Drinking is completely Rational
 

I suppose when you think about it, drinking is completely rational.

We drink to alter our brain chemistry. Chemical reactions in our brain alter our state of consciousness, so we become less inhibited, more confident, more aggressive or passive and turn ourselves in to unpredictable immature indulgent animals, more instinct that intelligence.

Why cant you drive a car while drunk ? Because you are incapable of controlling your reactions and your not fully conscious.

Alcohol damages your liver, heart, brain, kidneys and about dozen other organs, yet it is legal to drink as much alcohol as you want.

Over time some humans become alcohol dependant and abuse alcohol in one form or another and they are castigated by society for doing so, the same society that introduced them to alcohol. Very unfair really.

When we try to quit, if you tell some people, they question your need to quit, its a little like one drug addict telling another drug addict that quitting is a mistake.

After years of become alcohol dependant, drinking becomes rational and not drinking seems very scary. All we want to do is feel normal and thats where the AV tries to trip me up, its says I can cut down, that I have proved I can give up the booze if needed.

This is where I say to my AV, drinking is rational and I am going to behave irrationally about it. I refuse to follow the crowd and I will not give in anymore.

If drinking is rational, then I must rebell.

Well put :)

Nice post Lancashire

The legality of alcohol is a major hurdle in Sobriety being acceptable in some circles, some people I know just didn't get it!!

If I had of told my family/friends that I was giving up Heroin it would have had a different reaction to alcohol.

Nice post!! :)

After years of become alcohol dependant, drinking becomes rational ...
well, no. it doesn't.
but yes, it makes you feel normal and quitting is scary.
none of that makes drinking rational after dependence develops.
it makes it understandable.

i'd be real careful with this statement:This is where I say to my AV, drinking is rational and I am going to behave irrationally about it. just because it would have been waaayyy too easy for my "voice" to immediately flip that over into the opposite.

this is kinda like a double negative, and my trying-to-stay-quit-mind would have had a field day with this.
but, and it's a big BUT: if it works for you, do it.

I would say no, drinking to excess is never rational. Never will be.
Why do alcoholics try to rationalize everything and anything especially when it comes to booze?

Normal drinkers have 1 or 2 drinks, feel woozy and stop.
Alcoholics feel woozy and they suck on that bottle harder!
I think in a lot of respects its like a baby soother to them. Its been a very long time since I sucked on bottle, or swallowed poison. Sometimes we have good days, sometimes we have bad days. The good days outweigh the bad days. The harder moments become shorter and shorter and easier to control.

The definition of Rational is : Based on or in accordance with reason or logic:

As the reasoning part of your brain is also the part of your brain involved in the Alcoholic Voice. (i.e., you are reasoning with yourself), your rational brain is giving you excuses, reasons and logical ways to avoid being sober and to drink.

If I see a bottle of wine (like yesterday) and pour it down the sink. My rational thoughts are telling me, its a waste, it costs money. Another part of my brain is reasoning with this rational brain and saying, (yes but it is harmful).

This conflict is not rational. It is not rational to have two parts of the brain in disagreement with each other, therefore irrational thought in the face of reason must win out.

(Do not confuse rational with being right or wrong)
If I irrationally thoughts that sobriety is the way forward or counterbalanced by the rational thoughts that its ok to drink. Then irrationally is the right and rationally is wrong.

Is it rational to put your hand in a hot fire. No. So why would I do it ?
I wouldnt.

But is it rational for me to drink alcohol harming my body. No. So why would I do it ?
I would. (there is an error with this line of thinking).

So the exact opposites must apply.

Is it rational for me to be drinking alcohol harming my body. Yes. So why would I do it ?
I wouldn't. (Because I know it is harming me).

This is the dichotomy of addiction. Rational thoughts are used against the person and so perpetuating the addiction even though they know its wrong. This is why the relapse rates are so high, if drinking was irrational, we simply wouldn't do it and none of us would be here.

It is the fact that an alcoholic sees drinking as rational, whereas other see it as irrational is the root of alcoholism and what separates us from so called "normal drinker".

I really do not know these normal drinkers that drink 1 or 2 drinks that people often refer to on this site ,certainly not here in the uk , every single person I know drinks more than the weekly limit . It's like a pandemic in the uk , a & e units clogged up with drunks everyday up and down the uk , violence , deaths and countless drunken mishaps reported near on daily in our press yet they still go on about smoking or the handful of people that die of ecstasy each year like that is the real problem when the real problem is staring them slap bang in the middle of the face, one word. DENIAL.

