reasons not to drink

I am not a big drinker. Alcoholism runs in the family, and I have a healthy respect for that. Perhaps as a consequence, it seems I often am weighing whether or not it is okay to drink even moderately. Similarly, within the context of moderate drinking, it seems there are always decisions to be made, by those of us who both desire to enjoy good beer, wine, and so on, and also want to be conscientious about our consumption for various reasons. In fact, having to be engaged in this decision-making process on an ongoing basis is sometimes enough to make me want to be abstinent from alcohol. Several examples of situations come to mind in which my time and energy becomes somewhat absorbed in these decisions. During holidays and celebrations, everyone rationalizes excess. Ironically, when there are negative events in our lives, or we have particularly stressful days, an extra drink or an extra large drink seems well deserved. In fact, the self-medication of psychic anxiety becomes a particular issue for several reasons–one becomes somewhat dependent on that. If one drinks enough to self-medicate in the worst periods of stress, one may experience some degree of anxiety simply as a part of subtle or not-so-subtle withdrawal effects subsequent to that, and a vicious cycle can easily develop (i.e., addiction). And then there are decisions about context: Will there be any driving later? Are there children around? Is there food able to be consumed at the same time to buffer the effects of the alcohol? There are judgments to be made regarding not exceeding the 2-drink moderate level. If you make a martini and fill the glass, you’re probably already over that amount. If you drink it too quickly, your BAC goes up fast enough to be more likely to result in a slight hangover. So in some ways, for some of us, drinking requires too much decision making; tee-totaling seems easier. Furthermore, I sometimes wonder if making a conscious volitional and firm decision to be on the wagon results in fewer feelings of deprivation on an ongoing basis when forgoing an individual glass of wine with dinner or a cold beer, or a mixed drink when out at night. That is, if I don’t drink because I’m driving, is that more of a bother than to simply know that I don’t drink and that there is no decision to be made?

The next set of reasons that occur to me to be abstinent from alcohol have to do with short-term, moderate, and long-term effects on my psychological state. I am generally a happy person. My happiness set-point is pretty high. Of course I have periods of sadness and grief, but over time I gravitate back to feeling great. Alcohol and other substances seem to wear at that. Although I have never even tried the drug Ecstasy, it seems a prime example of this: People jack their serotonin systems through the roof, and then experience serotonin deprivation in the days to follow. With amphetamines people may make their dopamine receptors super-sensitive, contributing to anxiety and craving after discontinuing use. With alcohol there are multiple ways that mood can be affected, but one simple way is the slight degree of overdrive that our central nervous systems are in when rebounding from the depressing/sedating qualities of alcohol. The agitation experienced in a hangover is the acute form of this, but it exists in a more subtle fashion as well, post-drinking. Other ways in which it may affect mood may have to do with the toxins the body must process, and the direct effects of the alcohol on brain structure, chemistry, and processes. These effects can be enduring. Alcohol use exacerbates depression and anxiety. Headaches, chronic pain, sleep difficulties, and irritability become worse.

Of course, the most basic and obvious reason that many people curtail their drinking has to do with health dangers. Although cardiac benefit may result from 1-4 drinks per day, once the 1-2 drink threshold has been crossed the drawbacks start to outweight the benefits, and there are some detrimental effects that begin with any alcohol consumption. Myopathy is a concern, and cardiomyopathy with subsequent congestive heart failure is a primary concern. Heart arrhythmias and heart attacks even in the occasional binge drinker are a danger. Heart palpitations in even somewhat mild levels of alcohol withdrawal seem to occur. Liver and kidney function are affected, especially if you take any other medications, even and sometimes especially over-the-counter ones such as ibuprofen and acetaminophen. Alcohol-free mouthwash and medicines are marketed in part because people realize that there is a carcinogenic effect of any alcohol consumption. I worry about mouth, throat, and stomach cancers, damage to my stomach lining, and ulcers. One of my grandfathers had 2/3 of his stomach removed surgically, related to consequences of his alcohol consumption. The chances of cancer in a variety of organs increase with alcohol use, probably throughout the entire body. My skin becomes more dry, and I get eczema. Aging seems to occur more rapidly, most detectable in the skin and around the eyes. One’s conjunctiva become larger throughout one’s drinking career. Gum recession seems to increase. Drinking contributes to peripheral neuropathy, numbness in the extremities, poor circulation and worsening sexual functioning. Cognitive abilities decline noticeably. Unintentional injuries increase, including such simple things as bumping into things. This can include relatively frequent mild to moderate head injuries. Balance is affected both acutely and chronically, leading to more falls and misteps.

