Alcohol consumption seemingly goes back as far as recorded history. The earliest know remnants of intentionally fermented beverage production go back to the Neolithic era (10,000 BC). It was used in ritual and religious practices as well as for enjoyment and relaxation all over the world. It is mentioned 191 times in the old and new testament alone mostly for its medicinal purposes. Because it has been so prolific throughout time I began to think what it is alcohol means to me and how much of a part in my life I want it to play.
I have been indulging in drinking now for only about four and a half years. Being that I am 28 this often seems to surprise people when I tell them. I somehow seem to have gone from one extreme all the way to the other. Finding both extremes interesting in themselves and yet wanting and preferring to find myself somewhere in the middle. To me drinking has become not only relaxing and calming but has somewhat over run my life in recent months. I love it to no end but at some point you notice things are catching up to you. And no matter how much you love something there has to be limits because even the best of things have down sides. And things are much more enjoyable in moderation. After all the first taste of anything always far exceeds in pleasure the 4th or 5th or 50th. But I can’t say I think alcohol is necessarily bad. You will never find me in AA promising to never have another drink again. Excess in anything is detrimental but in moderation almost anything can be acceptable. It really does seem to have done some positive things for me, at least from my perspective, even though that is not usually the story they want you to hear.
Its important here to admit I have always been a shy person and sometimes taken to its extreme even painfully so. Around the time I started drinking I was desperately trying to conquer my social awkwardness and fears. I think I’ve been trying for as long as I can remember but at this time I was taking it more to heart and I was constantly putting myself in social situations so I would be forced to confront and hopefully over come my unfounded shyness. Which for the age group in which I found myself usually included a bar and drinking of some sort or another. I used to sit nestled quietly in the background simply listening. Watching awkwardness and quiet turn to happiness and joking and loudness. Then to laughing then eventually to slurred words and eventually to some inevitable slip fall or other such embarrassments. I found it distasteful actually that people could drink to the point of making fools of themselves, or saying something that would not have normally been said and regretting it later, or even suddenly finding someone attractive when they never before would have given them time of day. I used to think that for these reasons alone I would never be seduced into drinking. . I didn’t want to feel out of control of my mind or body. I never wanted someone to look at me the way I was looking at them at the time. But like a wondrous affliction I always want to know as much as I can about the so-called bad as well as the good. I had to see things from my own perspective looking out through my own heavy eyes. Evan if it was only to try it and reject it. I had to make that decision with full knowledge from both sides of the bottle.
When I began drinking is was like an express escape from my omnipresent anxiety. I began to see the seductiveness of it all. The calming effects of a drink or two in a given social situation. It was like a socially acceptable antidepressant or anti anxiety pill crushed up and passed around so that we could all happily do it together. That first sip entered like the deep harsh kiss from a lovers lips. The cool liquid entered quickly escaping into a slow hot burn that followed down my throat and to the center of my body. A single drink and already the world had become softer and calmer. I was quite literally dulled to my ever-present surroundings. Like the volume had been turned down…or not that it had been turned down really but just that suddenly I didn’t care about how loud it was or even notice it really. I was self medicating. Instead of mustering tears for a doctor's scribbles and a few pills I thought this time I had it all figured out…finally.
For me it has always made the world seem more comfortable. Makes the most mundane of tasks seem more interesting. Ill be it a bit unsteady. In that beginning I used to feel comfort in just a few drinks spread out through an evening and would let the lull of the alcohol drift and settle me into a distracted contentment. I was resting in the middle. I would have a few but never too many and never too often.
But if I know anything about myself I know I am never content until I have seen and measured both extremes. And so I embarked on sort of an experimental push to the other extreme. I had lived without alcohol for so long and watched and examined others. And, now it was time to see what the opposite extreme was like Perhaps to prove my point about how stupid it mad one seem? Perhaps... I didn’t care about the final outcome as much as the journey getting there. As time wore on no amount seemed to be quite enough. If two drinks could make you feel good then it only follows logic that four would make you feel wondrous right? This moving onward of course with alcohol already in your system and mixed with the obvious oblivion of inhibitions you come to think the pleasurable effects will continue into the infinitum forgetting the obvious downside, which was sure to follow. Soon your mind seemed out of the loop all together. You assume that if your glass is empty it was in desperate need of being filled. No time to waste. And yet what seems like just moments later you look down to find again an empty glass and think you must have forgotten to fill it the first place. All that really matters after those first few drinks is becoming more intoxicated. Continuing your high and more importantly reaching its heights. Anyone who pretends that by drinking you aren’t doing a drug is lying to themselves. Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s not a drug. If it changes you mental state I suppose it must be a drug. The dictionary defines it as a chemical substance used in the treatment, cure, prevention, or diagnosis of disease or used to otherwise enhance physical or mental well-being. I would say that it definitely enhances mental well-being. You can become addicted to it more easily then most and it is often harder to quit then any other drug you may find. You are enjoying yourself like it’s the first time you have ever tasted it everytime. And another drink becomes one too many and one day you wake up in your bed without any idea how you got there…Or even got home. Looking back the end of the night was really just a growing blur whirled and stirred and turned to a still vacant blackness. I liked to call it time traveling. One minute you are one place the next you are entirely somewhere else. You don’t remember anything in between so you assume there wasn’t one…until to your horror someone explains what you did or said. You may know somewhere deep inside that it’s true, but paradoxically you are definitely sure you weren’t there for it. It was as if whomever it was that had occupied your body for those hours wasn’t you at all. It was all black. Like a page ripped out of the middle of a book. You have no idea what was on it but you can’t deny it was ever there. You can’t skip pages. Something existed in between whether you remember it or not. And yet in a way I suppose it is true. It wasn’t really you. It was like a different version of you born out of the inhibitions and transgressions bestowed from your newfound love for alcohol.
