Today I wanted to talk about a question that I got.
This person wanted to know how they deal with the reward of alcohol.
They sort of felt that alcohol allowed them to check out, and this person said they were aware of the damage that it was causing, and at the end of the day when they finished work, they came home and had to deal with their family as well, and at the end of it, once the day was finished, they could sit down and check out with alcohol.
Finish their day off.
This person said they understood all the other tips on meditation and mindfulness, but they liked the feeling that alcohol gave them.
They were afraid of the consequences.
That’s exactly where I was.
That’s exactly where everybody is.
They like the feeling otherwise they wouldn’t do it.
There’s nobody that doesn’t like the feeling because it satisfies the urges, cravings and conflicts.
Once you get to a certain stage and you know you need alcohol, most people don’t get to this sage, most people are dependent on alcohol because it’s a drug.
Once you get to the stage, you understand that you’re dependent on it and need it for a certain thing in your life, then there is a conflict.
That conflict is really you wanting to drink because you like the way it makes you feel, and not wanting to drink because you don’t like the way alcohol makes you feel afterwards, the consequences of your drinking.
You don’t like to think of yourself as being addicted to anything or as having problems with anything.
You don’t like the consequences of the future if you carry on drinking because you know it’s a drug.
Think about this from the perspective of if it was heroin that you were doing.
Alcohol has been proven to be just as if not more dangerous than heroin.
If I’m thinking about this right, the only physical damage that heroin causes is constipation.
I know there’s physical damage caused by the method of taking it, needle tracks, danger of catching diseases through the needles.
This is through the needles not the drug itself.
If the drug is administered properly, with no adulteration, this is what happens.
A lot of people say your brain changes, but your brain changes with alcohol, with playing the piano, with everything that you do.
This is neuroplasticity.
So, heroin is less harmful to you than alcohol.
This is what I’m saying.
If there’s anyone telling you the truth, they’ll tell you that.
Look on the internet and you probably won’t find much about it.
There’s a doctor in England, he’s in a group of doctors that are trying to bring down the influence of alcohol companies and all that kind of stuff.
He’s a fellow called David Nutt.
They’ve proven through research that the most dangerous drug is alcohol by far.
On a scale of 1-100, heroin is in the middle, about 45; but alcohol is up there in the 70s in terms of physical damage.
Imagine yourself, if you switched out alcohol for heroin, would you be saying the same thing?
Would you be using heroin to check out and getting a buzz?
Would you be saying the same thing about cigarettes?
I used to enjoy cigarettes, that’s one of the reasons why it took me a long time to stop. That as hard for me to stop.
A lot of people are saying that quitting cigarettes is more difficult than quitting heroin.
This is all about mind-set.
We are programmed to think about alcohol as being a relaxation thing.
There are adverts all the time.
Most of the adverts are about being relaxed and sociable.
These are well thought out pieces of propaganda that are made with the sole purpose of getting you to use as much alcohol as possible.
I think a much better way of doing this is to think about the reasons why you actually want to check out.
Check out to me sort of means when the day is over and you want to put yourself into a non-thinking stage.
I understand that as well.
But for me drinking was a part of the problem.
I drank to forget, to check out.
I didn’t want to think about the problem that drinking was causing me, so I drank alcohol to stifle the problem.
It’s a sad, vicious cycle that only goes downward because the more you drink, the more alcohol you need, the more of a problem you have.
I understand where you’re coming from, but even though you might not think that this is one of the reasons you’re drinking, to beat back the fear, I guarantee you that because a lot of it is underlying, it’s a psychological thing, a subconscious thought process.
As soon as you start thinking about it, you have the tool at hand to make you stop thinking about it.
Once you take that tool out of the equation and you stop doing it, once you take it as not being an alternative to forget about your problems, then you have to confront the issue.
And once you do that, your super human brain, the most complex kit that we know about, starts to kick in and figure out things slowly but surely.
There is such a lift of the burden, and you don’t realise how much of a burden this thing is.
When I say it like this, I think back and it’s taking me back to those days.
That was hard. You don’t actually realise how dark it is until you’re out on the other side and you realise how much of a weight that was on your shoulders.
We’re not designed for that.
Alcohol represses issues.
Anything that you don’t want to handle, you drink.
You have to look at the bigger picture.
Don’t just look at alcohol as being the temporary solution to many problems because it’s not.
It’s never going to be a solution.
All it’s going to do is bring you more shit.
You said it all yourself, you know it’s a toxin, you know it’s doing you damage.
So, if you know this, if you know you’re drinking because you’re scared, you have to do something about it.
If I was a doctor and you came in and said to me: I’m 50 kilos overweight, and I started talking to you and you tell me your favourite food is four-cheese pizza, and I ask why, and you say you know it’s making you fat and clogging up my arteries, and you know it can lead to heart failure, and you know it’s making your life difficult, but you like the taste.
What does that sound like?
Is your doctor going to go ‘if you like the taste then why not?’
Think about when your child comes to you and they say ‘mummy, I want a Coca-Cola.’
And it’s ten o’ clock at night and the Coca-Cola will keep the kid up all night, so you don’t give it to them and the kid goes ‘but I like the taste! I like the way it makes me feel’ and you say ‘I don’t care what it does for you, you’re not having it.’
Do I need to spell it out how childish that sounds?
Like I said, I’ve been through all of that, and it’s an excuse.
You can do this to yourself throughout your life, you can carry on making this excuse, but you have to dig down to find the reasons why you want to check out.
For me, I liked to check out because I didn’t like the person I was becoming, because of the choices I was making.
One of those choices was drinking alcohol, and eating shit food because I was drinking alcohol.
It was all the rituals and behaviours that I was bringing into my life.
It was a mental thinking of, I would rather have the fleeting, temporary buzz right now.
It leads to problems.
Drinking will get you pissed, but you’ll suffer the consequences in the morning, and probably the rest of your life.
It’s the same thing with food.
Once it’s gone past your taste buds, the taste is gone.
But, the fat lasts for a long time.
You eat shit like that and it goes on ten times quicker than it comes off.
All I’m saying is you have to think about this from the perspective of am I making the mature, adult decision about this?
Am I thinking about this from an adult perspective?
Leave a comment down below, let me know what you think.
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Until next time, keep the alcohol out of your mouth.
A WISE MAN MAKES HIS OWN DECISIONS. A FOOLISH MAN FOLLOWS PUBLIC OPINION.
Until next time…
Onwards and Upwards!
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