consumption to try to fill the void but of course this in turn increases your tolerance. It’s a vicious circle. You drink to try to relieve the craving for alcohol caused by your addiction.
Non-drinkers do not have this craving, so, in fact, you drink to feel how a non-drinker feels all the time. The only way you can break the addiction and remove the craving is not to drink. That’s why you will never feel fulfilled as long as you keep drinking.
Drinkers believe the only way to relieve their craving for alcohol is to consume the stuff.
In other words, they’re deluded into thinking that more alcohol will leave them fulfilled. But what happens when they get their hands on a drink? Do they drink it and stop? Or do they keep on drinking? Remember:
Ask a drinker about the feelings that drive them to drink and the answers are very similar to those given by a smoker:
•Boredom – “It’s something to do.”
•Sadness – “It helps me forget that I’m alone.”
•Stress – “It helps me to switch off and forget about my worries.”
•Routine – “It’s just what I do when the kids have gone to bed.”
•Reward – “It’s my treat after a long day.”
In none of these cases does happiness come into it. Sure, we mark happy occasions with a celebratory drink, but that’s nothing more than a custom. Our happiness on these occasions doesn’t create a need or desire for that drink. In fact, it’s when we’re happiest that our desire for a drink is lowest. Next time you’re at a wedding, make a note of all the unfinished glasses of champagne left on the tables when the dancing begins.
My great pleasure in life is golf. If I could, I would play golf every day. I wouldn’t wait until I felt bored or sad or stressed. I would break my routine for a game of golf. And I don’t feel I have to earn the right to play. I actively pursue it because it gives me pleasure and I know the exercise is good for me.
Addicts often talk about their “drug” in terms of a “reward”. But why would anyone “reward” themselves with something that damages their health and wealth, turns them into a different and less likeable person and destroys their wellbeing?
Addicts aren’t stupid; they know the pitfalls. And they know deep down that their drug is not a reward, it’s destroying their life. So why do they kid themselves otherwise?
Because they’re caught in an ingenious trap
That first foul-tasting drink is all it takes to trigger a cycle of destruction that can lead to chronic alcoholism. It doesn’t matter who you are, how much you earn, where you live or what you do, everyone is vulnerable to the alcohol trap.
Later in the book I will explain why some people become alcoholics and others don’t, but at this stage all that matters is that you accept that it has nothing to do with the genetic make-up or personality of the drinker.
Alcohol is a highly addictive drug. As it passes out of your system it leaves an empty, insecure feeling, not dissimilar to hunger. You interpret this feeling as “I want a drink”, and think the only way to satisfy it is to have one.
When you have a drink, the empty, insecure feeling is relieved, giving the impression of a little boost. You mistake this boost for pleasure and so it’s ingrained in your mind that alcohol gives you pleasure.
But what you’re feeling is not genuine pleasure, merely relief from alcohol withdrawal which non-drinkers do not suffer from anyway. You could get the same “satisfaction” by wearing tight shoes all day, just for the “pleasure” of taking them off.
As you increase your intake, the alcohol cravings become more pronounced and, therefore, the illusion of pleasure when you relieve them increases. The more you drink, the more you think it’s giving you pleasure. In fact, all it’s doing is relieving the discomfort of craving the drug. Non-drinkers don’t have that discomfort in the first place.
•Role models make the belief in the benefits of drinking more convincing than any warnings.
•The illusion of pleasure is nothing more than relief from the craving which non-drinkers do not suffer from anyway.
•Therefore you drink to feel like a non-drinker feels all the time.
•The only way to break the addiction and escape the craving permanently is not to drink.