Author: lemsy

Alcohol can be fattening. So it is no coincidence that my many start dates for improving my nutrition correspond exactly with my start dates for reducing alcohol usage. However, it can also cause physical distress. One example is the evening of April 19th, 2012. I had just finished teaching a class on digital media communication, and I was just about to walk back to my car to get in, get a six-pack or four pack or 2 bombers of really great, hoppy, high alcohol content beer, in order to dissolve myself between 10 pm and 2 am, like I often did, with few exceptions. It’s a lot less than that now.

But, that night, suddenly, I got very sick and weak, as I was walking from my building to my car, and I decided quickly that I just needed to get home and skipped the beer, reluctantly. Was it the flu? Had I gotten some kind of bug? Maybe it was the six packs I was drinking.

By the time I arrived home, I was not able to walk, and was having trouble breathing and staying conscious. I did not have pain, but I had no energy; it was gone. I waited in my car, fairly immobile, in and out of awareness, until about 3 am, where I decided I absolutely had to get into my apartment, and I literally crawled up my steps, got into bed, and stayed there under a blanket for four days. Sickness often provides reflection.

It was a truly transformative, meditative, and revealing experience over the four days. I actively thought, without alcohol, about how I had lost so many things, and to contemplate what I was still losing. I still think of those things, even in moderative use. I realized that I had burned many bridges, and that I was taking advantage of people. Alcohol does not always show my best side. At that time, I was failing as a human, as a thinker, as a partner, as a worker, and as a father. I was at my lowest point, or so I thought, recognizing my life and what had transpired. I realized that at the center of it all, in the very heart of it, was alcohol. It requires taming and consideration to be medicine. It requires mindfulness to be medicine. Without mindfulness, it’s just debauchery.

There are a few things that are debatable while assessing alcoholism and alcohol abuse. It is not a science, in my opinion, in how one is finally regarded as an alcoholic. One is often labeled with this from many factors. One thing is very clear though: If alcohol is repeatedly affecting your life, choices, and outcomes negatively, regardless of consumption levels or frequency, it should be reduced, or eliminated. No one disagrees on this, but elimination is difficult, in a society where alcohol is so required.

Here are some distinct reasons why I needed to reduce my use of alcohol, and hopefully, a checklist of things for you to self-assess whether alcohol hurts you more than it helps. I have many other reasons from my experience, but some of them are not for public consumption, and some of them are too subtle and obvious to mention. Please note that I am fully aware that when I say “alcohol makes me”, or “alcohol prevents me” here, I know that it was me doing these things, allowing anyone or anything to commit me to those choices. However, my self while drinking alcohol to excess was a different self than me today. I would not do the following things outside of the intense alcohol abuse, depression, or some other influence being present.

Another thought: If ever I affected you negatively, if you had relied on me and I let you down, if you waited for me and I never called or showed up, if you and I planned to do something, and it didn’t happen, I sincerely apologize to you from the bottom of my heart. It was me, not you. I plan to make it up to you if you let me, if I can make it up, if you’ll allow it, if you still have forgiveness in your heart. I mean this, I offer this, with everything that I know as the truth. Alcohol, when abused, can absolutely destroy relationships for the abuser.

Alcohol abuse sapped me of the will to do anything, and made me disinterested.

In the abuse of alcohol. I would break plans, stop thinking, and just drink. If I did something, it was reluctantly. When I got up in the morning, I would remember the night before, remember the things I had done and not done, regret it, and swear off alcohol. Then, around 9 pm, I would start to get the internal call to drink, and I’d answer it, because in my mind, there was no other way. There are ways to challenge this, such as meditation, but that is another post. If I had made the mistake of giving into whiskey, each time, part of my memory was gone, every time. Now, when I get up, with a more present mind, I think about what I accomplished the night before, what I am doing now to make things better, and what I will do tonight, in the hopes of a great tomorrow. It is a far more rewarding life this way, to consume with moderation.

Alcohol abuse makes me a secretive, dual-persona person, and helps me remove my boundaries that protect me, at my cost. 

This post is self-explanatory in this regard. When I was drinking too heavily, it was important that no one knew how much I was drinking. The people who drank with me would stop before I did, would consider their driving and other responsibilities, and would wait patiently, while I had just one more beer. I recognized that this was a goal for me, to be like others in their reasonable use of alcohol. The people who kept up with me, who finished their drinks with me, and who did not have these boundaries became the closest people to me. They did not care if I drank myself into oblivion, as they drank themselves into oblivion, as that allowed them to justify the abuse of alcohol. There is a mutual acceptance in alcohol abuse.

