Self-Reflection as a: Consumer of Alcohol

Why You Should Make A Case To Yourself Before Buying A 2-4 This May Long Weekend

First published: 2018/05/23 03:33 (metric, UTC-4) on selfreflectionjk.weebly.com

My opinion on alcohol has changed many times over the past decade or so. I'm pretty sure the first time I really started thinking about it was when I was Grade 6 and we were learning about the impacts of peer pressure, the definition of a drug, and all the negative health effects different types of drugs, including alcohol, can have on a person in health class.

Sitting there as a naive, innocent, sheltered 11-year-old I remember thinking that when I grow up, when I become a teenager, and an adult, I won’t ever have to worry about feeling pressure to drink when I go to parties because none of my friends will ever drink alcohol or do any drugs since everyone else in the province who went through Grade 6 was learning the same curriculum as I was. It didn’t take long for my bubble to be burst though as I started to hear a few people in my Grade 7 and 8 classes telling stories about getting drunk on the weekends and experimenting with various street drugs.

When I started attending a Mennonite high school, I was confident that things would be different. After all, most of the people who were part of the Mennonite faith that attended the school were only a few generations removed from people who would’ve been ex-communicated from their churches or at least given a very stern talking to if it had been found out that they’d experimented with even a sip of wine.

But once I started attending full-out house parties with my classmates in Grade 11, I often found I was one of the few people without an alcoholic drink in my hand (which astonished me especially because of the fact that almost everyone in attendance was at least two years under the legal drinking age). By Grade 12 my mindset started to change a bit. No one else seemed to be very negatively impacted by drinking at these parties so I thought why not try?

So I started buying beers off people at parties or asking to try a shot of something just to make myself look like I had a bit of social sophistication but never drank enough to really feel anything. Once I turned 19, the legal drinking age in Ontario where I reside, which was at the start of my second year of university I began to drink more frequently and usually downed at least 2 or 3 beers and some shots of vodka or rum whenever I went to a party as that’s what my friends did, at minimum.

Again I can’t say I ever drank enough to be “drunk” or to feel a real buzz, so I can’t say I ever did anything I regret because of my alcohol consumption, but I’m sure my Grade 6 self would not have been proud of what I’d become.

Drinking alcohol is so ubiquitous and normal to so many people, it’s hard to blame myself for conforming. It’s such a staple not only in parties and celebrations but also in the everyday life of so many cultures, that the majority of people rarely question it. But one important lesson I’ve come to learn over the years is, you shouldn’t accept something just because it’s accepted by your friends, your family, your religion, or even your society in general.

I’ve done a lot of thinking and reflecting on the issue of alcohol consumption and I’ve realized that although there are many aspects of drinking alcohol that are appealing, which is why for a period of time I didn’t have any problem with it and why it’s normal for so many people, the negative aspects are just as strong. And no, potentially breaking the heart of my hypothetical time-travelling 11-year-old self isn’t one of these negative aspects.