In practical terms, relationships can be affected in a variety of ways. Although disinhibition can grease the social skids in initial courtship, it can also later have disinhibiting effects on being argumentative or volatile. Beyond the physiological effects, the consumption itself can become a bone of contention. Not unrelatedly, alcohol costs money, sometimes a suprising amount in terms of the proportion of restaurant or grocery bills. Other practical problems involve time management. Going to the gym or doing grading is unlikely to get done after a beer or glass of wine. Writing is affected. Efficiency is reduced. The most practical reason of all to be leery of alcohol is the legal liability that it opens one to. Obviously, driving is the most obvious example of that. To have no risk of DUI or alcohol-related legal or moral liability for injuries or property damage is an attractive opportunity. If it sounds like all of this was an effort to convince myself of something, you’re right, and the conclusion is that there may be lots of great reasons to say, “I don’t drink.”

My brother Will died an alcohol-related death on a Saturday night, November 25th, Thanksgiving weekend, 2000. He was with friends in a bar on the river near his home. He left on foot alone and was not found until that Wednesday. He had drowned in the river. He was 35-years-old, and had just made partner in an architecture firm. His blood alcohol content was .19.

I would frequently look for the phone to call him, which had been our primary form of communication, only to realize again that I couldn’t. A week after he died, I saw him in a dream. He was laughing playfully, which was characteristic, and simply gave me a hug, as if to say, “no worries, mate.” However, it was another five years before I woke up one morning and realized my heart was not as heavy.

work

Work…. Do you ever think about all those long hours, all those many years? I guess it comes to me occasionally if I’m leaving campus late at night. I think about all of the jobs I’ve had, and the academic work I’ve done, and all the other work, such as on houses and yards, but I also think about the way in which I have worked: tirelessly. You may have as well. Hour after hour, day after day, year after year. I know a lot of it is not really work, or doesn’t feel like work, which is good, and there has been plenty of rest and relaxation. On the other hand, a lot of the work has felt like work. I remember painting walls for hours upon hours, mowing lawns, raking leaves, clearing brush, baling hay and hoeing corn, feeding animals, hauling garbage and lumber, hammering nails, moving furniture, bagging groceries, delivering newspapers, selling door to door and by phone, working retail, doing multi-level marketing (ugh), shelving books, flipping hamburgers, being a cook in a dining hall, cleaning everything from bathrooms to gutters, doing laundry, babysitting, working security, washing cars, being a landlord, and starting a business. The academic tasks, which have accounted for the majority of my working hours since college, include literature searches, library runs, photocopying, running subjects, entering data, checking data, figuring out software, running analyses, reporting results, proofing manuscripts, reading, writing, studying, taking tests, writing tests, scoring tests, grading essays, lecturing, making posters and charts, traveling, presenting, reviewing, going to yet another meeting, seeing clients, doing consults and testing, and conducting supervision. What comes from all of this? How do we experience this mentally and physically? How has it affected us? Deeply, I suspect. I feel that in me it has cultivated (forced? required?) patience and discipline.

My college recently decided upon a book for our “First Year Experience” course next year, called Generation Me. We also had a recent guest speaker give a talk on the current college-aged generation of Millenials. 60 Minutes tells us they have never punched a time clock, never mowed lawns. It is all about them, and they are predictably unhappy with reality. Meanwhile, the rest of us thought we were onto something when we learned it is not all about us. There are a few difficulties with being self-centered, aren’t there? Happiness is elusive when it is directly pursued.

Several of my posts now strike me as effete and elitist; the neurotic tennis-lover who can’t relate to red meat and football, etc. But my many years of work bind me to the working man. I am the working man. And although I can admire the efficiency of the current generation in avoiding all of that work, I can’t help but think that all of the work has made me who I am, and that some of them will find meaning and identity in it as well.

Millenials are supposedly not afraid of work if it furthers their goals or is of interest to them. Some will be able to create those kinds of situations for themselves. Maybe that means more of them will be like academics, pursuing the fun stuff. Whether they could be academics probably depends on them learning to tolerate the long road to get there, and the hierarchical structure of academia. I often try to explain to undergraduate research assistants that they and I are engaged in essentially the same activities. We are, but it does not feel that way at the lower end of the ladder. To their credit or detriment, they are often unwilling to be in that position long. They also have different expectations about our roles. I am pretty accomodating of whatever role they select, but I think they miss out at times by being less interested in joining a team than creating a new project.

Supposedly Millenials find the rest of us irrelevant. However, I’m wondering how much of this is a problem with every generation in its youth. Didn’t our parents complain that we didn’t know the value of hard work? Weren’t they the ones who had walked to school five miles in the snow, barefooted, uphill? I think we were the ones who supposedly had it easy and felt entitled–were ingrates. I wonder if I haven’t fallen into the perpetual trap of the old complaining about the young while forgetting what it was like to be young, or whether there is something substantially different about youth today. The hypothesis is that they have been in situations where everyone got prizes for showing up, that they have had their self-esteem over-inflated. The clinical child psychologist in me finds that to contradict my knowledge base. Helping kids feel good about themselves was supposed to turn out well, at least when combined with an authoritative (warm and structured) parenting style. Perhaps expectations were not high enough? Interesting area of inquiry. I look forward to purchasing Generation Me, and seeing Twenge’s analysis.

