Alcohol Explained (William Porter's 'Explained')

In fact, they are simply doing what everyone else does. They drink because it makes them feel good, but over time the drink itself causes them to be unhappy. However, they cannot see this because it is also the drink that seems to relieve their unhappiness, so they keep drinking and exacerbate the problem.

Many people consider that they do not have an alcohol problem, yet will also say that they would rather not drink at all than just have one or two. I myself fitted into this category for many years. However, if we analyse this is detail we will see that it has some very far-reaching implications. We will explore this fully in the next chapter.

It is utterly wrong. You can enjoy life without alcohol; in fact, not only can you enjoy life without alcohol, but it is far more enjoyable. You just need to fully understand how the drug affects us and how every one of its perceived benefits is an illusion. With this in mind, let’s now move on to consider a better way of stopping.

There is a very pronounced tendency in the western world to expect to be happy all the time. We see it as our basic right and if we are unhappy, even for a moment, we immediately look to remedy it, often by taking some kind of external drug like alcohol. Just bear in mind that you can be unhappy for a bit and if you are, it is not all negative. If

Of course it doesn’t have to be anything as drastic as prison or being in a war zone, you might just be going through a bad patch with work or a relationship, or have health or housing issues, but if you are constantly anesthetising with alcohol you are never actually experiencing these negative emotions, you are never facing up to them and learnin

Now is a good time to stop and summarise where we are. Essentially, alcohol provides us with a feeling of relaxation. However, the brain and nervous system reacts to this by releasing stimulants and becoming more sensitive, with the result that when the alcohol wears off we are more anxious and unrelaxed than we were before we took the drink. So we

The hung-over mind will always find the most disturbing thing in any panorama and focus in on it.

For this period, no matter how short, we have been able to function normally, even to the extent of actually enjoying ourselves, or at the very least by not being acutely miserable!