Recently I was pondering on why I hate alcohol. I realised there were personal, societal and religious reasons for this hate and that they all stemmed from how much I love people and how much I hate the damage alcohol causes to individuals, families, organisations and society itself.
Personal
I hate alcohol because:
- When I used to drink alcohol, I turned into a completely different person – and I hated that person. I became loud, silly, often argumentative and sometimes even sexist.
- When I used to drink alcohol, I hated how I lost control of myself and gave in to having sex with men I hardly knew. I was even raped while I was under the influence of alcohol.
- Now that I no longer drink alcohol I hate the effect I can see, smell and feel that alcohol has on others. They become different people entirely and, although sometimes it can be funny watching others being as silly as I used to be, in reality it is not funny at all – it is very sad.
- I hate how alcohol detrimentally affects my relationship with my husband, whom I adore. I find it hard to be with him as he is not his normal gentle, tender self when he drinks alcohol. This affects my connection with him.
I love my alcohol free life now. It feels very different when I attend events – yes, even parties – where there is no alcohol. I had a gathering recently without alcohol and it was so joy-full being able to talk to people without the influence and interference of alcohol – everyone simply stayed themselves and so we had true and meaningful conversations and loving connections. Everyone said how much they had enjoyed it.
Similarly, with other gatherings or when I am with people where there is no alcohol present I have observed a much deeper level of conversation and discussions and everyone seems so much at ease with themselves and each other. I am therefore able to connect with people at a much deeper level and I love feeling their essence (who they truly are inside) and how we are all equal in our essence. Everything appears so simple and loving and time seems to slow down somehow.
Societal
I hate alcohol because:
- Alcohol is a big factor in why men and women are in prison, especially for violence charges. It is estimated that about 80-90% of crime occurs under the influence of alcohol and drugs or is committed to feed an addiction (1).
- Alcohol is a huge contributor to road accidents and the consequent clogging up of our hospitals and the endangering of others’ lives, including those of our medical personnel.
- Alcohol fuels domestic violence, which is largely against women and children – domestic violence is escalating in New Zealand, which has the worst rate of family and intimate-partner violence in the world, even though it is estimated 80% of incidents are not reported (2).
- Alcohol causes arguments, brawls and altercations, between friends, family members and strangers.
- Alcohol can be a big factor in marriage split-ups. It can cause financial strain and can lead to violence, bullying and neglect.
- Alcohol related issues cost the country one heck of a lot of money – would this money not be more wisely spent on health, education and reducing poverty?
- Alcohol causes many health issues including liver disease, heart disease and some cancers. The recent May 2018 expert report released by the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research on the link between diet, nutrition, physical activity and cancer found that there was strong evidence linking alcoholic drinks to an increased risk of breast, colorectal, stomach, mouth, pharynx, larynx and oesophageal cancers (3). As such, not only do these health issues cause much pain, grief and stress to sufferers and their families, and their employees/employers, they are also a huge strain on our health system.
Imagine what our society would be like if we didn’t have alcohol?
Many families would have more money to spend on essentials such as food, power, clothes and rent, which could improve their quality of life. Not as many school children would go to school hungry or be poorly dressed for the cold weather. We would have way less people in prison, which would not only mean more money in the national and regional budgets available for health, education and reducing poverty, but would also mean way less men, women and children detrimentally affected by being in prison. Not as many women and children would be injured, maimed or killed through beating and not as many people would be subject to psychological, emotional and verbal abuse. We would feel safer in our homes and on our streets. Our emergency medical staff would not be subjected to abuse by drunk people in hospital emergency departments, and our health budget would not need to include the huge amounts set aside to treat alcohol-related illnesses and diseases. Our police would not be put in as much danger, nor would they have to deal daily with drunken people or with domestic violence – one call every five minutes in New Zealand (2).
Without alcohol we would have more chance of returning to being who we truly are, living to our potential and with solid purpose in our lives. Our relationships could improve immensely without the influence of alcohol because they would be based on truth and love, without the damage caused by alcohol. We may even be more kind and loving to all we meet and our organisations would be more caring as a result.
In short, our societies would be far more loving, kinder, equal and inclusive of all, and our lives far more joyful.
