Tome of Wisdom

On Thursday night I visited my college buddies for a session of “drunken Mario Kart.” Among my friends I’m known for being so good at Mario Kart Double Dash that I can beat everyone even when I’m dead drunk. Sounds like fun, right?

Not exactly. I drank too much and had to be taken to my friend’s room and put into bed. I was vomiting and nauseated all night. Worse, Eunice called while I was throwing up, and my friends answered the phone. She was very worried about me and couldn’t sleep all night. Thanks to me getting so drunk, I couldn’t come home the next day and take Eunice and I to a fun event in Orange County with my coworkers. I was too sick to get out of bed for most of the day. All day Eunice has been scolding me, and rightfully so. She has personally seen a lot of her friends suffer from the effects of drugs and alcohol, and she shouldn’t have to worry about the same things happening to me. So I deserve every second of pain and suffering, and every word of her scorn and wrath.

This incident has convinced me to change my attitude toward drinking. Henceforth, I promise to never again drink excessively. A glass of wine every now and then is okay; drinking lots of alcohol to get drink is not. My reasons are given below. I give Eunice all the credit for pointing these things out to me and forcing me to re-think my views, and I agree with everything she has said.

In the past, when I drank with my friends, my sole purpose was to get drunk. Drunkenness is a euphoric state: you feel giddy, friendly, relaxed, uninhibited. In social situations, I tend to be shy, quiet, nervous, self-conscious. Getting drunk is a tool I use to open up, laugh, and have a good time with my friends.

This behavior, however, is stupid for several reasons.

The main problem is that drinking alcohol is like playing with fire. After the euphoric experience, I always experience the “crash.” Suddenly you feel sad, depressed, regretful. When I overindulge, the “crash” will be even more severe: I feel sick to my stomach, nauseated, and I can’t sleep. It takes me the whole next day to recover from the physical effects.

It’s possible to argue that there’s nothing wrong with drinking as long as you don’t overindulge. This logic doesn’t work because it’s very difficult to keep from overindulging in practice. Drinking is often done in a “macho” environment where “holding your liquor” is admired. This can lead to being pressured to drink more than you should. Drinking lowers your inhibitions and your ability to make rational decisions, plan for the future, and think about consequences. This contributes to recklessly drinking shot after shot. Most scary is the fact that your body builds up a tolerance to alcohol over time. Your brain compensates for the effects of intoxication, and your body also breaks down alcohol faster. This means that it takes more drinks to make you just as drunk as before, even when your blood alcohol concentration is exactly the same. This makes it difficult to know what your exact limit is, making it easy to drink too much and make yourself sick. Furthermore, when you are drunk you want to prolong the experience as long as possible, leading you to continue drinking. But if you don’t know how fast your body is metabolizing alcohol, you don’t know how fast to drink.

The bottom line is, the nature of intoxication makes it difficult to keep from overindulging in alcohol. Overdrinking can lead to dependence, and alcoholism can lead to significant health risks, such as brain damage, liver problems, or death. I always thought “I’m not an alcoholic; I’m not addicted to alcohol; I don’t have a problem.” This is because I don’t drink very often, and I don’t crave alcohol. But while this may be true now, there’s no telling what heavy drinking will lead to. Maybe some day, after a heavy drinking session, I’ll find myself craving alcohol, start drinking more and more, and turn into an alcoholic. Rather than risk sliding down that slippery slope, it’s better simply to give up heavy drinking. I don’t want to become an alcoholic, waste my life away, and destroy my body.

It is also not true that the euphoric state of intoxication is just harmless fun. I always thought I was a responsible drunk: I’ve never driven drunk, I’ve never done anything stupid like sleeping with a stranger or pissing all over somebody’s floor. I’ve always felt like I was “in control” the whole time, because I was always aware of what was going on, and never lost consciousness or had memory lapses. But even though all of this is true, when you are drunk you aren’t truly in full control, and you are irresponsible to boot. Even if you feel like you are making free choices, you are making free choices with an impaired brain. An impaired brain is not going to make the same kinds of choices that an unimpaired brain would make. You become more daring, lose inhibitions, are less able to judge properly, are less able to understand things, have exaggerated emotional states, think less about consequences. And this means you are not fully in control of yourself, even if you think you are. You are not actually yourself; a different personality has taken you over and is making decisions for you. If you have somebody very important in your life (a girlfriend, a wife, children), you don’t ever want to risk losing control of yourself. If something should go seriously wrong, they may never forgive you, and you will certainly never forgive yourself.

There are better ways to have fun. Seriously. You can have just as great a time with your friends, with a little imagination. You don’t need alcohol to become euphoric. Good friends, good activities, and the right mindset will do the trick just as well, with none of the risks. I know from personal experience how hard it is for shy people to feel like they “fit in” with people in social situations. Alcohol is an easy way to bring out your friendlier and more fun-loving side. But once the euphoric feelings wear off, you are left worse off than before: physically ill, risking turning into an alcoholic, and still unable to have a good time just being who you naturally are. It’s better to develop your personality and your friendships so that you naturally turn into someone who is happy and fun to be around, rather than relying on a drug to do it for you. And though it may seem like fun if you’re getting drunk with your friends, people who aren’t drunk hate being around drunk people because they act like complete fools. Developing yourself into a friendly, fun person is a more permanent, more general way to have fun. Plus, using your imagination to think of wholesomely fun things to do is better than unimaginatively relying on alcohol.

I used to think that getting drunk with my friends was fun, because we were laughing and having a good time. But now I understand that, since drinking involves so many bad things and can lead to alcoholism and health problems, I can no longer consider drinking to be fun. It is worse than a frivolous waste of time: it is dangerous and harmful. Drinking no longer has any meaning for me, because I can find meaning in other activities that are really and truly fun. I can only consider “fun” those things that don’t involve hurting myself and others. This is why I will no longer drink to get drunk.

David Butler health, personal