Lying Minds: An Insiders guide to alcoholism
Alcoholics are not damaged, faulty or broken, and we aren't bad or weak people; we are deceived: deceived by our own minds.
Most people that drink heavily in their youth will mature out of it and those that drink to relieve some distress will moderate their drinking if that distress is removed, but we do not. Our minds do not spontaneously curb excessive drinking, they do the opposite: they encourage it. Alcohol changes the way that we think, lowers our mood, and distorts our memory. Our minds compel us to drink more and we become progressively more anxious, depressed, fearful, alone and hopeless... all of which are relieved by drinking. Drinking seems to us that it brings relief from our problems whereas in fact it amplifies them, so we drink more. This is how our minds trap us into a self-reinforcing pursuit of alcohol, and that does not happen to most other people.
We are not broken or faulty but we are different. All people are different in some way. Some are tall, some are short, but we also all have unseen differences within us. Some are bolder that others, some more timid, some artistic and some more analytical. But we have differences that make us susceptible to addiction, and once that susceptibility is engaged then it forms into an ever strengthening force that propels us towards our own destruction.
This book explains how our minds become deceived by alcohol and how it changes our motivation, emotions, memory and thinking. If you want to understand the "why's" of alcoholism; why we have to have that first drink, why we can't stop at one, why we drink more often than we intend, why we keep drinking even though bad things happen, and why we can't drink like normal people, then this book will tell you. It explains why we can never safely drink again, and the deeper truth... that we never could in the first place.
Sprache
Produkt-Hinweis
Broschur/Paperback
Klebebindung
Maße
Höhe: 203 mm
Breite: 133 mm
Dicke: 11 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-0-473-52659-7 (9780473526597)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
When I first drank it felt great. I could join in, I was sociable, I had fun, I was relaxed and I felt like I was somebody. I liked it. Drinking was good, so I did it again. I drank to get the same feelings as I did the first time, and I did this again and again, but soon when I drank I didn't get the same result... I got slightly less. My body got better at cleaning away alcohol, so I had to drink faster and I had to drink more to get the same effect. So I drank faster and I drank more.
Over the years I slowly drank more and more. The change was so slow it was imperceptible but I drank more, I drank more often, I drank too much more often, and the spaces between the times I drank too much grew smaller. As my drinking slowly changed I changed with it.
My brain changed to offset the changes caused by large and routine doses of alcohol. My brain was being made artificially happy. It was getting more happiness than it ordered, so it lowered the amount of the happy chemicals it produced. It changed everything else it was getting too much of too.
This made me less happy, less sociable, and less relaxed whenever I was sober. A drink would fix this but I now had to drink enough to bring these back up to normal before I could even start to get happy. I was unhappy whenever I was sober. I was lonely whenever I was sober, and I was restless and anxious whenever I was sober. I drank to lift myself from being unhappy, lonely and anxious... which was every time I was sober. So I drank whenever I was sober. The more I drank the more my brain changed. Eventually I couldn't drink enough to get happy. I couldn't stop shaking until I drank, and I couldn't be sociable until I was already drunk. When I first drank it felt great. I could join in, I was sociable, I had fun, I was relaxed and I felt like I was somebody. But it didn't stay like that.
I drank for fun but it made me unhappy. I drank for friendship but it made me alone. I drank for relaxation but it made me anxious. I drank for confidence but it made me afraid, and I drank for comfort but ended up in despair.
I chose none of that. My brain never told me to not drink. My brain only ever told me that a drink would be good or that a drink would make me feel better. My brain lied to me.
My fight wasn't with the bottle. My fight was with my own mind.