That lack of boundaries was so important for me in assessing my friends and other relationships that I often chose the wrong crowd, who I thought loved me. I know now that this is not love, it is simply acceptance. Love is different. This post is for those friends, as well as for you, dear reader. I really do love them, and I hope that they find their bounds, and stick to them. It’s worth reducing your intake.

Alcohol abuse allowed me to do things I would not normally do. 

After regaining some clarity and distance, I am much more interested in how I am perceived, and make moves towards those ends. While I was drinking to blackout levels, I would lie, cheat and steal, and just not care that much about it. I don’t want any of that attached to me, to who I am, as an idea. I was only interested in feeling good, for a short time, so good that no bad could enter. It is better balanced now. I was only interested in pleasure and reward, and not that interested in anything that did not grant it. I have new goals now, and am working quickly to meet them, with just a taste, instead of a deluge. A taste is often plenty.

Alcohol abuse made me confused, scared, and illogical; Alcohol abuse presented itself in most of my arguments, decisions, and plans.

One thing that is very clear now, that was not clear at the time, while in the midst of an alcoholic abusive haze: the abusive haze itself. It colored, clouded, and influenced decisions. It made me scared to make decisions that are now snap-decisions. It made me choose to take the easiest route in the short-term, and deal with the fallout of that decision later. It made me reject, ignore, and push away those who I care about, to spend more time with people and things that did not care about me, so that I could indulge in alcohol abuse more freely. I would make decisions, free of logic, choosing answers and choices that led to less responsibility, more pain, and more want. It prevented me from standing up, saying no, and presenting my will.

Less is more. I’m better without, and better with less.

Alcohol abuse made me lose self-worth, confidence, and self-preservation.

When I drank to excess, I felt guilty about drinking, guilty about the inability to stop, and scared to ask for help because I believed it was evidence of my weakness. Asking for help is still difficult. The labels have a weight. I was afraid of the idea of being labeled as an alcoholic, because I was a practicing alcoholic.

I believed that I was worthless, and therefore unworthy of love, and sought out relationships and connections that lacked intimacy and effort, because they allowed for the constant stew and rattle of the haze. I could not believe that I had once been so successful, and wondered how in the world that I could maintain anything like success. Because I did not believe that I could, I was able to keep drinking to excess, and slip further into a lax state about work, relationships, and responsibilities, until each of them went away, dissolved or ended, which left me with great relief, because it was another reason to drink to excess.

I am very lucky that I did not ever end up in real danger or dying, because suicide is easy, if it just means letting go, and alcohol abuse made letting go easily.

In short, alcohol abuse and I do not get along. I would suggest that if you are experiencing any of these effects from alcohol, that you should consider them with the ‘good times’, and also consider that there are better ways. To each their own, and you should consider what is your own best choice.

j.

There is another meditation technique that I have learned about recently that I am very interested in, but that I am not quite ready to try. I want to write about it here in preparation because I want to have a better sense of it, and writing helps me to do that.

One calls this technique Neti Neti, or Not this, Not That, or Neither this nor that, and it is a highly structured method that whittles away the self’s understandings of you that you add on in life, and in the best case scenario, leaves you knowing your true self. It is a reductive method, like many meditation practices, and according to what I’ve read, is more practical to do after you have achieved success with more straightforward methods, such as breath counting or walking meditation.

One description is as follows:

“After you’ve allowed some space from the immediate concerns of life, focus upon your foot with as much mental clarity as possible, but certainly don’t allow frustration to develop over lack of absolute clarity. Once the idea of your foot occupies your mind, mentally say to yourself: “This foot is not me. If I was without this foot I would still be me. What then am I?” During the final part of this mental statement, imagine that your foot disappears. Repeat this sequence with each area of the body: the other foot, the calves, the thighs, etc., up to and including the head, face and brain.”

– The Neti Neti Meditation | The Meditation Blog at

However, I was first introduced to this method in the book How to Meditate, by Lawrence LeShan (1975), which describes it quite differently:

“In this meditation, we ask the question ‘Who am I?’ and respond to each answer we find in a highly structured manner. If a name seems to be the answer, we (inwardly) reply, ‘No, that is a name I have given myself. Who is the I who I gave that name to?’ If it is felt or perceived, as in ‘I am the person who feels tired,’ the reply is ‘No, that is a sensation I feel. Who is the I who has that sensation?’ If it is a memory, as in ‘I am the person who once…, ‘ the reply is ‘No, that is a memory I have, Who is the I that has that memory?’ If it is an image or picture of yourself, the reply is ‘No, that is an image I have of myself. Who is the I who has this image?’… All answers that arise to the question are responded to in this way. After each response, there is an active, dynamic search for the next answer. There is no rest in this meditation.” (p. 70)

I think that the first interpretation seems much more straightforward, but the second seems much more useful and insightful. I’ll likely try them both, and stay with each for a while.