On my walk recently I overheard a conversation between three people that went something like this:
“Our club went over to their club to play tennis and then they came over to ours… and afterwards we all got really drunk.”
This made me ponder on why people drink alcohol around sport, and why alcohol and sport (watching or playing) seem to go together.
I have observed, whilst attending professional sports games, that spectators’ emotions are heightened when they are drinking alcohol. For example, when the team they are supporting does well they get really excited and jump up and down, and when the team doesn’t do well they get quite despondent.
Indeed, in New Zealand (where I live) it sometimes seems to me that the psyche of the whole country is affected by whether the All Blacks (rugby) or Black Caps (cricket) win or not.
This effect appears to be exacerbated by alcohol because, in my experience, alcohol can bring a false ‘high’ or ‘feel good’ factor – it is false because your state of being at the time is altered by alcohol.
I well remember that when the effects of alcohol wore off, I came crashing down if the team I was supporting lost (I used to feel quite despondent, especially as I was aware my husband felt down about it), and if my team won, the ‘high’ dissipated fairly quickly because it was never enough to fill the emptiness I felt inside me (which was probably why I needed to drink alcohol or watch sport in the first place)… so I reached for the next drink… and so on…
Why is it that alcohol is so closely associated with sport?
- Is it possible that the sport we play or watch is not enough for us, so that we need something more to ‘have fun’?
- Have we disregarded our bodies so much playing sport that we need something to take away the pain of this disregard?
- Is it perhaps because we think we need a ‘reward’ for playing sport because it is ‘good for us’?
- Are we led to believe it is ‘social’ to drink alcohol while watching, or after playing, sport?
- Are we using alcohol to numb how we are really feeling about sport and avoid feeling the harm it is doing our bodies (if playing), or the obvious great harm it is doing to those professional sportspeople we are watching play? Could this be why many cannot enjoy a game of professional sport without alcohol?
- Have we been hoodwinked by the alcohol manufacturers who sponsor sport and are subconsciously brainwashed by them into thinking alcohol and sport ‘go together’, or that we are ‘supporting’ the sport by drinking it?
And yet the fact is, alcohol is a classified poison that is harmful to our bodies (it is a neuro toxin), and it is a well known fact that it alters our state of being.
Indeed, we can all feel the effect that drinking alcohol has on our body and mind and in my experience this effect is exacerbated by drinking alcohol after playing sport, or even drinking it the night before doing so.
I remember when I used to go for long bike rides on a Sunday morning that if I drank even one small glass of wine the night before, I could feel the effects in my body the next morning: I had less energy and it took me a long time to get going and sometimes I even felt a little nauseous.
I also remember just one small glass of wine going completely ‘to my head’ following a game of squash, so that I became really silly. And yet many of us went to the bar and had an alcoholic drink after playing interclub (competitive) squash. For me, it was sort of expected – indeed, as members we had to take it in turns to man the bar at our squash club.
I remember some of the men staying all evening and then driving home drunk – of course the drink-drive limits weren’t as strict then or policed as well as they are now.
So why is it that we still drink alcohol around sport when we clearly feel these consequences? Perhaps it’s because many of us do it, including many professional sportspeople, and therefore we perceive it as ‘normal’?
But what if we were to ponder on the real and true reason we need to drink alcohol whilst watching or playing sport? For me there was an element of having a glass of wine to fit in with the others in my team, so I would be liked. I know others drank as a reward for a hard game, or as a ‘celebration’ for winning or ‘consolation’ for losing.
But could the underlying reason be that we drink alcohol either to stop us from feeling our emptiness or as an attempt to fill the emptiness we feel inside?
For example, why did I have the need to fit in – to be liked? Answer: because I did not feel good enough about myself, which left me with an empty feeling that I looked for someone else to fill. Another person may play sport and/or drink alcohol to cover up the numbness they feel inside, i.e. to not feel the emptiness, or to avoid being rejected by others by seeking their approval.
It is only when we understand why it is we keep choosing a certain behaviour that we want to, and can start to, make true changes.
Indeed, I have found that being truly honest with myself is the only way I can change my behaviours. For example, I stopped drinking alcohol because I didn’t like how I acted when drinking it – I turned into someone else, and I did not like that ‘other person’.
I had known this for a long time, but it was not until I pondered on why it was I chose a substance that I knew would alter me that I was able to (very easily) give it up. You see, in truth I had never enjoyed drinking alcohol. What I realised was that I drank it either because I wanted to ‘fit in’ and be liked (especially in a sport situation), or because I was not feeling confident in certain situations. Once I had this understanding, quite simply, I no longer needed it.
Bringing honesty to our behaviours makes sense, for once we understand why it is we do something, we can more easily let it go.
By Anne Scott, accredited Mediator, Yoga Teacher, Exercise Instructor and Esoteric Healing Practitioner, Auckland, New Zealand
Further Reading:
Healing my Exercise Addiction and Adrenal Exhaustion
Shopper Dockets & Alcohol Abuse – Is There Such A Thing As Responsible Service of Alcohol?
What is addiction and why do we become addicted?
The expression ‘drowning our sorrows’ actually reflects that drinking alcohol sinks us deeper into our problems.
It feels to me that humanity is screaming in the agony of our separation to God we feel the emptiness and as much as we try to fill the emptiness with all kinds of manmade distractions nothing can or will asswage the loss we feel it is an unrelenting agony.
Anne I feel you have raised a great point here
‘Is it possible that the sport we play or watch is not enough for us, so that we need something more to ‘have fun’?’
That we need more and more extreme behaviours to fill the emptiness of our own disconnection to God
I read recently that some people put a pig into a harness and subjected it to a bungi-jump. I would imagine that the pig was terrified and the people that did this got a huge kick out of seeing pain and distress in another animal. Where will we draw the line and say enough is enough?
We never do a behaviour that is abusive because we are content and settled within ourselves. Being honest with how we feel about life, bring in self-care reduces and cuts out that negative relationship with ourselves. Then giving up abusive behaviours, activities, substances is easy because we know we are worth more.
“Bringing honesty to our behaviours makes sense, for once we understand why it is we do something, we can more easily let it go.” So true. Without honesty we are just deceiving ourselves.
“This effect appears to be exacerbated by alcohol because, in my experience, alcohol can bring a false ‘high’ or ‘feel good’ factor – it is false because your state of being at the time is altered by alcohol.” yes I agree Anne. I witnessed the same at parties and in myself back in my twenties and I never drank a lot. These days it just saddens me to see people behaving in such a way- still learning to not react.
Great questions Anne, and adding to the conundrum, could it be we play sport because we have never really learnt to live together therefore we had fights or war that divided us and these things happen even with our own family? And sports are a simple way of not fighting unless you are boxing etc. that is seen today as okay.
Fact alcohol is a poison, so why do we choose to drink poison? ‘the fact is, alcohol is a classified poison that is harmful to our bodies (it is a neuro toxin)’.
It would be a very wise decision to take a closer look at the harmful effects of our indulgence alcohol has on health and wellbeing, and the subsequent extra costs to NHS, police, etcetera, as a result of these indulgences.
‘Have we been hoodwinked by the alcohol manufacturers who sponsor sport and are subconsciously brainwashed by them into thinking alcohol and sport ‘go together’, or that we are ‘supporting’ the sport by drinking it?’ Yes, and ‘hoodwinked’, by so much more than this area!
“So why is it that we still drink alcohol around sport when we clearly feel these consequences? Perhaps it’s because many of us do it, including many professional sportspeople, and therefore we perceive it as ‘normal’?” A good question Anne. It seems that no celebration can pass without the imbibing of alcohol. If you don’t drink its surprising the number of people who want you to take ‘just a sip’…… Would that make them feel better because deep down they know that alcohol is really a poison and tee-totallers reflect a different way of living?
What a crazy ‘normal’ we have, playing sports, the competition of it, the emotions watching it, the alcohol consumption that goes along with it… all is an abuse of this fine tuned body we have, not only the alcohol is the poison but everything around it is too. So I agree Anne, ‘Bringing honesty to our behaviours makes sense, for once we understand why it is we do something, we can more easily let it go.’
Gambling on an outcome has now been added to sport and alcohol for people to get an extra’ kick’ and excitement from the competition to beat the opponent.
I remember growing up in New Zealand and the absolute focus of sports and alcohol, I did it and at the time was kind of into it only really because everyone else was doing it and I thought that is what you do. Later on in my late teenage years I started to see the bigger picture and that I really wasn’t into it at all. Today now living in London people always go you must be into rugby and when I say not interested in sports they are floored. It’s not just New Zealand it is Global and it really is a destructive ‘social behaviour’ that creates separatism and aggression. That’s why I can’t get into it at all.
“Have we disregarded our bodies so much playing sport that we need something to take away the pain of this disregard?” This question is very pertinent to the topic of sport in this blog but it also applies to any form of disregard of our sensitive and expressive nature. I know for sure when I ignore, dismiss or squash this my first reaction would be to have or do something to avoid feeling the fact. Yet the more willing to be aware I am, the more I understand what’s at play and the less I react. It will be interesting to observe what happens to Sport when we all start choosing to be aware and honouring of this naturally sensitive and expressive nature.
There are lots of great points here, but one that stuck out for me to day is, is the sport not enough that we need to drink to make it more memorable….then it in itself feels pretty empty…and this we could say is how many of us use alcohol, we feel that emptiness and lack of purpose in life and try and distract ourselves….
Sport takes us away from who we are – far away even and this tension can be resolved by temporarily numbing ourselves with a proven downer (the opposite of an upper like caffeine) that pleasantly (for a while) numbs us.
I used to love watching rugby, and then one day when sitting at a match I realised as I looked around and saw all the drunk people around me that it was like being at a giant pub with 50,000 plus people. That was the last time I went.
Its the world cup at the moment and everyone is really ‘happy’ that England has got through to the next final – If we scratch a little below the surface we will see the domestic abuse rates that soar during a match and the after match violence that happens, with this awareness we have to ask ourselves is it really worth it?
With the world cup now on I wonder how much rise in alcohol sales there will be around the world –
I also wonder how much of a rise in domestic abuse there will be and street violence.
There is quite a rise in domestic abuse. A study found that it rises during Australian Rugby League’s state of origin matches which are big events in Australia.
Great blog Bryony, reading your blog has brought to my realisation how I used to feel, and I remember I would often feel foggy in my mind, since changing my diet my head is so much clearer these days and I feel so much more vital in my body, this is definitely something for me to appreciate, the making of self loving choices.
Alcohol, junk food, paraphernalia, all lead to ways we can fill the need to buy, consume and barrack for a sport that sooner or later leads us returning from the low reaching for another high.
And yes… The hundred million dollar study on alcohol in the United States was just revealed as being mostly funded by… You guessed it … the alcoholic history
It’s a but bizarre that we associate alcohol with sport because if we break it down, sport is meant to be a healthy activity , therefore it would make sense to promote a healthy way of living by not drinking.
When we don’t like ourselves or the way that we are living or what we are doing we can drink alcohol to forget all that we do, temporarily that is. Just having one glass of wine or beer can take the edge off and lull us into a sense of ‘well-being’. We begin to believe that this is good for us. Some doctors even advocate drinking wine for ones health. I feel sure though that at a deeper level we all know what it is doing to us and that in truth it is a poison and has no place in a body that is actually precious and sacred.
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When I was brought up sports was focused on being not just about the game it was just as much about the party and drinking after the game. It still seems to be the main focus and that it is totally normal. I’m so thankful that this is not what my normal is and hasn’t been for quite some time.
“the ‘high’ dissipated fairly quickly because it was never enough to fill the emptiness I felt inside me” this is the hook of addiction, to continually try to fill the bottomless pit of emptiness within.
Alcohol is socially accepted. I tried many times to give it away. It was not until I understood the true effects of it + to feel more of me through the esoteric healing modalities I was easily and simply able to not poison myself ever again. It is deeply harming to ingest it and even be around it for long periods.
The emotional roller coaster that takes place through sports and how this is enhanced by alcohol is something that I have always found intense and at times when I was younger I went along with everyone that was doing it. But I really didn’t like it and how it made you feel during and after. Saying no to such abusive ways has been life changing to say the least.
Understanding why we choose certain behaviours is so necessary if we wish to let them go, ‘could the underlying reason be that we drink alcohol either to stop us from feeling our emptiness or as an attempt to fill the emptiness we feel inside?’ I like how you answered this question for yourself, ‘ why did I have the need to fit in – to be liked? Answer: because I did not feel good enough about myself, which left me with an empty feeling that I looked for someone else to fill.’
When I was young I went to tennis tournaments with my parents, they would play tennis all afternoon and then straight to the bar at the tennis club and drink all evening. The kids would have a great time playing with each other, while the parents time was spent competing with each other on the court, then getting drunk and not connecting with each other off the court. Interesting that they called this a great day out.
I used to play a lot of team sport when I was younger, after the game I always used to party and get drunk with team mates, this was considered an opportunity to bond, although we thought we were opening up and getting close with each other in these times we all kept a certain face and never really shared what was going on or how we were actually feeling with each other.
Great observation Anne, but let’s face it . . . competitive sport is war . . . even the terminology is warlike and aggressive . . . beating, thrashing, crushing, annihilating, humiliating, whipping, and trouncing the opposition. Some people must need a drink after all that!
Alcohol and sport, both epic manifestations of dysfunction and self abuse on now a global scale.
One just needs to sit in the grandstands to hear that brotherhood is not on the agenda and the words “friendly match” are not felt by the masses.
The education that comes with alcohol from following generations and generations of ‘it’s just what you do’ and not question it is fascinating. Almost if not everyone I speak to about alcohol, their first time trying it was a dislike and saying it tasted gross. Yet we are told by everything around us that it is good and everyone is doing it. I do wonder how much money the government does make of it as such and obvious health risk yet nothing is really encouraged to address the issue.
It is also great to consider how playing or watching sport can change the way we feel, just like alcohol. We can feel elated when we win or play well and belong to a team. Similarly we can feel disappointed when we lose or our team loses or does not play well.
There is no doubt that ‘alcohol alters our state of being’, the question is why can’t we keep it simple just be ourselves?
“This effect appears to be exacerbated by alcohol because, in my experience, alcohol can bring a false ‘high’ or ‘feel good’ factor – it is false because your state of being at the time is altered by alcohol.” This becomes so obvious in the sports arena and also at parties, when normally shy people can act outrageously – and remember nothing about it the following day when they surface! Why has alcohol – a pure poison – become such a ‘normal’ part of society’s functioning. To refuse a glass of alcohol at a wedding to toast the bride and groom is seen as almost an affront!
There are many ‘reasons’ that we choose to drink alcohol, such is the deviousness and hugeness of this consciousness. We have allowed the drinking culture to be normalised so much so that if we choose not to drink it is deemed that there is something wrong, or that we are being anti-social. Yet this is crazy and a fallacy, as how often do we see people that are intoxicated behave is a respectful, loving and honouring way, where true connection is at the heart of their actions? It is not belonging to a culture that will bring us the connection we so desperately seek, it is only through our return to connecting who we are within that we will realise that already belong to a far greater order where we are unified by our inner-most essence which already resides in us all. This is in fact the real normal which represents and honors who we all are.
When we know alcohol is in truth a poison and neurotoxin, we have to question in what way we celebrate after a match with a ‘good’ glass of alcohol.
Yes it seems most of us subscribe to the belief that its a great idea to celebrate with a good old glass of “poison and neurotoxin” and have our body struggle for ages to get rid of it.
When our local football club has a home game the whole city is affected, there is a lot more drinking and walking the city can feel intimidating. The amount this also costs our public services – a lot more police are assigned to the streets and the pressure on the A and E staff -when quite frankly they have other matters they could be dealing with.
One of the games the drinks industry plays is that ” it’s supporting the team ” and then it’s demanded of the ” fan ” to support the drinks industry . And support a brand if that brand is sponsoring the team and failing to do so , one is accused of not been part of the team and letting the team down, so one is rejected which of course no-one wants; so one ” falls ” into line and gets trapped in the illusion of this is great fun.
Drinking alcohol is a way to try to fill something that is not enough. If sport takes people to that feeling, it’s time to review the way we exercise and see any kind of sports celebration.
It is incredible the amount of alcohol that is consumed through a game of sports. I was recently in a conversation where a Twickenham pub that would go through 200 kegs a day for a game of rugby that was on – and that is just one pub in Twickenham, they are all out of control busy. This is excess to the max.
On one level, I can understand why spectators of sport may want to drink alcohol, but it doesn’t make sense that it is so excessive. It seems we like any reason to justify our drinking and watching sport is one of them. It also doesn’t make sense that professional sports men and women choose to drink as a way of ‘celebrating’ success when they have to go out and perform again. To be super healthy and on a fitness program to perform it doesn’t make sense to go against it.
The thing is that so much of humanity thinks that the altered states that abound are normal… imagine if there was no caffeine, no alcohol, no tobacco, and these things were introduced…. They would be up there with cocaine and marijuana on the banned list
Very true but currently the tax revenue is so huge that no way are they likely to be banned in the near future. Gambling is also highly associated with sport – another great source of tax revenue. Very few principles in government it seems…..
There has been a masterful job done hasn’t there … a mass brainwashing of sport and alcohol mixed together creating an awful mix that has created devastation in our society for eons
Add to that title the association of gambling with sport as well.
Isn’t it interesting how in the ‘something more’ that we seek, alcohol is so prevalent. To me this shows the lack of true role models in our societies everywhere, people who can demonstrate a lived quality which is deeply connected with the soul.
As you say… Alcohol and sport are such an insidious mix that one could almost imagine that there was a dark behind-the-scenes plot sussing out what would be the absolute best way to keep humanity locked up and trapped bodies flooded with poison and emotion… One could definitely imagine this!
Alcohol and competitive sport are two harmful things that people will defend as fun and harmless and even good for us to the death (literally sometimes)!
There is such an alignment between alcohol and sport. I am not sure I have ever been to a sporting event where there hasn’t been loads of alcohol involved. Even when I was drinking, I did used to look around and see so many young kids in attendance and wonder what did they think? Now that I don’t drink, I often wonder even more, what sorts of role models are we offering them. Ones that show them, you can’t enjoy yourself without ‘taking the edge off’ without alcohol, or ‘enjoy their company, being present with them’ without alcohol. This is a sad indictment of where we are in our society.
Even though sport and alcohol have been closely association for probably eons it’s a questionable match. Given that sports people are very physically fit and work very hard at their training, alcohol does not fit that picture. Why would someone who is entirely focused on fitness drink alcohol knowing what the effect is going to be.
Thank you Anne for bringing your honesty to the behavior. It seems almost normal to drink while watching a sport or after playing a sport – as a sort of reward – but I can see how alcohol comes back to us not wanting to feel fully in ourselves. The partnership of alcohol and sport is a tough one to break – it is almost a religion to some people – but I bring it back to how my body feels and I know it doesn’t agree with me. And honoring that is at least a reflection that there can be a different choice.
It’s great to question the so called normal, as coming from New Zealand you grow up around sport and alcohol and if you are not into both you can be considered not normal especially if you are male. It took me leaving the place of my birth to realise there is a bit more to life than rugby and beer.
I remember living in a small city where there was a rugby ground that hosted national games. On days when games were on the whole city would turn into a drunken mess. It was best not to go out of the house unless you wanted to get caught up in it all. The energy of this was actually quite scary. It was like a big wave of craziness sweeping the city. It’s a shame that sport has to also mean drink.
The association of alcohol and sport is enormous and normal as you share and so the true understanding of why we drink is a very loving and honest way to live and see things and this can change everything if we choose to feel heal and love ourselves with responsibility and quality.
As someone who was heavily into their sport, I understand the connection. At the end of a hard game, you are both exhausted, and in a lot of pain. So you crave a beer firstly for the sugar, and secondly for the numbing effect it has on the body.
It really is as simple as applying common sense to the situation isn’t it… rough competitive sport + alcohol = healthy…?
I was chatting to a friend about parties and drinking and I casually mentioned my partner and I no longer drink alcohol anymore and neither miss it. I was surprised when they asked how we enjoyed life anymore as it must be boring!
What struck me was the association of alcohol and enjoyment of life. They couldn’t understand that life is full of joy without the alcohol, so what is ‘enjoyment’? Enjoyment can be seen in everything we do, whether we consider it ‘good’ or whether we consider it ‘bad’. Are we so far off track that we’re lost in the illusion of alcohol and blinded from seeing the truth?
I too grew up around alcohol and sports but for me it was my reward after a week of work and working out at the gym. When Thursday came along, my weekend had started, it would be down the pub and when Sunday came – it was a downer time as Monday meant work.
Behind this was this culture, drinking was a social activity and most activities most gatherings involved alcohol.
I stopped drinking a few years ago and I can honestly say I do not miss how I felt the morning after a binge. To wake up and be completely aware, no nursing of headaches, no lethargic-ness, no queasiness – it is quite lovely and I can still have fun with out the poison.
There are many things in life that do not make sense. Yet while we consider whatever activity lots of people engage in as ‘normal’, we miss the fact that a change in choice and behaviour is long overdue. Holding a pursuit for health as synonymous with competitive sports that take their toll on the body is such an area. And the fact that it is considered entertainment, begs the question that how come we find witnessing the gain of someone over another, and the devastation of the defeat in the other person entertaining?
And how does alcohol fuelled disconnection, euphoria, despair and violence fit in with all of this? Poignant reassessment of an area that we have for a long time considered ‘normal’. Thank you Anne.
The combination of alcohol and sports is one of the combinations that we do not think about but if we do the combination actually does not make sense at all.
“Have we disregarded our bodies so much playing sport that we need something to take away the pain of this disregard”? I would have to agree with this comment. Whenever I hear some one espousing the virtues of playing sport, it is always accompanied by stories of pain and pushing through for the team. When did a team become more important than the state of our bodies. This is the one vehicle we get for life to drive around in. Why would we smash it up when we are young and have to deal with the consequences in later life?
It seems like a lethal cocktail to put alcohol and sport together. With sport there is already aggression, extreme competition and separation between players and energetically between the fans. Throw alcohol into the mix and this seems like a time bomb, as has been seen many times at sporting events such as English soccer matches.
Marketing companies use sport as a tool to sell more alcohol. The impacts on the consumer are not considered, this is a business about competition and making profit.
Heather I agree profit comes before people we see this daily and yet we are the ones doing this to ourselves; it makes no sense to me.
For a number of years now, I have felt sad about the state of the world, and in particular the state of our society. Being a born and bred Melbourne girl, the pull to enjoin in the sport consciousness is quite strong, and I was very taken by it for most of my life. I can’t say I ever really felt the need to drink while watching sport, but there were definitely times like the Aus Open where I did, because everyone else made it look good and cool.
Today, I’m saddened by what we allow to go on at major events like the football where it is completely accepted by all of us that getting drunk and being a fool is actually ok. And then even more devastating, the amount of families with children that are a part of this scene weekly. What are we teaching the young by immersing them in this culture? Have we not realised that the state if humanity is already going down the gurgler?
Elodie Darwish you wrote your comment back in 2017 about humanity already going down the gurgler. I would say we are well down the gurgler with no sign of us coming out the other end yet. There seems to be no respite in what we will do to ourselves and or each other.
yes it becomes blatantly obvious when we just step back and look at this association money is speaking very very loudly… But let’s face it when it comes down to it, both these things are incredibly abusive to our bodies.