sports

Socially desirable responding–it’s a funny thing. The Thursday before the Superbowl, someone asked me to a Superbowl party, and I realized I might have something else I had to do then, but it wasn’t until after the conversation that I remembered that I don’t even like football. Friday, I was reading the sports pages (about the Australian Open) and someone asked me what the paper said about the Superbowl. I did not know who was playing, and so I asked perfunctorily who they thought would win, not realizing everyone thought Pittsburgh would win. The morning of the game, someone at the BC Cafe breakfast counter said to us that this was “the heterosexual male holiday.” Not knowing him, and having the vague realization that he had somehow slandered gay and female football fans if not all gays and women, I bluntly said I don’t like football. He looked at me suspiciously. Running into friends on the day of the game, I heard myself asking them if they will watch the game, to make conversation. As they left Trader Joe’s, they said, “Enjoy the game.” I realized that I did not say I don’t watch football, and to top it off, I brought up the topic. Many times I have wished that I could tolerate ESPN news or the sports section of the paper long enough to be able to converse in a reasonable way with other sports fans. At the large table of the faculty dining room recently, the conversation shifted to sports. The depth of knowledge of these gentlemen would have astounded the casual observer. Coaches were analyzed, teams were deconstructed, seasons were rehashed. How, I wondered, have these guys mastered this trivia? How much time have they spent on sports? It boggled my mind. It was as though there was a secret world in which they had been vigorous participants for many years. It was revelational in the sense that it answered a nagging question I had about my colleagues–what do they really do when they leave work? Now I know–they are clearly often watching and learning about sports, and specifically, football.

At one time, I went to a number of Florida State football games, but I did not watch the game; I sold cokes. My friend Doug, who always had a lead on how to make money, had introduced me to the stadium vendors. We would buy racks of drinks and walk through the stands selling them. I remember that it was fairly profitable by kid standards. I guess that might have been an opportunity to get to like the game, but perhaps it biased me against it somewhat, in that there were throngs of people, some drunk and obnoxious. I remember later I was encouraged to join internship classmates at baseball games. For those of you who are not already painfully aware of this, if there is one thing on the planet that is more boring than a football game, it is a baseball game. My apologies to fans of the game. I know it is romanticized; the American pastime, Field of Dreams, whatever. Soccer, basketball, none of it seems to be of interest to me. I don’t know why tennis or volleyball would be, as they also involve a ball in play. My best guess is that it has to do with my having played the games. When I made a feeble attempt at intramural basketball I was able to sustain a small interest in televised basketball for a short time. I don’t know how many football fans have played football, at least for fun. There are undoubtedly studies of correlates of sports interest. It would be interesting to see if that is a key indicator.

tv

If frugality is the new chic¹, perhaps TV is increasingly America’s budget comfort food (though how much of our budgets go to satellite TV now?). I’m hearing of more and more people who watch TV during all nonworking waking hours. Recently I’m hearing of those who more specifically watch reality TV all evening (sometimes then switching to Facebook until they are ready for sleep). When Survivor became popular, I noticed that news programs on TV and on the radio would report what had happened on the show. Then other competitions with amateurs, like American Idol, or with celebrities, like Dancing With the Stars, became newsworthy. There is something about these shows that apparently makes them more addicting, whether it is that they are more intriguing due to real conflict and competition, that they involve greater opportunity to live vicariously, or other factors.

Nighttime dramas and sports are the perennial favorites, though, and are part of our common culture. Professors of Television are quoted in reviews of various TV series. Lines from recent episodes of TV shows are quoted in non-televison related news stories. When the Sopranos had an odd series ending, every news source I saw or heard reported on it the next morning (how many of which were owned by Time Warner, owner of HBO, I don’t know). I was a devoted follower of West Wing, and I admit being happy that ESPN Interactive has six channels devoted to the Australian Open at the moment.

TV can be both art and window to the world, but when I drive through the suburban sprawl at night, the blue glow of the television emanates from every living room: Everyone is worshiping the same Orwellian blue god. This seems the saddest among our children. There is evidence of 40% greater incidence of attention problems among children heavily dosed with TV, reported in a 2007 study published in Pediatrics, apparently making youth less tolerant of slower paced activities (like my lectures). There is not much debate that watching violence affects behavior, at least in the short-term. Personally I deplore the influence of the screw-it attitude of South Park, Beavis and Butthead, Bart Simpson, and even Sponge Bob, and their fart and booger-based humor. Although Wizards of Waverly Place and Hannah Montana are not inappropriate–they do drive the adults in the house nuts. And as adults, aren’t we simply allowing this device to do our childcare (while socializing them in problematic ways)? I guess that goes without saying.

Would we not be better off if we watched TV in moderation? Digital video recorders are somewhat helpful in trimming the fat and being selective (but also subject us to re-runs of Barney); a bit of self-control would help as well.

¹Goetz, K. (2009, January). Frugality is the new chic. In Day to Day, radio broadcast retrieved 1/21/09 from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99654933&ft=1&f=1017.