So I decided to seek out the facts. Find out worst-case scenario. How much of this particular drug would be too much. And how much could you continue to do without any noticeable effects.
They say that alcohol is empty calories. Nutritionally you derive nothing from it. But I can’t say nutrition is at all what I had in mind when reaching for my glass. I didn’t expect it to add to my health only to my satisfaction. I searched for ways to make it not better exactly but less bad. Lower calorie perhaps?
I found carbonation to be an interesting thing. Apparently when mixing your alcohol with soda or tonic the carbonation actually rushes the alcohol into your system so you feel drunk more quickly then if you were to mix it with say juice or other such things. Even the temperature of a drink can slow its process. A warm drink will enter more quickly while a cool drink will take longer as it has to warm to your body’s own temperature before it can be fully digested.
Another interesting correlation between low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) and drinking seems to exist. Although I have had problems with low blood sugar dating back to my teens its possible, I do imagine, that this may have exacerbated my issues with it, regardless of the fact that I didn’t start drinking until my mid twenties.
The key question that seemed to present itself is as to whether it is more harmful to binge drink only say once or twice a week or to consume that same amount of alcohol but spread thinly or evenly throughout the week. From what I have read it seems far better for you to have just a drink or two more often during the week then saving them all up for a self-indulgent binge on any given weekend. Drinking a large amount of alcohol in a short amount of time may pose obvious harm to your immediate judgment and may put you in harmful, embarrassing and often regretted situations. As well as taxing your body’s ability to filter the alcohol as you continue to drink. But is it really better then having only a few but more often?
How much is too much in a given binge? It is widely stated that for men it is consuming more then four drinks in a setting or more then 14 a week and for women it is around 1 drink a day or around 7 a week. A .30 bal is the apparent minimum amount of alcohol needed for possible alcohol induced death. A .40 usually induces a coma and a .50 usually slows respiratory and heart rate. And at the level .60 you will find almost certain death. I also found it humorous that suicide was often listed as a possible outcome. As if they believe that alcohol was the reason for the suicide rather then realizing that they probably already had it in their head and the alcohol only reduced the social inhibitions of doing it.
There seems to be some contradictory information out there about how much brain damage drinking may or may not cause you. I have often heard that drinking kills brain cells and that’s why you shouldn’t drink but this is not necessarily true. Drinking may damage dendrites, which are responsible for bringing the messages to and from those cells. There seems to be an array of contradicting evidence in this area. Some say it is merely left over propaganda from during the prohibition when they cited it among the “dangers of drinking”. When they were out to demonize the use of alcohol in anyway as unpatriotic. The truth is that this impairment for the most part is usually temporary and not permanent.
Apparently there are three noticeable effects of alcohol to the brain: Memory loss, confusion and augmentation. (Augmentation being that, as I had put it. “The world seems more alive” lights are brighter. Sounds are louder. And intensity and emotions seem amplified.) Looking at these three I have a hard time convincing myself that these are necessarily bad. I find them quite enjoyable really. But, it isn’t all together harmless. Long term alcohol abuse can and often will lead to neurological disorders. It can lead to damage of the limbic system and even atrophy in the brain causing more long-term effects. Although this is often attributed to a complication from a tendency of under nourishment in heavy drinkers. Anything taken to an extreme will cause you problems. Over all the leading studies seem to point to problems relating to acute alcohol impairment and to the withdrawal symptoms especially among heavy drinkers and not to longer term effects of it except in excessive users.
Although newer studies seem to lend credence to the idea that any alcohol at all can lead to slightly higher cancer rates. This is usually related to the fact that about 8% of the population lacks the enzyme needed to break down alcohol. This missing enzyme metabolizes the alcohol into acetate, which is non-toxic. But for those 8% the alcohol turns into acetaldehyde, which is a chemical that causes DNA damage and has cancer-promoting effects. This often causes facial flushing, according to scientists from NIAAA. The standard seems to be no more then two drinks a day for men and no more then just one drink a day for women. It is still generally accepted by most health professionals that moderate drinkers tend to have better health and live longer then both those who drink heavily and those who abstain from drinking altogether. This is often attributed in large part to its apparent cardiovascular benefits. According to the American heart association moderate drinking may have some anti-clotting benefits that are more helpful then not drinking however too much may result in the opposite effect Although I have often heard that memory loss is a strong reason not to drink this appears to be acute and studies have shown that you are actually less likely to get Alzheimer’s On the basis of its extensive review of research, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) reported that moderate drinkers have the greatest longevity. Moderate drinking among older women can benefit memory according to research funded by the National Institutes of Health. Moderate drinkers performed better on instrumental everyday tasks, had stronger memory self-efficacy and improved memory performance," said Dr. Graham McDougall, who led the research. The performance memory tests include such topics as remembering a story, route, hidden objects, future intentions and connecting random numbers and letters. In all cases, the group who drank scored better than those who did not drink. Women who drank alcohol in moderation (defined as consuming up to two drinks of beer, wine or spirits per day) also performed better on attention, concentration, psychomotor skills, verbal-associative capacities and oral fluency.
So what does all this information lead me to? I suppose the way I have and will deal with alcohol represents a microcosm of how I deal with all aspects of my life. I think the key here is to enjoy life to its fullest and yet in moderation.
