Why We Drink Alcohol When We Don’t Want ToBy Michaela

Why we drink alcohol when we don’t want to.

What is it about alcohol that keeps us coming back for more?

More often than we would like to and then having more of it than we want to. What is it about it? Well, I’m going to answer that question.

At some point in time most of us have been in a position where we have lost our mobile phone, we have mislaid it and can’t find it. The initial realisation is ‘oh no what have I done with my phone! How am I going to manage, how am I going to get through the next 10 minutes/hour?’ So then we start thinking about it, start worrying about it, start looking for it.

We may do other things to solve the problem because at that point in time there is something missing that we need and we want it and then low and behold we realise that we left it under the cushion, on the sofa and it is found.  

At that point when you lift the cushion and see it, what feeling is it that rushes through your body? May it be relief? Phew I have got it; I have found it.

That feeling of needing and wanting is gone, oh thank goodness, peace. The mind is silent where once a few minutes ago it was noisy because it was missing something it wanted.

So, would you say that you were relieved because you’d found it? You may even say well ‘Yes I felt good because I found what I was missing!’  If you hadn’t lost the phone in the first place, would you be delighted that it was there, every minute of every day?

No, it’s just there. It’s only when it’s not there that the void and gap is caused that make you want it to be there.

When a drinker seeks a drink. It isn’t to be happy. It’s to relieve the feeling of lack.

That feeling of ‘lack’ is key to understand where that feeling of lack comes from and why we go back to doing something that we really don’t want to do. Or we don’t do as much of or in the same way as whatever that may look like for you.

Often when we think of things like alcohol which by the way, is a highly addictive psychoactive drug. When we think about wanting a drink, you may hear the term, ‘oh I have got an itch and I need to scratch it.’  It’s kind of similar in a way, the feeling that until that itch is scratched. I’m not going to be settled or happy or calm, and so that’s what you want to do, and the more you try not to do it the itchier it gets and so you scratch it and feel relief again.

You wouldn’t say you were happy and fulfilled when you were scratching that itch because, you probably rather it wasn’t there in the first place truth be known.

But there is a little bit more to it again as we take the layers off this because, unbeknownst to you that stuff that you washed your hands with that morning is actually laced with itching powder and as you go to scratch that itch, you are putting itching powder onto your skin, and every time you go back to scratch it, your hands rub a little bit wider and so the itch starts to spread it grows.

And then the relief when you scratch it, feels more.

Now when it comes to scratching an itch on your skin, you know full well that it’s not in your best interests, you know you don’t want any part of it but the alcohol trap is very subtle and that perception of relief is so disguised as things like ‘it makes me feel happy, it makes me feel like I’m enjoying myself, it adds to my life.’

It is so brilliantly disguised that we don’t even know we are in it but the way alcohol and all drugs work is that when you have a drink you are simultaneously relieving that itch and you are putting itching powder back onto the skin in this metaphor.

So, by consuming alcohol you are relieving the irritation that was set up last time you had a drink. This can be amplified by stress, for example many more turned to alcohol during the Coronavirus pandemic.

The way all drugs work is that void, that gap, that lack that is being sought gets bigger and bigger and bigger and we are trying to fill it up but we can’t, as it’s a leaky bucket which is also getting bigger.

So it’s like the sorcerer’s apprentice, the problem is getting bigger because the problem is causing the problem.

Einstein said, ‘Don’t try to solve the problem from within the problem, you have to look elsewhere.’ All alcohol problems and alcohol itself is a drug and 95% psychological. This is proper science, not pseudo-science.

This is proper psychology not pseudo-psychology and that’s what is needed here to understand why we find ourselves with alcohol doing it when we don’t want to do it. Doing more of it than we want to do, more often than we want to be doing it and then for many, eventually getting to the point where you don’t want to do this anymore and you recognise you are in a trap but are unsure on how to get out of it. I hope this has helped explain to you in metaphors that make sense the underpinning science and psychology of why we keep coming back to something that is alcohol when we really don’t want to be doing that.

You can now watch my video relating to this blog post on YouTube, simply click on the below image and it will take you there.