As a society, we are willing to do many things that are harming for our bodies and defend it because it is ‘normal’ or that it is meant to be good for us- we need to be honest about the consequences of alcohol in our bodies and the way it affects our relationships, it is a poison and it only takes us further away from who we are.
The amount of alcohol advertising done at sporting events says it all… how can a so called “healthy activity’ promote ingestion of a liquid that causes road deaths, domestic violence and abuse.
What an un-holy marriage… competition … which further increases the separation within humanity, and legalized poison which increases the disconnection…. No wonder the combination is so popular.
Perhaps competitive sport is happy to associate itself with alcohol because it has a similar detrimental effect on the body?
What you have exposed and highlighted here Anne is shocking, and such a sad indictment on our society; taking individual and collective responsibility is certainly the key;
“It is only when we understand why it is we keep choosing a certain behaviour that we want to, and can start to, make true changes”.
There is so much associated with alcohol and sport. It is like we can’t just go and enjoy ourselves anymore without there needing to have a ‘coldie to take the edge off’, but what are we trying to take the edge off? What is it that we are so dissatisfied in our lives that we simply can’t feel. I know for me there was always the ‘social’ side, I wanted to have a social drink whether that was going to see a sport game or not. But there was always the pressure to align to what everyone else was doing. It is now a real stand out in the crowd if you do not drink, that is me and I enjoy that far more.
Yes, what is that ‘edge’?
To me Christoph I feel a tension in my body that is so intense that sometimes I want to scream as a way of reducing it. Some people use other methods such as cutting, drugs, extreme sports, alcohol virtually anything to try and disassociate from the agony that our bodies feel. The agony is our disconnection to God.
Sport feeds on competition and comparison that keeps players and spectators in constant nervous tension and keeping one group separate from another. Alcohol exacerbates the emotions and can make you believe that it prevents you from being aware of the misery of separation in our lives.
Great blog Anne, from my own experience sport was always associated with drinks afterwards, and more and more sport is now watched with open bars promoting drinking while watching games, making drunken behaviour more of a regular occurrence and a less safe place for families to be.
It really does not make any sense how alcohol is associated with sport? Alcohol itself is a social lie in how it is portrayed via commercialism, and how it makes it a heroic’ act to drink alcohol when it is mixed with sport. Yet we know that alcohol is a significant contributor to life damaging situations such as domestic violence, car accidents, not only car accidents but fatal accidents, then there are the violent alcohol induced incidences at sporting events, alcohol foetal syndrome and so forth and so forth. So it makes no sense!
The marriage of sport and alcohol is a long and well beaten path, they feel intrinsically linked in our society today. But wouldn’t it be wonderful to have an experience where there wasn’t alcohol, it would ensure that children would see role models that were more themselves, and not a warped version. They would see that you don’t need to add something to yourself, to have a good time or distract yourself from what you are there to see and watch, the sport itself. This day will hopefully come in time, we are a little way away from that just now, but there is definitely a truer way forward.
It looks like alcohol has got sporting competitions well and truly sewn up and cornered – but isn’t it ironic that people train so hard to then sacrifice it all to a deluge of alcohol once the competition is over? And that there always seems to be a reason for drinking – either to so-called ‘celebrate’ a win or to ‘drown one’s sorrows’ if one or the team have lost. It doesn’t really make sense, does it now? How docile and compliant are we actually and to whose tune are we dancing?
These are the things that need to be exposed Samantha, how alcohol increases violence, most of us know it, however it still needs to be brought out in the open and talked about.
Alcohol can attribute to so much, violence amongst spectators is ugly increased when people are under the influence of alcohol and a number of statistics have come out showing how domestic violence increases after a big game has been lost.
All these things we push under the carpet and continue with the illusion that sport and alcohol are just a bit of fun.
“Bringing honesty to our behaviours makes sense, for once we understand why it is we do something, we can more easily let it go.” – This is the key – once awareness has come and then coupled with the honesty, then we can truly make a change in our adopted behaviours that do not serve us.
I do feel we as a population are a long way off changing this mix of drinking and sport. But by starting a conversation and moreover inspiring others through the choices I/we make that change can begin.
We drink to celebrate and we drink to drown our sorrows, either way alcohol is the perfect medium to heighten either one. . So why do we need to heighten our emotions, what is it about the human race that needs the stimulation of alcohol to either feel happy or sad? I remember as a child not understanding when people got emotional, it all felt unnecessary but as I got older I thought this is what you had to do to show you cared, and so I started to become more emotional. The crazy thing is, we care more about our sport than we do about what is going on in our own lives and in the world today.
I find it so interesting that we justify the consumption of alcohol for anything and everything. A hard day at work, the loss of a competition, the win of a competition, a celebration, a mourning, a ‘why the hell not’ sunday sipsy, because it’s friday, because it’s saturday night, because it’s monday, a cheeky mid week, because red goes with steak, because it’s summer, because it’s raining.
I mean, it’s hilarious, sad and ridiculous all at once.
All the while, we are choosing poison every. single. time.
The marriage of alcohol and sport would seem to make no sense. If you are so dedicated to the pursuit of ‘strength’ and ‘fitness’ surely if you play this, or support it in any way you would be focussed on health not getting ‘out of it’? What you show here Anne is that sport isn’t at its heart healthy at all, but a harsh pursuit of a numbing high. When you look at it this way then these two make perfect bedfellows. The only game they truly have going on is one where we smash our body, and this is one I personally no longer have interest in playing.
Competitive sport pretends to be healthy but is unhealthy as is all competition therefore it is a lie. Alcohol pretends to be a reward but is a poison and harms – a lie. They lie together in their bed of deceit.
Interesting observations on the association of alcohol and sport Anne, I found myself reading to the end looking for the answer as to the correlation and seeming dependence between the two and then I realised I knew and have always known this. As I child it was ‘normal’ for the Friday night game of football in our house to be watched with a beer or two, I never enjoyed the sport but I used it as a form of connection between me and my own father, I used to jump in my seat when he would get excited and yell at his team through the screen and i’d snuggle up to the fire place cooking myself marshmallows. In my late teens I dated a football player and the pressure placed upon him, from his family and others, to “perform” was massive, leaving me to feel that there is no such thing as ‘playing for the fun of it’, it appears all wrapped around gaining recognition and competition with others, it’s no wonder we would want to dull our awareness with alcohol to not feel that.
I really agree with your views Joseph yet had a heartening conversation with a gentleman today who spoke with great appreciation of his time on the golf course with other friends. We had both been lamenting the fact that women rarely give themselves the time or space to get together in this way, or, when they do, they come home and bitch and moan about their awful friends. I would say the men have one up on us in this regard – and yes man-time happens in other ways than on the sporting field – and I would also say that sport may not be the best way to truly connect with another, but the golfing story indicated that (while alcohol isn’t involved) the men are at least getting together in a friendly manner for some downtime, with no need to justify the time spent doing it!
In Melbourne Victoria where I live it is the heartland of Australian Rules Football and as has been mentioned on this blog, the Grand Final was recently held. We also happen to live in the heart of the area where the so-called victors won the final for the first time in 61 years. Alcohol played a huge part in the post game debauchery and is affect was seen and expressed as a legitimate excuse for the winning team players to not show up at a prearranged meeting with loyal fans 48hrs afterward. They were not fit to attend. I can feel the pent up sadness in people who use times like these to let loose and use alcohol as an excuse to express themselves and feel connected with others via a violent sport akin to war. The aim is to crush the opposition by any legitimate means. Don’t worry that young men who play the AFL game have can receive frequent head knocks causing concussion and can develop short term memory loss. This unacceptable form of abuse is not being called out and alcohol plays a big part in drowning out any feelings of truth about the level of violence that occurs. And next year a women’s AFL league will commence!
On Grand Final day here in Melbourne, Australia, today, the association of alcohol with sport could not be more on display; the evidence is before our eyes at every turn. This association is absurd when you stop and consider the damage and great harm caused. Thank you Anne for raising our awareness around this issue.
Odd how we as a species pin all our hopes on what happens on the outside of us, as in sport, and then exacerbate it by either exciting or dulling ourselves with alcohol. None of those things truly works to bring us the feeling we really yearn for, which is the joy and harmony inside our own bodies which does not need any form of stimulation whatsoever, just a loving intention and an allowing to feel, rather than distracting ourselves from something that we will inevitably have to come back too, and this our true nature.
I remember as a little girl staying with a family friend and going to the local soccer match on a Sunday afternoon. There was drinking that I thought was normal in these situations. As I sat in the stand watching the game I noticed my friend’s father started standing and shouting out loud at his team when they weren’t winning the game. I remember feeling scared and worried that he would start shouting at me. I was shocked as this man was always gentle and I felt safe around him. There is a responsibility that comes with emotional highs and lows that is felt with the consumption of alcohol and what is modelled to our young.
I love the concept of bringing awareness and honesty to ourselves so that we can make sense of our choices and address what is needed to be able to then let what does not support us go…. For it is amazing how often we do something because it is ‘normal’ and yet on closer analysis actually harms us in some way.
“Bringing honesty to our behaviours makes sense, for once we understand why it is we do something, we can more easily let it go.” I totally agree with this, when the absolute cause is felt of an unsupportive behaviour it is easy to let it go. That is also why it is a problem that we see drinking alcohol as ‘normal’, because then not many people question this behaviour and not many people come to the understanding and letting go from there.
Alcohol and sport are obviously bed fellows and the liquor industry have a firm grip on it as it guarantees revenue and forever rising profits. Have we capitulated in the face of this collusion and don’t ever question why we would want to follow or precede something that is supposed to be really good for us (sport) with something that takes us out (alcohol)?
You have raised some great points Anne about our relationship as a society with alcohol and the way we have come to champion something that is clearly so damaging for our bodies, I feel the way it is portrayed by the media that encourages people to associate sports and alcohol as something that goes hand in hand is absurd and damaging as it sets the norm for future generations to continue with such ill behaviour. Honesty is the key as it allows us to be truthful about the reasons why we need alcohol in the first place and to take responsibility in making more loving choices for ourselves.
Once I became more comfortable with myself the feeling of being ‘out of it’ that comes with even a small amount of alcohol became abhorrent. I was amazed how the desire for alcohol, which at one time was a daily habit, just dropped away.
I really like your question asking whether we drink alcohol to ignore our body’s signals that we’re in great disregard playing sport. I wonder if we also drink when watching it for the same reason- watching and encouraging another to disregard their body in the name of sport. The audience condones such disregard by paying attention and fuelling big sports events with entry fees, TV subscription fees etc.
If you stand back from the games and look at the cold hard facts, it really doesn’t make sense at all that we go to watch and be inspired by some of the greatest athletes and ‘healthiest’ people alive and consume a drink that poisons our body. But when you start to consider the possibility that sport and the way we compete is a harsh and unnatural act in which we have to harden up to be a ‘success’ and achieve our goal or gold medal, then it starts to make sense. Rather than celebrating teamwork and achievement, what sport shows us today is we have literally mastered a way to override and push through, to soldier on and numb up. But this is a game where we all loose. So as more of us speak up as you do Anne about these games and how they go, we may come to see the beginning of true games and play in our lives.
‘And yet the fact is, alcohol is a classified poison that is harmful to our bodies (it is a neuro toxin), and it is a well known fact that it alters our state of being.’ One day alcohol will be treated as the poison that it is, and we will wonder how on earth it was ever considered legal… and how on earth we had such a significant place for it in our society.
Given we have strayed so far away from our divine origins, given we miss deeply even if we won’t admit it to ourselves the harmony and brotherhood we come from, a sporting event where camaraderie can play out can be the next best thing – kind of. Because of course it can’t be the next best thing, it takes us further down the route of separation, disconnection and ugliness between us rather than love. And this we know even though we accept. This is the emptiness you speak of Anne, the emptiness of our love and the drink offers the recluse to stop the ache that would otherwise be too much. If the grog wasn’t there the akward movements and silences would expose the falsity created and the sporting match wouldn’t be the ‘fun’ it is meant to be.
The summer Olympics have finished and what is in the papers and news after the closing ceremony, medal winners in all night alcohol-fueled exploits.
Alcohol is such a damaging tool to check out with, it is a wonder that it is still allowed in sporting events and being advertised there too. Sponsoring teams and events gives it so much advertising, not a great example for our young ones.
I remember exercising the day after drinking alcohol and can distinctly remember the smell of alcohol reeking off my body, now it eels like such a poison, then it was just so normal!
I found that alcohol kept me from connecting to myself and others!
I can remember when all I wanted to do was get drunk and do it for day after day staying drunk and at the time consider this as normal!
“Bringing honesty to our behaviours makes sense, for once we understand why it is we do something, we can more easily let it go.”
This is spot on. Evil cannot move when it is named. Evil here being simply the absence of love and all that seeks to control us when we do not live the love that we are.
In any given moment we can either move with the love we are, or move against it. Competitive sport is all about physical movement. It is also about investing, identifying and championing something that exists outside of us. It is all about ‘doing’ and not at all about ‘being’ and so in this sense it is pure glamour. Alcohol is about feeling emotions in place of feeling love, that is, we bury the pain from not expressing the love that we are, under the numbing and ‘pleasing’ affects of this drug. These two become a poisonous cocktail when we consider that by mixing these we are choosing to align to an energy that seeks to keep us lost in heightened emotions and looking outward for reward and satisfaction thereby choosing to move in a way that is not in-line with the love that we are. All this under the guise that such sport is ‘healthy’ fed by the belief that we need to be a ‘team player’ in life and this a pseudo form of Brotherhood that has nothing to do with union but everything to do with separation and ‘us versus them’. Without the numbness alcohol affords we are left to feel the harmful effect of the ‘pack energy’ we absorb and the degree to which moving counter to the love that we are, shocks both our body and our being.
When I used to attend major Rugby games I was literally one of the only people there who didn’t drink. After I while I realised it was like being in a giant outdoor pub with 50,000 people. That’s when I stopped going to the rugby.
Great sharing Heather and absolutely true, what happens there and what one can feel is really not very supportive, in fact it’s the opposite as the energy is not to linger in.
Both participating in sport and drinking alcohol are only possible when we are in disregard of who we are and our bodies, this make them easy bedfellows.
I am absolutely with you in clamming I never enjoyed drinking alcohol and certainly didn’t like how I felt once I had drunk some. Because of the feeling from drinking a small amount I would often then drink more to not feel Anything. Looking back on this behaviour it seems a little crazy and am so glad I saw why I was choosing alcohol so I could then easily stop.
This association between alcohol and sport for me shows very clearly what an untrue way of being sport is. There is not truth in competition get with another human, it is only used to not feel the emptiness inside ourselves, and alcohol has a great role in this.
Yes well pointed out Amina, and with true honesty we will find those hidden pockets we sneakily hide away …
This is so true Anne – “Indeed, I have found that being truly honest with myself is the only way I can change my behaviours.” Honesty goes hand in hand with responsibility and those two together are awesome when we start to live it in all we do.
Bringing honesty to our behaviours makes sense, for once we understand why it is we do something, we can more easily let it go. Yes, absolutely Anne, as most are not ready to get real and honest about their use of alcohol and in fact, your seen as being the odd one out, if you don’t drink alcohol. Being in the minority with not drinking alcohol, does not support the push to drink alcohol just so you are in with the masses. It truly is about starting to get honest about why we feel the need to drink at all, and asking, what’s driving this need that affects more than just our own bodies?
Alcohol plays such a huge role in our Australian society, it seems to be the focus of most occasions – a very large focus in sports and sporting events but also in all the traditional celebrations – New Year’s. Christmas, Birthdays, Public Holidays, even Easter. Having lived in so many different countries (Finland, Switzerland, France, Middle East, Africa and Australia) and been witness to different levels of alcohol consumption, I must share that Australia certainly sets a high level of alcohol consumption on all occasions. What has stumped me is that even funerals are used as an excuse to drink in Australia!
This does make me question what it is that we are essentially trying to ‘prove’ as a nation, what image are we portraying, and what example are we setting for others?
Alcohol and sport at the moment in our society are intrinsically linked, for this to change, there will need to be a significant acceptance that it isn’t working. That the role models that invariably come from the sporting world, are not good role models for our kids. There is so much that can change in this space, but it does come down to people making a stand and saying no.
” I know others drank as a reward for a hard game, or as a ‘celebration’ for winning or ‘consolation’ for losing.” Looking deeper at our behaviours around sport and alcohol askes us to look at our deeper needs as adults to drive ourselves for recognition and reward or seek out consolation when neither are achieved. If we heal our neediness to be recognised for our achievements, then our desire to win and be glorified dissolves and with it the need to celebrate or comiserate in a way that damages our tender, delicate bodies we use and abuse to get attention.
” I know others drank as a reward for a hard game, or as a ‘celebration’ for winning or ‘consolation’ for losing.” Looking deeper at our behaviours around sport and alcohol askes us to look at our deeper needs as adults to drive ourselves for recognition and reward or seek out consolation when neither are achieved. If we heal our neediness to be recognised for our achievements, then our desire to win and be glorified dissolves and with it the need to celebrate or comiserate in a way that damages our tender, delicate bodies we use and abuse to get attention.
The mixture of sport and alcohol is cocktail for disaster, how many acts of crime, violence and sexual assault have taken place after a match? This is what needs to be known not just the sporting results, we need the media to report every act of violence associated with sport and alcohol so we can really see the true harm and not just keep brushing it aside.
True Samantha, when we go to a sporting match we get caught up in a pack mentality. Sledging, shouting taking sides, abusing umpires, the other team and even other supporters. Even if we don’t participate there is an atmosphere of anger frustration and rage, even hate. This is so far from love of our fellow man where we are meant to work together for our society, not compete and fight each other. Alcohol is the perfect fuel for this de-humanizing behavior. How can we go back to the ones we say we love and not be affected by the indulgent frenzy of taking up sides against our fellow man. I feel we as a society would be rightly shocked and disgusted with ourselves if we published the results of crime, violence and sexual assault after sporting matches.
The Olympics are on and I’m wondering more and more how we can be so supportive to these men and women that compete so well, yet there are so many stories behind the scene that are not something to be proud of or supportive towards. I’ve read sports people being drunk, (sexually) harassing women, doping controls being hidden etc. And at last I read that the people who win, do not get any reward in money. Yet, the ones organizing it are earning billions of dollars. Something’s definitely not right. Why do we support? And do we know what we actually support? Alcohol and Sport go often hand in hand, even though alcohol is classified as a quite strong drug. When are we’re ready to say it how it is and take every action required. Are we the generation?
I’ve played football for nearly 5 years and when I stopped drinking I felt always a bit awkward when drinking my tea after a training or match. As if I wasn’t part of the whole anymore. The culture of sport and drinking is very strong! Our beers afterwards are a reward for the intensity of what we just did… And in the past, I was proud of this and was one of the ones who vocally could (and would) champion both the sporting and the drinking. Since listening to my body I’ve come to understand that not only the drinking doesn’t support me, but also that competitive sport is actually very harming to my body. As I’m able to observe it now, it is quite obvious that hurting our body isn’t a loving thing to do. Where once I did this, I championed this as well. As something cool, as something necessary, as something others should do too etc. There’s much to be honest about and in the western world, this is a huge one!
The association of alcohol and sport is heavily embedded in social culture, and if one is not being fully aware of themselves, it is easy to see how one can be swept along with this ideology and participate in mixing alcohol and sport, and then it become a pattern, a habit, and just ‘what you do’ . And yet, when you don’t go along with it, it’s interesting just how much questioning it raises.
It is quite a topsy turvy world when we pride ourselves on playing a match, which seems to be a healthy activity and then get drunk afterwards, even heading to the pub afterwards for a pint or G & T seems quite mad. What an insane culture we have developed and one that is so accepted that we are not even stopping to give it a second thought. These days not only have I realised that playing a match is actually a very hard exercise on my body, drinking alcohol or even a fizzy drink afterwards is the worst thing I can do to myself. Surely we can come up with much more beneficial ways to enjoy ourselves that actually nurtures our bodies and nourishes our friendships that leave us feeling vital and upbeat rather than trashed and beaten up?
‘Is it perhaps because we think we need a ‘reward’ for playing sport because it is ‘good for us’?’ Any time we seek reward, simply reveals we have not been living from the richness of our body, but a belief or version of life that ticks a box, leaving us with a void we seek to fill.
If sport was based on respecting and honouring our bodies in our movements, there would simply be no place, nor need for alcohol, or any other substance that compromises this.
Having been heavily involved in sport when I was in my teens and early twenties it feels to me that in participating and especially competing in sport we have to override so much that our bodies are trying to tell us due to the immense stresses and strains we put it under in achieving our ‘performance’, that one alcohol (and in some cases drugs) both act to numb these feelings and our desire to pretend we do not know about them and equally need the same level of disregard and lack of care that already exists due to playing sports.
It seems like the movements the athletes of today can do are so far removed from your everyday regular man or women on the street, and that for the children who are then in awe of the athletes and want to be like them would have to really push themselves even further than their sporting idol. Year upon year new comers are smashing the previous Olympic records, when will they get to the point where they hit a ceiling in some sports like running, swimming.
In the past I used to use any excuse what so ever to have a drink. Sport was a good one, I would become interested in a sport that was playing as an excuse to go to the pub. There were others like: I had a really bad day,a good day, someone just died, a mates wife just had a baby, need to unwind someone’s birthday the list is infinite. In truth though I didn’t need an excuse I needed honesty.
How about the association of sport with injury, with competition, with aggression, with abuse, and with exhaustion. Factor all those in together and it is not hard to equally see why it is associated with a substance that society uses to take the harsh edge out of life. One thing I noticed in all my years of playing golf and hockey was how little joy people truly gained from those activities.
I imagine that alcohol adds to the high that people get when they are watching sport. But it also adds to the lows too. Both states are total illusion.
I suppose if you have joined a sporting group because you want to belong to something then it follows that if drinking alcohol is the norm, you will join that too. It is worth pondering on the ethics of this. It is worth really studying the need to belong and what you are prepared to sacrifice to do so. This covers so many things, not just sport, being in a family for instance can be just as compromising. Feeling so confident in myself that I can join in something, or be in something, on my own terms, without having to change who I am, is something worth considering.
It seems we look for any and every event to have a drink; that alcohol is such a meshed part of our lives that to consider being without it would unfathomable. Sport is an area of our lives where this is the case.
When I was younger I was in a few sport clubs. They where quite different, like one was about shooting with air guns and another was a carnival club where I danced and …more of this. Anyway they were different but – what they all had was the drinking and I mean hardcore drinking. Not that I was just drinking in a sport club…drinking was all over. When you have dinner with guests, when you go out and meet someone, after a full day (so: every day),… drinking was THE thing I’ve done when I met people. Today this is different. I do not drink alcohol anymore but still meet people. But how I meet people now is with a different foundation and a different purpose. In the past it was about confirming each other in where we are and make the best out of it and now it is to truly meet, develop together and so: serve. In my past I had a lot of up and downs – happy with alcohol; party / bad with the hang over, sadness; and the feeling of meaninglessness till depression – and now my life is more constant joyful and I know my meaning and worth from the bones. This did not happen through a magic pill but through life-changing choices which supported me in my connection to divinity again. Awareness does not come ‘over night’, but over day, with every loving choice. Now I love to be me and don’t need or want to change me and what I feel with a drug.
Does the alcohol soften the blow of what we are experiencing when we watch sport and egg us on or are we already out of sorts and well away from our True knowing to watch or play sport in the first place?
This is an interesting quagmire in society – both sport and alcohol and humanity’s obsessional leaning on them.
