If You Need a Drink Don’t Take It’
Any person who has reached the point where they wonder if they should discipline their drinking habits may be in danger of the excessive drinking zone and relapse to drinking. It is a confusing area. They may fear they are an addict because their regular 5 p m. drink has established such a pattern that they definitely want a drink at that time, but habit does not necessarily mean or imply addiction. Some heavy drinkers may be endangering their health, but are not yet addicts. On the other hand, they may be a problem drinker though they limit themselves to a few drinks every other day
What then is the problem drinker? What counts is their motivation? Let’s look at an average sample of 100 drinkers. About half of them are persons whose drinking is only a symptom of underlying mental disorder. Alcohol cannot be blamed for their neurosis, or for the fact they are morons, or their epilepsy, dementia – or manic depressive psychosis. But the others are those who, starting as apparently well integrated social drinkers, pamper their frustrations etc, with alcohol until they cannot face life except through a haze of alcohol.
Frustrations are a futile field for the alcoholic person. One may seek escape from the fact that they lack energy to achieve their ambitions. Another with the same characteristic will break out in drink, only because they cannot secure a job, etc. Or another reason may lie in a childhood psychological experience which may have been forgotten. There are numerous tests which may help analyse a person’s drinking habits.
Can you enjoy a party only if there is liquor to release you? Do you long for the time, say 5 p m, to have a drink? Do you turn to alcohol to overcome anxiety, disgust fatigue, frustrations, resentments? Do you drink to offset difficulties with the boss, wife, job, children? If the answer is YES you are alcohol dependent of some stage and in peril.
To put it in a “nut shell” “DO I NEED THIS DRINK?” If the answer is yes, DON’T TAKE IT, –
The alcoholic is the person who does not need a drink to enjoy it but because they feel they need it. They are drinking to escape. They are developing a craving for alcohol.
There is no record of any alcoholic with a personal problem which caused him to drink. However, alcohol supplies its own problem. If you habitually drink, no matter for what reason, you finally will be drinking to escape the woe caused by your drinking. And, you drink because you are an alcoholic.
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