Drinking can be rationalized as in a cognitive distortion. sure the drink has a sinister pull and so dose the addictive brain that twist drinking into fun times when it is actual deterioration of the soul.

Countering all drinking thoughts is not impossible. Thus making recovery progress a monumental breeze.

I have to agree with you. I know girls that drink 3 bottles of red wine, BEFORE going out on a night out. Then its shots, chasers and a kebab on the way home and off to work in the morning. No problems.

I would be destroyed on that, people are different. I consider myself as a problem drinker, they wouldnt.

Wow Zencat, Bloody good to meet you.

I'm Irish. Living an expat lifestyle. I guess I don't really need to say more.
In Ireland at least half of my friends were alcoholic. Where I live now its at least half. I don't know a single person who never drinks and my wife is the only person I know who rarely drinks and when she does its one glass or less. It would be easy for your AV to convince you that you are not so bad or that this is how life is. Really its irrelevant though, right? The only thing that matters is whether YOU are living the life that you want to live and if not why not?

I agree with what you said. Except for the irrelevance. Knowing that the rational part of your brain is the part that is presenting options, excuses and get out jail free cards to resume drinking again, has helped me when I get urges and cravings as I did for the first time last night.

I was in my local supermarket and wandered into the drinks aisle. I was rationalising resuming drinking again. May be if I just drank small drinks of whisky. Maybe just a bottle of wine once a week. What about buying the wine and only drinking on a special occasion like normal people.

These thoughts were totally rational to me at the time. I came to my senses and realised what was happening and walked off without purchase. I saw the enemy and began to recognise it. This has been an invaluable too for me, but I agree not for everyone.

If we all recovered in the same way, wow wouldn't that be easy.

I think the key difference is that alcohol has a stimulant effect on alcoholics and a depressant effect on others.

when I settled down to have a few quiet beers on a saturday night, after 4 or 5, wild horses couldn't keep my ass on that couch.

I was out to see the world. Cause I felt absolutely bloody marvellous .... top of the world Ma.

Normies, have a few drinks after work or on a saturday and it relaxs them, then they go to bed.

I argue that it is entirely irrational.

We are creatures who are first and foremost rationally intent on survival.

Yet we ingest a substance known to endanger our survival, known to have both short and long term negative consequences - even after many and prolonged direct experiences of negative consequence.

Any other threatening of dangerous experience we have in life leads us to avoid like situations in the future - yet we go back to alcohol time and again even after near-death experiences with it.

Further - our science doesn't even know quite how or why alcohol does what it does. We know that it changes the very structures of the brain and body at a cellular level but after much research we don't even know what the hell it is and why it works.....

So an organism whose primary priority is survival willingly endangers its own survival by repeatedly consuming a substance of unknown function and impact despite repeatedly encountering its terrible, survival-threatening effects.

This is not in keeping with logic or reason.

This is irrationality, insanity illustrated.

http://m.psychologytoday.com/blog/yo...-brain-alcohol

Unread Today, 02:26 AM
Join Date: Jan 2015
Location: Lancashire
Posts: 45 Wow Zencat, Bloody good to meet you.
__________________As you too.


You can if willing, you can recover without much trouble.

...if drinking was irrational, we simply wouldn't do it and none of us would be here.

It is the fact that an alcoholic sees drinking as rational, whereas other see it as irrational is the root of alcoholism ...

my drinking was irrational.
and i KNEW it was irrational.
i decided to simply not do it.
then, irrationally, i returned to drinking.
irrationally, i did this countless times.
the fact that i couldn't "simply not do it" when i KNEW it was irrational had me in despair.
i didn't see my drinking ort repeated returns to it as rational.
or reasonable.
or making sense.
but did it anyway.

Excellent!!! :scoregood

One hundred percent agree with you DD. My hubby, like yourself also a cabbie, plus maybe one other friend of mine who literally just would have one or two drinks, never, ever, more than that. My hubby forever has said: I just can't understand why anyone would render themselves so drunk & so violently unwell and then go out & do it all over again. This friend of mine would never, ever frequent pubs, say like the Friday nights etc. People who go to pubs regularly go to drink. All my drinking mates get drunk & they do it every single week. They are in total denial, they could not understand why I gave alcohell up! They outcast me for doing so, and yet these very same people would bemoan their hangovers & swear off the stuff every week!!! You rock DD & sobriety is the coolest thing on earth.

This thread is from January guys