It raises the question of what it is we are escaping from? What we are needing a release from? Why we need to alter our true state? This really says a lot about how we are living, for why else would we ever leave our bodies natural state for an outside toxic solution (that takes us out and away from us) unless we were already loading our body with so much ill from not living our truth, that we seek to escape from the ill effects we have created by our choices? and avoiding living the Love we are and know?
In fact we love the closeness we get when associated with a group, it gives us the ultimate involvement and connection we so miss in our lives and that’s group work, but have no foundation for dealing with the power it can deliver. So we are given alcohol to keep us from understanding that we could all deliver if the connection was used for true purpose.
I played basketball with a group of women for 10 years or more, and we got to be quite close and really enjoyed each other’s company. But what do you do with that feeling of connection when you are not used to sharing such a love and respect for another human? Something has to be bought in like alcohol, to deal with the feelings and when the edge is taken off you can relax and express. We have heard many an intoxicated person say ” I lub yousss” it seems that’s when we allow ourselves to express our deeper feelings and when drunk it’s safe to say.
I remember tasting alcohol for the first time and being absolutely stunned that this was something people chose to drink. It tasted like paint stripper… But I also remember making myself drink it as it was not an option to abstain from drinking in the culture that I grew up in. In fact most of the social and sporting world around me was based on getting drunk and having a good time, or drowning our sorrows. My body is so relieved that I choose not to succumb to societal or cultural pressures as in my earlier life.
I recently read an article where alcohol has been linked to causing at least 4 cancers. I wonder how long before we take notice of these findings. It took a very long time before the serious heath risks of smoking were accepted. It shows we don’t give up our addictions easily even when we can feel the harm it does to our bodies.
Sport and Alcohol – two addictions fuelling each other.
Alcohol and its relationship to sport, win or lose it either heightens the buzz of the win or softens the blow of the loss, of course momentarily because win or lose nothing changes it is all just another distraction from what is truly going on,that our lives are not full or complete without a major investment in something that neither matters or brings us closer to God.
Such a pearl of wisdom right here – “Bringing honesty to our behaviours makes sense, for once we understand why it is we do something, we can more easily let it go.” That is the answer but what is needed to get there is a commitment to get real about what is truly going on and why you are doing XYZ. I know when I’ve been prepared to get real and see it for what it is, there’s no (or very little) resistance but when I am not fully prepared to see something, resistance is huge.
Its true…. We either drank after sport because we had won, or drank after sport because we had lost …. Phew!!
It is very interesting what you’ve share about feeling our emptiness and then reaching for a substance like alcohol to numb it. Often we use food too to create this numbing effect, sugar is a huge one and over eating is another. There are many things we can use for this numbing effect but it only delays what we will eventually have to heal. Why are we feeling so empty, what is actually going on? I feel we are actually missing our connection with ourselves, with people and with God, hence the feeling of emptiness.
Alcohol is a clear risk factor too for many illnesses and disease and yet we continue to use it in huge amounts. It’s not so much about having to stop its use, but being open to looking at why we need it in the first place.
Alcohol is seen to be simply a part of sport, that it would be weird to have one without the other. In fact it is championed, motor car racing celebrates with opening a bottle of champagne, most celebrations of other sports is getting drunk after a game or during a game, if you are watching. There is very little room for those who don’t drink, in fact I have experienced where I am totally the odd one out, if I am out and socialising where there is sport on, everyone is usually drinking. It is like it would diminish the experience if they weren’t. It is quite crazy that society has gotten to this state, where being with each other isn’t enough.
Alcohol and sport are intrinsically linked. Players celebrate with it and commiserate with it. Fans do the same. Alcohol is drunk whilst watching sport both live at the venue and at home. In fact alcohol and sport are so intrinsically linked that I actually genuinely wonder if people would still watch and indeed play sport if they couldn’t drink alcohol.
There is no doubt that a willingness to be honest opens up the opportunities to see the madness of some of our behaviours… then we have clearer choices.
Not that long ago sport was equally associated with smoking as well.
How often does the media advertise with honesty the drug association with alcohol?
Anne some great points you raise here about why we drink alcohol and the close association with sport. Whilst I’m not a sports fan, and never have been, from the outside it seems that we drink to celebrate our team’s win or to commiserate its loss. Either way there is alcohol invovled, and the pursuing violence that erupts, domestic violence etc.. It’s well documented that at time of national sporting event the rate of domestic violence increases – the question is if we know this why do we allow it to continue?
Once we have that understanding of why we choose a behaviour it is easier to let the behaviour go, this has certainly been my experience too Anne. If we were to really stop and consider the link between sport and alcohol we would see how crazy it is that alcohol is the major sponsor of so many sports and how inextricably linked they are. Sport is meant to be good for us and in some regards the exercise of our bodies can be good, even if the competitive element is not always so, which makes it rather crazy to have a one step forward two steps back approach to our health where we do something to increase our fitness and then counter that with something that is ruinous to our bodies.
At some point in time Governments will have to start putting warning signs up to the fact that alcohol is a poison, a bit like they did with smoking. Alcohol causes so much damage in every respect, yet is encouraged and treated as a normal part of everyday life. Which begs the question, are we truly intelligent?
Hello Anne and I’ve just posted this link on another article but thought it was also apt for this blog as well seeing that we are consistently linking alcohol with sport, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jul/22/alcohol-direct-cause-seven-forms-of-cancer-study This article breaks the silence on many things we already knew about alcohol but for some reason we still on the whole remain silent and blind to the facts.
It is a well known fact that alcohol is a poison, so it always surprised me that people who were concerned with their health, and would exercise regularly, still would drink on a regular basis. ‘alcohol is a classified poison that is harmful to our bodies (it is a neuro toxin), and it is a well known fact that it alters our state of being.’
Alcohol and sport go hand in hand and if it wasn’t offered at a state championship it would be called un-Australian or whatever nation you are cheering for.
The stats of alcohol-related damages exceeds off the books.
There is something about our behaviours that clearly, or so it seems, cannot live without it.
There seems to be a competition to win, and also a competition to drink the most and in that, many are really just abusing their body. It seems a shame, as it both are socially accepted yet so harming for the body.
Sports and alcohol may be used to have intimacy without having to be intimate, coming together as a group, being physical, experiencing a sense of union, being united for a cause, and alcohol taking the edges of the falseness. We crave intimacy, brotherhood, trust, union, purpose… sports make a seemingly good substitute as long as we keep going and going.
Sports and alcohol are the same same not so different modern day version of ‘bread and circuses’. Although we know the harm it is doing and the huge amount of tax money it is wasting on the police force securing sport events and managing the out of control and often aggressive people, hospitals dealing with the consequences of the unhealthy behaviour and all the long term harm to one´s health either through sports injuries or alcohol people need to be entertained, the show must go on, the show of avoiding to look at the true causes of our societies misery.
We know exactly to balance our emotional state of being with stimulation and numbing; both works well with sports and alcohol, both serves to numb and distract us from feeling how we actually feel, overriding it with artificially produced emotionality and altering our bodies natural sensitivity. Once the body is shut down we need even more stimulation to keep the emotional induction going.
It indeed appears that sports and alcohol go hand in hand as from childhood on I perceived it being related to every sports event we were watching on the tv. with advertisement, sponsoring, , having fun, time out from the chores of life. Sports as well as alcohol is taking time out and as they both serve the same purpose so why question their relationship in the first place – it is so normal.
I also observe that alcohol and sport feed one another – it is like a perpetual cycle – one giving us permission, and the need, for the other and so on.
Perhaps sport would become a little more tedious and dull if the alcohol wasn’t involved? The money that changes hands in the sporting industry is extraordinary and if there was no longer the hype around it (fuelled by alcohol) would the sports industry be as lucrative as it is today?
If true honesty was brought to the fact of sport and alcohol and we actually chose to listen to these obviously harm-full effects on ourselves and our bodies, many of the alcohol companies would not like it, they would lose billions in a very short space of time. Does this not reveal the true extent to how we are influenced by media, advertising and promotion to pander to our emotional needs and not to offer one ounce of inspiration and truth?
Well said Anne, ‘Bringing honesty to our behaviours makes sense, for once we understand why it is we do something, we can more easily let it go.’ Otherwise we just continue the same ill behaviour or switch it to something else.
The damaging relationship between alcohol and sport is very evident for all to see. However we still treat it as ‘normal.’
When when will we ever learn?
The weekend that has just finished has had the European football and Wimbledon finals played. Most of the Portuguese where possibility feeling a bit rough Monday morning from the libations consumed in celebrating the win. The Papers showed the tennis champs partying until 4 am. Is it ironic that Formula One ends with large bottles of Champaign?
Hello and I looked today at this site and saw that the category of ‘exercise and sport’ had a large number of articles. I thought it was interesting to note this and maybe look at why? Like this article from Anne Scott it contains how we are and act, our quality while we are doing these things. I always related exercise with being extreme and when I watched sport it almost always involved alcohol. Nowadays it’s a bit different and so I still go to see sports and follow them but there is no alcohol involved. To be honest I use sport differently, I don’t really go to watch the sport but I go to interact with people, for me that’s what it’s always been about. So getting back to why there are so many articles on this subject, maybe it’s something about us being together and moving that is the key. So it’s not about ‘exercise and sport’ but more about connection and movement, it’s worth considering.
We often hear of football matches breaking out with violence prior or after the game and it makes me wonder how much violence would be reduced if there was no alcohol sold at these venues.
I can appreciate you raising the connection with alcohol consumption and sport, Anne. In my late teen years, I used to go to Melbourne Australia’s ‘MCG’ (the ‘Melbourne Cricket Ground’) to watch international cricket tests. I went with a big group of friends and we’d sit in an area that was quite ‘infamous’ for the antics of the crowd (‘Bay 13’). The amount of alcohol drunk there over the course of a day was off the scale – to the point that for many, the cricket was not the spectacle of the day to be watched, rather, it was the ‘entertainment’ created by several super-drunk folk who seemed to revel in the opportunity.
I too found the whole thing kind of rebellious, an ‘anything goes’ zone. Yet looking back, it was actually really quite sad, depressing and alarming. That much alcohol (let alone yeast and sugar…) is not good for anyone, period. There was a false camaraderie that seemed born of the initial drinks, but always a point in the day where someone got ‘stroppy’ or violent in their behaviour, often sparking a chain reaction. The behaviour at the end of the day was not pretty, people were distorted, sunburnt, dehydrated and spent – all just taken as ‘the norm’ for a ‘good day at the cricket’.
But really? How did people feel later, the next day? Did they even recall the day?
This doesn’t actually speak to me of truly living, it speaks of escaping a life that is actually there to be lived in a rich fullness, if we are only willing to look at what exacerbates our need to escape and blur our experience, and dip into the actual joy within that far outweighs momentary supposed ‘entertainment’. May sound fanciful to some, but the truth of living such a richness is today very real for me in my everyday, thanks to the teachings of Serge Benhayon, and The Way of the Livingness.
If we were actually rational about the truth of alcohol, we wouldn’t drink, period. Yet rational we are not – we so readily partake of this actual poison, for whatever other desired effects it may have upon us. So it’s very worthwhile to ask the questions such as you have here, and go a bit deeper as to just what is going on?
Why don’t we question its prevalence? How has it become such a cultural norm to drink – often copious amounts of the stuff? Are we really that hell-bent on harming ourselves?
I used to be heavily involved in many sports, including high level triathlons, marathons, etc. and what Anne has brought up here really hits the nail on the head. I can remember thinking as I was running a marathon how good the beer was going to taste after I finished, as if I had deserved it or ‘earned’ it somehow. In reality though, I was feeling extreme pain as I had pushed my body waaaaay past the point it naturally wants to be in, and I was using the accomplishments in various sporting events as an excuse to drink alcohol and numb the feeling of emptiness I had around not feeling enough in life, and using my prowess in sport as a way to get accepted and recognised. When I think back to this way of living it seems quite pathetic really, and I am grateful to Universal Medicine for showing me another way through self love and dealing with the issues that lead me to drink, instead of using sport as a tool to continue the self-abuse.
With the levels of domestic abuse and alcohol related violence it seems particularly peculiar that we continue to really promote it as ‘fun’ and ignore the very real social damage it does to peoples lives.
“Bringing honesty to our behaviours makes sense, for once we understand why it is we do something, we can more easily let it go.” This and really taking care of our body which in turn feels good, and that becomes something we want to continue to feel. The body is so key to letting go of unwanted damaging behaviours.
“It is only when we understand why it is we keep choosing a certain behaviour that we want to, and can start to, make true changes.” Very true, Anne. Often we end up engaging in behaviour for reasons that we have forgotten, or do not completely understand. Uncovering our true motivations behind drinking alcohol is something that is really important if we want to stop. Because, the reason people drink is far beyond the social reasons they use to justify it.
Sport is associated with many things unhealthy – not least the which is the actual sport itself. Break it down, sit back and really look at it – the injuries, the competition, the aggression, the fatigue, the wear and tear. It is not what we make it out to be – all of this said from someone who was a sports fanatic for 30 years.
As I become more aware and honest with myself and what is going on in my life, the more self loving I am becoming for in truth honesty holds the key to unlocking those behaviours that cause harm to oneself and another.
I used to drink a long time ago, and used it to numb myself from not feeling that I wasn’t choosing to be the real me. I convinced myself that to fit in, I had to have a drink, but really, it was a very convenient but somewhat disregarding choice to make for my body. Even the small amount that I drank was enough to change me completely, which eventually I did not enjoy and so chose to stop altogether.
“The fact is, alcohol is a classified poison that is harmful to our bodies (it is a neuro toxin), and it is a well known fact that it alters our state of being.” – funny that we know this yet still accept it in our society. And we know the incidence of illness and disease related to alcohol not to mention the number of driving incidents related to alcohol consumption and yet we still accept alcohol as a normal part of every day life. Now this is rather telling…
I found that both watching sport and drinking alcohol are ways to check out from normal, mundane or everyday life. Maybe we should be looking at why we are living our life in a way that we need to check out from it?
I remember the total outrage when Shane Warne asked a winning cricket team one by one how smashed they were going to get to celebrate their win, one by one the faces of those being interviewed looked uncertain how to respond. Some played along and others just said no. It sets such a terrible standard for our children if we think the only way we can enjoy sport or celebrate is to get drunk. I remember so much violence associated with alcohol and sport when I grew up that it holds no attraction for me.
I like how you pose the question why do we need alcohol when we watch sport or after playing sport? It really exposes how sport alone is not enough but it needs some enhancing, a stimulation or a numbing and how it is not that enjoyable just on its own.
Alcohol is a known poison, it seems ridiculous that this is the norm; to drink it after a game of sport which is widely considered good for your health is quite a strange contradiction.
I stopped drinking alcohol because of the harm it was doing to my body. It got to the point where I just couldn’t drink one drop of alcohol because of the feeling in my body afterwards. So why is it that we choose to ignore the effects of alcohol knowing the harm it causes? Could it be that we simply don’t want to go there and heal our hurts?
Alcohol does exactly the opposite: it takes away honesty from us. By choosing to drink we choose to give away honesty.
Whenever there is alcohol involved, there is always a lessening of the bonds we can share with each other.
I feel you’ve exposed a great truth here Anne – that we drink alcohol around sport in order to not feel the pain of it. Yes there’s the physical pain from the disregard to our bodies (or that of the players) but there is also the emotional pain of the separation created by sport – there is someone that has to win and lose so there will always be one group celebrating over the hurt of the other group. The energy of this feel horrendous so it makes sense to me that both spectators and participants want to dull this by drinking alcohol. If they didn’t, perhaps they would realise the true harm of competition.
It’s so interesting that we associate intoxicants such as alcohol and drugs with things like watching sport and parties. Already, as you’ve shared Anne, sport can be a huge distraction and check out from life and it’s easy to get caught up in the competition of the players/teams, and parties are another example where the loud music and environment can be a distraction and thus harmful to our bodies. Is it that we choose to drink alcohol or take drugs in these instances to numb ourselves to what these activities are actually doing to our bodies?
It occurs to me that the association of alcohol and sport is not the only unhealthy relationship when you take the time to look at it. Violence being another, especially with football; then there’s corruption in just about every arena but especially the Olympics, Fifa (football), boxing and international cricket to name but a few. Drug use and doping again occurs pretty much across the board; betting is also commonly encouraged through our media and advertising but perhaps the worst of all is the promotion of competition itself. If we were completing a health check sport would fail on just about every level and yet in society we hold it as something special – it’s about time we opened our eyes.
I grew up in a society where drinking and sport went hand in hand and if you didn’t like drinking or sport you were considered a bit odd. It took moving away from this place to realise it was like this in a lot of places but there was now a choice. Coming to the realisation that both of these things are not only not normal and both do a lot of damage in more ways than one was such a freeing revelation.
Anne, such a great topic – alcohol and sport, it is so true, its like they go hand in hand for no other reason other than, its just the way we do things around here. Not questioning of it or very little in our society. In fact when I stopped drinking, it was actually so uncomfortable for some people to have me around. They just could not fathom how or why I wasn’t drinking. Especially at a social or sporting event. There is so much richness that comes from truly meeting and connecting with people, where the focus is not about alcohol.
The case of alcohol being so widely accepted is due to the majority of our population needing it to get by. If we relied on the facts and made choices as a whole relating to how alcohol damages and erodes our society the verdict would be an obvious one. it is indeed crazy that a substance that does so much damage to us is allowed, and so widely accepted.
Alcohol for me was used for a coping strategy in a time in my life where there was a lot of turmoil. I chose not to deal with the hurts I felt and kept them well covered with alcohol for a long time.
Wow, we focus so much on drink and drugs, and perhaps some of us can be willing to stretch this out to include sports, but what if this is not the real addiction? Reading your words what comes through Anne is how we are absolutely enthralled by emotions. We will do and say anything, go anywhere if there is an emotion we can get into. We might see emotion as limited to only the tears we cry into our soup, but really it’s in the hardness the reaction, the food we eat, the self-dispair, the self-loathing, the doubt and the questioning of our every feeling. Emotion is the main currency we live with today, it is high time we considered there might be another way. We can infact unhook from this endless circuit of draining drama.
I remember playing team sports and really enjoying the team aspect. As I was reading this I was wondering how these teams were so far short of the brotherhood and intimacy I was seeking so it’s no wonder we drink to dull the pain of this awareness out.
I used to go round to friends houses and watch sport and drink alcohol, but even then I knew the bit I really loved was the talking to my friends, it wasn’t in watching the game or drinking the beer, but connecting and having fun with other people. So now I know that I don’t need the drink and that the sport while it can be entertaining is ultimately empty, the fulfilment is in the meeting of others and sharing time.
Alcohol and sport are both distractions from the emptiness and deep sadness we feel because of the separation in which we live……. they are both desperate attempts in their own way to numb the pain and create a feeling of belonging…… they are both extremely harmful and poisonous to the body, mind, and soul of a person…..taking us even deeper into the pain of separation.
Good point – we are not ourselves and talk to people who are not themselves. There is something hilarious about this.
Your article Anne reminds me of the intense violence that arises in Football matches – take out the alcohol and most of the fuel will dissipate. Simple really so what is stopping us from doing this?
It then does amaze that in times of celebration or commiseration during things like sport, that alcohol is enjoyed, utilised and deemed an entirely acceptable lifestyle to upkeep… though as I see it, what’s really happening is not true enjoyment but more exact opposite in the upkeep of undealt with hurts, hurts that are then shaping our society, community, workplaces, relationships, countries we live in, that bear the consequences through dis-harmony and living life feeling really rather very empty.
I recall taking my first drink of apple cider as a teenager, and it was completely awful, tasted disgusting.. and yet i still drunk the few swigs wincing it down – to fit in, look grown up with the guy i had a crush on who had the open bottle… i felt dizzy and unstable and immediately left feeling horrid inside my body. And yet i continued drinking, it becoming a peer pressure to be accepted thing, and a way to be more open or free…escaping to have fun from an otherwise unfilled life from self-regimentation and control that i lived my life with back then. Being able to ‘be free’ with myself and others with alcohol was (and is) in fact the very opposite. There is the illusion that barriers came down, truth comes out.. and supposedly the real us is released and expresses… but just the stats on alcohol-related crimes, incidences, attacks, deaths, rapes, all show that with an induced state we are so very far from our real selves.. even one sip. I have experienced in an induced state there is a split, and it’s the split part, that is hurt, that gets aroused to do the ‘free-talking or loving’ because in real life a truer part of us is living under a control in not expressing what’s truly going on. In comes the alcohol and bang, what is repressed, unexpressed comes out yes – but not ever from true truth, but from hurt.
The competition aspect of sport is so against our natural way of being with each other. As a society and a race our natural pull is to be in brotherhood with each other, with everyone no matter what team they barrack or play for, no matter the religion, culture or nationality. Yet our world reflects the very opposite of this natural way – so do we use alcohol in sports to numb the feeling of devastation and separation when waging war between teams on a field?
Great point Rachael, if we were all living lives in connection then the consumption of alcohol and competition in sport would not be possible. How could we be in competition with others when we realise that we all originate from the same God?
The alcohol companies have hoodwinked everyone, not only is it a neuro-toxin but it’s a class B drug right up there with cocaine. And then there are the alcohol industry funded studies telling us alcohol is good for our health. We have allowed something quite dangerous to our health to be normalised, and even associated jovially with certain activities like sport and celebrations. Imagine that – a class B drug is normal for everyone to consume to celebrate!
Anne this is a great blog, Alcohol is used as a high and yet afterwards as with all drugs we have to deal with the low feeling we get afterwards. I have noticed how people rely on alcohol for a supposed good time, but are we using it to avoid how we are truly feeling, or as a reward because we are feeling empty? I also used alcohol for these things too, until through Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon Presentations, I have learnt to deal with my own hurts, and no longer have that empty feeling to fill.
I heard an interview on the radio the other day about the correlation between sport and domestic violence. It links in with this article – another way that sport disconnects us from our true natures and the catastrophic impact of this.
Its like the alcohol can take us so far away from who we are that we are able to commit acts that are so terrible under the influence of it.
It does not make sense that sports and alcohol go hand in hand when there is the intention with sport to do it to keep fit and the knowing that alcohol is a poison to the body. They are not natural partners. However when we stop and really feel how we feel around watching a sporting event especially when our team wins or loses or we take part in sport then using alcohol does make sense knowing how it numbs us to what we are feeling, if we don’t want to be honest with ourselves. Thank you Anne for some great questions raised.
Could the fact that these two huge industries actually are so related in every day life, actually expose the fact that both industies are not supportive (at all) for our wellbeing? That they are in fact adding hugely to the emptyness we feel inside ourselves? Activity and / or exercising is great! As well as drinking after (and during) intense use of our body. But all in a way that comes from within our body, our body as our guide. Rather than making it about competition, calories, goals, winning, superficial fun, freedom to choose whatever we want (whether it being an alcholic drink or anything else) – in total disregard of our bodies. Isn’t this exposing how arrogant we can be? If we would interview our body, what would be it’s say… To expand a little further, what if it is our body that is actually aligned to the world / universe all around us? Could it be that our bodies are actually very responsive to this – unseen – world? Wouldn’t it be wise to start listening? Or consider sore legs the next day after running, feeling exhausted or having a misty head or hang-over, as direct and very clear communication from our body that something’s not right… If we’re willing to admit at least or override this communication as well. And how loving is our body that it will never ever let us down and keep communicating to us – until our last breath.
