I grew up in a family with a lot of alcohol. A lot. My mother was and is an alcoholic, though to single her out as the only alcoholic is in fact the very first step in society’s clever and insidious avoidance of the whole picture.
An addict is defined as someone who is “…dependent on a substance and has formed a physical and/or psychological habit around that substance…”
Which also exactly describes my father’s relationship with alcohol and all of his friends. Because they all ‘needed’ to drink pretty much every single day. And all did. They were all “…dependent on a substance and had formed a physical and/or psychological habit around that substance….”
But they would never consider themselves alcoholic and nor would the zillions of people who all religiously go the pub every evening and/or have a glass of scotch before going to bed. I don’t want to get into a big discussion about what is and isn’t an alcoholic – that is a debate that has enabled millions to live in denial for years.
Its acceptance as normal is what is important in what I am saying.
My mother was not a raging, angry, dysfunctional alcoholic. Quite the opposite. She (almost all of the time) held it together expertly, running our extremely busy and full lives with amazing dexterity and skill. She kept the ship afloat and kept it on some kind of course.
So nobody was doing or saying anything about it. Society accepts alcohol. So, for my parents and their friends, their consumption and my mother’s consumption was normal.
If you are used to listening to music with the volume at 9, you would never notice if someone else is listening to it at 11. That is how it is. That is what society’s acceptance allows.
But I can now see how deeply damaging this all was. In two ways.
Firstly, the alcoholism itself. Secondly the way she, my father, and my life were held together. The first of these two feels like it has been well documented by many, so I’m less focussed on that.
“Holding it together” is what is relevant.
It may seem weird, but in a way, that is the absolute worst thing for a child growing up, because it makes it all seem normal – as if this is how it is meant to be. And this is exactly what society’s acceptance of alcohol supports.
In amongst that ocean of booze was me – a child – growing up…. looking around, learning, seeing, feeling, watching, evolving.
No matter that I may have instinctively known that this was wrong and felt that it wasn’t true…. in my case, that didn’t last long. It can’t. If it is everywhere, you just assume that it is life. It was my world, my normal. So I believed it, I took it on as my truth. That’s what kids do – their world ends up as only what they see. That is the extent of their boundaries, of their experience, of their influences.
So, for me, it was normal to have cold, functional, disconnected relationships.
- Normal to look at someone you love and to feel distant and utterly alone.
- Normal not to trust someone enough to cry with them.
- Normal for a hug to feel empty.
- Normal for a goodnight kiss to feel perfunctory.
- Normal to feel lost.
- Normal to think that this somber cloak of denial and subterfuge enveloped every family.
- Normal to have no actual experience or example of true love as a marker in my life…. the list is long.
Now it would be erroneous to land all of the above at the door of alcohol. Indeed alcohol is never the root of the problem. And in my family there were certainly many, many deeper issues at play.
But even as only a percentage of the full picture, it is still powerfully affecting, and what is so damaging about alcohol is that because everyone considers it normal, then the child grows up believing that it is normal. And in my case it was all SO normal. I can’t over-stress the effect of this. As I have said, Mum was coping with our lives, the ship was afloat (sort of!), the days were working, my parents’ friends were all around us, all seeming to be having a grand time (and, in their minds, they were),all doing exactly the same and all further embedding the ‘normal’ of it. There was nothing to cause any alarm bells to ring. Nothing to make me think that this wasn’t exactly how it should be. Nothing to make me question it. Nothing that didn’t cement it all deeper and deeper into my consciousness.
I had absolutely no notion that there could be another way.
But inside I was craving for true love, craving for true intimacy, craving to be met, to be heard, to be understood, to be respected and valued, craving for this fog to lift and to be able to connect with another human being as an equal.
Again, I reiterate that nothing extreme was going on. I wasn’t being physically abused or anything dramatic like that. On the surface I had it all. Parents, lovely home, friends, toys, holidays etc…..
But the more normal and happy it looks on the outside, the more confused and messed up the kid is on the inside. Because I knew, but nothing was telling me I was right.
And thus I gave up. I started coping. Putting on mask after mask, layers and layers of protection. I became an expert at life. At doing. At surviving. At coping.
I lost trust in myself. I had to. Because everything that I was seeing was contradicting my feelings, thus my feelings must be wrong. Thus I stopped feeling.
It’s obvious. It’s science. It’s evolution.
