Rethinking Drinking- The Truth About Alcohol Consumption
It seems like everyone is into their “wine” these days. It’s become the cultural norm to numb our tough emotions, rather than addressing issues head on. There are two problems with this: 1. Drinking alcohol can take a serious toll on our health. 2. We’re not taking responsibility for listening to our emotions and addressing the issues that need to be addressed in our lives.
Alcohol takes a serious toll on our health regardless of how we sugar coat the facts, or try to disprove them.
Alcohol interferes with the brain’s communication pathways, and can affect the way the brain looks and works. These interruptions can change mood and behavior, and make it harder to think clearly and move with coordination.
Drinking alcohol can damage the heart: cardiomyopathy- stretching and drooping of heart muscle; arrhythmias- irregular heart beat; stroke; high blood pressure
Drinking takes a toll on the liver and can lead to a variety of problems and liver inflammations including: fatty liver, alcoholic hepatitis, fibrosis, cirrhosis.
Alcohol causes the pancreas to produce toxic substances that can eventually lead to pancreatitis, a dangerous inflammation and swelling of the blood vessels in the pancreas that prevents proper digestion.
According the the National Cancer Institute, there is strong scientific consensus that drinking alcohol causes several types of cancer. Consumption of alcoholic beverages as a known human carcinogen.
Drinking alcohol can weaken your immune system, making your body a much easier target for disease and illness.
Have you gotten into the habit of using alcohol to numb your difficult emotions? Here’s a way to start to become “friendly” with your emotions once again and seeing them as the allies they were designed to be:
Write down the exact emotion you’re experiencing. Don’t settle for “anxious” or “overwhelmed”. Dig deep and get to the root feeling: sadness, disappointment, fear, anger.
Describe the feeling in detail- where it’s located in your body and how your body feels as a result of the signal.
Breathe into the emotion until it dissipates.
Ask yourself why you were experiencing the emotion. Make sure you stick to the facts of the situation at hand. Describe the exact nature of the problem.
Decide how you want to respond to the emotion. It is always our responsibility to respond to our emotions in a way that aligns with the life we are intentionally creating for ourselves.
Don’t let your brain trick you into discounting the facts about alcohol. Our primitive brain is always looking for quick, easy pleasure and alcohol has become the “norm” because of its appeal to our primitive instincts. It is weakening society and making us sick mentally and physically. Alcohol is not our “friend”; negative emotion IS our friend when handled properly. Life is tough sometimes, but gets much easier when we feel our best physically and are skilled at allowing our emotions and responding with clarity!