IN THIS CHAPTER
•THE BENEFITS OF ALCOHOL •CUTTING DOWN •DIFFERENT STAGES OF THE SAME DISEASE •THE JOYS OF “NORMAL” DRINKING
Do you want to quit completely or merely cut down on the amount you drink?
We have established that problem drinking has nothing to do with an addictive personality or a lack of willpower, but is caused by illusions, which trap us in a prison of fear. You may be wondering, then, why you can’t keep your drinking to a controlled level, like all those happy “normal” drinkers.
All drinkers believe they get some pleasure or support from drinking. That means 90 per cent of the adult population believe that alcohol benefits them in some way.
A common conversation we have with people who come to us with a drink problem goes like this:
They begin by asking, “Do you ever fancy a drink?”
“Never.”
“Do you think you could have an occasional drink and not get hooked again?”
“What would be the point, since I have no desire to drink alcohol?”
“Could you teach me to have an occasional drink without getting hooked again?”
“I’m teaching you how to remove the desire to consume alcohol at all. Why would you want to have an occasional drink? Would you want to take an occasional dose of arsenic?”
“Why on Earth would I want to do that?”
“Exactly.”
At this point a look of realization usually comes over them. They’ve begun the conversation with the suggestion that alcohol provides some benefit. I’ve ended it by highlighting that alcohol is neither a pleasure nor a support, it’s an addictive poison, pure and simple. When the client accepts this, the fear they have about never drinking again – the fear of success – disappears.
This is a wonderful feeling, a revelation, like the sun appearing from behind a cloud. Or when you see the hidden message in an illusion, like the STOP diagram. Just by seeing the facts in a new light, you go from fear to joy in an instant.
FEAR: I WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO DRINK AGAIN.
JOY: I NEVER HAVE TO DRINK AGAIN.
I’ve talked a lot about the disadvantages of alcohol. For the sake of balance, it’s only fair that I tell you what its advantages are. There are three things:
•An anaesthetic
•A detergent and antiseptic
•A fuel
Similar to meths, in fact. Would you drink meths and believe it was doing you good? Now remind yourself of what you know about alcohol:
•A powerful poison – half a pint drunk neat will kill you
•A highly addictive drug
•A drain on your finances – an average drinker spends more than £50,000/$75,000
•It impedes judgement and concentration
•It weakens your immune system
•It destroys your nervous system
•It causes stress
•It tastes foul
Alcohol is also a diuretic. Diuretics make you thirsty. That’s why after a binge you wake at 3 a.m. with a mouth like a dry riverbed, and one thing on your mind: water! If alcohol quenched thirst the last thing you would need, after all that liquid, is even more. The fact that some people can drink 16 pints of beer proves alcohol creates thirst: you couldn’t drink 16 pints of water if you tried!
Like all addictive drugs, alcohol creates withdrawal and then – as you develop tolerance – ceases fully to relieve it. So you want more. On top of that there’s the fact that it creates thirst while seeming to quench it. The water content slakes your thirst immediately. So your brain is fooled into believing alcohol quenches thirst. But once the alcohol content is absorbed, it makes you thirstier, so that’s another reason you soon want more and with each subsequent drink you just get thirstier and thirstier.
Now, why would you feel miserable about never drinking alcohol again? It does absolutely nothing for you but damages you in all these ways. Wouldn’t it be wonderful never to have to drink again?
So why do we envy those “normal” drinkers who haven’t had their life ruined by alcohol? Well, for that very reason alone, you might say. But then why not envy a non-drinker? They haven’t had their life ruined by alcohol either. If you think it’s better to be a “normal” drinker than a non-drinker, that’s because you still believe there is some benefit to drinking.
You also believe that the “normal” drinker is in control. That’s the difference between them and you: while drinking controls you, they seem to be able to decide when they drink and how much, without any trouble at all. But is that really the case? Remember, all drinkers try very hard to give the impression that they’re in control.
The fly on the upper slope of the pitcher plant thinks it’s in control. It knows it can fly away at any moment. But it doesn’t. It continues to drink, sliding further and further into the plant, until it’s too late and the fly is doomed. Anyone observing this will know that the fly is doomed the moment it lands on the lip of the plant. The same inevitable process follows time after time. The fly is never in control. It’s controlled by the pitcher plant from the moment it picks up the scent of the nectar.
A similar scenario is acted out in the Hitchcock movie Notorious. The heroine is ill and is being nursed by her husband. Then she discovers that she’s not really ill, he’s poisoning her. She tries to escape but the drug is having a debilitating effect on her legs and leaving her mind addled. Ring any bells?