The sport of disconnection lies in both drinking the alcohol as much as playing one of the many sports that we disconnectedly watch.
I wonder what would happen if the consumption of alcohol was forbidden during big sports events. I reckon we wouldn’t be able to stand watching what’s happening in the center of the stadium. Just as we can now hardly imagine how people enjoyed watching slaves killing each other in roman times would it be difficult to fathom how humanity could enjoy two teams of humans fighting each other.
“Bringing honesty to our behaviours makes sense, for once we understand why it is we do something, we can more easily let it go.” Thank you for opening the conversation Anne, one that is high time we discuss as a society. What comes to me is that the competitive energy we go into when we play any kind of sport exhausts us and reaching for the alcohol after a game helps us to ignore this exhaustion as the sugars in the alcohol prop up our energy levels. It is a very insidious relationship and one that clearly does not make sense. We regard sport as a healthy occupation but then indulge in consuming a class B, highly toxic substance alongside the activity. When we honestly stop to ask ourselves why we do this, it can bring some surprising answers and amazing resolutions to these issues. I know that giving up alcohol is one of the best things I have ever done for myself. I understood that I was using it to smother up feeling exhausted, sad and empty. Once I could feel that, the choice not to drink was very simple.
Alcohol and sport are two activities we use to fill the void inside. Together – and separately – they add up to a deadly cocktail of harm, sometimes even death. And that’s just the players. Plenty of spectators have also been killed in the name of sport.
Few sports people seem to demonstrate a gentleperson’s attitude to the sports they play. In fact the word play should be discarded with regard to sports. There is nothing playful about the ways sports are performed! Competitive sport today is for the most part brutal.
Actually, as I look back at my own drinking habits of the past, little about that seems to make sense either, as Anne spells out very clearly here. Consuming socially-sanctioned neuro-toxins is really oxymoronic – being sociable in the true sense has nothing to do with drug consumption or altered states of being. We need to seriously ask why we continue to allow alcohol to be available. One day it will be seen as cigarettes are in many places now – as a destructive and dying habit.
I’ve never understood the purpose of sport and why so many play it and even more watch it. Physical competition – and mental competition – seems fruitless and leads to… what? Little that supports humanity in any true way. Indeed, we seem to hear mostly about endless scandals, player misdemeanors and corruption in sporting bodies much of time. The notion that it might bring people together seems to have been long gone from the equation.
Anne this blog is very real, we don’t talk about alcohol as being a drug when chemicals it surely is. I would also say we use it for the same purpose, to self medicate. as we go through life we feel the way we are treated and the way we treat others and it is not so pleasant, instead of being real and honest we self medicate with alcohol. It successfully dulls the feeling and its easier to twist the truth and justify your choices. What we feel in our bodies is true and real and is wise to be respected, Alcohol is an assault on the body which we override. Sport is also about overriding what we feel by hardening up. Another self medication to get us through life, no wonder they often indulged close together.
With the european cup on at the moment it is really significant how much more hyped up energy there is, on the news, outside pubs, in classrooms – as they show the english games in schools. It shows so clearly how both the elation and the disappointment create the same thing an explosion of energy, that energy is not pleasant either way.
The fact that alcohol is a poison would be enough basic information that people may choose again before they drink it. The fact it is also in the category of hard illegal drugs could be more widely publicised, as this might gather more awareness. The fact that our cultures dress up this poison to be palatable, appealing and then marketed in and alluring way and it is legal is real a crime against humanity. Yet many many people go along with this in either direct or indirect ways.
In quite a lot of competitive sports there are no alcohol ads these days just like there are no cigarette ads any more. Being currently in Europe though and with the European Soccer Championships going on, I saw one game where alcohol was advertised right next to a Junk Food chain! Numbing and dulling going on big time.
Alcohol and sport are another ‘normal’ that most of us have swallowed hook, line and sinker – but normal is not natural, no matter how the numbers stack up.
“Are we led to believe it is ‘social’ to drink alcohol while watching, or after playing, sport?” Today it seems that it is socially acceptable to drink at sporting events, but what are we really accepting in these instances? Drinking alcohol and watching or playing sport go hand in hand because it keeps people stuck in a false feeling of camaraderie or of being accepted by the group. But essentially both are only taking us further away from ourselves. we are selling ourselves short when we separate from ourselves and what feels true for our bodies, which in turn affects everyone.
Indeed, why would any of us want to be any less than who we are, why would we want to be altered in any way? “I had known this for a long time, but it was not until I pondered on why it was I chose a substance that I knew would alter me that I was able to (very easily) give it up. ” When we ask this question it uncovers something, the question is are we willing to go there and see what it is…For me, it was a bit of a chicken and egg, I knew that alcohol wasn’t supportive, I did not want to feel that I choose to be altered rather than stay with me and for awhile I knew this but did not want to stop. “I liked it…” And so theN what was changing alongside this new honesty, I began to like, care and so love myself and letting go of substances that harm me was simple. I still and will always have work to do, this is life, but it feels awesome to let go of alcohol with no struggle, it happened because I honoured what I felt and I began to realise that who I am in essence is something that I do not want to alter but explore and celebrate more deeply.
I agree, there is a general societal agreement that it is ‘normal’, and I was part of this opinion, and yet it is classified as a poison, and statistics very clearly state that it is deeply harming to society. I can only speak from my own experience, life without alcohol is super duper, and the only way this occurred was through me being honest about how I felt when I drank and why I drank in the first place.
The quote got me pondering how we get to understand why we do something, how does the clarity required come about….”It is only when we understand why it is we keep choosing a certain behaviour that we want to, and can start to, make true changes.”. Being honest, that is what I feel, feeling how our bodies respond and knowing that we have a choice. Through this awareness clarity has begun to develop, I understand more fully why I have made choices and continue to make choices that do not support me. I have an analogy, habits that don’t support me once seen, and so understood to some degree are like a slippery tail, once I have seen it, I grab it and reel it in and so see it for what it is…once seen it does not have the control it once did. Honesty and feeling what there is to feel has enabled this understanding, and so it continues.
Sport which is supposed to be a healthy activity which in fact due to the amount of injuries that occur prove not to be the case and alcohol it seems in most cases as going hand in hand and accepted as normal. How can that be when it changes peoples behaviour and they are not fully in control of themselves? I like you Anne never really liked alcohol and in fact didn’t start drinking it until in my mid thirties and succumbing for the same reason to ‘fit in’. It was really liberating to stop drinking and to honour what I always knew to be true that alcohol changed people and that they/me weren’t relating with each other honestly for how can we when we use a substance to change who we are. When we need a substance to relax, to have fun, to feel confident or to deal with a situation then we need to ask ourselves why. “Bringing honesty to our behaviours makes sense, for once we understand why it is we do something, we can more easily let it go”.
Brilliant observation of the relationship between sport and alcohol consumption. Now you come to mention it when I reflect this is often true. When I was young a lot of the beach sports -training and surfing were followed by drinking. The effects of drinking I felt more keenly because I had exercised and not eaten much. Surely being in the water would be a natural high but something couldn’t have been right if often it was followed by drinking and looking for a partner in an attempt to escape the emptiness I felt inside because I did not know how to be intimate with myself or others in the true sense of what intimacy is.
The European Championship football is held right now in Europe – France. There’s been much violence between the supporters of different countries. Both inside as outside the stadiums. There’s much alcohol and other drugs involved. So why is it that we allow this to continue? Why, why, why… If they would ruin our precious homes, would we stand by and say/do nothing? The Power of silence has braught the world as it is. Only the expression of honesty, warmth and love will change the way we relate. For sure, one day we would cease all competitive sports as competing to one another is in fact the opposite of working harmoniously together.
For me the desire to be accepted played a huge part in drinking. It wasn’t that I said “I desperately want to be included so I should drink”, it was a much more subtle yet powerful drip feeding of images that included – cool people look like this and do these things and that is how you have a good time. I really wasted my 20’s in a hiatus of experimentation with drugs and alcohol and dealing with the emotional ramifications of making those choices. I look back now and see that it was a huge waste of time. I didn’t seek an alternative until my late 20’s and then I happily walked away from it all. It was a relief in fact. I still have to watch the need to be accepted, it pops up in different ways, but essentially it means I ignore behaviour I am not comfortable with – this can include jokes at work that are offensive to others and letting my kids leave a mess around the house. Not dealing with these things is not wanting to upset the applecart and comes back to responsibility.
‘Bringing honesty to our behaviours makes sense, for once we understand why it is we do something, we can more easily let it go.’ So true Anne, because then we are left with the real choice – nursing and caring for me and my body – or a quick fix relief to entertain and bury awareness.
I chose to be involved in sport because it made me feel less lonely and gave me a sense of “connection”. Interestingly reflecting on why I used to go out drinking a lot, it was for much the same reasons. I drank to feel connected to others and to ease a lonely and empty feeling I had inside. Did sport and drinking work you might ask? The answer is no but it kept me in a cycle of needing. It’s like coffee, you drink it to wake you up and then you need it to wake you up, thus the cycle of addiction. Sport and alcohol are much more closely linked then we might think, I know people that are just as addicted to sport as I was to beer.
Even lawn bowls has been associated with alcohol. As a way to market this to young people, the clubs would advertise barefoot bowls on a Friday afternoon with a happy hour. There is a long way to go until we realise that alcohol is far more damaging than we have been led to beLIEve.
In an unlovely way relating alcohol & sport make total sense. Both feed and are fed by the same energy of separation.
Looks like it is still ‘bread and circuses’ – we did not really develop from here, just the circus is now sport and the bread is now alcohol.
This question “But could the underlying reason be that we drink alcohol either to stop us from feeling our emptiness or as an attempt to fill the emptiness we feel inside?” makes me stop and look at the reason why I used to drink. In the most part it was because I was running away from a feeling I did not like, it was an escape. So what I then really appreciate is that by allowing myself to take a deeper care of my body then I no longer needed to drink. This simple fact exposes that I did not like drinking but I used it to avoid feeling empty.
Perhaps one reason why alcohol and sport go together is because of the interpretation of how alcohol takes down boundaries in people, the protection they build up, which seems to be the much needed compliment to sport, which creates boundaries between people through competition. Ironically of course, when the effects of the alcohol wears off, we are left with a body that feels ill and we want to be left alone and anything but sociable.
It is interesting how alcohol becomes associated with sport, an example of this is skiing and alcohol… When you think about it, having an alcoholic beverage up on a mountain, where atmospheric conditions have less oxygen, it’s cold, many potential hazards to bump into (trees, people) and you then ski down very fast, under the influence, how different is this to drinking alcohol and then getting behind the wheel of a car? And yet, it is socially acceptable to have a schnapps or two up on a ski mountain…
Understanding a negative behaviour we have is certainly a great start to stopping that behaviour; but without self love it is very easy to override the behaviour even with understanding. I am sure this is the case for many people with alcohol.
Alcohol and sport, a very toxic mix! Much like any other pastime, hobby or activity, do we use alcohol to keep us away from what we are truly feeling, empty, disillusioned, dis-connected from ourselves, lonely, anxious, joining in with others, to be ‘socially acceptable’ or just plain exhausted. In the past I have been under the spell of alcohol, not excessively, but enough to take me away from my true nature and make me feel rubbish in the morning, which was an absolute abuse to my body. Of course, there is also a very substantial amount of money generated with the sale of alcohol so there is a vested interest in keeping us drinking it, so in my opinion, we will continue to consume alcohol until we begin to look at the reasons why we are using alcohol in the first place and take steps to heal the issues behind it.
Re-visiting this blog today has brought deeper awareness of the absolute misery of human beings and societies that we live in on a daily basis and continues to be covered over and numbed out from, with the use of various distractions (e.g. alcohol and Sport!).
Everything in external life is an illusion geared to keep us away from the true glory of knowing and experiencing who we are in truth. Re-connecting back to our innate essence within is The Way home to this.
This completely shocked me Anne – yes, I now know alcohol is a poison to the body (a fact totally ignored when I was drinking alcohol) but I had no idea of it being classified as a Class B drug.
“And yet the fact is, alcohol is a classified poison that is harmful to our bodies (it is a neuro toxin), and it is a well known fact that it alters our state of being. What may not be so widely known is the fact that it is a Class B drug – yep, right up there with ecstasy, morphine, cannabis, opium and amphetamines!”
I wonder how many young people just start drinking alcohol because it is the done thing, a way to fit in, perhaps even to not stand out? How many of these young people would not really choose alcohol for any other reason? You could say the same with sport, it is a way of identifying our worth, to be good at something. That was certainly my experience growing up. And it is always championed as a great way for children who don’t get recognised academically to find a way to shine. But in truth if we can see the beauty in all children we would already be supporting these children to shine by recognising their quality and that this quality has nothing to do with being good at sport or anything else but everything to do with who they innately are. This need for us to rank people and recognise talent, when I take a step back and look at it, it just looks rather unintelligent and not very loving.
Anne – this blog did make me wonder – do we associate alcohol so heavily with sport and especially team sports because we know how much it actually hurts to firstly be in competition with each other and secondly to put our bodies through a sport that is based on training hard and winning. So is it possible that alcohol is the perfect ‘reward’ because we don’t have to feel all of that?
In the euro football tournament with recent football fans causing disturbance through excessive alcohol and later violence it could be said that alcohol and sport is not a good mix.
And one point well to be remembered is that having a glass of wine in front of the television isn’t any different. It’s still alcohol, it’s still showing to the world, to the children, to everyone around, that it is supposedly normal when it’s far from normal. We adults might be numb to the fact but the children gets deeply confused when they see their parents and adults around them drink alcohol because they can see the change in their behaviour, even after very small amounts so in stead of defending it we have to ask ourselves why. do. we. drink.alcohol?
Being honest with myself is something I am practising these days – what blows me away is that each time I do, I get a sense of the depth that this can go – it is an ever developing choice that unveils so much understanding and appreciation of myself and life.
“So why is it that we still drink alcohol around sport when we clearly feel these consequences? Perhaps it’s because many of us do it, including many professional sportspeople, and therefore we perceive it as ‘normal’?”
This is a great question that has many different answers, my spin is this: maybe sport needs intoxication…maybe it needs the booze to be involved because it might be boring to watch without alchol? I remember going to the pub to watch sport, I never would have made it through a game sober, definitely not through a cricket game, endless standing around with old men commentating.
It might be because watching sport you feel less bad about drinking, you feel like you are involved in something healthy. Also rushing for an after game beer might be distracting from the fact that playing competitive sport does not feel that great.
“I stopped drinking alcohol because I didn’t like how I acted when drinking it – I turned into someone else, and I did not like that ‘other person’” This is a great observation Anne and to me is one of the best things you can do with regards to alcohol as why would we want to alter our state of being?
As an interesting side note, alcohol was used in the very early days of the tour de france as a performing enhancing drug, to assist the bike riders to numb themselves to the pain of what they put themselves through.
Words wide it seems that our society celebrates ‘hard work’ with alcohol. This does seem really strange – you train all week and treat yourself as healthily as you can so that you can then perform optimally on the sporting field only to then trash yourself afterwards with a party and drinks. And in all this alcohol is seen as the reward. This is done over and over again, and copied by many which then becomes a ‘normal’ way to celebrate in our society. This seems to be a very strong trend in Australia and many other countries, but having lived in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, I can say that Australia (and Anne this may also apply to NZ) certainly knows how to push the extremes – but my point in saying this is that what appears to be the norm in Australia, does not necessarily match the norm of Europe and other countries. This does not mean that other countries don’t do damage to themselves in the process of so called celebrating themselves, but that there are versions and extremes of the same that exist all around the world. To be able to see this for what is, is not always that pleasant and easy, but certainly does open the eyes.
I don’t really feel we have been hoodwinked by the media or alcohol manufacturers. I feel they play on and utilize our weaknesses. If we need to reward ourselves at a sporting game or numb the feelings of emptiness, they make use of this. The media is a powerful medium for social manipulation but we have to give it legs, as it responds to what we call for
I have also noticed people’s moods going up and down with the win or loss of their sporting teams. I grew up with footy fanatics who certainly did this yo-yo behaviour and seemed to take a win or loss personally, as though they played the game themselves. I didn’t understand this as a kid but can now feel how this gives you a buzz, a false aliveness that is missing in so many of our exhausted bodies.
Alcohol and sport do seem to have become associated with one another. I can think of other associations that we have in society, smoking and drinking, eating popcorn and watching movies or binging on chocolate, ice-cream or chips in front of the TV. They all seem to have the same starting point of doing something as time out, as a reward or check out time. Anytime I feel myself going for check out time is when one or more unhealthy behaviours sneak in and feels like a ‘normal’ addition at the time. It’s only later that my body pays for the consequences!
Using alcohol for a reward after doing exercise, which we think is good for us is something I have noticed and can relate to. I have seen that mentality in myself and women who exercise then later binge on treat foods or exercise to burn off the last binge. It’s a vicious cycle to get into and one that isn’t based on having a steady, caring attitude to your body or health. It’s more seeing what you can get away with and driven by wanting a certain look or body shape
Some strong questions raised here Anne, one that need to be asked. We have begun to accept it as normal but it is only something we have gotten used to.
Australia is very similar to NZ in terms of the alcohol and sports culture. I used to live in Brisbane, driving home from work after a big football game I could always tell if the local team won or lost by the way all the drunk people were on the street.
This is a straight forward and matter of fact exploration of the triggers behind why we drink alcohol – it is great to open up this conversation because once the facts are on the table and if we are prepared to be honest, it makes absolutely no sense at all to drink alcohol.
What you have written Anne certainly is felt in my body to be so true. Once I was involved in the Alcohol sports alliance.
Understanding, awareness and responsibility is the key to dissolving this alliance. I love the succinct summary of your blog;
“Bringing honesty to our behaviours makes sense, for once we understand why it is we do something, we can more easily let it go.”
Witnessing what happens quite regularly when you put alcohol and sport together can never be considered ‘normal’ behaviour. It divides and separates us under the illusion it is bringing us together.
You raise some really great points and questions here Anne, as a society it is ‘normal’ and accepted that copious amounts of alcohol will be drunk around sports events and then the players who are idolised by all ages in the community will celebrate after a game and often end up in all sorts of offensive or violent behaviour that we all get to view on the front of the newspaper the next day – and then the pattern is repeated all over again. Bringing awareness to this subject is needed in a society where most are turning a blind eye to the real harm that alcohol brings, thank you for starting this much needed conversation.
I do not relate to sport and alcohol but as I realised that any time I wanted relief or was excited about something, I looked for alcohol to mask both the anxiety or excitement. I can still do the same with food though so underneath it is all about lack of acceptance and lack of responsibility.
Anne, your sharing here brought back many memories for me and as I kept reading I could feel the emptiness that drinking alcohol covered up. The lack of presence and appreciation of myself, just for being me was not there in the moment I chose to drink alcohol.
Imagine someone from outer space coming to earth in an attempt to get to know what we are like, as human beings… We would definitely have a pretty hard time explaining why we do some things wouldn’t we? Blush-time…
It is amazing how we choose to drink alcohol and play sport yet both take us away from being our natural loving selves.
I love these questions too Anne. As expressed in many of the comments, I also drank to not feel the tension that I was feeling in my body from the way that I was living. I was so very uneasy in my own skin and this was intensified when I went to parties with so many new and familiar faces. Alcohol numbed that tension momentarily, yet the awareness and knowing that it was there never ever went away. I didn’t really care how I behaved so long as I didn’ t have to feel that emptiness and tension. It was only when I was honest about why i was drinking and about what happened when I drank- that I would become a different person and that it made me ill- that I made the choice to stop drinking. As has been shared, honesty about how different choices make us feel and why we choose them is our gold in changing our behaviour.
Sometimes it is only when we stop having something for some time do we become able to look back and truly see the effect it has had on us.
It never ceases to amaze me that some sports people, usually the professionals, train hard during the week and look after their bodies so they are in top condition for game day and once the game is over they head for the bar and pour alcohol, an actual poison, into their bodies. The amount of alcohol will probably depend on whether they have won (drinking to celebrate) or lost (drinking to drown their sorrows), and then once the hangover eases off they are into training mode again. It just doesn’t make sense they put more care into their bodies for one game than they do for all the living they do in between.
This is such a great question Anne. It is one I have never read anywhere before yet it is such a great one for us all to consider. Sport is something that is so deeply ingrained in society that perhaps alcohol is needed to numb us from the truth that it causes separation between people and disconnection from their body.
What I find “interesting” is how ‘normal’ alcohol and sports go together for most people in the world. We come up with the best excuses to drink alcohol and watching sports is huge. The more we feel how it causes harm to our body, the more alcohol is needed to override that feeling. A sad and horrible vicious circle that only creates separation, numbness and not least, poor health.
I basically learned to drink alcohol, I never really liked it but bit by bit got used to the taste and the effect it had on me, then the less I dealt with the world and my own insecurities (hurts) I used it more and more as a medication to get through life. This in itself shows how crippling alcohol is, it does not help has to stand more fully in the world but numbs us away from seeing what is necessary to change to make the world a place that we want to live in.
Your blog Anne reminded me of the old beer adverts on TV which I used to watch as a kid which would always come on in the breaks of any sporting event I was watching on TV, usually because the whole event was being sponsored by the beer company. These ads would have famous sporting celebrities guzzling down ice cold beers after playing sport or working out. The whole thing was portrayed as refreshing and even good for you to have a beer after playing sport or doing exercise. Later when I was studying physiology at University it surprised me to find out that alcohol is an inflammatory chemical that exacerbates and inflames tissue damage that may result from exertion or sport, so in a nutshell it is the least helpful thing you can do for your body after it has already been through the stresses and strains of vigorous exercise or activity. The fact that this came as a surprise to me just shows how good the marketing was at turning a truth into a complete lie.
Alcohol and sport do tend to go hand in hand whether or not your side wins or loses. They win and you drink to celebrate, they lose and you drown your sorrows! From a physiological point of view I have observed my body getting racy and agitated watching sport – I may be sitting in my living room yet and playing every stroke with my body – so no wonder I need the sugar from the alcohol and whist I have not ‘moved’ my whole body has internally and so it is depleted me, hence the need for the sugar.
It is some what ridiculous how we have been fooled into this false sense of security with alcohol when it is such a dangerous drug that is damaging to our health. We have all ignored the very obvious warning signs which are everywhere in our society of the damage being done but we don’t say anything because it is such an imbedded socially acceptable thing that to speak against it is considered weird or even wrong. But is it not weird to drink a poison that completely changes who we are and champion that as a good thing?
I reckon you might be on to something here Anne when you said that the reasons we play sport might be similar to the reasons we drink alcohol – to numb and distract us from feeling a lack of something in our lives, an emptiness from not really feeling fulfilled by life. Rather than continuing to look for distractions from this inner pain we should be asking questions why is it there in the first place?
I have also noticed the phenonomen whereby the general mood or the psychological state of a whole nation can be affected by whether their sports team wins or not on an international stage. This statement alone surely is enough to beg a huge question why? How can performance in a game which has no significance or impact on one’s general life and makes no difference to a country’s environment, economy or structure have such an impact on a population’s health?
In a world where alcohol abuse, violence and crimes is such a huge problem, I find it difficult to see how a double page spread selling cheap alcohol is ok and that the government allows this to continue. (This has been an advert recently in a leading newspaper).
There is no sense that alcohol and sport go together, personally alcohol should never be mixed with anything but it is, it’s mixed with all sorts of flavours to just stomach the poison that it is. Its association with sport, clothing or celebrity is purely from a financial marketing perspective to keep the industry going.