From The Buzz To The Hangover: The Pros And Cons Of Alcohol Consumption

Common reasons/reasons I’ve given for consuming alcohol

It tastes good, it’s refreshing.
- It took me a while to become accustomed to it, but I can now say I quite enjoy the refreshing taste of beer. Wines fine too but anything else needs to be sugar-blasted to be enjoyable to me.
It’s cultural.
- People go on wine tours and visit wineries that have existed for centuries, and almost everywhere you go there’s a unique craft beer you can try.
It makes you feel good, puts you in better mood for the time being.
- It’s always a tempting short-term solution to try to “drink away the pain” or “drown your sorrows”.
It can make you more socially confident, relaxed.
- This can especially be helpful for someone like me as I consider myself having an introverted personality and as explained later on, I don’t often overly enjoy big social gatherings like parties.
It can help you sleep.
- Although the relaxed, drowsy state alcohol can put you in can help you to fall asleep which can be nice, it has been shown that your quality of sleep may actually suffer because of it.1(http://valleysleepcenter.com/a-drink-might-make-you-drowsy-but-does-it-help-you-sleep/)
It’s fun to feel a high or to get drunk and not feel in complete control of what you’re saying and doing.
- As mentioned although I’ve never actually experienced these feelings myself, it’s the goal most people try to achieve when drinking so I’m assuming it’s enjoyable.
It’s relational, it gives you things to do/talk about at parties, social events.
- How many times has an entire conversation you’ve had at a party been centered around what you were currently drinking, how much you had had to drink already, and what all you were planning to drink over the course of the night?
Drinking games are fun
- For me, it’s always a relief when I walk into a dark, loud, crowded house and I spot a pair of overly-confident but focused competitors standing on opposing ends of a kitchen table, staring into each others eyes before ping-pong balls are released from their raised arms with the flick of the wrist in pursuit of one of their six target red-solo cups. I always enjoy drinking games such as beer pong because it gives me something to do at parties (even though I don’t always actually drink when I play them).
It feels like you’re doing something rebellious without doing anything too serious (arguably).
- For example if you’re under the legal drinking age, or if drinking was something that was always discouraged at school or at home.
The more you drink without showing it -> the more tolerant you are (the more of a “heavyweight” you are) -> the funnier you are or the more manly you are
- I admit, it makes me laugh when someone comes up to me and says something like “Dude, I got absolutely plastered last night!” Binge drinking can make you the centre of attention at parties and often gives you some social credibility and respect (at least that’s what those taking part in this behaviour believe in their own minds).
“Everyone else is drinking it, why wouldn’t I?”

Except for the last one, these all sound like great reasons to me, if there were no negatives, I’d be drinking all the time.

Common reasons/reasons I’ve given for not consuming alcohol

If you have to drive, it’s dangerous and it’s breaking the law to drink and drive. Too many people still do it and too many people have been injured or killed because of it (but it wouldn’t happen to me right?).
- With all the awareness campaigns and the tragic news stories displaying the impacts of drinking and driving this is an obvious negative to me. It does not make much sense to me why people would attempt to drive when they know they’ve had alcohol to drink but what baffles my mind is people who go for a drink when they know ahead of time they plan to drive.
If you’re under 19 (the legal drinking age), it’s breaking the law.
- Even if everyone else is doing it and there’s a low risk of getting caught or fined, if you are under the legal drinking age in your jurisdiction and you are drinking or possess alcohol, you are doing something illegal (but yes, I admit I was guilty of this a few times).
It can make you vomit, feel disgusting the next day.
- Once again I can’t say I’ve ever had a hangover but that’s not something I’m ashamed of.
It makes you do or say things you regret doing.
- Not only can alcohol make you so overconfident or unaware of yourself that you blurt out one of your deepest secrets or find a way to break a window, alcohol is notorious for being the fuel for the majority of violent acts, sexual assaults and traumatic injuries that occur in our society.
It causes negative physical long-term health effects.
- Studies have shown that frequent alcohol consumption can lead to conditions such as cirrhosis resulting from liver damage, pancreatitis, death of brain cells inhibiting mental or physical functions, and an increased tolerance making it more likely for a person to drink enough to have dangerous short-term health effects (https://drugabuse.com/library/the-effects-of-alcohol-use/#long-term-effects-of-alcohol). According to the Canadian Cancer Society, alcohol is among the top three causes of cancer deaths worldwide (http://www.cancer.ca/en/about-us/news/on/2016/february/story4/?region=on)
Alcohol is a depressant.
- Like other central nervous system depressants, alcohol slows down your respiratory and heart rates, as well as brain activity but since it also causes the release of dopamine, the “feel-good chemical”, in your brain, the depressant effects are masked by the high you get from this dopamine in the short-term (http://www.addictshelpline.com/is-alcohol-a-stimulant-or-depressant/).
Alcohol is addicting and an addiction can have very negative effects on both yourself and the people around you.
- You’ve probably heard stories about that about how alcoholism not only affects the health and mental well-being of the person with the addiction, but also the health and mental well-being of the person’s spouse, children, and other family members sometimes for the rest of their lives. Although there are genetic factors in determining someone’s risk for alcoholism, their risk would likely be a lot lower if they didn’t live in a society where alcohol consumption for pleasure was the norm.
It’s expensive.
- Since I can be stingy, this has been one of my biggest deterrents. According to CBC, not only did Canadians spent $22 billion on alcohol in 2016, alcohol costs the economy $14.6 billion a year in lost productivity, health costs, and enforcement (http://www.cbc.ca/radio/checkup/with-all-the-concern-about-opioids-and-marijuana-are-we-forgetting-the-dangers-of-alcohol-1.4439867)

Booze Before Bros? Liquor Before Love? Cocktails Before Consciousness?

