By Dr Anne Malatt, Australia

Most of us can remember having a hangover and saying to ourselves that we will never drink alcohol again.  Why do we? Why do we drink to begin with? 

Alcohol is a poison. It kills nerve cells, and hence pain. It is a sugar hit which picks us up at the end of a hard day and leaves us feeling comfortably numb. It is a treat, a reward for a day’s work. The prospect of enjoying a drink can get us through a day, a week, a life. It can be a substitute for intimacy, a companion, a best friend. No wonder we arc up at the prospect of losing it.

Alcohol also opens us up to energies which are not us. It can allow us to behave in ways we would never behave without it. It can lead us to do things which are dangerous, hurtful to ourselves and others and leave us feeling ashamed. We cannot bear to remember and feel this, and so we drink again.

Medical and scientific research, which has supported the drinking of alcohol in small amounts, is finally coming out and saying what common sense, and our bodies, have been telling us all along – that there is no safe level of alcohol. One hangover should be enough to tell us this, if we listened to the truth of our bodies. Why do we ever have more than one?

Why do we need to drink alcohol?

Why is our life not enough for us?

Why are we tired?  Why are we angry?  Why are we sad?

When we drink, it is easy to deny that we feel this way. We go to work, we live our day, and at the end of the day we have our reward. We bind ourselves together with it socially; we use it to sweeten our relationships; it comforts us when we are on our own. It is easier to believe that life is good with a drink in our hand.

If we think about taking the drink away, we start to feel differently. This is almost unbearable for many, and we look outside ourselves, blaming others or our lives, to give us an excuse to keep drinking.

Let’s say, just for fun, that we have a glimmer of an understanding that we are drinking because we have to, not because we want to, and we would like to stop but don’t know how. Let’s say we have some health problems, or it is causing problems in our relationships, or we are just sick and tired of needing to drink.

Where do we start? How do we deal with the feelings that bubble to the surface? What helped me was to understand that I was drinking for a reason, and to take full responsibility for how I was feeling and for the choices I had made in my life.  Blaming others for my problems is a very bad habit of mine, and this was a fact I had to face, before I could deal with anything else. I also had to look at the way I was living and make deep and lasting changes. This was incredibly difficult, and I fully understand why people choose to drink, even when they know it is hurting them. I was one of those people for a very long time.

We drink because we don’t feel good about ourselves or our lives. If we did, why would we poison ourselves? These feelings can be very subtle and deep, and we may have created a great life to cover them up, but they are there, underneath.

So, how do we deal with them? It helps to be very loving and tender with ourselves as they start to surface. It also helps to get help. There is a saying “A problem cannot be solved from the level at which it was created”, and this is very true of a drinking problem.

I found the work of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine more helpful than the many other things I had tried in the past. Serge helped me to feel that I was so much more than I had previously believed, that there was a greatness, a grandness of love in me that I had not connected to for a long time. By connecting to that love, that living stillness within me, I was able to make more self-loving choices.  

I continued to drink after meeting Serge, and would sometimes come to sessions with a hangover, and sometimes drink after I had seen him. This was because I still could not bear to feel how I had lived, and the choices I had made, which were still living in my body. It was a very painful and difficult time, but I received only loving support from Serge. He never judged me, never told me what to do, only offered me love.

We drink because we think that our life is not enough, that we are not enough. But we are. Try life without alcohol. Get help if you need it. Feel and deal with what lies beneath your need to drink. Feel what is truly within you. Give yourself a chance to feel how great you truly are.