The good thing about being born a human (instead of, say, a bluebottle), is that we are highly intelligent creatures, brimming with thoughts and feelings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The bad thing about being born a human, is that…well, we are highly intelligent creatures, brimming with thoughts and feelings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sometimes all that brain activity, all that emotion, can get a bit overwhelming. Did I say sometimes? I meant most of the time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even for an extrovert such as myself, the (mostly self-imposed) pressure to be on the ball: quick-witted, well-mannered, informed and generally just nice <\/em>all the time is exhausting. Working in retail adds to that: the shop floor is like a stage, where you always have to be \u2018on\u2019: all-singing, all-dancing – jazz-hands at the ready. Actors. And now we have to be actors in full PPE, \u2018smizing\u2019 (corporate speak for \u2018smiling with your eyes\u2019) above our masks; dancing daily on the cliff-edge of redundancy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So is it any wonder, then, that after a long day serving customers, smizing until our eyeballs bulge and jaws ache, we have a tendency to reach for the bottle? Retail workers are like the orchestra on the Titanic, playing on whilst everywhere around them people scurry in all directions, running for cover as the ship lurches and plunges deeper into the abyss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A long drink of something cold at the end of a long-ass day is like a reward, a pat on the back for successfully completing another 24hrs without committing murder. \u201cWell done, you survived another whole day without sucker-punching anyone,\u201d murmurs the Sauvignon bottle telepathically from inside the fridge, willing you to up-end it into a large wine glass. It certainly takes those jagged edges off the day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The experience of being human is so intense that as children we are given dummies to suck on, to pacify us; to stop us crying with fear and anxiety at how scary the big wide world is. As we get older that fear is proven to be justified, but we can hardly be walking around town with a big ol\u2019 dummy stuffed in our gobs, a threadbare teddy tucked under one arm, so we replace it with other, more socially acceptable forms of comfort: cigarettes, vapes, drugs and alcohol. Much better to replace those harmless childish objects with life-limiting addictions, right? At least we\u2019ll get this fraught human experience over with quicker. Jeez, what a messed-up thought process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So we drink largely to anaesthetise ourselves from the abject horror of being a highly intelligent spiritual creature, trapped in the confines of a physical body, being controlled by our minds. Why do I say horror? Because the body can restrict us (for example due to illness, disability, being unfit); the mind that controls us is often negative. The brain is always fearful: watching for predators, suspicious, assuming the worst in order to keep us alert and subsequently safe. However the mind\u2019s uber-cautious nature can be like having your biggest enemy – the toughest bully at school – whispering in your ear all day long. We often drink to silence those vicious voices, for some respite, even just for a little while. We get \u2018out of our heads\u2019 by consuming alcohol to do exactly that: to get away from the internal chatter for a bit. To numb ourselves against the mischievous monkey bouncing around in our brains. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So if we\u2019re drinking to escape physical or mental pain, to dampen down our anxieties (or drown them in some cases), or simply to let our hair down and quieten our minds long enough to shrug off our inhibitions, dance, and have fun, surely in order to remove the desire to drink, we need to find a way to quieten the inner chatter in the first place? <\/p>\n\n\n\n In order to remove the need for that anaesthetic we need to stop flapping and floundering in the choppy waters, drowning in our feelings, and learn to float amongst them instead. We need to find that sense of stillness, a lake to lie back on, toes up, and just \u2018be\u2019 instead of constantly trying to swim upstream against the rapids. <\/p>\n\n\n\n