by Jason Vale
Not only am I suggesting that alcohol does not provide any genuine courage or confidence but I am categorically stating that it does the complete opposite. Alcohol destroys your courage and your confidence and this is the most damaging part of the whole con trick. One of the biggest advantages of being free is getting that true confidence and courage back.
When you see somebody of five foot nothing and built like Kate Moss taking on Arnold Schwarzenegger after they have had a drink, does anybody think for one second that they are being genuinely courageous? No, everybody but the addict thinks they are stupid. Alcohol removes our natural fears so we feel a false sense of confidence and courage. If you do not have any fear, you simply cannot be courageous. A courageous act can only happen when there is fear to overcome. How can you have any genuine courage if you don’t feel fear? When you see Tom having a go at the waiter after having a drink, do you look back in admiration and say, ‘I never realised that Tom was such a confident man’ or do you want to apologise profusely and say, ‘Please ignore Tom, it’s just the drink talking’?
The truth is that the person on the outside is never fooled; however the addict, in this case Tom, is. Even when Tom wakes up, he is still fooled into believing that the way he felt the previous night was genuine. So an easy way for Tom to gain confidence and courage is to drink alcohol again. The problem is that it is all false. Some people question whether it actually matters if the feeling is false because as long as the addict believes it to be real, then there is no harm in it. Yes there is. There is tremendous harm in removing your natural fears to give yourself a false sense of courage and confidence for two very important reasons.
First, when we remove our natural fears, we become unprotected and vulnerable to all kinds of danger. We disable our most powerful survival mechanism. We need access to all our senses in order to react at a moment’s notice. If we are relaxing and a door slams, we jump. We are meant to jump as who knows what danger there might be. Someone relaxing on alcohol will often be unaware of danger as their senses are numbed.
There are products commonly referred to as ‘date rape’ drugs. These drugs put the intended victim into a zombified state so they do not know what they are doing or where they are. All their senses become numb and the natural fears that exist to protect against such circumstances are removed. Sound familiar? We need our natural protective fears. Without them we put ourselves in the position of being both deaf and blind to the dangers around us. Sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch and instinct are all there for a good reason: to help us survive. Remove them and we lose the ability to access the adrenalin, the fight or flight hormone, and we literally become helpless.
Two teenagers who are about to fight may feel brave but, at the same time, they are probably hoping that someone will stop the fight before it’s started. Even if the fight goes ahead, usually the second that one of them goes down, the other will stop and is considered the ‘winner.’ The worst that tends to happen is a bloody nose or two. However, give them alcohol and you remove their natural protection from hurting others or being hurt themselves. The only time you might see somebody getting kicked repeatedly in the face, even when they are unconscious and have blood pouring out of them, is when people are ‘high’ on drugs. The most horrendous violence is usually drink related. Those doing the kicking are not being courageous because their natural fears have been removed and they are out of control. The person lying on the floor would probably never have been involved had they been fully compos mentis and able to judge the situation.
When a young girl is walking back alone from a nightclub she is meant to be slightly nervous and alert. Anything could be around the next corner and she needs her wits about her. Alcohol removes those fears and replaces them with a false sense of confidence. At times like these you do not want confidence, false or otherwise; you need your natural fears to keep you alert to danger.
Second, and I believe the most detrimental problem with this false sense of courage, is that the addict actually believes it is real. All the time alcohol is depressing the central nervous system and doing the opposite to what the addict believes. So while the addict is ‘under the influence,’ not only is the alcohol giving them a false sense of courage or confidence, but it also renders their own inoperative. As a result, their true courage will be suppressed and confidence so much that, eventually, they will be convinced they have no confidence without their ‘fix’ as they are so dependent.
In the film The Wizard of Oz, the lion had lost his ‘C-c-courage.’ At the end of the film he found it again. The truth is that he always had his courage. He never lost it at all; he just hadn’t used it for a long time. The longer he went without using it, the more he was convinced that he had none. That made him more and more fearful, thus reinforcing his belief. How did he find his courage in the end? By having a drink of alcohol? No, of course not. Do you think that there is one person in a million who saw the film and thought the lion could regain his courage by drinking alcohol? No! He found his courage the very second he used it. When he felt that natural fear, he broke through it and rediscovered his true courage. If he had taken alcohol he would have had a very false sense of confidence and would never have found his genuine courage. Why look for something when you believe you have already found it? (Think about it.)
The drinker strongly believes that alcohol helps give him confidence and courage, but it’s an illusion. The longer he believes it, the more afraid he is that he cannot live without the drug. I used to believe that you had to be a really confident person to live without alcohol but why did I think something as ridiculous as that? I never thought I was being confident or courageous for not taking heroin in order to enjoy or cope with my life. I never thought that I was a confident person because I was living without the need for LSD or crack, but to the person who is dependent on these drugs life could never be the same without them. They believe that those who do not take the drug are just confident people who do not need anything to bolster them up. They blame their personality or genetic make-up when it’s actually the drug itself that is suppressing their true identity. As I will repeat over and over again throughout this book, the drug causes the need for the drug.
