This Naked Mind. Annie Grace

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СКАЧАТЬ just enough to see dead, floating bodies of other bees and insects around you. You realize you are not enjoying a drink; you are drinking the juices of other dead and dissolving bees. You are the drink.

      But can’t we have the best of both worlds? Enjoy the nectar and then fly away? Maybe you can put limits on yourself and monitor your intake. Tons of people can do this and do it well—for a while, until something changes in their lives, some additional stressor or a tragedy. Or perhaps nothing changes and, like me, you gradually find you are drinking more than you ever set out to.

      All doctors and alcohol experts agree that alcohol is addictive. How many people do you know who drink consistently less over time? For the moment, let’s focus on “responsible,” adult drinking patterns. Sure, students are well known for binging while attending university, leaving the party-heavy environment of frat houses for steady jobs and family life can reset the amount they regularly drink. But once they’ve set their long-term patterns, isn’t it true that people tend to drink more, not less, over time?

      We used to tease one of my friends because she was tipsy after half a glass of wine. Her low tolerance was the butt of jokes for years; however, when I saw her last week, she drank two large glasses at dinner and felt sober enough to drive home. Alcohol is addictive, and your tolerance increases over time. It’s a dangerous road no matter how little you drink or how in control you think you are. In fact, recent neurological studies demonstrate that the brain changes in response to alcohol. These changes increase tolerance, diminish the pleasure derived from drinking, and affect the brain’s ability to exercise self-control.⁴⁴ We will talk in detail about the effects of alcohol on the brain in a later chapter.

      A Neglected Warning: The Homeless Drunk

      Why aren’t we forewarned by the dead bees at the bottom of the pitcher plant? We have all seen people who’ve lost everything to addiction, who beg on the street with a bottle of booze in a brown paper bag. Isn’t this vagabond like the rotting bodies of the other trapped bees? Does this person help us to see the danger? Perhaps for a few. But most of us hide behind the arbitrary line we have drawn between “alcoholics” and “regular drinkers.” We don’t blame the addictive drug in our glass. Instead, we believe that there is something wrong with the addict on the street.

      Thinking the alcoholic on the street is different allows us to believe ourselves to be immune. What has happened to him cannot possibly happen to us. We are not in danger of becoming one of “those” people. Of course, we don’t know his backstory, that he was a smart, successful businessman with a growing family. We don’t know how alcohol ensnared him, and he lost everything to the most accepted, deadly, and widely used of all drugs.⁴⁵

      Let’s look at it a different way. We see the homeless man on the street like a bee views an ant that has crawled into the pitcher plant. The ant doesn’t have wings; therefore, he is not like me, the bee. I have wings; I am in control. I can escape whenever I want to. But in reality both the ant and the bee are in mortal danger.

      The last time I was on the Las Vegas strip everyone, everywhere was drinking. I mean, hey, it’s Vegas. The drinkers came in all varieties, from giggling girls with the “yards” of fruity drinks to the bachelor-party boys with their 40 oz. beers. They were young, vibrant, and full of life. I watched them walk right by a beggar with his bed on the street. He had no food but clutched a bottle of alcohol hidden in a paper bag. It was clear to any passerby that drinking had destroyed his life. All of the “regular” drinkers looked directly at him. Many even gave him spare change.

      But did they question the substance in their own cups? Did they realize they were drinking the same life-destroying poison as the homeless man? Did it prevent them from ordering their next drink? Sadly, no.

      The Descent: When Did I Lose Control?

      Is it so hard to accept that the youngsters, experimenting with alcohol, are like the bee landing on the edge of the plant and tasting the nectar? That the homeless man begging for food is just at a more advanced stage in the descent?

      A recent study by the Prevention Research and Methodology Center at Pennsylvania State University measured the college binge drinking habits of students whose parents had allowed them to drink in high school. The findings demonstrate that teens who drink in high school have a significantly higher risk of binging in college. The study also confirms how much influence parental behavior has on teenagers and children. And it’s not just boys modeling their dads or girls modeling their moms. If either parent drinks at home, both the son and daughter are influenced.

      Starting to drink in high school leads to more drinking in college.⁴⁶ Why? Because when the descent begins at an early age, kids enter the college years farther down the slope than those who waited until college to sample the “nectar.”

      I didn’t realize how my drinking increased over time. I shut my mind to the fact that I was drinking more than I ever had anticipated. Are you drinking more or less than you did three, five, or even ten years ago? What about your friends? Are they drinking at the same level, or do they drink more as time goes on? When we realize we are drinking more than we want, we begin the battle to quit or cut back. But, like the bee in the pitcher plant, the more we struggle, the more stuck we become.

      When does the bee lose control? When she begins her gradual slide downward? When she tries to fly away and is unable to? That’s certainly when panic sets in. But it’s clear she lost control well before she realized it, prior to the point she couldn’t physically escape. As Allen Carr theorizes, perhaps from the moment she landed on the pitcher plant, the bee was never in control.

      When did you lose control? Was it the first time your spouse commented on your drinking? Or someone noticed the smell? When you drank so much you threw up, again, perhaps on your partner? When you got a DUI? Maybe you feel like you are still in control. I’m not asking when you realized you had a problem. That was most likely a definitive moment: another hangover, blackout, or even wrecking your car. Losing control is different from realizing you have lost control.

      So when was it? Or are we always in control? No one insists we drink; no one holds a gun to our heads. But if we are in control, aren’t alcoholics also in control? No one forces them to drink. But that has to be different, right? Is it? Or are there just different levels of the same thing? From the outside no one would have guessed how much I was drinking. I was a “high-functioning alcoholic.” I didn’t lose my job or miss a single meeting because of alcohol. In fact, I excelled at my job and was frequently promoted. I didn’t drink and drive. There were few outward signs of how much I drank. Did that mean I didn’t struggle? Or that the alcohol wasn’t slowly killing me? On the contrary.

      Perhaps it’s like the story of the boiling frog. A frog is placed in a pot of cold water, which is moved onto a hot stove. The water heats up, yet the frog does not jump out and save himself. Why not? It happens at such a gradual pace that the moment in which he should jump out passes. When he realizes he is boiling to death, it’s too late. Could it be that the 87% of adults who drink are like the frog? Are we all in the same pot of slowly boiling water?

      So when did you lose control of your drinking? When you experienced a life-crisis related to alcohol? When you realized it was hurting your health, and you decided to cut back? No, it must have been before that because if you were truly in control, you would not have allowed any of those things to happen. When exactly was it? Can you pinpoint it? Chances are you don’t know when normal, habitual drinking became a problem. Can you entertain the possibility that you may never have been in control? That, like the bee, you are not in control of alcohol but alcohol is controlling you? And if you are certain you are still in control and can stop whenever you want to, are you certain you will still be able to next week? Next year? Are you willing to bet your life on it?

      Finding Freedom: You Can СКАЧАТЬ