Although some of these stats and facts may be new to you, I’m sure none of these negative effects are too big a surprise to anyone. You hear these things, you start to think twice about whether you really need to make that LCBO run, but then you think of the positive aspects of alcohol, how much fun you’ve had previously when you’ve had a drink in hand, and you don’t see anyone else changing their habits so you say to yourself “ah whatever, YOLO.” Until recently, this is the kind of thinking I often had; I knew in my heart that my drinking didn’t feel right, that I should really pay more attention to the cons of alcohol consumption, that I should listen to the voice of my Grade 6 self, but the negatives just didn’t outweigh the positives to me, which is likely the case for many other people. All the negatives in the bullet-point list above can be managed, or minimized, or justified in your mind if you try to but after wrestling with it for long time I had an epiphany and came up with a negative point which really put the nail in the coffin of my desire to drink alcohol:

Theory: alcohol takes us away from reality and gets in the way of our relationships

If you scroll back up, I did say that one of my pros of consuming alcohol is that it puts you in better mood for the time being. Escaping reality sounds like an exciting proposition but is it really a good thing? I understand if you’re having a stressful day, or going through a tough time in life you sometimes just feel the need to get away from it all somehow but this is only a temporary solution, it’s not going to make your problems go away (the same argument can be made for other substances or habits a person can be reliant on such as cigarettes, marijuana, junk-food, or pornography) .

In the same way, when you go to a party or get together with friends and you’re drinking the whole time, you may feel great from the dopamine rush you’re getting and you may be having lots of fun saying and doing crazy things you wouldn’t have said or done otherwise but when it’s all over can you really say that it was your true self, your full mind that was experiencing this good time or since the alcohol was mostly in control, were you actually absent from the true reality of it? Again, it’s only a temporary solution, only a short-term rush, so when you do come back to reality you’re likely not going to get the same excitement out of the experiences you are fully aware of, causing you to crave that escape again. When alcohol becomes a main source of enjoyment in our lives it takes away from our ability to experience things for real: real quality interaction, real fun, real joy, real love, real connection, real relationships. What’s the point of living life, what’s the point of spending time with people if you’re not fully experiencing it, you’re not living it for real?

One thing I want to be to clear, is that I’m not making this as a religious argument or even an ethical argument, this is a completely prudential - an argument made in regards to my own interests. Although I’ve stated on here I call myself Mennonite, and I go to church, I’m not basing this on anything that’s said in the Bible, any traditional religious rules, or any moral theories: I’m making my case based on the fact that not consuming alcohol is for my own good, for the good of my relationships, for the good of my enjoyment of life. The way I see things though, because of the way my values and beliefs are aligned, is that trying to live according to my faith will lead me to my own personal happiness, so in some ways it can be the same as living with a prudential mindset or trying to satisfy my own self-interests

Sober Celebrations

While I’m on this topic, I might as well put out in the open some of my long withheld frustrations with a highly popular but controversial event that takes place March 17 every year on Ezra Ave. in Waterloo, Ontario where I go to university. If you don’t know anything about it, the picture to the [] pretty much says it all (I can’t say I’ve actually attended it but I know many people who have and have walked by a number of times while it was going on). Basically it’s an unsanctioned street party where 15,000+ students wear green and binge-drink all day, making a mess of the entire neighbourhood and fully exhausting the community’s emergency response personnel team, supposedly in the name of St. Patrick. The thing I’ve always been confused about is why is there any correlation between St. Patrick’s Day and partying and drinking anyways? And why is it such as big deal in Waterloo of all places? I would bet big money that not a single person on Ezra Ave. on March 17 could give a full, accurate, historical account of who St. Patrick was and how the holiday started (watch this if you want to find out who St. Patrick really was: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg5ejLGEnZk). Waterloo Region Police Chief Brian Larkin, who with his staff, has been working hard to try to shut down or at least minimize the damages from this event justified his reasoning by explaining that it shouldn't have to be about “not having a good time” but recommends that people try to have a good time in other ways: “have a good time at a licensed venue, throw a house party, throw a backyard BBQ if the weather permits, just do business differently.” Although I still don’t understand why there is such a need for people to celebrate this day at all, this quote resonated with me because he points out that you shouldn't have to feel the need to party hard and suck back 15 green beers to have fun.