It is only in the past few years that I am really beginning to see the depth to which this has been embedded in me and the expansive damage that it has done to my trust in myself and in humanity. To my ability to accept love, intimacy and the truth.
BUT…
I do know love and intimacy. And I do know the truth. I always have.
However, it wasn’t until I came across Universal Medicine and its teachings…. it wasn’t until I came across human beings like Serge Benhayon and his children Simone Benhayon, Natalie Benhayon, Michael Benhayon and Curtis Benhayon…. it wasn’t until I came across the numerous other people that I have met through Universal Medicine…. that I began to see that I was in fact, and always have been, right. That my life wasn’t normal. That there is another way.
I have made enormous and amazing and fantastically courageous steps away from my old normal and am now discovering the deep wells of love and tenderness and intimacy that reside in me, that are me, and that reside in all of humanity. It is glorious and wondrous and joyous…. and, at times, hard – as I discover another layer of protection or hurt.
But I now clearly see that any of those hurts are just a product of my life that I have described above so it is so much simpler to discard, so much simpler to say NO to and so much simpler to see as NOT NORMAL. Because I now know that it IS NOT NORMAL.
All over this world there are zillions of kids who are living amongst alcohol consumption, KNOWING that the life it is making them live, is wrong. KNOWING that it isn’t right. But, because life isn’t confirming that knowing, in fact because life is actively telling them they are wrong, they abandon themselves and enjoin.
I know because that is EXACTLY what I did.
That is the true evil of alcohol. It’s acceptance by society is what allows it. And this is what imprisons so many.
I now know that it is not normal. And that the little child who knew that something was wrong, was in fact, right, all along.
| A postscript:It was totally normal for my mother and father to live like this, to bring up their children like this. They had no idea there was another way – they had been brought up in exactly the same way. All their friends were the same. It was everywhere. It was their world. Like me, they had no way of knowing any different, so I have zero blame for them. I have total understanding of their choices. And I have a deep and true love for them.As it is all of society’s normal, it was also their normal. |
By Anonymous
Inspired from a comment in response to: The Abuse of Alcohol – The True Harm
The Truth about Serge Benhayon 
I agree alcohol is normalised. When you don’t drink then you are classed as being abnormal.
I used to drink and drink I did. It was something celebrated for drinking loads. The sad part was the fact that days off, weekends etc were wasted recovering. No wonder life passed us by.
Roll on post Serge Benhayon and his family and my life has turned completely around. My body had already felt the ramifications of the separation alcohol was causing well before this. I began to realise there was more to life and a life of quality is now being lived.
I am now living the normal life, whilst everyone around are living in abnormality.
When we know something is true but are then reflected a lie long enough then it can be hard to not embrace the lies. The moment before we embrace the lie there is a point where we let go of the truth and in that moment we give up, and in the giving up we then get fed the lie as the truth – something has to replace the truth that we have chosen to let go of. A lie cannot replace the truth unless we allow it to. Hence how important is it to appreciate, and hold dear what we know to be true and allow that to grow and expand.
A lie will always be exposed somewhere along the way. It can be felt, smelt, tasted, seen, heard, read…and will lead you along another path. Truth gives you absolute settlement.
On a deeper level we all know what is true and what is love, and hence the disturbance we can feel when we are told that something else is love. If we hold steady and do not allow ourselves to be convinced of this other, then we do not lose our connection with what is true, and we do not forget, but if we allow ourselves to be convinced, perhaps because we seek to fit in, to be accepted or recognised by those around us etc, then we enjoin those who have accepted a lie as a truth… until such time that one day we see and remember through the reflections of another of the truth we once left behind.
Thank you Anon – you have truly highlighted how something so not natural for us can be masquaraded as ‘the norm’ and the more we are told this then eventually it is like we forget what the truth is. The truth of course never goes away, but it is forgotten… often for a very long time, until such time that someone can reflect that truth back to us, and then it is amazing how we can extract ourselves from the mud and remember again!
Getting honest about our normal or what has been ‘normal’ for us and talking about this is very important as this supports us seeing that in actual fact it is not normal at all!
The thing we think is normal exposes itself in not being so normal in the end.
“If you are used to listening to music with the volume at 9, you would never notice if someone else is listening to it at 11. That is how it is. That is what society’s acceptance allows” – I agree, and that is such an uncomfortable truth as it clearly indicates how we each participate in this gradual decline in our standard. No one is to blame, but we are all responsible.
