Marvellous and Pleasurable Effect

Ah yes, the marvellous and pleasurable effects of alcohol ; that rather strange feeling in the brain caused by alcohol. But what is that strange feeling? Is it a genuine pleasure and does it really make us feel truly happy? Can we ever really explain or describe ‘that’ feeling anyway?

When you are doing something you instinctively know to be stupid, you come up with any reason to justify what you are doing, not only to other people but also to yourself. If you say it for long enough, you end up believing it and will not question whether or not what you are saying makes any rational sense.

Heroin addicts believe they enjoy injecting themselves with a powerful poison which will zombify and stupefy them. They believe that the destruction of their lives is the price they have to pay in order to get ‘that’ marvellous pleasure. Alcohol addicts also believe they enjoy drinking a poison that will zombify and stupefy them. They just don’t get that the destruction of their lives is the price they have to pay in order to get ‘that’ marvellous pleasure. But, when it comes to alcohol, the biggest illusion is that it can genuinely make us feel happier.

I have said that I loved drinking. I honestly thought I did at the time but now I see clearly that I had simply fallen for a very clever trick. Alcohol fools you into

thinking that you are getting true pleasure when you are not. Heroin addicts think they get genuine pleasure when they stick that needle into their arm and fill their vein with heroin but all they are actually enjoying is the relief from the awful lows that the drug itself has created . The poor heroin addict is in a constant fight to stay out of that depression and desperate to get back to the state they were in before they started taking the drug. In fact the only reason they continue to take heroin is to try to feel like a person who doesn’t need to take heroin.

The only problem is that they are trying to gain control over something that is in fact controlling them. The more they try, the more they lose it and the more they lose it, the harder they try to regain it. The body will always build up an immunity and tolerance to any drug; it’s the survival mechanism. So the more of the drug they take, the less relief it provides and the less it relieves them, the more they need.

Many heroin addicts will often go back to the drug even after they have gone through withdrawal. Some stop for years but are still taking one day at a time. They say they are never really free as they could go back at any time but, for today, they are resisting it. The sad truth is that they are pining for a pleasure that does not exist. They continue to feel mentally deprived because they believe they ‘gave up’ a pleasure.

Alcohol works in exactly the same way. This is why there are many people in the world who have stopped

drinking but still feel there is a void. They take one day at a time trying to resist the marvellous pleasures of alcohol according to the AA philosophy. Unfortunately these people are also pining for something that does not exist. They are going through mental deprivation for nothing. While they still believe they have made a sacrifice, they will always feel the void to some degree, confirming their belief that alcohol fills that emptiness. But it is how they think that actually created the void and the feeling of inadequacy in the first place.

When you stop, you actually return to normal. We never needed alcohol before we started drinking; the need arose afterwards. I remember going to parties as a child and I did not need alcohol to enjoy myself. I never feared that Christmas or my birthday would be a disaster without alcohol. I never thought that one day I would reach the stage where I would panic at the thought of not being able to drink alcohol on my birthday; that the very thought of celebrating New Year without alcohol would scare the life out of me; that just contemplating the idea of going out at the weekend without drinking would make me miserable. I never thought I would become so lethargic and tired that my main source of pleasure would come from a bottle. I never thought that I would ever become dependent on a drug; that I would reach the stage where my confidence would be so shattered that I wouldn’t be able talk to my friends without having a drink. When I was a child I never thought I would end up like the adults I saw.

If you were at a children’s birthday party do you honestly think that they would be happier if they had some alcohol inside them? If you saw a child crying would you give them a drink to cheer them up? If you saw a child laughing would you give them a drink so that they could get even happier? Do you think that by giving a hyperactive child alcohol they would become relaxed? Of course you wouldn’t because you would know for certain that alcohol would not relax them or make them happy; it would simply stupefy them. Would they enjoy that stupefied state? How could they? It would no longer be them. They would not be feeling any genuine feelings any more as alcohol numbs all the senses. The magnificent machine that is the human body would now be malfunctioning. When alcohol hits the brain it deprives us of our natural senses, leaving us unprotected and vulnerable. If you gave a child alcohol on their birthday, not only would they not get any genuine enjoyment but they would also miss that birthday. The alcohol would deprive them of that experience forever. How can you truly experience any emotion when you do not have access to your genuine feelings?