I always had a beer after a game. It helped to “alleviate” the exhaustion, “assisted” to wind me down from the adrenaline coursing through my veins, and “assist” me to ignore the pain from the abuse I had just put my body through. Of course, it did not truly worked, but did temporarily relieve the tension of such self induced ailments.
It feels to me that we know deep down that what we’re doing with sport just isn’t right for us. We know innately that the obsessive competitive behaviour that sport harnesses is against our natural way of being. We know that slamming our bodies into the ground is so deeply unloving. We do all this and we are so hurt by our choices (unconsciously so), we drink to forget all about it. It’s the ultimate escape from responsibility.
Alcohol is a class B drug? I had no idea. I mean, it makes perfect sense of course, but when you put it in the same bag as all the other illegal substances it makes you wonder what the hell it is doing sitting so readily available at every supermarket, every restaurant etc. We have specialty shops and venues that are completely reliant on the selling of this class B drug.
Are we insane? Do we ever stop to consider the implications alcohol has on our society? I mean we stop and talk about it occasionally…we also make decisions to minimise the percentage of it at major sport grounds…but do we ever take the leap and abolish it, which will in turn naturally abolish most of the other symptoms that come from using it?
Drinking alcohol socially may give a temporary feeling of belonging, but what are we belonging to, because it is not us anymore. I used to drink socially because I felt awkward in myself and drinking numbed this feeling, but it did not bring me closer to others and took me further away from myself. Now I cannot bear that feeling of being lost in the buzz or blur of alcohol, but I can be myself in social situations.
I only drank to fit in because I never liked the taste or how it made me feel, and if I didn’t like how I felt at a party because of guys wanting to get into my pants or because there was an undercurrent that I felt and didn’t like, I would just drink more to not feel that.
These days I am aware of what I feel so don’t put myself into situations where I don’t feel comfortable, so there is no need to numb myself silly. For me, its a much better choice and I wouldn’t change it or start drinking again for anything.
Anne I love the realisations that you have when you go for your walks! A great blog exposing the links between alcohol and sport which can be considered so ‘normal’ in our society today that the two go together. One just has to feel the effects of what happens to people on mass at something like a football game when alcohol is involved and to get honest to see that this is involution with the rise in violence, heightened emotions and indecent behaviour.
Such great questions on why alcohol and sport seem to be matched. It is seen as acceptable for all the reason stated, and I feel it is true perhaps some use sport as an acceptable excuse to drink alcohol thinking it’s better than sitting home alone drinking, without having any interest in the sport at all. The focus is on filling the emptiness and numbing the alone feelings that we want to avoid.
I’ve not known and ever heard of the fact that alcohol is a class B drug! I would never have considered alcohol as a drug before reading this blog. But reading it and pondering on it, it makes a lot of sense. Alcohol does stimulate a lot and it’s actually why we use it. To be stimulated. But why do we need stimulation in the first place? It made me feel into why I needed the stimulation at the time that I drank quite a bit of alcohol, especially after playing football – whether it being a match or a training. For me it had a lot to do with wanting to fit in, I didn’t want to be a ‘softy’. When I stopped drinking, I actually never felt part of the team anymore afterwards. One of the reason why I quit sport completely. The culture of sport and drinking seem to go hand in hand. After stopping playing sport, I actually have come to know that my body not only doesn’t like alcohol, but neither does it want to play (competitive) sport. Exercising gently, f.a. walking, is what my body loves. Looking back I’m thinking, how on earth have we accepted that running which is stamping on the ground, is a loving, healthy thing to do…
The question is, are we prepared to look at WHY we feel the need to check out with alcohol while we watch sports or after having participated in sports – sport being something that is supposedly ‘good’ for us? Something doesn’t quite add up.
Often sports and nationalism seem to go hand in hand – why is it that so many people get so obsessed that ‘their country’ win? There is so much pressure on the athletes that they would even cheat and lie to win, just to feel that moment of superiority. Crazy, and the fact that we combine sport and alcohol goes to show that sport, and the way people relate to it, is not performed in and with a body of harmony and true vitality, but with a drive and a desperation to get better.
Yes Eva and I wonder if deep down when we either play in a sports contest or watch it as a spectator that deep down we know we are effectively at war. We are forcing ourselves to turn against, fight and separate from our fellow human beings. Perhaps deep down we know that this feels very unnatural to do so. And so we need to have some kind of lubricant or substance or mechanism to offset or dull our awareness so that we do not feel the unnaturalness and disharmonious quality of what we are engaging in?
Great blog on subject that needs to be addressed. I love to play sports but never understood why you would poison your body after it has served you. Another example of our mind overriding our body. Thank you Serge Benhayon for presenting another way that makes sense and has changed my life like nothing else.
Skiing for me as an adult went hand in hand with alcohol. A pit stop for a drink to warm up mid morning or to get me going to alleviate a hangover from the night before, along side a leisurely lunch under the guise of connecting with others and fitting in. It all made me ski better didn’t it? Then of course there was apres ski before changing and going out drinking more so I could stay up and usually dance into the night, more fitting in rather than going to bed as by then I was tired and my body weary from a day’s skiing. I recently went skiing having given up drinking many years ago now and I actually had to feel what skiing felt like in my body. The skis are heavy to carry, the boots are mostly heavy and hurt after wearing them (who doesn’t take off ski boots and go ah that’s better?) and for the first time the act of skiing actually felt quite alien to my body. I had to consider why I was actually doing this. It was tiring all that on and off ski chairs with this heavy gear on, moving in a manner that my body doens’t usually, it didn’t feel natural or loving and felt more challenging to be gentle with the added weight to carry around. It hurt my body. It’s undoubtedly beautiful to be in the mountains, amongst the snow, in the sun, with the breeze on my face but feeling how it was for my body, skiing lost it’s appeal. At one point I looked around me and the act of it just looked strange. Perhaps I’d always felt this but masked it with alcohol rather than face the truth of what I was really feeling.
There is always a deeper intention behind all our behaviours and when we are ready and willing exploring this can bring about much change and understanding in our lives.
It’s great that you’ve opened this up for exploration Anne and another thing I’m feeling also is that people go along to these games seeking connection with others through their shared interest only to be left feeling the emptiness that inevitably comes to the fore hence the need to medicate with alcohol not to mention all the junk food that goes hand in hand with the alcohol consumption.
“Indeed, I have found that being truly honest with myself is the only way I can change my behaviours.” – so true Anne, if we’re not honest, we end up just replacing one behaviour with another – it may seem “better” but does not bring us any closer to dealing with whatever was prompting us to choose that initial behaviour in the first place.
France banned alcohol company sponsorship of sport in 1991 and Russia, Ukraine and Norway followed suit. They still have very successful sporting events without it. Together or apart the two, most often, create an environment of out of control emotions.
People can indeed become ‘a totally different person’ when they drink or are under the influence of other intoxicants. I’ve always found the idea of feeling out of control and my senses being diluted under these influences as a strong put off, and have thus chosen not to drink alcohol or take any drugs so that I can remain with my body at all times and not powerless to the effects of a foreign substance.
When we choose activity that deepens our connection with our body, it reduces our ability to self-harm. The fact that we have such a high level of alcohol abuse in association with sport, exposes the quality with which we are ‘exercising’ and the state in which we are left – seeking further abuse.
It’s funny how we associate certain things with other things, like alcohol and sport, or ice cream or popcorn with a movie. It just seems to be a given. We don’t seem to have a feeling for ourselves about any of this and prefer to go with the masses almost on autopilot through our lives, like if we go to the footy and we don’t take/drink alcohol, what will others think? We can’t seem to just sit somewhere and just enjoy and value our own company while we are there, and instead, choose to numb and distract ourselves with alcohol and other things.
“What may not be so widely known is the fact that it is a Class B drug – yep, right up there with ecstasy, morphine, cannabis, opium and amphetamines!” This fact makes a total farce of our classification system, for what is it there for if not to confirm the damaging effects so why would we knowingly allow this to be our everyday normal – is this really what we call intelligence?
This is truly an eye-opener and all alcoholic beverages ought to be labelled with this – CLASS B Drug- in line with ecstasy, morphine, cannabis, opium and amphetamines! I wonder how many people would stop and reconsider before buying …
Great observations Anne, thank you. I would be very interested to witness the reality if alcohol was banned while watching or playing sport…could “sport” as we know it continue?
I grew up in a family where alcohol was always seen as a way of socialising and form of harmless enjoyment.
In making the choice to give up alcohol , i also had to shed these big ideals around fun and socialising being hand in hand with alcohol. To be ok with just being me when i was out at the pub with my friends, indeed i was quite surprised at how calm and solid i felt, how much i appreciated returning home and not having to drag myself through the rest of my day.
I have noticed that at times when someone suggests there may be an issue about something, it is not a big deal, I hear it, I remain light in my body, I consider what has been said, I feel into it and it either confirms or expands the stance I had before. But there are also times when someone’s suggestions results in me reacting and bringing out big guns, I dig my heals in, I can defend, attack, block or even change what has been proposed so that I keep in tact the stance I had before. I have started to recognise that the first response is the natural response of a free, open and expanding person. So when I get the second response I go “Woah what is going on here? Why am I so attached to this? What is the issue being masked that needs attention?”
Anne i too can really relate to your reasons for not drinking alcohol, I did not enjoy who i became when i drank and would often be cringed at my behaviour the following day, however i could not imagine what life would look like if i gave up alcohol, I was scared by the idea of standing out and of being seen as boring – peer pressure was huge.
Anne, I can very much relate to this, ‘in truth I had never enjoyed drinking alcohol. What I realised was that I drank it either because I wanted to ‘fit in’ and be liked (especially in a sport situation), or because I was not feeling confident in certain situations’, I love your honesty here, it is very refreshing, when I was drinking alcohol I convinced myself that I enjoyed drinking it, but in truth I did not, I did not like the taste or the fact that I became different – it was a false confidence, where I thought I could speak up more and not be shy, but the reality was I became hard and insensitive.
I never knew alcohol was a class B drug. This exposes the level of dishonesty we are living in.
I have been on some sport events with the kids and it is a great experience to see how kids starting in sports feel quite awful in this competitiveness and they really don’t like the tension and they feel very sick in their body. But with the time they learn to call the tension excitement and they learn that it is a good feeling that makes you want to compete more and more and they learn to harden their bodies and with this use the excitement as a stimulant. Competitive sport is a well manufactured way to get you to not feel your body.
It is quite interesting that generally speaking almost all leisure events that are considered as fun and entertaining are unbearable and not really fun for people if not accompanied by alcohol. Perhaps we should re-consider why we need to stimulate ourselves to feel pleasure at our so called enjoyable activities.
I picked up all my ex-girlfriends, except my last who I evidently married, while drinking alcohol – I had no confidence so alcohol was my fix. My confidence and me as a man is now due to my connection to who I am as a man – tender, delicate, my presence of being settled within myself in the world, and essentially appreciating my qualities and values.
It is so sad that we are not taught these tools of how to self love and nurture this confidence from within at an early age…imagine how much a better state the world and its inhabitants would be in even if it only cancelled out the drunken pick ups…more loving relationships, less abuse, no hangovers, more money in our pockets, no regrets…the list goes on, and that’s just one example.
There is a common practice in amateur footy to take out any rising stars. This task is usually given to one of the team not fit enough to play a full game, someone who the team wont be missed if the umpires disqualify him from playing for the rest of the season. He cops the penalty for the team to increase their chances. How do you “take out” the other sides rising star? They call it tackle, its just a bit rougher than usual, for the star it usually means a horrific knee, neck, or back injury that never fully recovers. That is a pretty sorry indictment when win at all cost comes to this with adult men, but when the same sort of thing is happening in under 11’s we have to stop question is this really sport and is it really what we want?
Hi Anne my feeling is that we are all looking for brotherhood, mate-ship, a feeling of oneness with others as we are very social beings. To feel connected to others without having made any true connection to our self we tend to resort to things like drinking alcohol and playing sport. Everything is ultimately about the our need to connect.
“…for once we understand why it is we do something, we can more easily let it go…” This is a great statement as it is having understanding that brings change to any of our behaviour patterns and habits.
One reason may simply be that people are tired after doing sport and the sugar in most alcoholic drinks will be welcome. In other words, one part of drinking may simply be the munchies with the numbing from the alcohol happily accepted.
‘For example, why did I have the need to fit in – to be liked?’ Being liked is probably one of the most common factors to why so many people choose to drink, because they don’t want to stand out or be seen as different.
I used to get ‘smashed’ after every weekend representative game or on a tournament there would be plenty of drinking on the bus on the way home. I think both sport and alcohol are used to try and feel happy or have fun in a life that feeks rather flat, dull or unsatisfying, so it’s a way to try a feel rewarded or treat one self. After a period of time sport alone or alcohol alone is not enough so if we combine both together there’s a greater chance of the ‘feel good’ feeling or of basically feeling numb to the things in life we don’t enjoy or want to feel or deal with. Like the fact that our job feels like a drag, our relationship feels unsatisfying or empty, or we are exhausted or overwhelmed with life, or we feel tension in our family, or we just lack confidence and don’t really like who we are or how we look. It’s easier to just knock back a few beers or whiskies and pretend everything is ok…
I had no idea alcohol was a class B drug, I always felt it was as harmful as other drugs as it seemed to me you lost all sense of awareness with alcohol and yet with some other drugs you can continue to function. It makes no sense that it is so socially acceptable.
I love that with the power of honesty and understanding, unwanted and unhealthy behaviours can be addressed and changed, rather than continued just because they are considered normal. It is deeply empowering to know that we possess the power in any moment to make the choices that will support us the best.
Sport is a fascinating thing, currently we have the european football cup happening, I was very surprised to see games being shown live at school. Peculiar for one that timetables are so tight these days they rarely will go off curriculum and then why was it so acceptable to be promoting this ardent worship of a game. It really was disturbing to see all these children screaming with ‘delight’ when their team scored. It did not feel good and it felt like a massive force of energy being spilled forth, imagine how much energy is being generated when one goal is scored, one camp screaming in ‘joy’ the other in ‘devastation’. And we wonder why there has been so much rain this month, it feels like the world has to be washed from all this excessive emotional force.
” You see, in truth I had never enjoyed drinking alcohol.” same same, I didn’t even like the taste, I purely used it to fit in and create excitement and ‘fun’ in my life. I had no problem letting it go once I had made changes to the way I treated my self and after one drinking session that had me feeling hungover for a week I never drank again.
What we are trying so hard to avoid is feeling who we truly are, and taking the responsibility for how we live. It is reflected in sport, which is a very purposeless pastime if you asked me, drinking alcohol and every other way we don’t get to feel the true us.
Playing sport and competing is full of tension as it is something we impose on our bodies. One way to get rid of this tension is drinking alcohol after a match and we have enough reasons to do so or we will find one. Is sport really for staying fit or healthy or is it abuse just like alcohol is for our bodies.
It was very easy for me to give up drinking alcohol once I let myself feel and became truly honest of what alcohol does to the body and how alcohol plays out around us. Before this, just like you, I drank alcohol to fit in and to not feel tension in life. I used it as a reward, a moment to relax but it was only checking out from what was going on in my life.
When you look at it this way, sport makes no sense. To see adults striving and pushing themselves for a hollow and empty prize often at the bodies expense, to see time and our delicate quality frittered away on fighting and battling something that is not real, well all of this applies equally to alcohol. So no surprise that they make such perfect bed-fellows. No matter how strong or fast, pursuing something outside of ourselves never ever works, for living with Love is the only way we truly ever win.
Truly a great expose Anne, and to link these two aspects – alchohol & sport – together in the way you have done offers much food for thought and reflection for many I am sure.
Drinking alcohol stopped for me nearly 15 years ago now, after I had worked with an issue that at its root cause, led me to believe that I was not loveable (something I had heard as teenager quite often). The astounding result of my understanding and the felt truth of, that that was not true, and starting to accept myself as the loveable being that I was and am, resulted in my body rejecting any alcohol from that moment on, I simply could not bring it past my lips, it was a feeling of utter disgust from my body, and I have never felt again ever any inclination to drink it again.
So true Anne – ‘It is only when we understand why it is we keep choosing a certain behaviour that we want to, and can start to, make true changes.” To get to the cause of any behaviour and address it at that core level is the only way to truly heal what starts the behaviour in the first place. No issue, no behaviour any more 🙂
That is indeed an eyeopener – “What may not be so widely known is the fact that it is a Class B drug – yep, right up there with ecstasy, morphine, cannabis, opium and amphetamines!” Even though I do not partake in consuming alcohol or any drugs, this was news and it does not surprise me as the damage we witness through the consumption of alcohol ( as a socially accepted drug) is just enormous!
The more honest we are willing to be with ourselves about how and why we do things, the more open we are to seeing the full extent of the effects to which we were numb to previously. What was once a favourable option becomes no longer so, and thus we can easily let go without struggle or ‘will power’.
It is truly amazing what we will put our bodies through and still call fun… this is quite an expose you have written Anne, thank you. The stark reality of sports, particularly these competitive sports is quite shocking.. it is little wonder to me why so much alcohol is associated with those who are so enthralled.
Abuse, arguing, and brawls so bad the police have to be called that’s what is happening in under 11 footy; this is not the kids on the field it’s the parents on the sidelines. The poor volunteer umpires cop it bad and wonder why they bother. What hope have these kids got of growing up well adjusted when their parents and role models are behaving so anti social?
As a sporting nation how much time money and energy do we waste in conflict with each other? What awesome things we could achieve if we worked together for humanity instead.
It is very interesting that the government has a classification system and places alcohol as a ‘class B’ drug. My body also has a classification system and I feel it if something I have ingested does not sit well in my body. My body naturally recognizes alcohol as a toxic and wisely expels it (along with anything else that may be in my stomach).
‘Bringing honesty to our behaviours makes sense, for once we understand why it is we do something, we can more easily let it go.’
I agree, Anne, when we get an understanding for our behaviours it is much easier to let them go. This is an ongoing process and requires observation and honesty.
Reading this blog got me to consider how prevalent drinking alcohol is in life. It has become like coffee, so much part of life that people just go into it without realising the dependency on it. With both of these the dependency is soon revealed when anyone considers giving them up. It becomes about mind control and feeling defeated when the dependency shows to be more engrained than we assumed.
These article poses great questions. What is it that alcohol is actually masking? Carrying on without looking at this question is like using painkillers on an ongoing basis without bothering to check what the pain is about and how to address it so there is no need for further pain killers. It seems far wiser to be inquisitive, ask the questions and be prepared to check out any possible answers.
‘Indeed, I have found that being truly honest with myself is the only way I can change my behaviours. For example, I stopped drinking alcohol because I didn’t like how I acted when drinking it – I turned into someone else, and I did not like that ‘other person’.’ – Absolutely, I stopped drinking alcohol because one day I was feeling truly poisoned by it, the moment I drank it felt like someone had poured acid into my brain. That was the last sip of alcohol for me.
It was the same for me. I could strongly feel what the alcohol would do to my body and the need for alcohol was diminished at the same time, so why drink it?
Thanks for this important account Anne, a discussion much needed. How many people are aware that they drink alcohol to fill up their own emptiness? I certainly wasn’t… I was ‘enjoying myself’, ‘relaxing’, ‘deserving it’, ‘everybody else does it’ and all the other excuses in the book.
Very true Anne, once we bring honesty to our behaviors we will know what is going on if we really wanna go there. It is how much we allow ourselves to see beyond what we are used to see, and so daring ourselves to go beyond by becoming aware of why we do certain things or feel certain ways. Than the gold comes in and we enrichen our lives with truth and depth and understanding of who we are and were we come from. This has been in a way so beautiful communicated to humanity through the vehicle Universal Medicine.
I have often wondered that if sport is such a great thing how or why have we got to a point where alcohol has been so accepted and used to change the state of this ‘enjoyment’? This article answers and presents clearly why this happens. Thank you Anne.
The violence and hooligan behaviour of people at sporting events cannot be ignored – not can the competitive nature of sport continue to be championed – its detrimental effects are obvious and widespread and need addressing.
Once we understand something we can easily let it go, is absolutely true and can be apply to all our unloving behaviours.
It’s interesting what you share about the nauseous and fatigued feeling you felt in your body after just one drink of alcohol the night before… I wonder the effects that two, three or four drinks would have on the body, and what a ‘night out’ getting drunk really does to us. There is no doubt that everyone’s bodies would react to drinking this intoxicant in one way or another, but as you’ve shared a common ‘solution’ to not feeling this is to drink more! To numb ourselves so that we cannot feel what it’s doing to our body… It really is a vicious cycle.
Alcohol confirms that we are not living who we are. It brings us in an altered state covering up that we haven’t been true to ourselves before having the drink either. We create a world of “altered” and “normal”, pretending we are doing ok. The “normal” we live today is already an “altered” state as we live in the constant numbing of our awareness to not read what is truly going on in the world. If we would live who we truly are we would never ever reach for alcohol.
If we do sport, we can feel our body more. Alcohol does well at numbing whatever we feel and to cover the adrenaline that has just been put into our bloodstream.
If alcohol is a Class B drug and it is a known fact, why is it not banned from all sports events? If it were I feel this would begin to wake up humanity that alcohol is detrimental to our health and wellbeing. At present we as a society still feel that alcohol is not harming us even though all the statistics on what alcohol does to our health would say otherwise.
There are phrases we all use but the one the barman uses; ‘what’s your poison’ has a chilling ring. People still put more nails in their coffin with every cigarette they smoke. We often hear and or said; I could just die for another ‘fill in the blank’ (piece, slice, bag, plate, etc. of food). The world is getting bigger and so is our waist! These are all things we always blame everything but ourselves. Sports is just another item on a long list of stuff that we do not accept our responsibility and the part we play!
Could it be that people resort to alcohol around sports to try to cope with the fact that we feel how devastating is the energy of competition?
Sports and alcohol are two clear cases of how dependent we are on something external to us to bring us something extra-ordinary.
It took me many years of winning and losing in supporting sports teams to realise that the emotions that arose were both the same. Both created feelings of emptiness, that what I had watched was actually meaningless, perhaps entertaining in many ways but not important and far removed from living a rich and fulfilling life. Perhaps thats why alcohol is so prominent in sport, because it helps to mask and smother those feelings that would expose that sport is ultimately meaningless and actually harmful to us.
Alcohol and sport both give its users an illusionary sense of union; of togetherness.
Anne, this is a great article, what stands out for me this time reading it is ‘yet the fact is, alcohol is a classified poison that is harmful to our bodies (it is a neuro toxin),’ this very important fact seems to be over looked in our society, it seems that alcohol has become very accepted in many areas of life – sport, home, with friends and family, celebrations, meetings, the list goes on and yet as you state Anne, it’s a poison we are putting into our bodies that affects us and everyone we come into contact with, it seems that we do not want to admit the harm that we are doing to our bodies by drinking it.
Alcohol and sports are never enough if we are using them to fill the emptiness.
Sports and alcohol are two instances were people feel they can transcend themselves… via enhanced emotions.
Drinking alcohol is the number one way of celebrating or commiserating anything in the culture I grew up in. It is easy, convenient, available and a no brainer in so many ways. Yet, once we drink we are altered and no longer really us. I can imagine that playing sport gets you fairly wound up to win or to lose and coming down from that takes some time so numbing yourself, taking yourself out would be attractive.