“On the surface I had it all. Parents, lovely home, friends, toys, holidays etc…..” The surface ‘normal’ is very thin when we can feel the truth of all we are missing. Serge Benhayon presents the truth that there is another Way.
To have had the reflection of truth from someone as humble as Serge Benhayon is a blessing like no other – he is a simple ordinary man who can transform lives with this power of reflection and supporting us all be reminded of what we know to be true.
We have many ways in which we self-medicate and using alcohol is one of them. It becomes a need that we have so we numb what we are feeling. There is a belief that because something (such as alcohol) is commonly used and has been used for a very long time that its normal. It is still seen by many that if used in smaller amounts it has benefits. Whilst our needs remain, it will be regarded as normal for some time to come.
It shows how much we have normalised drinking alcohol when we are surprised when someone says they don’t drink and is left feeling awkward because of it.
It is about being honest with the fact that alcohol is a dead end. There is nothing good, in the long run that can come from drinking alcohol. I feel everyone would agree with that.
It took me years of drinking and abusing my body to not see Alcohol as not normal. What got me to really see it was two things, first Serge Benhayon presenting on energy and then the other was when working at the same time in a bar club till silly o’clock in the morning and just seeing how much alcohol was creating monsters out of people it was then that it was all just confirmed that this is not how we are meant to be living. Even in moderation when I work and some clients start to have an alcoholic drink then I get to see them change within the first drink – the quality of the connection simply disconnects. If we drink so that we go beyond that point you can see when something takes over someone or you can feel it within ourselves. I just got to a point where I knew I didn’t want to abuse myself in this way any longer.
I am always surprised how people ask me why I don’t drink alcohol.
That is for me the same question as asking someone why they don’t do drugs.
We turn the things upside down.
We should ask our fellow brothers why they do alcohol or drugs? What is really going on that you want to numb yourself so much.
I wish somebody was asking me that when I was a young woman drinking alcohol.
I was like many others not willing to feel the pains I carried with me.
It’s quite exposing where society is at if they champion and indulge in alcohol on a daily basis, when it is proven by science to be a poison.
And, it makes one wonder if we really are an intelligent species.
Alcohol is one example of how we use denial to carry on with things that we know are not good for us. Everybody knows alcohol is a poison, All you need to do is taste it and the body says no.
Yet we rationalize, that well everybody drinks, and a little bit will not hurt.
A friend of mine who always enjoyed going down to the pub to watch football finally had an experience that woke them up to the side effects of Alcohol. They had been watching the recent world cup while drinking beer. On the way home they collapsed in the road late at night and passed out. They came to as neighbour’s were trying to help them as they had found him lying cold and bleeding from a bad cut. He was badly shaken up by this event which he found mortifying it seemed to hurt his pride and dignity. Since then he has hardly touched a drink because he felt for himself the devastation in his body. Sometimes it takes an incident such as this to wake up and realise the damage we are inflicting on our bodies.
“Alcohol is not normal” – this ought to be on every billboard in the world.
Along with, ‘Alcohol is a poison’.
The title alone should have us cringe in our minds as our bodies know this simple fact. There is no true intelligence in stating otherwise.
I find it really sad what we have come to accept as normal, we don’t need to accept a world of empty hugs, and perfunctory kisses or meaningless words – it’s totally possible to turn this around to live a deeply loving and rich and beautifully caring life.
“I lost trust in myself. I had to. Because everything that I was seeing was contradicting my feelings, thus my feelings must be wrong. Thus I stopped feeling.” Says it all really. I can remember absolutely hating the taste of alcohol and yet what do I do when I grow up, force my body to get used to the taste. What a huge inspiration Serge Benhayon and his family are, a living example of what normal is, to live with no artificial stimulants, toxins or poisons and love life to the hilt.
It’s interesting how often we hate the first taste of something but we can override it for what we need – until we actually think we like it. It’s remarkable what we are capable of.
I have just been conversing with a friend of mine who stopped drinking alcohol years ago but started drinking again after a death in their family and was encouraged to do so by friends. This conversation gave me space to stop and appreciate how I used alcohol to numb the fact that I found life to be unpleasant and therefore used alcohol to take the edge of it. However the next day life was just as ugly and I felt so washed out and even less able to cope with it. Looking back I considered myself to be an intelligent person but this way of living was anything but intelligent it was very harming to myself and others.
