A New View of Alcoholism
7/26/2007 12:02:00 PM
vinzz
30 Posts
Alcohol
helps us cope. Our drinking
makes us feel better or helps us avoid some problem. Basically, we drink to gain some desired effect.
There are hundreds of ways alcohol seems to help. Each person has his or her own unique set of reasons for drinking.
Sometimes
we find a different reason for each drink we take. Here’s an example: Allen knows he gets nervous around others.
Because he’s going to a party tonight, he has a couple of drinks.
He does this to “calm himself down” and “get ready to meet
people.” When he gets to the party he still feels uptight, so he has
another drink to “loosen up.” A
couple more drinks help him to “laugh and joke with others.” His wife is coming on to him, so he has a couple more drinks
to “get in the mood.” The
last drink at the party is “one more for the road.”
Back home and before going to bed with his wife, he has another
drink to be “a lusty lover.” And
if he gets through sex without passing out, he has one last drink to
“help him sleep.”
Alcohol helps Allen cope with these and many more experiences. Alcohol does so much, it’s easy to see why people become so
devoted to drinking. Here are a few specific ways alcohol helps. It can help you:
 |
take
risks
|
|
calm
yourself down
|
|
overcome
shyness
|
|
escape
loneliness
|
|
forget
some sadness
|
|
feel
bolder
|
|
solve
problems or forget problems
|
|
overcome
depression
|
|
fit
into social situations
|
|
remove
worry
|
|
suppress
anger or get your anger out
|
|
cope
with personal stress
|
|
reduce
feelings of guilt or shame
|
|
celebrate
happy occasions
|
|
ease
tensions
|
|
get
rid of aches and pains
|
With
so many good reasons for drinking, why would anyone want to quit?
There are two main reasons: 1)
If you continue to drink excessively, alcohol soon stops helping you and
actually begins to hurt you. It
begins to cause more problems for you than it helps you to solve. 2) Most of us, sooner or later, realize we’d rather do something
on our own instead of depending on a drug to help us do it.
Early
in our drinking careers we’re amazed at how easily we can fit alcohol
into our lives. But it gets
harder and harder. Instead of
using alcohol to help now and then, we begin depending on it to help us
constantly. We can’t get
along without it. We stop
wanting a drink and start needing a drink.
This
is a crucial change. It
indicates addiction.
Here’s
another way to see it. After
a while, we start using alcohol to cope with problems that only alcohol is
causing. We need a drink to
stop the shakes. Or to blot
out the memory of our drunken behavior the day before. Or to cut the pain of a hangover.
That’s how powerful this drug can be. We use it as a medication for so many of our problems—even
problems it itself causes. No
wonder we feel we need it!