It seems strange that something that is considered healthy needs to be followed by something that is definitely not. I’ve been good therefore I can be bad. It really shows me how different we are from animals who do the best for their bodies at all times – Eat, sleep, hunt all for their bodies. Human beings don’t seem to operate that way at all. Competition, drinking and all the other things we do to escape our situations are not always the best thing for our bodies.
Anne such wise words “Bringing honesty to our behaviours makes sense, for once we understand why it is we do something, we can more easily let it go.” if we do this perhaps we stop defending what we do, our behaviours and start asking if they are supportive or not? If sport was so great for us in its current form, why would we need to combine it with poison?
The fascinating part that I found to this blog was how you describe the way the sporting event effects a body of people… if you have ever been in a crowd you can feel the surge of excitement or disappointment and can easily become sucked into it, so that for a time it becomes all of you. Alcohol certainly makes the integration into that group energy much complete… and in that we lose ourselves.
Interesting that you mention your squash club – our social life was totally based around our local squash club and when we moved to a different part of the UK, that was where we built our new social life – of course there was a bar – we always met in the bar and I even had my 40th birthday party there. Alcohol is definitely part of the UK social scene and its association with sport is legendary – witness the drunken fans that cause so much disruption when they travel abroad.
From young I hated the taste of alcohol; my dad make his own wine and it was always readily available at meal times.
I was often encouraged to drink some wine by my parents believing red wine was good for your health.
-(It’s actually the grapes that are good for you, but not when it ferments into alcohol)
My body was not the same even after a sip of wine- I felt lightheaded/ dizzy, not connected to my body, and felt nauseous. And now as an adult I still choose to not drink alcohol as it feels horrible in my body.
To me the question is not about the association of alcohol and sport at first, but why we need both in the first place. Why do we need alcohol and why do we need sport in our lives? Is it because we have lost the connection with our essence, an essence that does not need to prove it self through sport or needs alcohol to have a moment of relief from the tension of life that has been build up? Could it be that needing sport and alcohol in our lives is just a way to cope with the fact hat we have lost that inner connection with the essence that lives equally in all of us? To me it is a truth that when I am living my essence then I do not need to play or watch any sport to feel myself better or feel recognised by or need to drink alcohol to alter and numb my state of being. In contrary, I just love being with me, as in that connection with my essence, there is a feeling of joy, a joy in stillness that is profound and divine and connects me to a life that is part of a much grander whole, a whole of divine order and in which there is no place either for sport or alcohol at all.
It is quite extraordinary how drinking a poison has become ‘normal’, socially accepted, and even promoted!
How did we come to this?!
Wow Anne, this blog is honest in its sharing about the role of sport and alcohol in our lives and the sinister way in which they work together. I am also aware of the role alcohol plays in other social situations and how it separates people from who they truly are allowing behaviours that harm and humiliate. Alcohol is a ‘Class B’ drug – this is new to me but does not surprise me and causes me to query why this is not more widely known. This article challenges some deeply held and ingrained beliefs about what it is to be an ‘Aussie’ – it is great that this is being challenged and exposed.
It’s a great question you ask Anne. Why is alcohol closely associated with sport? It’s a very close relationship too. There is very very obvious answer…money. The advertising dollars, media exposure. A similar thing could also be said about gambling and all 3 are in the pockets of each other. But everyone along the line here is getting something out of it. However is the what we are getting out of it (money, fame, excitement, my team, etc) actually worth it in terms of what that brings to our communities and societies? When we ask these questions we do need to look at the totality of this, not just the obvious so called ‘good’ that this something may bring. Alcohol for example is often looked at as 1 glass being beneficial for lets say ‘heart health’. But if it is a poison, toxic to other parts of the body, then is it really good for us? When we drink too much we know this well and our body speaks very loudly here.
We so often seek in the world outside of ourselves ways to fit in, to not be left out, to be loved and appreciated, to feel sense of belonging but seldom do we turn to the world within. A senseless venture that leads us only further away from feeling the true sense of who we are within, in essence, to the place that eternally call us to be at one with ourselves.
This blog reminds me of those moments when we just happen to bear witness to a young person’s rite of passage as they are ‘treated’ to their first grown-up sip of alcohol. The look of expectation and glee as they clock that they’re being let in to the adult world – at last! But that first sip is always followed by an alarmed grimace or a turned up nose as the reality of the taste hits them at the same time as they realise the world is watching and they need to conform to expectation. What a confusing moment of realisation that the image they so coveted and the reality they have just swallowed are entirely at odds. And then for most the disregard sets in. We pretend we like the taste for the sake of social acceptability and fitting in.
Spectating is all about taking sides, there is an ‘us and them’. In this mindset people pick on and amplify every little thing to distinguish their adopted team and denigrate the other. This culture is widely accepted as harmless lighthearted banter. It escalates into vulgar full-blown abuse when supporters shout together in a pack mentality, and/or when fueled by alcohol.
Abuse is only possible because the culture of “us and them” is accepted as normal in our society.
Alcohol has a very firm connection with sport, but it’s actually connected to so much of our lives. Any celebration and there it is. It’s often given as a gift, seen as a treat, a way of ‘letting your hair down, a way to unwind at the end of the day, and a quick numbing for that awkward feeling we can all sometimes have in social situations.
I drank alcohol to ‘fit in’, to feel like I was part of something, to feel accepted and not left out. I never really could say I enjoyed drinking it myself but what I was attracted to was the illusion of the momentary escape from the life I was leading. Yet I was always left with the feeling of superficiality and the following day came with an enormous sense of aloneness, anxiousness, regret and my body always felt abused. So what was I willing to be part of, what was this socially accepted as normal drinking culture actually offering? That it is OK to abuse ourselves further to avoid feeling the abuse we have already chosen in our lives, and if we all do it together that then it’s OK? I eventually realised that there was no fulfillment whatsoever in drinking alcohol,what was being left out was me and that developing my connection to who I am and how I feel in my body is what offers me a far greater sense of fulfillment and normality beyond comparison, one that I have no interest in compromising ever again with alcohol or otherwise.
I also played club squash where it was generally a friendly family atmosphere; until someone got carried away with fierce competition and would abuse opponents and umpires. When this happened it destroyed the atmosphere. Some of the children ran out upset. Some clearly did not like it but accepted it like everyone else. Worse than that is that some of the children emulated the behaviour, yelling abuse and throwing tantrums to get their way to win at all costs.
Whenever any of the offenders was called to account for his irresponsible and anti-social behaviour, he unleashed a barrage of alcohol-fueled justifications. Looking back now I feel: you would have to be on some sort of drug to not feel how horrible it is to treat other people that way.
To witness and accept that sort of behaviour you would need something to numb yourself. Competition and alcohol are both abusive to self, and void of love for others.
Have you ever had the thought during sport that you want to stop, but you motivate yourself with a goal that you had previously set for yourself? This gap between the wanting to stop and the actual stop is the emptiness that afterwards needs to be filled. With alcohol or anything else that numbs.
I reckon that not a single person would be able to drink a drop of alcohol, if he/she were really connected to their body.
Great question Anne – ‘But could the underlying reason be that we drink alcohol either to stop us from feeling our emptiness or as an attempt to fill the emptiness we feel inside?’ Why do we drink alcohol when we know that it is a poison as it make us feel not ourselves whilst consuming and ill the next day? Your question asks us to consider what it is that drives us to consume a substance that we know from studies and firsthand experience has an ill-effect on us. It is crazy, when we are open and willing to honestly admit it, that we are driven by the emptiness we feel to abuse ourselves in this way so that we avoid or numb ourselves from feeling our choice to separate from our connection to our essence.
As a teenager I would often join friends when a big game was on and sit through these games that I really didn’t understand. I didn’t want to be there yet I was. I wanted to fit in and be with my friends. Reading your blog Anne it sounds as though you did a lot of en-joining to fit in also. I wonder how many people are out there watching sport and drinking only because they want to fit in.
What a great conversation to open up. It really is a good question – why do we pair sport and alcohol? I grew up in New Zealand and during my late teens and early twenties if there was a rugby game on I did not like to be out that night. If we lost there was so much aggression – this combined with alcohol is scary. If we won, there was madness. This was disguised under the umbrella of fun and celebration but really it was just as scary.
So true Anne, brilliant, honest and inspiring blog. When we understand why we make certain choices it is easier to let them go, especially if they are not at all supportive or loving in any way. Alcohol certainly changes people’s state of being, I didn’t drink alcohol but went out a lot to socialise and was able to witness how people’s behaviours, facial expressions and body movements change when alcohol was consumed. Sometimes I felt the people I met at the beginning of the evening were physically with me but energetically they were someone else. Often the conversations were empty, emotional and often made no sense. The harm and devastation alcohol causes to our body to our community is massive but not many people are willing to acknowledge this because like you shared, drinking alcohol is an accepted and even expected thing to do in social gatherings. With time, I feel this will start to change as more and more people choose to love and care for their body and become willing to acknowledge the devastation alcohol causes.
We study ancient cultures and their way of life, what on earth will they say about our culture when it comes to the way we live, watching sport and drinking alcohol, ” No evolution there! “
Alcohol consumption is not just confined to sport, it seems to accompany the many ways we use to distract, numb or ‘celebrate’ ourselves. I’ve been there myself, using alcohol to give me false confidence, connecting to people that I would not have connected with had I been sober. I always thought that after a drink I was more the ‘real’ me, but now I realise this couldn’t be further from the truth. It is staggering to think that a very large proportion of the world, at any one time, is under the influence of the drug called alcohol. This means that many are not being true to themselves and avoiding feeling who they truly are, something wrong somewhere…
I find this a great article Anne, I never questioned the combination of sport and alcohol as being normal and just put up with it. When I was young I always felt reluctant to go into the clubhouse as there was the bar and the feeling of it was not very friendly even when there was nobody drinking. Your blog just makes me realise that it is not normal to have alcohol and sport combined and associated with each other which is a very welcome realisation.
In my teens and twenties, sport such as the soccer world cup was just an excuse for us to stay up drinking until all hours of the morning – when I think back , we didn’t actually care that much who won.
I can relate to this experience Anne.
“What I realised was that I drank it either because I wanted to ‘fit in’ and be liked (especially in a sport situation), or because I was not feeling confident in certain situations. Once I had this understanding, quite simply, I no longer needed it”.
At the first presentation I attended by Serge Benhayon, we did an exercise with a partner which uncovered drinking alcohol in any amount which exposed the need to feel as if I belonged and more acceptable by the peer group. After that, alcohol just left me and eight years later, there is no desire for alcohol in any way.
Great blog Anne. I loved what you shared about the reason behind why we drink. Bringing honesty to it is a great start. I always use to drink for the same reasons – to fit in because I didn’t feel normal and because I had no confidence, regard or love for myself. What a difference it makes in life when you don’t drink, when you start to be honest you can look at changing all that.
“What may not be so widely known is the fact that it is a Class B drug – yep, right up there with ecstasy, morphine, cannabis, opium and amphetamines!” Whoa, I had no idea! That’s crazy how its so widely acceptable, but not only that, completely legal.
Anne a superb expose into an integral part of our global culture. The combination of sport and alcohol is one that I would imagine is found in most countries that have alcohol, not only that but it is an unquestioned coupling. But as you so rightly ask, ‘why’? I think that there are potentially many answers but surely the starting point must be that both sport and alcohol serve the same purpose and that is to assist us in numbing ourselves from our inner angst.
Alcohol would have to be one the most harmful drugs on the market and why it so widely encouraged in society has to be questioned
“Indeed, I have found that being truly honest with myself is the only way I can change my behaviours.” – it is the honesty about how something is affecting me that allows me to drop it. Alcohol is something I used to pick me up or relax, or to basically numb myself at times. It wasn’t until I got really honest with myself about how sensitive I am to its effects, how it made me feel at the time and afterwards, and how I didn’t enjoy being around people drinking when I wasn’t that made me stop drinking it. I didn’t give it up, I looked at why I was using it and over time addressed that so that I no longer needed it.
There is so much emotion lacing every sports field in the world well before a drop of alcohol is taken and alcohol can make it so much more volatile.
On the radio today I heard a short replay of a commentator reporting on a football match, where a much needed goal to get through to another round in the competition was scored. The crowd went into a frenzy and the commentator was also completely out of control screaming hysterically with elation over and over about his favoured team’s scoring. I found this minute-long emotional expression very imposing on my body and he probably had not even had an alcoholic drink at the time!
Bringing honesty to our behaviours makes sense, for once we understand why it is we do something, we can more easily let it go” absolutely I use to drink because I felt I had to fit in be liked, when I understood truly what it was doing to me, it was very easy for me to give up.
I love your honesty here Anne. Alcohol certainly does change how we are and it is as if another person takes over.
“For example, I stopped drinking alcohol because I didn’t like how I acted when drinking it – I turned into someone else, and I did not like that ‘other person’”.
I recon a lot of people drink for the social interactions that can come with it – this is quite embedded in many cultures.
Thank you Anne. You help me to understand why alcohol and sport go together hand in hand. I have never been into sport, however, I know many people that are and it it quite shocking to see how much people are affected when the team they support doesn’t do well. I have also noticed that some people back teams that always seem to do badly and they seem to enjoy commiserating about how bad their team is and dreaming of the day when it all turns around. The fascination with sport exposes the fact that many of us are addicted to emotions, if we don’t’ get our hit from sport we are likely to seek it somewhere else be it at the shops, through TV or in our relationships. No wonder alcohol is the drug of choice for so many.
When you speak of lack of confidence Anne, it reminds me of how at a party it was so much easier to have a glass in my hand, and for others a cigarette between their fingers, for something to do with the hands or to create an “effective” posture to do with image. How difficult it was to just stand and be and let the arms hang loosely by our sides. Body postural habits develop because of the underlying energy that we choose to inhabit us, and are as much like a prop as anything else. They also keep us hooked into the actual habit. Changing the movement can begin to change the whole habit.
Great blog Anne. You have certainly exposed the extent to which alcohol has become entrenched as an integral part of the fabric of our society to the point where we feel that in order to ‘fit in’ we have to drink. Alcohol intensifies the atmosphere at the big matches with supporters of the winning team becoming more elated, and those of the losing team more aggressive – certainly not a harmonious union that would evolve humanity.
In sport there is a captive audience and this is an ideal place for companies to advertise their product, particularly when it is a substance like alcohol that will heighten the emotion that’s already stirred up by this competitive arena. There is a fit that makes the whole experience more extreme when used together, it is true Anne that this chemistry will need a huge dose of honesty to break the mass cocktail of the two.
Why do we need to drink alcohol, why do we need to watch sport? Perhaps because we don’t enjoy life enough as it is, perhaps to forget about the pain we feel of not being joyful. So these things work as a form of remedy to cover up the pain. In time, what is not part of our evolution as a humanity will be shown. Perhaps in ways we find a bit harsh but as history shows us we sometimes need to be woken up from our slumber in ways that really makes us stop in our tracks and makes us reconsider. Sport is not part of our evolution neither is alcohol.
Hi Anne – this is a massive subject. Sport and Alcohol appears to be interwoven into the fabric that is our lives until we come to the point where we discover that the life we are living is not true and does not honour or support who we truly are. The life based on gaining acceptance, recognition and worth from outside of ourselves never feels right and so it is further complicated by bringing in a substance to ‘alter’ what ever is coming up for us so that we can continue on this slippery slide. Once the truth is known, sport and/or alcohol cease to have any claim on us – on the breath we take, the quality of movement we participate in or any choice we make. ‘Love’ the essence of who we truly are is re-connected with and becomes that which feeds us in all we do. Great blog and lots of stimulating and shape shifting questions – thanks Anne.
I have drunk alcohol for many years in my life. I have been involved in different situations with friends, family, parties and celebrations where drinking alcohol was the main purpose, everything was planned around it. But I was not aware of it until someone invited me to ponder why I was drinking alcohol. I reacted, full of pride at the beginning, telling her some “intelligent” reasons and defending my position. I knew already inside that my arguments had not any true foundation. At the same time I decided to drink in less quantity and experience in my body how it felt. My body started to feel better and more sensitive. In fact when I did drink I felt more of the effects and this felt awful. Some time later I started to consider the possibility of not drinking as overtime I did it affected me more and more, well always affected me but at this moment I was more aware of it. When I did stop, I could feel a deep gratitude from inside. Everyday without alcohol I felt clearer and lighter. Today I don’t miss a glass of wine in any way. In fact my life is more joyful than ever without this neediness of something that relieves what I don’t want to feel. It was a blessing for me to stop drinking alcohol.
Alcohol and sport have become one of the biggest distractions from our true love and connection to ourselves and all we are . They have taken over as a culture of competition and abuse and cause a violence and aggression competition and false togetherness with the real isolation of ourselves from our natural oneness love and knowing. Two huge subjects to look at and ponder on with such enormous effects on the world and our livingness and truth.
How often I heard I was boring because I didn’t drink is uncountable. How can having a good time or being a worldly woman or sassy girl have anything to do with a poison that alters us in every way?
“I have found that being truly honest with myself is the only way I can change my behaviours.” Same for me, it starts with awareness and the willingness to be honest. The answers won’t come if you are not really looking for truth, then you allow yourself to play a game with yourself and only see what you want to see.
Someone I know drinks a beer (or two) every day. He is very overweight with all the consequences for his knees, back and heart etc. He knows that he would benefit from not drinking alcohol and yet he refuses to quit. You can’t take that away after he stopped smoking years ago. Not willing to feel what is there is to feel, It is sad to see a beautiful person not dealing with their hurts and the body has to deal with the poison as a consequence.
This absolutely seems to be the case, ‘Are we led to believe it is ‘social’ to drink alcohol while watching, or after playing, sport?’ Sporting events are very often held in pubs so alcohol is on tap and if the event is being held at someones home then it is very ‘usual’ for those attending to bring alcohol and snacks, alcohol seems to be considered ‘part and parcel’ of watching the sport, particularly from what I have observed with football.
Alcohol today is present in many different areas of our society. It’s something accepted as normal more than ever before. Even young people are encouraged to drink his/her glass of wine or beer to prove their adulthood. This fact can’t be avoided if we consider the violence and separation that alcohol comes with. We are playing a game seeking connection in supposed “celebrations” when what we are really seeking is to fill our emptiness and avoid feeling the deep sadness within by denying our true and precious natural state. So what are we really celebrating? In the name of why we need to be poisoning our bodies in this way and encouraging others to do the same? The big amount of illness and disease is telling us that something is not right. Maybe it is the momento to be honest with ourselves and to start to see what is underneath our habits.
Alcohol and sport are very comfortable bed fellows and designed to be that way. Both multi-billion pound industries feeding off each other. it is common knowledge that major sports events and tournaments, boost income and sale of alcohol That is the intention and reason why the sport industry continues to grow at a pace with more tournaments and the introduction of new sports to attract increasing numbers of people, especially women to participate in sport. If you’re a spectator, watching from home or attending matches, alcohol is the crutch that enliven the match experience. It seems most people are not able to watch a sports match without being fuelled with alcohol. And this is a societal problem that is accepted and encouraged.
‘Have we been hoodwinked by the alcohol manufacturers who sponsor sport and are subconsciously brainwashed by them into thinking alcohol and sport ‘go together’, or that we are ‘supporting’ the sport by drinking it?’ It was not that long ago that motor sport was heavily sponsored by the tobacco industry until this was prohibited. Should the same not be true of alcohol and other sports when alcohol is associated with so much harm to so many people?
All of this kind of behaviour with drink and sports is what makes university for many in the UK. The clubs to join, the nights out, weekends away, overseas trips. All of it coming with a drive. A dogged determination to fit in and be part of something more, but really all it does is send people into debt, into disregard and it takes us further away from the connection we were seeking in the first place.
Recently someone looked at me strange because I said “I don’t drink alcohol”. I realized how much this substance is related to fun and if you don’t drink it you are a boring person. Alcohol is idealized and seen even as something exquisite. The marketing and propaganda that is around it is huge. And how this manipulates society to see alcohol as normal and even healthy (in a moderate consumption) when it is not. We have the big responsibility to break this normalized and sickly habit that is affecting so many people in this world, just expressing and living a way of life that honours and loves our bodies deeply.
10,000 fans in a fans zone watching the Euro 2016 football, lots of drink on sale. But what would it look like without drink, would the fans mingle more, is the drink a way to a false confidence, for some it creates unruly behaviour, for others just loud and boisterous, but one way or the other, a party without booze is much more real. It allows us to be honest about where we are at in our ability to relate and have conversations. Many say it’s boring not to drink, you’re boring, but if you need drink to have a good time, isn’t that an indication that your life is not very rich. My life was definitely that way, drink was a comforter I would have to go with watching sport, but they were both, the alcohol and the sport covering up the feelings of emptiness.
“It is only when we understand why it is we keep choosing a certain behaviour that we want to, and can start to, make true changes.” What holds us back so often from exploring the reasons behind these behaviours is the fact that in practically, if not all, cases it feels too painful or difficult to address. However, when we do, rarely is it as painful as we imagine and the liberation we experience is worth the pain.
It’s quite a cocktail, sport and alcohol… “Indeed, in New Zealand (where I live) it sometimes seems to me that the psyche of the whole country is affected by whether the All Blacks (rugby) or Black Caps (cricket) win or not.” That practically the whole country can be affected by a sporting outcome exacerbated by alcohol is a potent mix…it feels akin to winning a war or not.
Yes it is the same in Germany (where I come from) with regards to soccer (football). The way people get worked up in the UEFA cup or other major games (and minor ones too) is amazing, and the alcohol is fuelling this behaviour too.
Anne following sentences got me as I only can agree to it through my own made experiences: “Bringing honesty to our behaviours makes sense, for once we understand why it is we do something, we can more easily let it go.” The understanding of a behavior is for me important as with understanding I look with loving eyes on me and that helped me more easily to let go of things than if I am hard and strong or disciplined.
I never enjoyed alcohol. I always hated the smell and my first experience of tasting it was horrible. However I persevered with it until I became accustomed to it because I too wanted to fit in. It was a habit that I kept up for over twenty years even though it made me feel quite miserable and took my body days to recover from.
I realized reading this blog that sport is largely an activity through which we seek union and brotherhood – even individual sports like tennis or golf include your ‘opponents’ so you’re never alone playing sport. The catch is there is no true brotherhood in sport and we are deeply aware of this at some level of our being, to the point that we use behaviors and substances to mask the fact that we are missing out by settling for a second-rate attempt at being at one with one another.
It is nuts to do all of the hard work to become good at a sport and then drink after playing, to celebrate for winning or drowning your sorrows for losing? Does play hard, drink hard seem to fit? But what about the armchair athletes at home or the pub? Are they just reliving past glories of times gone by or just adamant supporters? We know how drinking makes us someone else, what’s wrong with re-discovering the amazing person that resides within us all?
Getting involved with competition is a great adrenalin shot. That is true even as a spectator and the shot is very numbing. Alcohol multiplies the numbing and the combination of adrenaline and alcohol is very addictive.
Very well said Christoph, that’s exactly how it is.
So true Anne that fact that people need to drink alcohol directly after playing sport exposes the emptiness of sport. There would be no need to numb our self with alcohol otherwise.
The fact that people play sport to keep fit then often drink alcohol straight after shows how idiotic we are as a society.
Hahaha – yes so true Mary-Louise, and this happens in so many different types of sport too – it makes me wonder why people that engage in this are not aware of it, or maybe there is a choice to not be aware and also numb the potential of a choice with alcohol.