Children do not need alcohol to enjoy themselves so why do we feel the need? Why do we feel as though our lives would no longer be complete without alcohol? Why do we feel that something would be missing if we stopped drinking? It is because of the alcohol itself that we have these feelings. The alcohol creates our fears. We were complete before we started taking alcohol; it is only the drug itself that gave us the feeling of inadequacy. This

means that drinkers experience a constant void and they try to fill that void with the very thing that created it in the first place. While they continue to believe they are not complete without alcohol, they will never feel truly complete, even if they stop.

Alcohol is a depressant that appears to cheer people up but only to the person ‘under the influence,’ not to a sober person. It is only the perception of the person drinking alcohol that has been changed, not those they come in contact with. I know that when I was sober and tried talking to someone who was drunk, the last thing I wanted was to feel the way they did. I could see they were not really happy. They were in a stupefied state. I could not communicate with them and it was not even worth talking to them because I could see clearly that it was not the real person. I was fooled into believing that this is what drink did but was convinced it never did that to me. After all, I felt better when I had a drink, or so I thought. Once alcohol enters the brain your perception changes. You feel a false sense of pleasure and of being in control. You actually believe you are happier . If you are with other addicts it appears normal as everybody is experiencing the same feeling, but what is this feeling anyway and do we ever really enjoy it? What true pleasure do we get from an alcoholic drink? If we had to sell it could we do it?

I remember my first experience of getting drunk. I was about ten years old and I drank some wine. The feeling was awful. The room was spinning, I felt sick and vomited. I felt completely out of control. The next day

I felt as though I had been run over by a steamroller. I never enjoyed it for one second. So, did the feeling change as I got older? No, the drug isn’t different, just my perception, along with the many lies I concocted to deceive myself. The only difference was that my body had built up an immunity to and tolerance of the drug, so it took a lot more alcohol for me to reach that state. The first few drinks at lunchtime were just topping up the low feeling I went through in the morning, created by the drinks I had consumed the night before. As you will no doubt be aware, when you first start drinking one drink floors you, but gradually you manage more and more. Now it takes even more to do that. The alcohol itself hasn’t changed, only your body’s tolerance to the poison. Some people build up such a tolerance that, even while they are drinking, they still feel the need for a drink as the more they drink the greater the need and the greater the need, the more they drink.

Most drinkers are not aware of the fact that it can take 72 to 240 hours for your body to get over the physical effects of alcohol. That is up to ten days to recover from the low caused by the drug. Some people describe this as withdrawal. Most of the time this is imperceptible to the addict as they are used to feeling this low and regard it as normal. If they have more than their tolerance level, they will become more aware of the low that causes a hangover. Their body then builds up even more of a tolerance to the drug which happens every time they exceed their usual tolerance level. After a while they believe that the ending of the low is a true high

which is about the same as putting on a pair of tight ski boots, wearing them for a couple of days, just so that you can get the pleasure of taking them off again.

Alcohol is a double-edged sword when it comes to creating the illusion. One is the partial ending of the physical low; the other is that it’s mind altering. Drinkers believe that this is where the pleasure really lies, but does it? We say that we drink to get ‘that’ feeling but what is that feeling?

The feeling I thought I was enjoying is a short circuit in the brain – literally. People sometimes describe it as a feeling of being ‘light headed’ and say they enjoy the sensation. But isn’t that the same as feeling dizzy? Well spin around then, it will save you a fortune – but if you do try spinning and then walking straight, you will fall over which is worth remembering. I never drank alcohol to make me feel dizzy; I drank it for the same reasons that heroin addicts inject themselves. It was because I felt as though I could not enjoy myself or cope without my drug. I never consciously thought this as I believed that I was getting a genuine pleasure from alcohol and that I was choosing to drink. In fact I was never choosing to drink and I was certainly never getting genuine pleasure from drinking.

Some argue that people laugh more when they’re on alcohol. In some cases this is true, but when I was seven years old and living in Halifax, I used to hang around with a bunch of similar aged kids who always had smiles on their faces from sniffing glue. Is this a good reason

to sniff glue? Is it genuine happiness they are feeling? Do their inane expressions mean that glue sniffers are genuinely happier than those who don’t sniff glue? Of course not! However, the fact is that if you do drink alcohol …