The question today is: Why is just one drink, so difficult? Why is having one drink so difficult? Why is it so difficult to have a drink and say ‘no’ to the second? Why can’t I just take or leave alcohol? Does it mean I’m an alcoholic? Am I dependent?

Now, there are two reasons I’m going to give you for this. The first one is tolerance. That any drug that you put into your body – and alcohol is a drug. Any drug that you put into your body, your body is going to try one way or another to either eliminate that drug or it’s going to try and acclimatise your body to having that drug inside your body; alcohol is no exception.

When you drink alcohol, the first time you drink it, you’re going to feel the effect of that alcohol, the consequences of that alcohol really strongly. You might throw up, the world might be spinning around, you might not be able to talk, you might not be able to walk – depending on the levels that you’re drinking.

The more you drink; the more acclimatised your body is going to become to the alcohol. The less you are going to, the less effect you are going to have; the more of the substance you are going to have to take – so the more alcohol, you are going to have to drink.

The one drink that you started out with years ago, is not going to give you the same effect as the one drink that you’re taking now.

The second part of it is that it is a drug. Any drug is going to cause you to have this type of problem. They say that alcohol, the reasons why a lot of people drink alcohol in the first place, is because they want to reduce their inhibitions. By that, they mean that they want to overcome their shyness a little bit, they want to be able to talk to other people, to their friends and to strangers, with a bit more confidence and all that kind of stuff. But, alcohol also reduces your inhibitions in the sense that, you don’t give a shit what you’re doing once you’ve had a couple of drinks and it makes it easier once you’ve had that first drink to step down and have the second drink and then to step in and have the third drink – and then step in and have the fourth drink.

So, this is what happens when you take a drug; that it just makes it easier and easier to take the next one. The alcohol companies know this fine well. That’s why they sort of encourage people to have – “Don’t worry; you can have just two, you know.” They know fine well that when you take two, it’s easier to take the third and the fourth and the fifth and the tenth.