Religious
I hate alcohol because:
- Drinking wine as part of communion in many churches is a bastardisation of the life and teachings of Yeshua (Jesus). After Yeshua commenced his teachings he would not have drunk any substance that was poisonous for his body. He loved himself and all of humanity too much.
- Drinking wine as part of communion in many churches is a bastardisation of the Last Supper, which symbolised the letting go of food and drink which does not honour and support our bodies.
- Because some institutionalised religions sanction drinking and some sects even manufacture alcohol, it normalises and enables the drinking of alcohol by their congregations.
Now I’m not perfect, so sometimes some reaction creeps in when I think about alcohol. But mostly I hate alcohol because I love humanity so much and I hate to see and feel the huge harm caused by alcohol.
You often hear the old “moderation in all things” argument as an excuse to keep drinking alcohol, i.e. “I only have one or two drinks a day – where is the harm in that?” The harm is that alcohol, a substance that is poisonous to the human body and to societies, becomes ‘normal.’ Children see their parents and other adults drink alcohol, so they drink it when they grow up. Indeed, many people believe they cannot ‘celebrate’ major milestones without it and so there is often a lot of pressure on everyone to drink to “help them celebrate.” So many end up drinking alcohol, not because they want to or because they like the taste (remember your first taste of alcohol? Yuk!): more so to ‘be social’ or to ‘fit in’ or to be “one of the boys.”
But… would you give a baby even a ‘moderate’ amount of alcohol? If not, why not? Let’s be absolutely honest: we all know deep down that alcohol is harming us and harming our societies.
Is it not time that we de-normalised the drinking of alcohol? There will come a time when the harm caused by alcohol will no longer be sustainable. A future without any alcohol is coming – how about we bring that time forward?
By Anonymous
References:
- co.nz. (2018). Qualified addiction counsellors not wanted in NZ prisons | Pundit. [online] Available at: https://www.pundit.co.nz/content/qualified-addiction-counsellors-not-wanted-in-nz-prisons [Accessed 10 Aug. 2018].
- Leask, A. (2016). Family violence incidents increasing. [online] NZ Herald. Available at: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11674698 [Accessed 10 Aug. 2018].
- org. (2018). [online] Available at: https://www.wcrf.org/sites/default/files/Summary-third-expert-report.pdf [Accessed 10 Aug. 2018].
Further Reading:
The Abuse of Alcohol – The True Harm
Giving up Alcohol
Shopper Dockets & Alcohol Abuse – Is There Such A Thing As Responsible Service Of Alcohol?
445 Comments
I hate alcohol but it hasn’t always been that way. Although in my younger days I was quite a moderate drinker I did have times when I didn’t know when to stop and found myself dancing on the table a few times (!) waking up feeling awful and taking a whole day to get over it. I expect many of us have experienced that one! I used it as a crutch when I become single, giving me confidence but more often than not, getting me into trouble and doing things I later regretted. I used alcohol to fill the emptiness not realising how much it was poisoning my body. I guess that’s what we’re doing, using alcohol to numb and distract ourselves from feeling ourselves and what’s going on in the world. I guess alcohol will still be around until we wake up to ourselves and deal with our hurts.
I met up with a work colleague recently for supper and I noticed they were not themselves from being a very sweet and gentle man who adores his wife and children, loves to work on his allotment at the weekends growing and tending to his veggies. His whole persona had changed he was very loud, aggressive in his manner and swore a lot. This change in personality was due to alcohol I guessed he had been drinking alcohol all afternoon and when in a hot country the alcohol seems to have a greater effect on our bodies a little goes a long way. It definitely changes how we are and how we respond to our environment. I wonder why alcohol makes people so aggressive and lose control of their senses?
I’ve experience that too Mary, people changing their ‘persona’ before my very eyes. I guess it’s because we’re missing something, but we have forgotten what that something is! Alcohol can affect us in many ways, for example gin was renowned for making people depressed, and I believe that in the early 1900’s it was known as mothers ruin! Never again will I touch alcohol as I can see the damage that can be done and I’m not sure I have the answer to your question Mary but could it be that alcohol allows that part of us, that part that isn’t our true self, to play with us and doesn’t care how it goes about it or the affects it has on others.
