When Drinks Consume You

During my long and full 17 years, 51 weeks, and 6 days of life, I have seen many situations where people have had a strong addiction to alcohol. Not only is it not healthy, but it is also sad. Many people who are addicted to alcohol often cannot see that it is harmful to them, until it's too late. Plus, it not only affects the person, but it affects the people they know, people around them, and people that they don't even know. What they don't know, is that while they are drinking, life is slipping by them. They are so obsessed with their alcohol and feel that they need it so badly, that they forget what is really important. They waste their money for a temporary "happiness, when they could be saving to get a better job, or to support their family.

"If you need an excuse for why you don't drink alcohol, you could say that addiction runs in your family and you don't want to try it even once because you may not stop until you are dead in a puddle of your own vomit or smashed into the side of a mini-van with children's body parts scattered around your corpse."

~Duane Alan Hahn

Although this seems grotesque and hard to think about, these are real live situations that happen to thousands of people every day. This is the cold hard truth. The Japanese Proverbs states, "First the man takes a drink; then the drink takes a drink; then the drink takes the man." I believe this to be true because a lot of the time, it only takes one. One sluff. One cigarette. One drink. That's all it takes for everything to change in the blink of an eye.

Fun without challenge, without inner satisfaction, often comes from surrogate motivators influencing one's actions and perceptions. More often than not, something like this is considered "fun" because it is a lack of "pain", be it social, physical, or psychological pain. For example, if you are programmed with social expectations that drinking and partying are key steps in securing one's self-worth, and that not having a bar life makes one lame and unaccepted, then one can squander away much of life in a drunken stupor, blissfully thinking all is fun with this programmed lifestyle.

~Montalk

P.S. I love you, Uncle Jason. Please think about life and how you can better yourself. And always remember, I love you and so do a lot of people.