I felt as though I did not have the courage to do something as simple as stopping drinking alcohol. The fact is that I’d always had my courage but, just like the lion, I hadn’t used it for a while. What was stopping me? Fear caused by the drug itself and the fact that the longer I took it, the more fearful I became. The more fearful I became, the more alcohol I drank to overcome those fears. But it’s always the alcohol that causes the fear.
… the drug causes the need for the drug.
Children have fears but they break through them using their genuine courage. Look at children at birthday parties: they sing, dance, play and don’t care about making fools of themselves because they are alive and having fun. Alcohol addicts are even afraid of doing that. They believe that in order to have fun you need a drink first. Every time you overcome a fear you grow as a human being; if you are not growing you are dying, there is no in-between. This, I believe, is the saddest part of alcohol addiction. The more you depend on alcohol, the more convinced you are that you cannot cope or enjoy yourself without it and the quicker you die inside. Then your life is less fulfilling and when this happens, the more you rely on alcohol to fill that gap. This is why I was so afraid of stopping. I always thought there would be a permanent gap in my life if didn’t drink. It is alcohol that creates the gap and getting rid of alcohol fills it. Now that the gap has been filled just the thought of drinking again fills me with fear, not the other way around. Why should we fear not drinking? That should be the real question.
Alcohol destroys your courage and confidence. What confidence or courage do you need to eat a meal with friends? What courage do you need to lie on a beach, enjoy a party or talk to people you already know well? Why should you ever feel insecure on these occasions? Exactly what confidence is needed to watch the football, g
o to a wedding, a christening or even wake up in some cases? There are people who have already reached the bottom of this pit, ‘skid row’ as it is commonly known. These people cannot even function without a drink in the morning. Do you think that the drink is helping them get through another day or has the drug itself buried their true confidence so much that they now believe it only exists inside a bottle?
‘But I would never reach that stage because I am not an alcoholic,’ I hear people say. There is no such thing. You are in quicksand; you are living the lie. Your confidence will not improve with alcohol; it will slowly wither away as it has been doing for years. This will happen imperceptibly. This process is often so gradual that you will put it down to all kinds of other things like your job, family or lifestyle. I reached the stage where I couldn’t go to any social gathering or cope with any stress without having a drink beforehand. I was just like any alcohol addict; my true confidence had been suppressed. I just didn’t know how to enjoy myself without a drink. All I knew was that I was miserable and happier when I had a drink. Foolishly I concluded that I was happy because I was drinking but that was never the case. I see it all very clearly now as I go out more than I ever did and have more confidence now than I ever had in my entire adult life.
I used to delude myself into thinking that I didn’t need to drink. I believed I was in full control of my intake and that I could take it or leave it. Yet I was aware that I had to control my drinking as I had to permanently watch my consumption. This is not control; this is slavery and this is dependency. When you are dependent on anything it slowly destroys who you are. It wears you down and drags you down. This is how alcohol really destroys your courage and confidence.
Trying to keep control of something that is actually controlling you is extremely soul destroying, especially when you believe that you are the only person having to do this. After all, everybody else is telling you that they are in control, that they drink because they choose to or that they might drink a little too much on occasions but it’s not like there is a problem. But what are you telling everybody else? Are you telling them the same thing? The biggest problem is the constant battle to try to keep control of something that is in fact controlling you. It is very easy to tell if somebody is not really in control; it is when they tell you that they are. It sounds like a contradiction in terms but let me explain. When someone thinks it’s a major achievement if they haven’t had a drink in a week and brags about it, it means they are out of control. Why do people congratulate others who have managed to stay on the wagon for a couple of weeks, especially when they say they get genuine pleasure from drinking alcohol? What is so clever about stopping something for a week that you claim to be in control of? If you were in control why brag? It just doesn’t add up. If I went a week without a drink I would tell everybody. All the time you hear drinkers trying to justify how little they take, yet bragging about how they can drink anyone under the table. If you are happy and proud of yourself because you have managed to go a week or more without alcohol the simple fact is that the drug is controlling you and you are not in charge.
There are people who go on the wagon to prove they are not hooked. As I mentioned at the start of this book, there is even a book called How to Give Up Alcohol for a Month. It states that you should stop for a month every year to prove that you are in control. The author also says that it will be very hard to do and that you will miss alcohol all the time and even suggests a day-to-day planner so you know what day you are on. So, stopping drinking for a month, counting the days and missing it all the time, would apparently prove that you did not have a problem with alcohol. But surely this would simply confirm your worst fears: that you do have a problem and that you are not in control. What does that do to your genuine confidence? Like everything to do with this trap, it shatters it. Think about that for a moment. If you were in control you would never need to buy a book like that in the first place, you would just stop. If I wanted to stop eating bananas and went around telling everyone who would listen that I had not had a banana in weeks and at the same time I was reading a book called ‘How to Stop Eating Bananas for a Month,’ wouldn’t you immediately know that I had a real banana problem? Not only that, you would make absolutely certain that I sought help immediately!
