2004
Addicted to death
"Drunkenness is temporary suicide: the happiness it brings is merely negative, a momentary cessation of happiness" (Bertrand Russell, "The Conquest of Happiness")
I consider that the abuse in consuming alcohol is one of the biggest problems of the society we live in. Though it is a problem of our every day life and it spreads like a plague, environing us no matter what we do. This black hole in the society is its own product, and with every day that goes by it becomes more and more incontrollable. Living has become a struggle and each one of us find different means to win the contest of life. Not all of us succeed in doing that. The first step is making the difference between the good and the bad choices we have to make in order to thrive. I presume that there are few persons who wonder why some people direct their attention to the bottle. There is more than one answer to this question. The response stands hidden deep within our minds, in the arts of psychology.
We walk pass them each day and we feel either repulsion or pity, but we never think about what exactly makes a drunkard of a sane person. It never occurs to us that one out of ten persons sitting next to us may die because of this very reason. Whether it is an inherited bad habit or simply a means of sedation, drinking is the worst dependency there is. Beggars lying on the cold pavements of the street, asking for money just to get a little more alcohol revolt us, and make us angry, but we don't usually see this situation from the right point of view. People selling everything they have, betraying every little crumb of the humanity they're left with are left lying in misery, having nothing else to face but the same filthy bottle of gin. How can they get out from this horrible situation if they get no help from us, the reasonable people? But only leaves me to wonder: are we not the ones who can distinguish what is right and what is wrong? Yes, we are . That means we are the ones in power to understand what a drunkard has to go trough each day, having the bottle of vodka as his only friend, his only confident. We get scared that we will "catch" some illness of some kind from them, but we should know better. A little research in this domain would automatically make us realize what those poor people are going through.
Since the beginning of all times, man used different substances with the purpose of mutating his own of consciousness, of stimulating or relaxing himself, of inducing sleep or preventing it, of intensifying usual perceptions even of producing hallucinations. The taught of facing the drastic reality each day scares people, and that's what they feel the urge to cut themselves off from all their every-day problems. Some substances have the property of "tricking" people's minds, separating it from reality, taking it away from the real time and space. The substances that affect the behavior and the psychical disposition are called psychoactive. These include not only drugs like "crack", "speed", "marijuana" or "angel dust", but also alcohol. These sedatives, as they are called, sometimes produce a state of tranquility to the user, setting his mind away from concern, making his body float into a dreaming state. It may be pretty hard for the nowadays students to understand the major changes, concerning the behavior models involving the use of drugs, that intervened in the past 40 years. Although in 1950 few people used any form of drugs, we changed into a relatively drug-free society. Many parts contributed to this metamorphose.
Alcohol is some kind sedative, and the most frequently used of them. Sedatives reduce the activity of the central neuronal system. The consuming of alcohol is considered by most of the students to be a part of the social life. That's where they go wrong. Though they are convinced that alcohol does no harm, they are terribly wide of the mark. Sedatives favor sociability, calm tensions, free us from inhibitions, and in all, they generally add to what we tend to call "fun". Even so, the use of alcohol in the social life caused problems. A lot of time is being lost in the disfavor of learning, not to talk of the low performances at exams. The worst of all is that accidents may occur while being under the influence of alcohol, sometimes even fatal.