“Alcohol is Not Normal” – drinking alcohol maybe our societal norm but choosing to not sustain that ideal and norm and instead listen to and care for my body in choosing to not consume alcohol has been one of the greatest choices i’ve made because of the vitality i feel inside my body as a result. Just because something is the norm, doesn’t make it right or true for the body to ingest that [poison].
My husband and I live in the city centre and really get to see first hand the effects of alcohol, we have also noticed the amount of drug taking that has gone up, its now very common for people to smoke pot in the street, many in the general public know what it is but choose to turn a blind eye.
The consciousness of alcohol and its impact is huge to say the least. We know the truth of alcohol and what it does. We know how it affects us and the impact it has on those around us yet we still drink alcohol. To see the energy of alcohol in full and its purpose is to hold myself in love knowing the truth/abuse of alcohol doesn’t go away no matter the force or energy that tries to persuade me otherwise.
The issue with alcohol depends very much on how we approach it. And how we approach it depends on how willing are we to relate to truth. We approach it either based on the truth of what alcohol is and does or our needs. In the first case, it is easy to realize that it is not normal, but in the second one, it is easy to say it is normal because, you and many many others cannot see beyond their needs.
Drinking alcohol is an enormous issue in our societies, much more than we realise. When I look at the trend change of smoking and how society has firmly said no to it, I imagine that alcohol will one day go that way, once society wakes up to the real impacts, and decides those impacts are no longer worth the so called social pleasure of drinking.
Your list is very relatable and I understand it all, this one is something that we really do misroute on, as adults…this is how children feel and it is terrorising….”Normal to look at someone you love and to feel distant and utterly alone.” To have this in your home destabilises you for your future, no doubt, what ever the level of drinking that is occurring.
“Alcohol is Not Normal” – alcohol is a poison to the body and in this way it is not normal for the body to consume such alienness. How is it that what is alien is an accepted norm of society and that if one does not buy into the drinking of alcohol that one is seen as a spoiler, party-pooper, weird, anti-social.. aka not normal, or living and enjoying a normal life when what is normal and enjoyable is to not drink alcohol?
Alcohol is so so not normal – the fact we have normalised this poison in society highlights our deep level of arrogance.
Alcohol has never been normal, as young children we know this, ‘I now know that it is not normal. And that the little child who knew that something was wrong, was in fact, right, all along.’
We simply cannot say it often enough that alcohol is not normal. We need to become more honest about why we use alcohol.
It’s interesting how we have come to see drinking alcohol everyday as normal and I have watched while waiting for an early morning plane how people are drinking alcohol before breakfast or during it. Their going on holiday so there is a sense of they deserve to relax and enjoy their holiday as it is all part of it. We have normalized drinking to the extent that we have dulled ourselves to the damage alcohol has on our bodies and how abusive and violent we can become. I have been on a plane where the captain of the aircraft had to come and speak to an out of control passenger that was very drunk and disorderly that if they didn’t behave he would turn the aircraft round and go back and he would be arrested at the gate. When we landed he was actually arrested and this may have been a wake up call that was needed.
There are so many things in life we have now accepted as normal. The scale seems to forever increase to the level we now say yes to. If we connected back to our bodies and restarted the scale we would be blown away by how much abuse we call normal.
Questioning what society has accepted as normal is very necessary for our evolution. Outing the normal’s insidious harm and saying it is not ok takes courage but offers others an amazing opportunity to consider whether that might be also true for them.
I find it super amazing the constellations there for us to experience, learn and grow from to support us to evolve. Our mother, father, grandparents, children, brothers, sisters, aunties, uncles, cousins etc, are not randomly in our lives. Each and every one of them plays a part in our lives and to truly love them having the understanding from the love and understanding we have for ourselves, regardless the choices made, is immensely powerful. We cannot offer anything greater than that to ourselves and to another.
It’s actually scary that consuming alcohol is an accepted part of ‘having a good time’. And the ‘good time’ is laughed and joked about afterwards, even when most of the ‘good time’ cannot be remembered. I remember being a part of this way of life many years ago. It was a roller coaster ride of emotions that led to misery and depression, and all to avoid truly embracing life and feeling what was actually going on. It is scary that this is an accepted part of life.
