Good times are a lot more enjoyable when you’re conscious and awake.
Besides, how much do you really remember of the last time you had any kind of alcohol related fun?
A better policy is sticking to one drink or shot per occasion (even if you were celebrating your 1 month wedding anniversary). That way you’ll be able to make a memory of it, rather than everyone else make a memory of all your mistakes, accidents and catastrophic incidents from that night. With one drink, the chances of you losing count are also very low.
So, does the one drink per occasion/day policy solve all your problems?
Not really. But it’s definitely better than drinking to the point of not remembering your name, gender and birthday. And then showing up at the wrong house at night.
In other words, alcohol is best served to…the person you hate the most…without you ever taking a sip yourself. That way you can rejoice in the fact that they’re gonna die at least a few days sooner than they would have otherwise. That’s because every glass or shot we consume snips out 7 hours of our lives.
But wait! There’s more:
- Drinking two or more alcoholic drinks everyday snips out 23 years of our lives
- Drinking a whole barrelful could get us hospitalized and then institutionalized almost instantly (who knew?)
- 1 in 10 casual drinkers end up becoming alcoholics. Strangely enough, it usually happens to the Dude that says “It won’t be me”.
- 17.6 million people in the US are suffering from alcohol abuse and dependencies (with similar stats across the globe).
- One third of the US population suffer from AUD at some point of their lives, but only 1 in 5 of them seek treatment. Others just “drown away their concerns” with even more alcohol. By the way, AUD stands for “Alcohol use disorder”, not the “Australian dollar syndrome” (that every Kangaroo and Koala suffers from).
- In 2014, around 679,000 adolescence between the ages of 12 and 17 were said to said to suffer from AUD in the US alone. And they haven’t even been to Australia.
- Alcohol kills over 2.5 million people every year. We’re not talking about the Dudes that have a couple of sips and start killing everyone around them. We’re talking specifically about people that die as a result of “consuming” it.
- Children almost always pick up where they Parents left off (in the drinking department and in almost everything else). That means, if the Parents drank their asses off, they probably will too (unless someone “intervened” before things got crazy).
- Alcohol leads to hallucinations, damage to your nervous system, malnutrition, sexual dysfunction, birth defects, muscle cramps, lung infections like tuberculosis, pains in the pancreas, slurred speech, problems with coordination, blackouts, shifty eyes, fatigue, infertility, skinny skeleton, bloating, gas, painful ulcers, unannounced visits from dead relatives and frizzy hair
- Alcohol also has a habit of winning the spotlight in your friendzone, in the guise of a good friend who keeps you sedated until he takes pretty much everything that you ever owned including your health, family, friends, soul, money, happiness, love, joy, beauty, sports memorabilia, silverware and ultimately… your life.
So, it’s safe to assume that there are no happy endings in any alcohol related story, even if the participants were said to be “harmless casual drinkers”. A better definition of “casual drinking” would be playing “Russian Roulette” in a more socially desirable way. If you play it long enough, it’ll eventually get you or get someone close to you (even if that happens to be someone many generations down the line). That’s why every family that’s ever allowed “alcohol” into their homes have at some point experienced an “alcohol related tragedy” or maybe a series of tragedies down the line.
A good relationship (or even a moderately bad one) is built upon a give and take process. Alcohol on the other hand is only interested in taking whatever you have: starting with everything you have in your wallet. It’s kinda like a bug that’s clinging onto your windscreen for the purposes of procuring a free ride. If you don’t get him off the windscreen quickly, he could run you off the road. If you let him into the Car and maybe offer him a seat, he’ll buzz and hiss at you until you drive straight into a tree.
So, the safe solution is to let him off at the next gas station. Or let him hop over to someone else’s windscreen and let them worry about it instead.
Now, quitting drinking isn’t really as difficult or as bad as many former alcoholics make it out to be. Sure. There will be some tearful moments, shaky moments, cuss filled moments and even some prolonged moments of pure bewilderment. But given that you’re doing it primarily for the wellbeing of your loved ones, you should embrace the pain with delight, kinda like how people love looking good embrace the pain of working out every day for 25 hours a day…up until they become great grandmas and grandpas.
As per the escape route, the best quit remedy out there (the one that’s has helped millions of humans and T-rexes since the dinosaur era) is “The easy way to quit alcohol” by Alan Carr. If, however you want a “softer approach”, try Annie Grace’s bestseller “This naked mind, control alcohol” instead. There’re a ton of other good resources out there too, including tablets that help fight off the craving, hypnosis CDs and even rehab centers. Try em all if you have to, because all you need is just “one breakthrough” to set yourself and your entire family tree free from the “grizzly paws” of alcohol. And, if none of those solutions appeal to you or you’re looking for something a little more cost-effective: there’s always jail.
In addition to the “alcohol itself”, other factors that push people into substance abuse are “family turmoil” woven primarily around blame, shame, criticism and motherless /fatherless parenting.
Now, if you’re one of those people who strongly believes that you’re about as immune to alcohol as fish are to water, then here’s a little test for you:
For 7 days keep away from anything that has any form of alcohol in it (both food and beverage). That means you can’t stand next to it. Or even look at it from the corner of your eyes during that time. The 7-day period allows much of the alcohol you currently have running through your veins (aside from what sticks to your waist, thighs and cheeks) to fully “digest”. Yep. When we down a glass of champagne or even a slice of tiramisu, that “alcohol dose” pretty much stays in our system for up to 6 days. If it’s fermented for an even longer period…say a thousand years, it stays in our system even longer. So, by going through this simple 7-day “mini-detox” you’ll know for certain whether or not you have your alcohol under control or if the alcohol pretty much has on a leash. By the way, this isn’t one of those tests you perform once every 50 years. It should be carried out at least once a month.