Alcohol isn’t the drug being used in the film but the comparison is frighteningly apt. While she thinks she’s being nursed by her husband, she has no fear of the food he’s giving her. She thinks it’s doing her good. “Normal” drinkers have no fear of alcohol for the same reason. Like the heroine, and like the fly on the upper slope of the pitcher plant, they’re oblivious to the danger they’re in. By the time the true situation is revealed and fear kicks in, they’re way beyond the point where they lost control.
The crucial difference is that the person administering the poison is you. Unlike the fly or the heroine in the film, you have the power to stop.
Let’s look at another scenario. Imagine you have a spot on your face. Someone gives you an ointment that they say will clear it up, so you rub it on and sure enough the spot disappears. A week later the spot’s back, only bigger and redder this time. You apply more ointment and it disappears again. Five days later, it’s back, but now it’s more than just a spot, it’s a rash. As you go on, the duration between the rash breaking out becomes shorter and shorter and it becomes bigger and itchier each time. Imagine the horror you’d feel, knowing that it’s going to get worse and worse until you can find a cure. You’re also so reliant on that bottle of ointment that you’re prepared to pay a fortune for it and you’re afraid to go anywhere without it.
Then you discover that you’re not the only one suffering this problem. Millions of other people are in exactly the same boat, all handing over a fortune to the ointment industry. And so your nightmare continues, until one day you meet a man who says he used to suffer from the same problem but solved it. You ask him his secret and he says, “Oh, I realized the ointment was causing the rash so I stopped using it.” He advises you to do the same – the rash will clear up in a few days and you’ll never suffer it again.
What would you do? Would you feel miserable that you could never use the ointment again, or would you be elated that you never had to? Now apply this logic to alcohol. You have the power to free yourself. Isn’t that a wonderful feeling?
To the problem drinker, all “normal” drinkers appear to be in control. But would you say a pilot was in control if he was flying through a mountain range with inaccurate charts and his instruments had been tampered with?
He might have his hand on the joystick, but each decision he made would be based on false information. He would be unaware of the danger and so would have no fear, but that doesn’t mean the danger isn’t there.
We continue to drink because we’re addicted to a drug that controls us. We drink purely and simply to get the alcohol.
When you cut down, you resist the craving for alcohol between drinks. What effect do you think that has on your desire for alcohol? Imagine I forced you to go without food for a day, how would that affect your desire to eat? Say I starved you for two days, three days, or more – the longer you went without food, the greater your desire for food would become, to the point where you would relish anything I put in front of you.
Hunger is a natural instinct designed for our survival, whereas the Little Monster is a parasite that causes our destruction, but in some ways they are very similar. The longer we go without relieving them, the greater our desire to do so. We all know the meaning of forbidden fruit. The more you cut down on alcohol, the more precious the next drink seems to you. And the more you deny yourself a drink, the more miserable you become.
You try not to give in to the cravings as another part of your brain is feeling rather pleased with itself for apparently taking control of the situation. This creates a schizophrenic dialogue in your mind, rather like Gollum in The Hobbit. One part of your brain is whinging about not being able to drink, another is maintaining a haughty superiority as it controls the rations. The result is a constant gabble, dominating your mind with thoughts of your next drink.
At the same time as your desire for alcohol is increasing, something else is taking place. Because you’re reducing the dose of poison and the money you spend on booze, the ill effects are waning. But it’s these ill effects that made you want to cut down in the first place. Therefore, as your desire increases, you start to forget your reasons for cutting down. Small wonder that most attempts to cut down end up with drinkers eventually returning to their previous intake and more often than not surpassing it.
Drinkers who try to cut down are creating a number of serious problems for themselves:
1.They keep themselves addicted to alcohol.
2.They wish their lives away waiting for the next drink.
3.Instead of relieving the craving whenever they feel like it, they force themselves to fight it and so are permanently restless and uptight.
4.They reinforce the illusion that drinking is enjoyable.
When you drink heavily, you lose the illusion of pleasure. Each drink becomes automatic and subconscious. You will find that the occasions when you relish drinking most occur after a period of abstinence. This is because there is no genuine pleasure whatsoever in drinking. All that drinkers enjoy is the ending of the aggravation caused by the craving for alcohol, which nondrinkers do not suffer from in any case.
Cutting down increases the illusion of pleasure because the longer you endure the craving, the greater the sense of pleasure when you relieve it.
