Pros and Cons of Alcohol Abuse

They say alcohol is a suppressant and it is quite ordinary to hear of the famous little old men and ladies going to bed with a ‘night cap’ to swiftly put them off to slumber. Well, it is all quite misleading. Yes, alcohol slows down this and that in the body and so it is classified as a suppressant. And about the ‘night cap’ thing, I simply suppose this is all a massive lie – a society-wide conspiracy to cover up or euphemize the huge scale of prevalent alcoholism going on. There are no little old men or little old ladies who take just one drink before sleep. There are millions of little old men and little old ladies who get drunk and pass out.

But even ‘passing out’ presents a bit of a problem. They’ve done studies concerning chronic drinkers, whether bonafide alcoholics or not, and have found that alcohol actually contributes a great deal toward insomnia. You know, if you actually observe people’s drinking habits, you would not need so many Scientific Studies to point out what is clear enough already. People who drink stay up to do it. Then compare the sleeping hours of people who don’t drink versus the sleeping hours of people who do. People who don’t drink eventually get tired at night and then they go to bed, and sleep like babies (only an expression as real babies sleep rather fitfully). But a drunk will take another drink and stay up, and then another and then another.

If the Night Cappers have a secret, it is that they keep only a single bottle on hand at a time. They finish their bottle and can’t find another, and so off to sleep they go. Yes, this is why we attribute such behaviors to little old men and little old women. Such capacity for effective planning is a sure sign of the Wisdom that only comes with Age.

Anyway, what is it about a ‘suppressant’ that can keep people awake? It seems paradoxical, and it is. It is not really fully explainable in simple logical terms. There must be more about the bio-chemistry than simply being a ‘suppressant’. But in just examining the behaviors involved, it seems like Drinking mimics ‘something to do’. It seems like Drunks actually think that they are doing something when they are sitting around getting drunk. It’s an activity. And it is difficult to walk away from. Ask an ordinary drinker how many times a year he sees the sun coming up before having gone to sleep. In most cases drinkers are saved when the supply of alcohol simply runs out, as in the case of the careful Night Cappers. Bars close. The keg goes empty. The party planners had only bought 8 cases of beer… thinking that would be plenty for the entire weekend and not just Friday night. In cases where limitless alcohol has been stored up… when Miller goes on sale just after a big payday… then it is usual enough to set off on an entire binge, that is, days of drinking end on end. Not only sleeping is suppressed but even food is neglected… and I don’t know why. I suppose drunks begin to feel too queasy and nervous to eat.

Some Supermarkets have regulations in place to sell no alcohol in the early morning hours, for exactly the purpose of interrupting binge drinking long enough to allow the drinkers to go home and get to sleep. You see, binge drinking always depends on being able to reach for the next drink. Without the next drink, a drinker will pass out. It is not drinking that puts people to sleep. It is the interruption of drinking that puts people to sleep.

Well, that covers the Cons of drinking. What about the Pros.

What could possibly be good about drinking.

Well, it keeps one awake.

Churchhill stayed awake during the entirety of World War Two… oh, and World War One too while he was at it… stopping Hitler, and the Kaiser, almost single-handedly, by basically staying drunk the entire time. Roosevelt too. I don’t think he had a sober moment in his last ten years. No one did during the Thirties and Forties. The Golden Age of Drunks. Watch any Black and White Movie. Do they ever put down the Drinks and the Cigarettes? You would think it might have impaired their judgment a bit. Duh!? Well it did!? The Depression! The Wars! Does that all seem like sober behavior to you? The Whole World was Drunk and out of its mind!

Oh, drinking also aids with ‘Writer’s Block’ or at least with that part of writer’s block where the writer gets tired and decides to turn in for the night. Alcoholic Writers simply take another drink and power on through.

Who was it? F. Scott Fitzgerald or Deshiell Hammet who couldn’t finish a screen play for a big Studio Movie until they put him on an intravenous alcohol drip. For a whole week. But the Movie stayed on schedule!

We can all understand how a Writer might begin to be backed into a corner by a deadline and then need the ability to work straight through for a few days and nights. Nowadays we would think of solutions in terms of cocaine or methamphetamine, that is ‘Stimulants’, but when one thinks in regards to the quality of the actual end product, the Writing, then alcohol does much less damage to the written word than the hyper-activity stimulants. Writing is not like driving a truck. Yes, there is more surliness and sarcasm in a drunk’s writing than if he were sober, but so much of that can be mistaken for wit. However, a speed freak will be positively arrogant, even megalomaniacal. There cannot even be a passable pretence for intellectual integrity from the Speed Freak. They write like Lawyers!

Indeed, many a student working on some final Term Paper would be well advised to consider alcohol as an alternative to methamphetamine, if he needs something to keep him awake. The trick is to pace oneself, to stay just under the threshold of actually being able to detect one’s own inebriation. Just enough to stay awake and maybe you might still be able to get an ‘A’.

However, don’t get the wrong idea. I do not advocate the positive use of alcohol. I am only saying that the abuse of alcohol is better than the abuse of methamphetamines.

You see, at the point in which one begins to hope for a perfect product in one’s writing, then alcohol really does need to be dispensed with. One needs to plan far enough ahead so that writing during the days is sufficient. There is a subtle but damaging tone that inevitably creeps in when drinking. Yes, it looks almost indistinguishable from clever wit, but at a certain point in the development of one’s writing, even clever wit is a silly trick that one should make the effort to transcend. One should aim at presenting Wisdom in the Sublime…. Which you can’t do when you are shitfaced.