If alcohol did not exist we would easily find some other vice to use instead be it another drug, food, major forms of abuse and so forth. Imagine having methaphetamine an acceptable normal substance to take in society. It sounds crazy to most that this could ever be possible but alcohol is just the same! It only has a greater delay before it really kicks in and we feel the consequences of it and it is watered down to minimal amounts so the impact is not as severe not to mention loaded with sugar to make it really enticing. The fact is that we have accepted a drug to be the norm in society yet we police against every other such one. Is this truly wise for us all?
Alcohol abuse and the harms of alcohol are becoming more exposed and worked on in community health, but the messages are al still there condoning the use of alcohol, and it is freely promoted as being a good thing for social occasions. There is also great harm in saying “1 drink a day won’t hurt me”, this is still abuse.
I used to play sport for the sense of camaraderie and drinking was always part of this. We would champion each other to go to more extreme limits and risk-taking behaviour- it gave a false sense of ‘bonding’ as a team. It stopped me from feeling the awkwardness I felt in social situations and also the underneath craving I had to have stronger connections with others- when I went into this behaviour I thought I had it- but it never lasted.
‘…once we understand why it is we do something, we can more easily let it go.’ So how about educating children about the effect of alcohol like any other drug, so that they can choose different and understand that what they experience around them is not ‘the normal’. It is an ill behaviour and just like you would vaccinate children to not let diseases spread and try to bring a stop to it, so should we look for a true way to stop this epidemic use off alcohol.
I recall feeling disappointed and sad as I watched an ‘old dog’ teaching ‘young pups’ bad habits. I am referring to my youngest son’s soccer coach who would proudly reward the young lads when they won a big match with a slab of beer! This was well supported by most of the dads and quite a few of the mums too. I felt like an alien!
Pretty strange when I think about it that people find it very social to drink alcohol even though it makes lots of people act very un-social
..”What may not be so widely known is the fact that it is a Class B drug – yep, right up there with ecstasy, morphine, cannabis, opium and amphetamines!” This is a fact that people choose to ignore, why do people admit that something like ecstasy is a drug, but say it is okay to have one or two glasses of beer or wine every day. Could it be that a large percentage of humanity has found the perfect way to not be confronted by the hurt and emptiness that competition brings up by numbing themselves with alcohol? And that we do not want to give up this numbing device because it helps us cope with live?
“It is only when we understand why it is we keep choosing a certain behaviour that we want to, and can start to, make true changes” – absolutely, I totally agree. No matter how hard I may try changing my choice of behaviour, and I could be well aware of the harm I am inflicting on myself and the others, it would still not work if I stayed in denial of the hurt I was carrying.
How can we, as a society, possibly think we are intelligent when we think it is okay to reward our bodies, after they have served us well whilst playing a competitive sport, by poisoning them with alcohol?
Interesting Tamara Flanagan you have shared that both choices of reward are actually harming. Why then are we choosing “past times’ that are doing the opposite to what they promote?
I’ve been pondering the strong relationship between alcohol and sport since reading your blog Anne. Coming from Australia, a ‘sporting nation’, I have observed this behaviour here too. I’m not into sport as either a participant or spectator, but one day (over 50 years ago) I had the much coveted honour as a child to accompany my dad to see a footy (AFL) match at the famous MCG. I only went once. It was strange seeing a crowd getting excited about the action on the field, and there was the distinctive yeasty smell of beer pervading the areas where the pies (and sauce) , fizzy drinks and alcohol were served. It was very loud and uninhibited emotional experience. I can’t recall if people were allowed to bring drinks to the stands or had to swill it in the drinking area as my father did not drink on these occasions. It felt to me that in those days men together would always drink beer. Nowadays it is everyone of course, so the image that is fed to our young is that sport, ‘heroism’ and alcohol go together, something advertisers have capitalised on – satisfying the ‘well-earned thirst’.
I would really love to know how and why alcohol became best buddies with sport – who started it and why was something as crazy as this ever approved? Did our health department give it their seal of approval?
Anne I love how you say it as it is… It’s like if everyone just paused for a moment and considered what you have written here, would we not see that there is a major revelation of what sport and competitiveness is doing to our bodies if we are reaching for a well known drug (alcohol) before, after and/or during it!
” What may not be so widely known is the fact that it is a Class B drug – yep, right up there with ecstasy, morphine, cannabis, opium and amphetamines!” Really ! I didn’t know that …. How we have normalised alcohol to be acceptable, just shows our desperation to cover up our feelings of emptiness and separation.
I drank alcohol to fit in and not be so ‘ normal ‘ it released any tension and inhibitions and that was championed at the time, if you didn’t drink to this day people think you must be boring. It was the unknown that attracted me, as it was quite unpredictable as to where you would end up and in what condition, and then the next day the retelling and piecing together the missing bits. It filled and masked a void I was feeling and not honestly willing to explore.
I used alcohol to numb the feeling of not fitting in and not feeling good enough – to check out, and be that other person. Once I started to accept myself and enjoy being me I could no longer abide the way alcohol would take me ‘out’. I happily will choose to be myself even if others are pressuring me to ‘be sociable’ and have a drink with them.
Until my early thirties I played sports and drank alcolhol after every game, whether it being a training or a match. There’s enormous pressure to drink a beer (or 2, 3, etc.) afterwards. Firstly I stopped drinking alcohol and not long after I stopped playing sports. As I didn’t like the aggression / competitiveness that came with both. Looking back I can now see how competitive I was. Constantly trying to ‘prove myself’ and doing a lot to be liked. It’s quite incredible when I now look back, how much I actually harmed myself. What if from young, caring and nurturing was taught in schools. Actually, if caring and nurturing our bodies was part of the curriculum. Imagine have one hour at school where we would just have the time and space to connect, appreciate and celebrate ourselves deeply. Could it be that this would be of GREAT benefit to the world?
Thank you Anne for sharing about the connection between sport and alcohol. Just last night on the news the QLD rugby team were celebrating their state win, a game that most of Australians watch. It was sad and disturbing to watch the players being drunk and pouring drink over each other, and this is celebrating the emptiness with more emptiness, not wanting to feel what is really going on when the short time feel of winning is over.
Alcohol and sport go hand in hand because they are ‘partners in crime’ so to speak as together they breed division and not the unity they falsely proclaim to. While we may feel that competitive sport is a chance for us all to come together to support a common goal, in reality it is a highly emotional affair that seeks to put one person/team better and above the other and breeds this division by feeding the ‘us and them’ mentality we get sucked into. With the resulting ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ – the separation is complete. Alcohol is drunk by the vast majority in order to feel like we ‘fit in’. This is done under the guise that we are connecting and coming together but it comes from a feeling of being less and searching for ‘more’ outside of ourselves. The illusion of unity is laid bare when we consider the violent outbreaks that occur when alcohol is drunk. Again, the separation is complete. It is only by being honest with ourselves and dealing with the hurt that we harbour deep within that together we can truly arise out of this mess we have made. But it starts with us being willing to admit that it is indeed a mess in the sense that after centuries of living together on this planet, we are no closer to living in true harmony with each other. Alcohol and competitive sport are only two examples of the many ways we seek relief from the harmful way we live when we hold back living the true love we are.
It’s the whole competitive thing that goes with sport, we either end up celebrating or commiserating and that in most cultures usually means alcohol … It’s not only an event we watch but we also get physically involved in and it takes alcohol for most to feel uninhibited enough to participate and release all the pent up feelings and frustrations we carry in our everyday life… it’s a right of passage for freedom to yell, dance, cry, laugh, scream, swear and then there’s the bonding, connection, mate ship, division, hatred that occupy a supporter between games. Sport and alcohol is the total distraction away from our disconnection from ourselves and others we are not willing to face, and that affects everyone
I think that you have hit upon something key to the use of alcohol and sports, Anne. There is a need for belonging that they both are wrapped up in. Push yourself in a sport or drink too much and you end up feeling not so great the next day, but the camaraderie and the apparent good times become justification for leaving our bodies behind.
I have to comment again here…It seems to me that alcohol is not only associated with sports but with a multitude of different activities, especially so in Australia – from birthday celebrations (even children’s birthday parties in Australia), to general parties, Christmas and New Years, and as you have mentioned sports events. It seems to be the in thing that people wait to do as soon as they finish work – time to head to the pub or go home and sit down for a beer. As a nation the focus is alcohol and any excuse seems to do. Having lived in other countries such as France and Switzerland (well known for the wine they produce), I must say I was surprised to see how much the focus in Australia is on drinking alcohol. But the key thing you are presenting here Anne, is that there is a reason why the alcohol is being used – and essentially it seems it comes down to the fact that people are medicating themselves from something they are feeling deep inside and are not really wanting to feel. This sadly is often the case, we turn towards something like alcohol to numb us out, rather than sit with what is going on and seeking the support to work through it. This does of course require a certain degree of courage, but more so it is about being willing to go there.
Bringing understanding to why we do things is a game changer – or game dropper! Once we bring the honesty, and know the underlying energy driving us to do something, it looses its power over us and there is no longer any need to follow that behaviour any more… game over!
“Bringing honesty to our behaviours makes sense, for once we understand why it is we do something, we can more easily let it go.”
It really is this simple. Yet we have not reached a point as a society where we can even admit that the gross majority of us are addicted to this poisonous substance and Class B drug. Under the creed of ‘it’s normal because everyone else is doing it so therefore it can’t be bad for me’, or even worse ‘anything in moderation’, we are slowly killing ourselves. And as a whole, we can’t even admit that we are addicted if we have not been classified as ‘alcoholic’. Perhaps we need a new definition for addiction which we simply call ‘alcohol dependant’ meaning that if we can’t enjoy a game of sport or a meal with friends without a glass of plonk, then we too are simply addicted. For in-truth an addiction is simply a habit we cannot live without. Yes there are varying degrees of this but we need to be very honest with what it is we are engaging with and why. It is understandable why we refuse to see the hold that alcohol has over us when we consider how unwilling we are in taking responsibility for the misery we feel – all this is a choice we keep choosing to not live the love that we are. Thankyou Anne for your honesty and understanding and for beginning this much needed conversation.
Unlike you Anne I thought I really enjoyed drinking, especially around sport, after all I was a sports fan and drinking is a cause for celebration? ….right… Well maybe not but that is where I was at, I drank more the less I knew about the game I was supposed to be there for. For example horse races are a sport I knew little about, so at Melbourne Cup I would drink so much to avoid having to talk to anyone about the race. The real reason I ‘liked’ the other sports I watched like football and cricket was really a way to try and get close to men in my life, I did it with my father and then with boys that I wanted to go out with in high school and guys that I wanted to date in my 20s. I was forever compromising what I really liked doing to be in cold massive outdoor ovals with crowds shouting and flat beer, I hated compromising myself and the alcohol took the edge of that truth.
Thank you Anne, I could not help but hone in on this fact that: That alcohol is a Class B drug, right up there with ecstasy, morphine, cannabis, opium and amphetamines! And yet we are socially accepting that people use it – what is this saying about our society and our level of self care and self respect?
All I can think of is the influencing advertisements the alcohol companies put out – I think people are also being brainwashed that this is what you do – then you too can be ‘having a good time’ in the ra ra of sport – I could never handle noisy sports stadiums, you probably had to drink to be able to stay there!
Purely on a physical level it makes no sense to play sport and drink alcohol, as the alcohol is toxic to ones body and health.
I remember drinking alcohol to fit in be liked and to conform to what was deemed normal, but it now occurs to me if I was doing this, then was everyone I was drinking with doing the same thing, drinking to fit in and be normal? Therefore had we all subscribed to a massive lie, collectively together?
“So why is it that we still drink alcohol around sport when we clearly feel these consequences? Perhaps it’s because many of us do it, including many professional sportspeople, and therefore we perceive it as ‘normal’?”
We have many activities and behaviors in society that we consider normal most of the population is doing them, yet no one stops and deeply contemplates whether what we do is in fact supportive to our bodies, to other people and the population as a whole. The drinking of alcohol is one of theses activity’s is it really a social activity, is there true and deep connection with others and our bodies and our selves when we drink it, or is this something we conveniently believe, so as not feel the real reasons behind the impulse to drink?
This is a very important topic you have raised Anne, as there is a strong association between alcohol and sport, and the violence between soccer fans is but one of the side effects that clearly shows this. The huge harm that alcohol does to us as a humanity needs to be looked into deeply as to the reasons why we choose to drink in the first place, as any kind of reform or control policy’s don’t seem to really help with the global problem.
“Bringing honesty to our behaviours makes sense, for once we understand why it is we do something, we can more easily let it go.” Honesty and understanding have been the cornerstone of changing behaviours which don’t really support me.
Great point Gina, honesty and being fully responsible for all we do is an amazing step that I have made in changing my behaviours.
Most sports clubs have bars and sport and alcohol seem to go hand in hand, but it is such a dangerous combination. In sport, there is competition, and where there is competition, there has to be emotion and a fight to be the best, to win. And so, if you don’t win, then there is disappointment and possible frustration even anger or maybe a berating of oneself for not winning, not being good enough. So imagine a whole team feeling this way and then add all their fans. Then add the emotions of the team that won – feeling elated, superior, better than the other team or gloating even. And then add the emotions of their fans. Imagine again that it is a big game with a big crowd – that’s a lot of emotion. Now add alcohol to the mix. The winners feel on top of the world, and the losing team feel terrible and are drowning their sorrows. It is dynamite – alcohol plus emotions. The alcohol fuels the emotions being felt and it can result in violent incidents amongst fans, or in homes when the losing fans return after the game.
It is very strange indeed how as a society we champion all these things that harm our bodies and can even get quite hostile or unsettled when people choose not to abuse themselves or others in this manner. Sport in itself is an abuse as it generally abuses the bodies of those participating and fosters separation and competition between people and groups rather than celebrate our oneness, connection and brotherhood.
Perhaps one of the reasons people drink alcohol around sport is to give them energy because a lot of sport actually drains you of energy when it comes to watching and engaging in the competition aspect. Alcohol contains a lot of sugar, and sugar gives temporary energy but like alcohol is a poison and leaves you worse off afterwards (and during too). Therefore, people need to really poison their bodies with alcohol, sugar and emotions (another poison) to get the full effect just as people poison their bodies with other so called hard core drugs to get the effect they required.
I’ve never been into sport, but I do remember in my late teens going to our local sports centre, which by the way, also had a bar! This was the 80s but a sports centre with a bar? Us girls did aerobics and the boys swam or played squash, and we would meet in the bar afterwards. Looking back now, it seems crazy that we were there to ‘be more healthy’ by exercising but would then have a drink. It really doesn’t make any sense and shows that the exercise wasn’t coming from a place that honoured the body, but from a ‘should do’ which then necessitated a drink afterwards as a reward.
“I have observed, whilst attending professional sports games, that spectators’ emotions are heightened when they are drinking alcohol”. Yes, Anne, alcohol has such a strong effect on people, they can completely change in personality when under its effects. So many young people especially now, are quite prepared to say that they have no idea what they did the previous evening, whatever they did was under the effects of it and they have no memory whatsoever. So WHO were they when they were behaving as they did? It was obviously not them who was in control. This is really worth pondering.
“You see, in truth I had never enjoyed drinking alcohol. What I realised was that I drank it either because I wanted to ‘fit in’ and be liked…….”. I so relate to that, Anne. I came from a family that did not drink at all, there was fear about alcohol with one of my parents and I had my first drink with my then fiancee and his parents who only had wine on special occasions such as a special meal out at a restaurant. I know I did not like wine, in those days it was mostly a pretty sickly sweet white wine, and I never could drink more than one small glass or I felt sick. I totally drank it to fit in with the others. Yes, I too wanted to be liked. When I discovered the drier white wines, I slowly became more comfortable drinking it, but I admit I still did not truly like it. But like many others, I became more able to drink it sociably. But there was a knowing within me that I did not like the way I felt in myself when I drank alcohol, I had a real dread of losing control of myself, so never really drank in any great quantity. Since I have lived on my own the past twelve years, I have never felt the need to drink alcoholic drinks, and I know my body has felt the great benefit from that. And I no longer do anything that I no longer feel is right for my body just for the sake of fitting in with what others may feel is normal. I love to listen to my body now and know what is good for it. What is normal for my body is normal for me.
Looking back I can remember a number of occasions when I went to the pub to ‘watch a game’ be it rugby or football. I never enjoyed it, I couldn’t see the screen, I couldn’t hear what anyone was saying, I am not remotely interested in sport and I felt out of place. I went because I wanted to ‘fit in’, be liked and be a part of what was going on never because it was what I really wanted to do. It’s crazy how often we mould ourselves in order to fit into what we feel others want us to be.
It’s a tad ridiculous that we use alcohol to celebrate when our team wins and to console ourselves if our team looses. If we were to be honest about our motives to drink surely we would see that we are looking for ways to fill a void of emptiness that is in our lives and alcohol is a socially exceptable and effective way to numb ourselves from what we do not want to feel.
What you share is so true Anne, and it reminded me of the huge concerts in the stadiums we used to go to. Many people would sneak alcohol in and get so blotto and pass out and many more who boasted that they couldn’t even remember the concert afterwards. What is the point of paying a large amount of money to go to something and take along something to obliterate you before you could even enjoy it? It just does not make sense. Perhaps being in such a large group of people, as we are when we go to sporting events, really points out the fact to us of how disconnected we are from ourselves and each other, we cant help but feel the collective effect that must have, our lack of confidence to just be ourselves without a drink in hand gets exposed and it can be unbearable to feel the loneliness and emptiness of that. I know this because I have been there myself.
How wisely you write Anne. On the surface, drinking and sport might seem poles apart. But as you show both are ways for us to disregard and harm our body to gain relief. The thing that struck me about sport, is how for the most part your team actually never succeeds but is stuck on a rollercoaster of drama and intrigue. It’s this we seem to be addicted to in all of life just like the way we are with alcohol too. Escaping from our feelings and life is loosing game we don’t have to play.
We have a culture where we need a ‘treat’ for doing something. A child gets a ‘lolly’ for being ‘good’ and an adult has a drink of alcohol or a piece of cake for doing well or even winning.
The reward for the job well done is a poor replacement for us yet its serves its purpose. It gives us a momentary high that lets us know that we have been rewarded.
What happens if the treat is actually the punishment? A sweet is not a loving gift for a child and neither is alcohol for a thirsty sports fan.
Alcohol is a classified poison that is harmful to our bodies (it is a neuro toxin), and it is a well known fact that it alters our state of being. What may not be so widely known is the fact that it is a Class B drug – yep, right up there with ecstasy, morphine, cannabis, opium and amphetamines!” I didn’t know that and it makes so much sense.
I love your questions about why alcohol and sport seem to go together and especially: “Are we using alcohol to numb how we are really feeling about sport and avoid feeling the harm it is doing our bodies (if playing), or the obvious great harm it is doing to those professional sportspeople we are watching play? Could this be why many cannot enjoy a game of professional sport without alcohol?” I love moving my body, and I don’t like competition at all. I don’t understand how we can glorify a man who risks his body by solo sailing over the world for a month and kept going with immense pain, living on painkillers and hardly any sleep. And all because he wanted to be in the top 10. How has this changed the world?
It is amazing that when someone chooses to not drink those around them can feel very uncomfortable. My 18 year old son who does not drink says there is huge pressure on him to have drink when he is out with friends. Perhaps this is because we all innately know that alcohol is not good for our bodies but we don’t want to feel the reflection of another who has made a more loving decision.
You have asked many great questions Anne, regarding why we drink alcohol around sport. I have worked behind the bar in a squash club too, and was constantly surprised at the amount the members drank after playing, men and women. I wholeheartedly agree with your comment “… Bringing honesty to our behaviours makes sense, for once we understand why it is we do something, we can more easily let it go”. I used to like a drink, usually to gain confidence as I am naturally a shy person, but once I realised the affect it had on me, and became more aware of how my body felt after a drink, even a small glass of wine, I decided that enough was enough, it wasn’t worth it, especially considering that drinking alcohol can be classed as self-abuse and poisons the body. Once I had made that choice, and decided that I would replace my need for alcohol with an honest appraisal of myself, my lifestyle and behaviours and my choices the desire for alcohol vanished as if my magic! It could also be the case that as so many people seem exhausted, especially after playing sport, and as alcohol contains a very high percentage of sugar this may be another reason why alcohol surrounds sport, and of course, there is also the not wanting to be left out and enjoining with others to either ‘celebrate’ a win or commiserating due to losing a match…!
I drank to do what every one else was doing. Mostly to pep me up when I went out of an evening as I was usually tired at this time so used it to keep me going, or because it was something to do, give a situation more fun but I never felt good about how I was when I was drinking, I always questioned what I’d said to people after which not only made me question myself the next day but my head hurt and I felt nauseas and tired. Over the years my alcohol intake got less and less until one day a friend of mine asked why I drank at all. It wasn’t till I realised I actually had a choice not to and that it was ok to be different that I stopped.
We just have to look at what is taking place now in France, with the European football matches. This has nothing to do with sports anymore, but with abuse, violence and people misbehaving. The fact that they want to have alcohol free zones says enough.
Yes Anne, you can give up and let go of any ingrained behaviors once you understand why by being honest – very simple.
These are some interesting points you bring up, Anne. In my experience, alcohol was a reward for pushing my body to its limits, as in, now that I’ve accomplished something (i.e., pushed my body and did not get too hurt in the process), now I can relax and celebrate. When I think back on those times, I also remember feeling so exhausted and looking to alcohol to pep me up and numb from the soreness in my body.
In terms of watching sports, it is expected that you will drink alcohol while watching whether at a pub or at home. Watching sport is an excuse to drink, and also to eat in excess. It’s the ultimate check-out. And it’s also been marketed that way for so long that most people don’t even question the connection like you are, Anne. It’s just a given.
A very interesting article Anne. I wholeheartedly agree “It is only when we understand why it is we keep choosing a certain behaviour that we want to, and can start to, make true changes.”
It makes no sense to consider alcohol a part of a healthy lifestyle when we know it is a poison to our body, alters out state of being, is filled with sugar and is the driving force behind most violence (from what i have heard police report). It is interesting to consider why we choose to drink it when we know it isn’t good for us. This is not about judging ourselves or each other for drinking or not but understanding human behaviours.
I love this article Anne,
It so says it like it is and leaves those who read it open to explore the many pearls of wisdom you share for them selves. It also brings an honesty to the choices we make around sport, alcohol and how the two are so linked in our world. Another thing I have observed in our community is how when ever sport and alcohol are mixed, our care for ourselves and our children gets tainted with an ‘it will be right’ attitude that often finds us and our children sunburnt, dehydrated, emotional and so exhausted that we are very reactionary, agitated at the end of the day. Creating the reality of being stressed because of the choice we made earlier in the day.
You are a gutsy person writing about alcohol and sport – these are 2 national pastimes both in NZ and in OZ. But I completely applaud you for putting pen to paper – or finger to keyboard – to question what many would simply refuse to do.
To lift the lid on why we choose to drink so much in association with sport. Great questions here Anne.
I can’t remember the statistic however alcohol-related expense endured by many nations around the world is HUGE.
We have a lot of sense about some things but when it comes to the popularity and what the people want an air of change is difficult to find.
Doing sport to “get healthy’ and then going to the pub after you do it simply does not make sense. Whilst it is perceived to be ‘normal’ it is anything but normal. As you say, Anne, there is a reason why we do both and that is to fill a gap/emptiness within us. When we are full of the joy of living, alcohol and sport do not hold the same sway over us.