Finding a replacement for our lost way of living has been such a Joy and considering that we are all searching for the same thing then as has been nominated drugs of every description should be eliminated from our societies.
I was chatting to a builder recently saying that I had recently been to a party where there was no alcohol and what fun we had all had. They were quite surprised but then said they had decided to stop drinking for 30 days and we agreed that alcohol was like a drug but as yet unclassified and that it was hugely damaging to our bodies. We know all this but we still continue to consume it so my question has to be why? Why is it we are so unintelligent when it comes to alcohol?
I feel we DO know the affect that alcohol will have on us, but choose to ignore it, and if that were the case it would mean that we are super intelligent, but choosing to ignore the truth. We use alcohol as a coping mechanism, a way of self-medicating.
I hate alcohol for what it did to me personally, I also hate alcohol for what we have allowed it to do to our society.
I agree Anonymous, I bought a Soup maker recently and was unpacking the contents of the box when a card fell out of the box. I assumed it was the guarantee, so put it to one side and carried on unpacking. When I looked at the card it was not the guarantee card but a redeemable 50.00 gift voucher for wine as a thank you for buying the manufactures product!
This showed me that alcohol is now such an accepted part of our society and a much needed crutch to support us to get through the day. It’s as common place now as buying a bar of chocolate.
If there wasn’t a call for alcohol, alcohol wouldn’t exist. We’re using it to numb ourselves so until we stop drinking alcohol and dealing with what needs to be dealt with, the call for alcohol will be there.
In hospitality theres a thing called ‘bottomless brunch’, where I worked it was £20 for 2 hours of as much as you could drink alcohol and thats what people came for, to get absolutely plastered. Often there were a lot of birthday parties that came for this drink offer. I remember being in a lot of reaction at first when I started but quickly realised that me reacting and judging people was just as harmful if not more so than what the alcohol would be doing. Judgment is a silent attack you can’t physically see but energetically it’s happening.
Spot on Leigh. Just hold them in steadiness and love and they will feel it by your reflection. Much more powerful.
Today in a PSHE lesson some Y9 pupils very easily identified the reasons why people do or do not choose to drink. With this clear wisdom we all have at this age it is a wonder that we choose to drink at all. So what happens to this wisdom between the ages of 13 and young adulthood when the activity of drinking can intensify? It doesn’t really make sense, does it?
We have normalized alcohol and do not want to see the damage and harm it is having on the young and old alike. None of the statistics seem to have any effect at all. We are totally blind because we want the relief it gives us of not dealing with life.
Realising that to truly hate something we have to be coming from love first, supports in the claiming that it is ok to reject utterly anything which prevents humanity from truly know who we are.
Our way of communication get lost and transformed when we drink and we also eliminate our ability to appreciate our essences and the same Loving nature that is in everyone so we are blinded to ours and everyone else’s ability to be connected to our Souls.
What you have written Greg resonates with me, Alcohol is a source of sugar and we use all sorts of sugars to race our bodies so they cannot connect to our loving nature which resides naturally within us all. If we are disconnected to ourselves then we are disconnected to everyone.
Absolutely Mary, sugar should be on the list of drugs that need to be eliminated from our society.
As with most things in society we appear to be blind to the ill effects of our choices, preferring instead to protect and justify them. At what point does the straw break the camel’s back?
Drinking alcohol, which is a poison in the body, often leads to accepting other poisonous and damaging substances. Self-care and well-being laced with alcohol do not go together.
We cannot have a firm foundation of self love if we are compromising ourselves in certain areas. It’s not just the literal poison that is ingested into the body with alcohol, there is an energetic fall out too. But in abusing ourselves in this way we leave an opening that allows more abuse to come in and this we cannot control no matter how much we think we can.
Interestingly I was with a group of friends having lunch and it was the men who were drinking nonalcoholic drinks and the women who were drinking wine. I was blown away to observe men in a group discussing Football happily with a nonalcoholic drink in their hand. It seems that one of the men was competing in an ironman run and so hadn’t drunk alcohol for quite some time so all the men in his friendship group stopped too. This shows me that it only takes one person to bring about a change.