If you think increasing the illusion of pleasure sounds like a good thing, think again. The only way to increase the illusion of pleasure is to increase the aggravation. It’s like wearing tighter and tighter shoes in order to get increasing relief from taking them off. No drinker, including “normal” drinkers, enjoys the aggravation caused by alcohol. There is a constant impulse to scratch the itch, and the more you scratch it, the worse it gets.
That’s why cutting down is unsustainable and usually results in drinking more than before.
Perhaps you believe there is an idyllic alternative to being either a non-drinker or a problem drinker – a third way: the happy casual drinker. In that case, let me ask you a question: why are you not one already? And if you claim to be one, why are you reading this book? Let’s establish whether you really want to be a casual drinker.
If I said I could fix it so that you could drink just once a week for the rest of your life, would you accept it? Better still, suppose I told you you could control your drinking so that you did it only when you really wanted to? That’s a pretty exciting offer, isn’t it?
But that’s what you already do!
Has anyone ever forced you to drink? Every time you’ve had a drink you’ve done so because you wanted to, even though part of your brain wished you didn’t.
So I take it that you’ll settle for just the one drink a week. Well, if that’s what you want, you can do just that. Who’s to stop you? In fact, why haven’t you just had one drink a week for the whole of your drinking life? Could it be that you wouldn’t have been happy drinking just once a week?
Of course you wouldn’t. Nor is any other drinker. Agreed, there are drinkers who can discipline themselves to just once a week, but can you really believe that any of them are happy restricting themselves almost every day, for the whole of their lives?
If you like something and you think it gives you support, why restrict the amount you do it? OK, money plays a part and there’ll be times when you’re in a place where drinking is forbidden. Then there’s the effect you know it will have on those around you; it doesn’t look good being drunk at work, or drinking as you walk around the shops.
There are many external forces that restrict the amount you can drink, but if all the restrictions were removed, most drinkers would become heavy drinkers.
My question to the casual drinker is this: “What’s the point in drinking at all? Do you think you’re getting some genuine pleasure or support from those occasions when you drink?
“If so, why wait so long in between?”
The truth is that most casual drinkers are usually suppressing the urge to drink more. They’re still labouring under the illusion that drinking is an escape and a relief. All it takes is a crisis for them to increase their drinking in the belief that it will provide some comfort.
At our clinics, we meet people who have become alcoholics in their 30s or 40s or even later, and it doesn’t take long to establish that they have spent their entire lives believing that drinking could give them some pleasure or support. The only reason they didn’t get hooked sooner was because their desire had never been enough to outweigh their knowledge of the dangers. One trauma was enough to tip the balance.
It’s illogical to believe that there is a fundamental difference between one kind of drinker and another, between “normal” drinkers and problem drinkers. We’ve established that the problem is not with the alcoholic but with the alcohol. How can the same drug be beneficial for one group of people and devastating for another?
The obvious answer is that alcohol is not beneficial for anybody, and once you strip away the veneer of happiness and control from “normal” drinkers, this becomes abundantly clear. There is no demarcation line between “normal” drinking and problem drinking; it’s all part of the same disease. The problem drinker is just at a more advanced stage.
Say you have a tile missing from your roof and rain is dripping in. All you have to do is replace the tile and the problem is solved, immediately and permanently. It will take a little time to clear up the mess, but you will find this clear-up process much easier now that the leak has been repaired.
You can cure a drink problem just as easily by stopping the flow of alcohol. As soon as you do, you know your problem is solved and you can enjoy the process of repairing the damage.
But say you don’t replace the roof tile and choose instead just to put buckets under the drip. You might be preventing damage to the interior of your house but you’ve got the constant headache of having to empty buckets and replace them. How long are you prepared to do this for?
Do you expect the hole in the roof to just heal over one day? Of course it won’t. In fact, sooner or later another tile is blown away and the hole doubles in size. Now you’re struggling to catch all the drips and your buckets are overflowing before you can empty them. As time goes on the flow of water gets heavier and heavier and the damage to your house is becoming disastrous. But you can make it stop any time you want, simply by fixing the roof.
Now, would it be logical for a person with two tiles missing to think, “I wish I had one tile missing.” Wouldn’t they be better off fixing the roof completely? The person with one tile missing is suffering with the same problem as the person with two; it just hasn’t reached the disaster stage. But it’s only a matter of time.
“Normal” drinkers like to make out that they’re in complete control of their alcohol intake.
“I can take it or leave it.”
Why not leave it then? Because they believe that it gives them some pleasure or support and that life would not be as enjoyable without it. Present them with the prospect of life without alcohol and see the panic set in.