A great expose Anne. I agree with all your possibilities of perhaps why we associate the two – they are all very plausible and indeed very accurate. Unfortunately until we are prepared to be honest with ourselves about how we are feeling we cannot begin to see what and why we chose certain things, which ultimately hurt not only ourselves but others around us too.
Fantastic blog Anne. I was surprised to read that alcohol is a class B drug but when I pondered on the effect that alcohol used to have on me I could instantly see that it is as strong a drug as any other. I know there is a huge stigma around other class B drugs as they are illegal which makes me wonder why on earth we have collectively accepted this one class B drug. It cannot be because it doesn’t do harm as the horrors inflicted as a result of alcohol abuse are well known. Could it be that many of us are simply unwilling to look at why we need this destructive substance?
Put alcohol and sport together and you have a pack mentality and worse — the people involved caught up in a force that takes them into a way of behaving that isn’t far from barbaric. Why do we choose this when it’s in truth so far removed from our true nature… Maybe because we’ve walked so far away from who we truly are, well before the beers and game of sport came along — and these two things are yet more ways we can distract ourselves from the deep pain and anguish we feel deep down having separated from our own enormous love.
I never really liked alcohol but I drank it to fit in. That’s it. And then one day I realised this was ridiculous because alcohol never agreed with, I would always feel terrible even with the smallest amount. Now I look at alcohol and go bleugh!!!
It’s fascinating to explore the connection between alcohol and sport – and when we seemingly have what most would determine a ‘heathy’ activity such as sport sharing such an intimate space with alcohol (a known poison). It’s always struck me that when athletes focus so much on health and fitness, that one of the first things they do after a game or competition is to celebrate by drinking…. it doesn’t really make much sense, unless of course, we really don’t want to consider the harm that either sport or alcohol is often doing to our bodies…
Anne, I can really relate to the reasons why you chose to drink in the past as I did the same. Not that I was a big drinker as for me also, it only took 1 or 2 drinks and I was well on my way and totally not myself. It was something that I had no trouble giving up as it was only used to fill the emptiness you talk about here Anne. Now that I don’t need to do that, alcohol for me just isn’t an option.
I remember working behind a bar on the day that my home town won the FA cup! It was a very scary experience. The pub was swarmed with football fans who were pumped up and high about winning, the que for the bar was 10 people back, and the floor behind the bar was swimming in an inch of beer under my feet. The force that was coming through everyone was so strong, and everyone was so drunk. It’s always felt strange to me why we would celebrate something by harming our bodies, and this is exactly what was happening in this case. I will never forget this experience.
Drinking alcohol s not only socially accepted it is socially encouraged. And when we were young it was considered grown up to drink alcohol so we wanted to do it for that reason too. Many consider that just one drink a night can’t harm you but as you point out alcohol is a poisonous substance and if we take just a small dose on a regular basis that can build in the body. There does seem to be an association with sport and alcohol and, if not earlier, this really kicks in at university where it is expected that after a game there will be a drinking session. This is the same for both young men and women.
There are so many golden points you make in your blog Anne and reading about all the pointers that indicate our attachments to living in an illusionary way are pointing sky high, or perhaps maybe not now so much but I feel that many of us have done so in the past where the drinking of alcohol is concerned. I have clear memories of those I care about looking ashen and bereft, wrapped in all the garb of the specific team, when that team has ‘lost’ – omg how can life go on after “our” defeat – the pale faces were as a result of the amount of alcohol consumed and the “our” defeat meant it was felt as a personal loss. I never really understood the depth of despair displayed – and still don’t to this day as I witness even now the depths of despair to which the ‘followers’ will descend to when the person they look up to misses a putt or whatever-especially when alcohol is being consumed while being the spectator.
It is interesting that we do not question the use of drugs and alcohol in the use of playing sport or as an accompaniment to watching sport. So much so that rather than looking at the negative impact of many sports on our bodies it has now become a common place thing to take drugs to be more competitive or drink after playing.
Jennym yes this is a great observation I also know men who in their 40’s decided they could no longer watch sport as it made them too racy. We continue to build stadiums like colosseums of roman days – feed them bread keep them dull is now more like fuel with alcohol – nobody the wiser. Great Blog by Anne, appreciate the depth.
Alcohol has never agreed with me but I would be a social drinker just to fit in and it seemed at the time that I could not relax or enjoy myself without having a glass to give me confidence, but the next few days would horrendous due to the detox. So when you write about alcohol being a poison Anne this I can believe, as anything that puts the body into that much distress can’t be good for it.
In Australia too Anne, with have the strong association of alcohol consumption with sport. Winning or losing it seems must be either celebrated or marked with alcohol. Which begs the question as you ask Anne, why do we need alcohol to intensify, prolong or change our emotions. Why are so invested in competitive sport to deliver emotions or states of being to cover our own internal lack?
Indeed Anne, I can relate to a long history of linking playing and watching sport and drinking. As if playing a game of something did not deliver that feeling of belonging or fitting in for very long and had to be heightened by the drinking of large amounts of alcohol.
What a great subject to discuss. I find it amazing that alcohol and sport seem to be inextricably linked in our society and it is considered completely normal. When you explore it rather than taking it for granted it really is ridiculous and makes no sense. I wonder how many other behaviours we human beings regard as normal are in fact far from that and are truly harming to us and the lovely body we live within.
‘ we both knew that whatever it was that we had to resolve, was something that could not be left un-dealt with, otherwise it would just come back and ‘haunt’ us again, be it in this relationship or be it in the next one we would move onto in case of divorce.’
This is so true Henrietta, we can only take with us into the next whatever is not resolved.
For some and like you Anne one could not be without the other…it doesn’t make sense but when your in it it does all seem normal and the after affects are just something you have to put up with for the fun and acceptance you are gaining. With the support from Universal Medicine I started to work on my self love which I knew deep down was something that I was craving. Here I started to let go of the need to be accepted and things that I used to choose no longer are in the picture and I don’t even think about them any more
I looked on alcohol when watching sport as like a reward, something to look forward to, which now seems a bit crazy as where is the reward in hurting myself. The actual reward comes when I take care of myself and that could never happen by drinking. The emptiness feeling is a huge factor but perhaps not one that many are ready to honestly admit exists, I know for me I would never have considered it, I just thought I like to drink, I like the taste, but I knew my body didn’t and ultimately that became more important. Thanks Anne, lots in your blog to consider, particularly how even when our team wins it never really makes us happy, which is a big question in itself, why then do we place so much emphasis on winning and is it actually really a victory if it doesn’t alter how we feel in a positive way long term.
I love how you share here the potency of sport and exercise and how one game can effect whole countries. That is a strong force at play or should I say ‘at war.’ Well worth pondering on.
Reading your blog Anne makes me realise that I have not ever felt deeply into why I drank. I can come up with many ‘set’ answers about not wanting to feel, but now I realise that I have not gone any deeper as I am still avoiding a deeper need in me. It feels as though it was initially to fit in with others – and then once I began it became a need or compulsion to drink more, as though enough was never enough to dull my deep discontent with who I was and how uncomfortable I was with being in the world. When ‘we drown our sorrows’ in alcohol we are just putting our feelings on hold to be dealt with at a later date – things always have a way of coming back to revisit us.
I remember also joking how quickly I would get drunk on a tiny amount of alcohol after a race. My body was exhausted, dehydrated and craving sugar so no wonder a few sips of beer would give me a ‘high.’ I can feel I have come such a long way from needing alcohol or sport in my life. Gentle exercise and being me are now my natural high, that high being a steadiness and joy-filled way of being that requires no stimulants or escape routes.
It is a strange drug. One moment it induces euphoria and excitement, and the next, deep depression. Regardless of what effect it has, one thing is for certain. It certainly changes your state of being – makes you less responsible and more inclined to commit acts that will negatively affect other people. The crazy thing is that as a society we seem to accept it as some sort of excuse if you do something “under the influence”, as though that should be a mitigating factor. Whilst it is certainly a factor and acknowledgement that when you drink alcohol, you are no longer “you”, it is also a form of acceptance that is obviously prevalent because as a society we have a vested interest in not seeing the truth about alcohol. Otherwise we would have to look at our own relationship with it.
Anne, I agree, there is such a strong association between alcohol and sport. It was something I never questioned during my days of competitive running and when i look back now I can see there was an arrogance there. I thought that because I worked hard (ie pounded the hard streets for hours and hours) it was justified that I also play hard (drink copious amounts of lager). The truth is that both were my escape from a life that was sad and empty.
Your final sentence Anne, “for once we understand why it is we do something, we can more easily let it go”.
This was true for me with my choices to let things go . I knew when I was young and the drinking was going on around me, that the abuse I could feel happening was not the way to be using alcohol. It was not long before I was joining in with my peers rather than being the one looking after them. In my first serious relationship at 20yrs of age, after 4 months we gave up alcohol together after my suggestion, because I could see and feel how destructive it was, but it did not last a forever thing. Over the next 25 yrs I had many times when I would not drink alcohol for long periods of time (12 months long breaks) and did a one month cleanse every year, but still I went back to it, which I put down to not having a full understanding of why we choose it in the first place. Thanks to the very first presentations from Serge Bendhayon of Universal Medicine that I listened to, I completely understood my reasons for using alcohol and it was gone from my life overnight.
Although I was never really into watching sport it was a very normal and accepted thing to comb sports with alcohol. Now i can see the irony of it, as if when we choose something we perceive as healthy we get to then balance that out with a reward that is not healthy. On the bigger scale though what it shows me is how much behaviour and ritual we have i our societies that we never ever take a step back form to observe and discern if they make any sense at all. We have been so taken by them that not only do we not have the space for this, we have come to defend them with all we have.
There is such a strong consciousness that says having a good time needs to be accompanied by alcohol. And this is what the industry is forever selling to us. Simply being with each other is not enough (and possibly quite confronting to how we truly are with each other) and so we need ‘props’ to feel good and make it a party: food and alcohol, that mask the fact that we are disconnected and not able to be truly joyful because we hold an emptiness inside.
This makes so much sense, Anne, yet common sense seems to go out the window when we consume a harmful substance because it is our coping mechanism of choice. As you shared, the important thing is to be honest about what we are struggling to cope with in that moment, and allow ourselves to feel the vulnerability of that rather than mask it or numb it with intoxication. The same goes for all coping mechanisms, even healthy ones like excess exercising – we’ve got to get underneath to what is really going on inside.
Having been a keen sports player and spectator, the force applied to one’s body is easily felt to be harming, yet we champion this to be character building. Yet, deep down we all feel the harm. Both players of rough sports and spectators use alcohol to numb that feeling.
Anne – what a great blog which really does open the lid on drinking and sports. It made me instantly think of a massive marathon in Australia that people run each year, and at the end of it, in my local area – there would be a huge ‘celebration’ – so people would run for 3 hrs and then go straight to the pub for the rest of the day. And it was absolutely painted as a reward. The cold beer at the end of a long run was absolute victory.
But what we don’t seem to consider is that the marathon is harmful to our bodies, and the alcohol is a poison to finish it off with. It seems we have got into an arrogant state where if we are not instantly feeling the ill effects of alcohol, we ignore it and put the importance on a cold drink with close friends. But where is our responsibility of being honest and really listening to our bodies. It is blogs like this that can make us think twice.
Anne when I drank I was a complete nightmare, a risk to myself and friends, they would often fear going out with me if I were to drink. Yet we all still accepted it as normal. As someone that is not into their sports I’ve not really considered the link between drink and sport, I would normally associate sport with “fitness” but the very fact that so much alcohol (aka poison) is consumed shows something is not adding up. I do now wonder, is it the sport or the pub drinking that people like about football so much?
Alcohol is viewed as such a normal part of our society. When I made the choice to stop drinking alcohol due to the damage I could feel it was doing to myself and family I was questioned by others why I would want to stop drinking? I was asked ‘Whats wrong with You?’ Through this experience I can feel how drinking alcohol is so widely accepted and also how when others see someone that is making a different choice how it challenges the way in which they are living and the attacks come.
I remember a local gym/sporting facility asking me to comment on the introduction of a bar inside the facility. I opposed it and made suggestions why, but the for v’s the against were overwhelming. As I understand it, sponsorship had a lot to do with it, need I say more.
“It is only when we understand why it is we keep choosing a certain behaviour that we want to, and can start to, make true changes.” This is very true what you share here Anne, without questioning our behaviours or simply resorting to reacting and avoiding the behaviour or it’s trigger then nothing changes. But over time when not dealt with, these behaviours that go against and ware down our health and vitality it gets to a point where we have to listen. Once we do listen (by our own steps forward to understand or being made to stop and look) the quality of that process of change going forward can be governed by our initial step – the choice to understand or the forced to stop. I have found that stepping forward to understand to be a much lighter path than the being made to stop and look which is much more arduous and painful. Asking questions and being open to why we do what we do is a dose of good medicine!
True, Leigh – it’s when we allow ourselves that curiosity with ourselves as to why we do things, and not criticism, that we can start to have a relationship with the behaviour we want to change.
When you look at it like this sport and drinking have one big thing in common – self disregard. Sport becomes an occasion which makes this acceptable and alcohol steps in because of this and its effects on those drinking it.
If alcohol was not associated with sport like it is, I think (I personally believe) that sport would not be enjoyed by so many people, because it is really just a game for entertainment and distraction. The real harm of competitiveness, and the roughness of playing sport would be exposed.
I had never really thought about it before but it is really silly actually to do something that is apparently healthy for our body, working out, and then drinking alcohol which is known to not be healthy for our bodies. So I like your point that there must be something going on in sport that we do not want to feel, and try to avoid feeling by numbing ourselves with alcohol, in a sound mind it would just not make sense to combine the two.
Anne, this is a great article, reading it I can feel how alcohol and sport as so linked, I used to play women’s football and we would always go to the pub afterwards to drink alcohol and eat pizza, this was very numbing, for me this was to not feel how hard the football had been on my body, and to make myself feel better for not being particularly ‘good’ at football and to fit in with a group, at the time this seemed ‘normal’ as this is what all the teams did, it’s great to have this awareness.
Thank you Ann for exposing so clearly what is really going on around alcohol and why this unhealthy habit has became normal in our society. It’s surprising the negative impact that the alcohol has in our bodies and how we deny what we already know inside of us. I find this kind of conversation so necessary to say “Hey wait a sec, maybe there is another way to live where we can be honest, loving and caring with our bodies?” and invite people to wonder about their behaviours.
Governments have toyed with legalising cannabis as a tax revenue, just another cash cow like alcohol and cigarettes. That becomes a vicious cycle that makes the cost of health care rise, because increasing the tax doesn’t seem to slow down the use of either. I had spent 20 years in the forces and worked hard, and to party hard was the theme. Alcohol and cigarettes had no tax on them so where was the incentive to stop or cut down? 15 years ago I developed a liver problem that could have been caused by alcohol consumption, so I was asked to stop drinking for six months to see if it would fix the condition. I had no problem quitting drinking; I just found other ways to numb myself. After the six month abstention I returned to the doctor and asked if stopping drinking had any effect and I replied Yes, I saved a shed load of money but had no effect on the condition. Why do we use alcohol as a way to celebrate when all it does is dumb us down?
An honest account of alcohol and sport and the effects it really has on us all. The harm and altered states in our bodies and all outside influences really does play havoc with us in so many more ways than is generally accepted and claimed and the truth is avoided at such a cost . Once we bring honesty to our behaviours it simply makes sense and allows us understanding and to let go of them beautifully, and this is very powerful and empowering for us too.
Great to call out the link between sport and alcohol – especially relevant at this time when the Euros football matches are on. Competition always leaves one side losing – and those associated effects. The winning side becomes euphoric – but for how long? Until they need their next ‘fix’ so as not to feel the emptiness inside…. Alcohol is used by both sides, one to commiserate their loss and drown their sorrows and the other to celebrate. Alcohol is a poison – so how crazy is that?!
Sue thats exactly what I thought, that I was shy, not worth much but give me a drink and the “real” me came out. How opposite to the truth was that thought! My actions certainly were not true!
Anne what you share is considered so normal it is not something we usually question. It’s true that sport and alcohol go hand in hand which in a way doesn’t make sense as sport is “promoted” as being healthy and good for us. Why would we take part in something healthy only to do something unhealthy afterwards? In a way it is more understandable that spectators of a sport may choose to drink as a way of wanting to let go of pent up stress and emotion, but the truth is alcohol only dulls or exacerbates this more intensely… so I guess we kid ourselves when we reach for that pint for some relief.
“This effect appears to be exacerbated by alcohol because, in my experience, alcohol can bring a false ‘high’ or ‘feel good’ factor – it is false because your state of being at the time is altered by alcohol.” People who drink often think that it gives them confidence and they can be ‘more themselves’ – but the opposite is true – because of their altered state of being, as you say.
It is crazy that something like sport that is supposed to be ‘healthy’ for us has such a close association with alcohol, a recognised poison, and until just over 10 years ago with tobacco advertising and sponsorship which was commonplace at many sporting events. Similarly confectionary manufacturers provide funding for sport in schools thus associating themselves with something healthy and linking themselves in people’s minds to a healthy activity as a ploy to maximise sales. Thank you for exposing the illogicality of this behaviour and your call to bring honesty to our behaviours that do not truly serve us.
You raise some very good points and questions here Anne. Growing up I played rugby and drank a lot of beer and so did just about all the blokes I knew, it’s just what we did part of being a kiwi; it took leaving New Zealand to realise rugby was not such an important thing and now that I don’t drink I can see that a lot of sport I did watch was just an excuse to go to the pub and drink. Take away the alcohol and I lost interest in the sport. So the two hand in hand were just a distraction from the fact that life wasn’t all that I knew it could be.
That’s a really good point Kevin when you took away the alcohol, you lost interest in sport. This shows that the real interest is the alcohol and not the sport, so maybe banning all alcohol at sports events would change how we view sport. There would probably be a big drop in the amount of people that supported games such as Rugby, Football, horse racing and many other recreational sports.
Either that or a lot of people complaining that there is no alcohol! Some football matches ban alcohol -and rightly so look at the history there wth hooliganism and violence.
Alcohol was banned from football grounds in Scotland in the 80’s due to violence and yet there are calls from some for it to be introduced. The link between drinking and sport runs deep and even with the ban there are for many drinks before and after the match. I remember as a kid being around men who had drunk before the game and were in the crowds making their way to the match. My overriding memory as a 7 year old was that it didn’t feel that safe and was pretty unpleasant to be around.
What you write about “Take away the alcohol and I lost interest in the sport.”, Kevin, reminds me of when I was young and if I didn’t have any sweets to go with the movie, I lost interest in the movie. It goes to show that we need something to numb us out, to distract us from being present where we are, in what we do, because if we didn’t have the distaction we wouldn’t be there in the first place, – we would feel how much damage it (sports and other things) does to the body.
Great observations Kev, having lived in NZ for a while I can see how absorbed the country is in sport, and how much its identity is wrapped up in the rugby team, to such an extent that when it loses the whole country collectively questions it self worth. That to me is a destructive association to let run, for really it is just a silly game when we stop and consider it and should never be a determinant of how anyone feels. Why be invested in something you cant control for you can never be fulfilled, no matter how many world cups, medals or trophies your team wins.
Interesting blog Anne, there is a pride associated with certain sports such as Rugby Football cricket, the more popular the sport the more it seems to attract alcohol. For example alcohol is not associated with swimming or running. It makes me wonder the more that we gather together in an emptiness, seeking fulfilment in some way, the bigger the collective consciousness of emptiness and the need for alcohol to numb this energy.The stakes are higher in the bigger games and the need for a team to do well is fuelled by a lot more people, especially when it comes to one nation against another
interesting observation Alison. The energy in a football/ rugby or team sport is very aggresive with 11 people going against each other and a whole stadium of people going against each other, with much in common with a gladiator fight.
At one time I believed I would never wish or be able to completely abstain from drinking alcohol. However, like you Anne, once I was truly honest and accepting of the fact of what alcohol does to the body and why I was drinking, the desire and need fell away without any struggle or regret. It is now 10 years since I had an alcoholic drink and feel so much more alive in these years than I ever did while drinking
Alcohol a Class B drug. Wow. So all of us who claimed they never took drugs were lying.
Well said Anne, the more truth and realisation we bring to what we do the more real we can be about why do it. After all alcohol is a poison for the body so why would we want to poison our body? What are we actually getting out of it? By delving deeper we see that alcohol is not the problem just an end result of the way we have been living.
Exactly – alcohol is just the means to not feel how we have been living and treating ourselves.
To practice most of the sports on offer today we have to disconnect more from our bodies. Even “health” sport like Hatha-Yoga is not an exception from this. Since disconnection is one of the greatest pains to experience it is no wonder that the propensity to alcohol rises with sport.
I fully agree wit you Anne, that only when we are honest with ourselves that we can let go of the need to drink alcohol. To me it was a need, either to numb myself or to fit in and being part of the team. But I know I knew that alcohol was not good for my body as I have exclaimed many times after having drunk to much while awakening the next morning and I vowed to never drink alcohol again.
I can’t remember ever drinking after playing sport, I could not think of anything worse. Don’t get me wrong though the way I played sport was so hard and abusive to myself it was no different to drinking alcohol.
Could it also be that alcohol plays such a big part in sport and around sport because we are numbing ourselves to the fact that we have been fooled into believing it is okay to compete, bully, bring each other down or crush another team all in the name of sport and good fun?
You are right Aimee. When we really do sport with complete intensity, we are so exhausted that the sugar in alcoholic drinks doesn’t help but the alcohol itself actually hurts.
When we need alcohol to feel ourselves, we truly do not know who we are.
Not only do we not know who we are when we drink, we actually do not express what is there to be said because we are not ourselves when we are drunk.
So true, and what then comes out of peoples mouth is not them speaking at all – how frightening is that when we truly consider that another energy takes over when we are drunk, and does and says all sort of things we could never have imagined our selves say or do!
Very true Adele, I grew up with the saying that you would become more ‘yourself’ if you would drink a glass of alcohol. Me being quite shy thought that it was true but looking back now after not having drunk alcohol for a while I can see it did not work, I might have been more talkative but not more myself. What helped me was reconnecting to myself in daily life and not drinking a poison and class b drug.
When we need alcohol to feel better, we feel truly bad.
This is true. If alcohol (it is a poison) is the pick me up then how low has the body been let to fall to.
Yes, the idea is conceptually quite hilarious: We need a poison to feel better.
What we choose to eat and drink, the choice itself is governed by the movement within and expressed on the outside. If we choose alcohol after a sports event, the choice of alcohol which we know will bring us to an altered state of natural being, has come from us already being in an altered state of our natural being, could this then be the state we are already in from sport-playing? And this could go back a long way.
Well presented and I feel what you say is very true Adele. Sport is already being in separation by the fact that it means we must put ourself against another and push ourselves, our bodies to win.
There is a picture in this world which says, “You are only a part of us if you fit into us”, but this picture is not true. We are all connected to each other as a unified whole no matter what our choices are, and therefore, choosing what is true for us and our bodies (not drinking alcohol for example), even though it may not be the choice of the majority of the world, would not make us not a part of each other. But when we make choices that are not true to us, we are already in separation with our bodies, so no matter how “together” we seem in the world, the world is still not in true unity.
This is true, Adele. I’ve observed – even in my drinking days – that if I order first, people usually follow with the same. I remember a few years ago ordering (first) a soft drink at a dinner- lo and behold so did many others. And then you realise that togetherness you talk about doesn’t have anything to do with booze, it’s just an excuse/reason for us to be together.