Another example of an experience that wouldn’t require alcohol to be enjoyable in my opinion, but is often associated with it is the locker room celebration after a sports team wins a championship. Although there are a number of reasons I want the Winnipeg Jets to win the Stanley Cup this year, a big one is that it would be interesting to see how Patrik Laine reacts in the dressing room when his teammates are wearing goggles and drowning each other in champagne. The 19-year-old Finnish goal-scoring machine, claims he's never had alcohol in his life and says he will probably drink something else out of the trophy if they do go all the way (https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/talented-patrik-laine-gunning-league-goal-scoring-title/). It would be pretty inspiring to me if he followed through with this. I don't understand why you need to celebrate with alcohol as a professional athlete who just won a championship anyways: if I was in that position I would have such a crazy high that I would probably act as if I was drunk. Why do you need alcohol to make it a real celebration, why not be fully conscious in experiencing these positive emotions?

Personal Prohibition

If you’ve made it this far, you’ve read through all my philosophy and ranting, I’m sure some of you may be thinking “Really no alcohol at parties? Man, this guy’s lame, he does not know how to have fun.” This would’ve bothered me in the past but I really don’t care much about what people think of me anymore (at least that’s how I'm trying to train myself to think). I'll admit I’ve never found going to typical house parties or clubs extremely fun or enjoyable, mostly because of my introverted personality (I can usually only last a few hours at these kind of things before I feel drained) but I’d also argue that standing around in a loud crowded area where you can hardly hear the person beside you, while chugging back beers or doing shots without thinking about why you’re doing it, just because everyone else is doing it, is lame.

It’s not that I haven’t had a good time at parties before: the ones I actually have enjoyed are when I’ve spent a good amount of time with only a couple of people having good conversation or doing something fun like playing beer pong or watching a sporting event on the TV. I really think it's possible for people to have fun at parties and other social events without drinking. I support the idea that these kind of things are meant to be a good chance to do something with friends and get to know different people but I think there are many other ways you can do this while having a good time. Things like going out with a few buddies for food, playing games or sports with people, experiencing festivals, movies, sporting events, concerts, dramas, informative events or other live shows together with friends, exploring new places, new cities, nature, learning about different cultures, trying new restaurants, I’d consider these sort of things fun (I’m sure you could list off many more things to do that are fun that don’t require alcohol). Ya, you may not be able to do these things with the same 200 people you would be at a party with, but I’d argue you get to know people better doing things like these. Besides how many of those people do you actually even really interact with at a party anyways?

From now on there will be very few situations where I will be able to give myself honest justification for consuming alcohol. If I’m going out for wings and I need to buy a beverage to get the deal, then sure I’ll have one pint of beer so I don't have to get a drink filled with sugar. I also wouldn't say no to buying a beer to support a good cause or a local business such as a Face for Radio beer from Block 3 Brewery in support of the Farwell4Hire fundraiser for Cystic Fybrosis research if offered. But there are very few other situations where I could convince myself to accept alcohol’s negative effects.

I know the topic of this reflection applies to a lot of people I know and a lot of parties I’ve been to so I’m not trying to single out any specific people or events (some of these thoughts have existed for years). I’m concerned more about myself and society as a whole. I'm not going to judge anyone for continuing their drinking, partying ways, it's not my place to judge, I’m just another human being and I want this blog to be about helping myself, not judging others anyways. One hope I have though, is that this might encourage people to at least start asking themselves a simple question before purchasing or consuming alcohol: Why?

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