What Does Alcohol Do?
Alcohol is a poison that shortens your life considerably. It is addictive. It will destroy your immune system and impair your concentration and judgement. It will take away your confidence, your courage, your ability to relax and your enjoyment of life. It will embarrass you on occasions and make you vomit. In your life time it might cost you £100,000 or more.
All the above is true – so it raises the question: why do we drink alcohol in the first place? The question ‘what’s your poison?’ is a more accurate description than many of us realise. If we were to drink neat alcohol, a relatively small amount would kill us. So what do we do? We flavour it to make it more palatable and water it down and then drink it sufficiently often so that it kills us more slowly.
It is true that most people who drink feel no need to cut down their drinking – and for those of us who do feel a need to cut down, we can’t, it is too late. What a conundrum! So what benefits do the people who are drinking ‘normally’ receive?
Is the taste enjoyable?
People think that alcohol is enjoyable, it relaxes them and gives them confidence. Is the taste enjoyable? The taste of neat alcohol certainly isn’t, that is why it is flavoured. Does it relax you and give you confidence? Perhaps yes but we did not need alcohol to relax when we were children – we could enjoy a party then. Alcohol can certainly make people feel stressed and eventually it takes away all confidence, that is a certainty. Does it quench your thirst? No, alcohol dehydrates you! If you feel that a pint of beer actually quenches your thirst, you are being mislead, it is the water in the beer that quenches your thirst, not the alcohol.
Alcohol makes you thirsty!
That is why after several pints or several other alcoholic drinks, you can wake up with the bottom of your mouth as dry as the bottom of a bird cage and with a raging headache. Then you know that what you really need is a large glass of water. If you were to complete a long distance run, you would rarely need more than a pint of water to quench your thirst. However, if you were to have a pint of lager, you would probably still be thirsty and then drink another – and another. Because alcohol makes you thirsty!
Alcohol also inebriates you rather than relaxes you
It deadens your senses and inhibitions. If you were to be offered the opportunity to just be hit on the head and be knocked out that way in a short cut – rather than go through the embarrassment of letting yourself down, getting into all sorts of scrapes (in the name of having fun!) – would you take it? Would you deaden your senses with pills like valium (some would, I know)?
Most of us wouldn’t, especially if we discovered that we did not need alcohol to relax and enjoy ourselves but saw it instead as something which deadens our senses.
If you have an alcohol or drug related problem, please call 01462 851414 for free and confidential advice and help.