Yes, I agree with you Rebecca, it is scary as it should make us wonder why we behave this way and keep going this way even though we all can feel that this is not in truth a way that we truly enjoy.
If we can stay sober long enough to appreciate life with all its beauty and all its challenges and take steps towards dealing with the issues that make us want to drink in the first place, we can begin to see and feel that life lived with love towards oneself and others is so much more delicious and fun than any drunken ‘good time’. There really is no comparison.
And as in fact there is no drunken ‘good time’ for any of us, it is only that we have settled for good times with alcohol. And that is not only sad but should shake us wide awake how little we know of and appreciate the grandness we are part of – the universe, mother earth, nature around us, the beauty of every single one of us – .
Anonymous this is a great conversation to be having. I feel as though we have normalized alcohol as something that helps people calm their nerves and relax, say after a stressful day at the office. We were sold the idea via advertisement that cigarettes helped to calm the nerves and were promoted as a benefit to health. Now we know differently. I wonder how long it will take before we once again realise that alcohol is very damaging to our bodies whether we have just one glass of wine a day or get drunk.
My normal now does not include alcohol or indeed any stimulants or substances that take me away from myself. A big and very valued shift in my life that occurred when I was empowered to realise my own fragile and beautiful worth. When we are able to restore connection to our inherent love, the real quality of these choices are naturally exposed, revealing our true and gorgeous normal underneath.
It is crazy how society has normalised not only drinking a known poison but large quantities of it, it is championed as being a national pastime when in fact it is a contributing factor to so much domestic violence and to people’s general health and well-being.
Anonymous, reading a blog like that inspires change. All-time!!! I commend you highly in regard – instrumental how you delivered just how evil and entrenched alcohol is. So much so that I feel to write myself just our abusive this substance was to my family, my relationships and Me. One quote from many – So true “But, because life isn’t confirming that knowing, in fact because life is actively telling them they are wrong, they abandon themselves and enjoin.”
“Alcohol is not normal” – this is the absolutely truth of alcohol and the more we accept this fact the easier it will be to get rid of it out of our lives.
Alcohol is not normal but we’ve re-defined what normal is to suit our needs and so that what is not normal is normal simply because everyone does it.
It is very striking, the image of a child in amongst many adults who drink alcohol. The contrast of the vulnerability against the harshness of the way people are when they drink is vivid and telling, mainly because every single adult who drinks alcohol was once a child too, open to feeling and to being vulnerable too.
‘I had absolutely no notion that there could be another way’ which describes beautifully the deceptive and illusory nature of ‘normal’ as a concept we need to learn to start to see through.
Thank you for speaking up about alcohol. It is so accepted in society and its use so fiercely defended yet it wreaks so much havoc in so many peoples lives and is the cause of death to many others. It is about time we became honest about all of this and started to put ourselves before our needs of escape or comfort or reward or whatever else we use alcohol for. It is not a necessary substance for life on this planet however anyone may like to pretend it is and the world would be a much better place without it. I know so many people who thought they could not live without it and now say that their lives are a million times better for having left it behind.
It takes simply one to stand in the truth that they know and express from this, and then the ‘normal’ that everyone deep down knows is a lie we have bought hook, like and sinker is exposed as that – a lie we have willingly bought and made our normal. This applies to the normality of alcohol – share with someone when prompted that you do not drink because why would you intoxicate your body and alter your emotional and mental state, and the reality of what is being chosen is very clear for everyone around you.
It is the denial that is concerning. When we deny something we refuse point blank to be open and see that there could be another way other than to abuse ourselves with alcohol.
We have normalised a view of ourselves that is insidious, small and reduced down. No wonder we allow abuses in our day when we don’t even view ourselves in a true way – a divine son of God not just a husband, wife or employee. Thank you Anonymous for speaking up about the evil of normal.
‘Normal’ is deemed normal because enough people are doing it, it is their common denominator or one of them. But what is apparently ‘normal’ is not natural or not yet in our society. At present ‘natural’ is more like a branding tool that sells merchandise. On so the twisting and devaluing of words continues.
I grew up around alcohol and it was something took place in the house hold as well as dad going to the the club on the way home at least once or twice a week. What I couldn’t get my head around was when they had people over the excessive in take that would be present, and everyone started to make fools of themselves. I couldn’t quite understand that this was what was needed to ‘have a good time’ yet it was super ugly and aggressive. That was my role models and that was what I believed was life and how it will be.