That’s interesting Mary, especially as we only usually associate teenagers as having peer pressure and start drinking or smoking to please others but here we have grown adults choosing to take notice of just one person.
I hate alcohol because it is used as an excuse – an excuse to sleep with someone you wouldn’t have – an excuse to argue and shout at someone – so many excuses -so much harm.
Sure alcohol is used as an excuse but most of us don’t need an excuse to behave badly, it’s just what we do.
As a society we are full of excuses, however surely we are all responsible for the choices we make. Before we decide to sleep with someone a choice is made then there’s the action.
It feels to me that what you are alluding to Annoymous is the dropping of moral standards in our society which are very low at the moment. Is it possible that when people give up and withdraw from life so that there is a palpable feeling of ‘whatever’ I don’t care attitude then our acceptable standards will drop because no one is prepared to uphold them which leads to a collapse in society and we all suffer the consequences.
I could substitute the word sugar for many of the sentences you have written here, it has the same hooking claws and it serves a similar purpose. Deeply loving humanity can support the process to unravel ‘why’ in the dysfunctional behaviour.
We rarely want to admit the impact of our behaviour when we are under the influence of alcohol and yet statistics are very telling. Therefore it would be worth considering why we need the alcohol, how it serves us, because until we do we will not be able to walk away from its alluring influence.
Oh yes fantastic article exposing the what this ‘harmless’ substance is really.
I’ve seen a fair few articles in the news of younger generations consuming less alcohol than their parents’ generations. Alcohol-free bars and clubs and other places are still considered a bit hipster in London where I live but they are growing. However, as one vice is replaced others the root of why we drank, don’t drink and do something else instead, needs to be looked at honestly.
We had some engineers out recently to sort out a water leak they arrived very early in the morning and as I was the only person up and about I made them some tea. And one of the men asked me out of the blue if I drank alcohol I replied not for years I stopped because I didn’t like feeling so out of sorts the next day as it took me a while to get going. He said he had a similar experience it took him 30 years but he feels so much healthier for stopping he said he hated having meaningless conversations, rambling on about nothing because at the time he could not speak coherently and waking up the next day feeling crap. He also said he hates eating chocolate because he feels bloated and tired after eating it but cannot seem to stop. It was a really interesting conversation to be having so early in the morning I am noticing a trend in people giving up drinking alcohol because they do not like the effects it has on their bodies and how they want to find out if anyone has done the same thing, sort of a pack energy type of thing.
“Alcohol is a big factor in why men and women are in prison, especially for violence charges. It is estimated that about 80-90% of crime occurs under the influence of alcohol and drugs or is committed to feed an addiction”
I have met amazing people now locked up in prison because of actions they took whilst under the influence of alcohol. As a society it is time to ask the question – is it worth it?
Alcohol is still seen by many as harmless yet this could not be further from the truth.
Yep, I hate alcohol, I saw my dad drunk too many times and my mum annoyed by it, then chose a husband with a drinking problem that he can’t control. His behaviour is altered- argumentative at first, then verbally abusive. It causes so much harm, family issues, broken marriages, anxiety, depression, dementia, impotence etc. alcohol is also on the world health organisation list for a known carcinogen. It’s a shame it’s so socially accepted and abused!
I agree with you that alcohol does so much damage not only to the person drinking it but to everyone else in the vicinity and the after effects are just as unpleasant. I had to walk away from someone who was still very hung over from a late night drinking session as they were very rude and aggressive which was un-called for. So I left them to sober up and when I saw them some hours later it was obvious they couldn’t remember how badly they had behaved. I feel that alcohol and humans just don’t mix it’s a deadly cocktail pun intended.
Alcohol does so much damage, I know as I used to drink loads. I stoped when I realised the harm mentally and physically it was causing. There is no safe amount of alcohol.
I never enjoyed drinking alcohol, so it was not a big part of my life; and I had a loud and clear message to stop drinking in my early forties, if I had one drink I would lose my balance and co-ordination, a very weird feeling, a bit like getting off a big roller coaster ride when younger, so my body clearly told me no alcohol.
Yes, we are crazy human beings, we use our savings to poison ourselves, and at the same time frequently behave in atrocious ways whilst under the influence of alcohol.