I used to go on holiday with a friend and we would always celebrate our arrival with a bottle of champagne on the terrace overlooking the sea. When I told him I had stopped drinking, his first reaction was disappointment. “We’ll never be able to enjoy that ritual again,” he moped.
He was wrong. The next time we went on holiday we sat out on our first night and shared a drink just as before and I enjoyed it as much as ever. Of course I did: the weather was superb, the view was spectacular, I was with one of my closest friends and it was the first day of the holiday. It made no difference that I was drinking fruit juice without any poison in it.
But his enjoyment was diminished. He wasn’t sure whether I’d mind him drinking alcohol in front of me and he seemed uncomfortable every time I topped up his glass. He clearly regarded my situation as something to be treated delicately, as if I had some sort of terrible disease. The irony is I’d got rid of one!
This goes back to the illusion that alcohol is essential for happy occasions. I can think of numerous social occasions that have been ruined by booze, through fights, accidents, people saying and doing stupid things, people getting ill. I can also think of many happy occasions where the company, the setting, the weather or the food all contributed, but I can’t think of a single one when everyone came away raving about the quality of the alcohol.
My friend eventually relaxed and enjoyed our holiday ritual, but I wonder if he would have if I had insisted he didn’t drink. Given his attitude to my not drinking, I very much doubt that he could “take it or leave it” on that occasion.
Observe the “normal” drinker when the question of who’s going to drive arises. I’ve witnessed so many discussions between partners who regard themselves as “normal” drinkers.
“Am I driving tonight, darling?”
“I will if you want. I don’t mind.”
“Really? Are you sure it’s not my turn?”
“I can’t remember. I don’t mind, honestly. I’ll drive, you enjoy yourself.”
“Well, if you insist. I think I will.”
I find these conversations fascinating for several reasons. First, the opening question, “Am I driving tonight, darling?” is cleverly designed to receive the answer “no”. But the partner doesn’t come back with a straightforward “no”, he throws the responsibility back on her: “I will if you want.” Then he adds, “I don’t mind,” meaning, “I’d rather not but I’ll stomach it.”
She then expresses her relief by faking surprise at his gallantry. “Really?” Then offers him the chance to change his mind: “Are you sure it’s not my turn?” Of course, for him to say, “Yes, it’s your turn,” would be extremely ungallant, so he feigns ignorance: “I can’t remember.” Then he repeats the plaintive “I don’t mind”, hoping she’ll take pity on him and feel guilty, and rubs it in with “you enjoy yourself”, implying that there’s no chance of enjoying oneself without drinking. She reaffirms this with, “I think I will,” and the first thing she does is top up her glass. She can’t wait to relieve her craving.
Throughout the conversation, both partners are like prisoners drawing lots for the gallows. Neither wants to come across as so desperate to drink that they’ll say, “You drive, I really have to drink tonight,” yet the relief of the one and the despondency of the other when it’s all resolved is plain to see.
“Normal” drinkers harbour the illusion of pleasure more than problem drinkers. But ask them to define the pleasure and they can’t. Instead, they offer defensive excuses:
“I can take it or leave it.”
“I don’t drink that much.”
“It’s not doing me any harm.”
If they genuinely enjoy a drink, why would they choose to leave it? The only possible reason is that it’s causing them a problem. It’s common practice to abstain from drinking throughout January, ostensibly to “detox” after the heavy drinking of Christmas.
What are these abstainers trying to prove?
That drink isn’t a problem for them.
What are they actually proving?
That it is.
If they didn’t think their drinking was a problem and they genuinely enjoyed it, why go without for a whole month? Imagine if a friend told you they were giving up bananas for January. Would you think, “There’s someone who’s in control of their bananas”? Or would you think, “Golly! I didn’t know he had a banana problem!”
As for the excuse, “It’s not doing me any harm,” even if that were true, is it any reason for doing something? Wearing a top hat and singing “Waltzing Matilda” doesn’t do any harm, but I wouldn’t choose to do it for that reason. If I did, you’d think I was crazy. But it’s not half as crazy as giving the excuse that you drink because it doesn’t do you any harm, when everybody knows it does!
I began this chapter with a question: cut down or quit completely? I hope you can now see that cutting down is not an option. The only way to stop the rain coming in is to repair the hole in the roof. Quitting completely is the only way to free yourself from the alcohol trap.
SUMMARY
•Alcohol can be used as an antiseptic, a detergent, an anaesthetic and a fuel. It has no other benefits at all.
•Cutting down increases the craving.
•Casual drinkers are constantly restricting themselves.
•“Normal” drinking and problem drinking are just different stages of the same disease.