As the drug suppresses your confidence more and more, the ability you may have had to exercise control between drinks reduces. Like all drug addiction, the more it drags you down, the more you will be fooled into believing that it’s your last pleasure or crutch and the more dependent you will feel. But, as I have stated, the whole process of stopping drinking is easy and enjoyable. It’s only the fear of stopping drinking forever and the belief that you will be missing out for the rest of your life that causes people to feel stressed at the very thought. After all, fear in itself is a stressful emotion. This is why people who stop, even for a couple weeks, get very uptight and stressed. It’s not the physical withdrawal, but the feeling that they are missing out. The problem is made worse because drinkers have taught themselves and been brainwashed by society to believe that alcohol relieves stress. So the more deprived they feel, the more stressed they become and the more stressed they become, the more they will crave a drink. It is only the mental craving causing the stress. The irony is that, contrary to what you have been brainwashed to believe and what you might think at the moment, alcohol is incapable of relieving genuine …
Stress
If you tell a lie long enough and hard enough, even the person telling the lie will end up believing it. This is exactly what has happened with the conviction that alcohol relieves stress. Alcohol might block your mind to some of your stress, but genuinely relieve it? Never! When the drug has worn off you still have the stress to deal with. It doesn’t just go away because you blot it out. We, as intelligent human beings, tend to laugh at the ostrich putting its head in the sand, thinking that the danger has gone because it can no longer see it. By thinking that alcohol relieves stress we are doing exactly that.
Every time you wake up after drinking, you are physically, mentally, emotionally, socially and financially worse off than if you had not taken the drug in the first place. That will make you more stressed. The genuine stresses you had the day before seem much worse and now you are convinced that your life is very stressful. You never really put it down to the drink but if you are always trying to get over the physical and mental effects of a poisonous drug like alcohol, then you will always have an additional stress. Just the physical effects of alcohol take at least three days to get over. Alcohol addicts think that if they have had a ‘skinful’ on a Saturday night and a couple on the Sunday then they are fine by Monday morning. However, this is simply a level that they are used to. This is their normality.
There is only one stress that an alcoholic drink is even partially capable of relieving and that is the stress caused by the last drink. Even then it doesn’t do that. Some drinkers near the bottom of the quicksand think ‘at least it ends the stress of my need for a drink.’ Does it? Or did it create that stress as well? I can recall numerous occasions when I was going to have just one drink and ended up having two, three, four or however many it took until there was no more or until I collapsed, whichever came sooner. Was I happy in this state? Was I calm? Was I stress-free? I don’t know because I wasn’t there to enjoy it. My senses were numb; I was stupefied and ‘out of it.’ While you are in this state, you remain vulnerable, unprotected and have your head in the sand, yet people take the drug because they believe it makes them more courageous, confident, calmer, relaxed, happier and stress-free. Alcohol never relieves stress, it does precisely the opposite.
Alcohol never relieves stress, it does precisely the opposite.
Have you ever felt stressed when you are having a drink? Have you ever been uptight or argumentative while ‘under the influence’? Ever got aggressive, obnoxious or loud when inebriated? Have you taken things out of all proportion or just been plain rude, spiteful or hurtful when you’ve been drinking
? I really don’t need to ask these questions as I know you have and you know you have. Everyone who has drunk alcohol has experienced some, if not all, of these emotions when inebriated. If we have been stressed at the same time as drinking alcohol why do we believe that it relieves stress? It is because, just like the heroin addict, we feel better when we first get our fix. Also we have ended the ‘wanting’ a drink feeling created by the belief that it will help the situation, while at the same time partially suppressing the physical low created by the drug itself. However, this is just one of the many excuses we use to justify our intake.
Either the offender or the victim (or both) has been drinking alcohol in 65 per cent of murders and 75 per cent of stabbings in the UK. Do you think these people were stress-free? Do you think ‘It’s a good job they had alcohol in their system to relieve some of their stress, otherwise God knows how many people they might have killed’? Of course you don’t because you know that these crimes happened largely due to the depressant, alcohol.
When I was a drinker I was always more stressed than I am now. I was either on the drug, thinking about when I could take it again, trying to control my intake of the drug or coming off the drug. Non-drinkers just do not have these stresses. I don’t have them any more. I used to get stressed whenever I heard the bell for ‘Time Please’ in the pub. I may already have had five pints with one more sitting in front of me, yet I still wanted more, why? Was I stressed? Was I unhappy? Was I not being sociable? Wasn’t I relaxed? Did I need courage? Did I need confidence? No, no, no, no … I just needed more of my drug like any other drug addict. I felt a chemical reaction that simply made me want more and more. I would walk to the ends of the earth to get more. I would pay any amount of money for ‘take outs’ as money is never an issue when you have been chemically and mentally programmed to need a drug. That is why, no matter what the cost, when you are ‘under,’ you don’t care. This is when you can see clearly that it’s a drug addiction because, at these times, you would drink sewer water provided it contained alcohol.