It can be a very lonely place for a child growing up in a household where alcohol is the norm.
As a society we often see an “alcoholic” as someone who is dysfunctional with alcohol and who has a major problem with it. But low level alcoholism is very common with people having a mild problem with alcohol, something that is accepted or in most cases not even considered a problem. Needing a drink at the everyday is a common event and no one blinks an eye. But if we really take a look and get honest, we know that is a problem.
Wow this is a very powerful blog, illustrating how normal alcohol is and how truly evil the impact is on society at every level.
Your heading says it all – Alcohol is not Normal – but society has made it so. And as you show so clearly, from the acceptance of it being normal flows a whole lot of other behaviours that then come to be accepted as normal, especially by children in these situations. But the consumption of alcohol is not the starting point of the problem but the tool used to cover up the real issues, issues that may have not yet been identified or if they have they are being ignored. The use of alcohol is simply another ‘problem’ layered upon all the others.
Alcohol is the vehicle through which we get to normalize a lot of ab-normal things of life. It gets to the point that the conform a package that is so entangled that is difficult to let go.
It will take a long time for humanity to accept the immense harm that alcohol has caused let alone the yet more ginormous harm that has been done from separating from ourselves.
Drinking alcohol can be a way to escape the rigours of life and dull the edges of reality. Those “rigours” do not go away so while the alcohol long term wears us out we are in a much less clear and less vital state to address those very things we are trying to get away from.
I used to think alcohol was very normal as that was all I knew, I had watched how the adults would drink in the evening and on the weekends and they all made out that it was a whole lot of fun. This was how you were sociable. Over time I got sick of it both physically and literally and would say the famous words ‘never again!’. Since I was introduced to the thought that perhaps alcohol wasn’t all that we had made it out to be and in actually fact it was cementing the separation from our inner being within did I stop and say ‘hey why not give it a go without alcohol. Over 9 years off it is one of the best thing I have ever done!
Alcohol is definitely not normal, although we have made it a normal and acceptable part of life. But how can it be normal to poison ourselves on a regular basis and struggle to deal with life. Definitely not normal!
Besides everything else alcohol is known to be a poison. Drinking it is as normal as drinking poison and calling poisoning yourself as having fun.
“But inside I was craving for true love, craving for true intimacy, craving to be met, to be heard, to be understood, to be respected and valued, craving for this fog to lift and to be able to connect with another human being as an equal” I feel you speak for most of humanity here Anonymous, so many people who are craving love are doing so as they are missing out on true intimacy – of course we will look for stimulants of some sort when we are not being love and expressing the love we are – Being tender, intimate, sensitive delicate all of this we are and if we are not this then we look to substances to camoflage the lack of love we are feeling.
Wow Anonymous, when I was reading your list of what was normal, I can very much relate to it and it makes me realise how low we as a society have set the bar for what is normal.
It’s getting closer to Christmas, which means that there are a lot of Christmas staff parties happening. I heard of one Christmas party where the behaviour got so outrageous due to alcohol consumption that disciplinary action is now required. Surely it is time to look at the effects of alcohol and how harming it is not just on the person drinking it but also on the whole of society.
How cool is it to just come out and say , yes alcohol is not normal , nor is abuse, bullying and so many things that are taken for granted or at best tolerated in our society.
My now deceased father admitted to me that had he not left the army when he did, he would have become an alcoholic. For him he enjoyed spending time with his friends, having a laugh and singing after having had a couple of rum and cokes and when that all stopped he lost the drive to drink on his own, and slowly he would only drink on special occasions and family get-togethers. What this shows is how pulled we are to follow others even at the expense of ourselves all in the name of having a good time.
We have learnt to normalize and accept that which is a real detriment to our bodies, society and the world at large. It says a lot of where we are in our evolution as we clearly got a long way to go!
Its Halloween here tonight and this like many other themed nights are used a excuse to have a big night out- a big knees up. No doubt there will be more fights, more casualties, more people sexual assaulted and more people ending up at A and E – amazing what we call a good time.
During my years of growing up, I had one adult who did like to drink and the other who was very sensitive to alcohol and the side effects, and for the best part chose not to drink. I took after my mother who was the sensitive one and could not tolerate the hangover feeling, but this did not stop me trying to drink despite what my body was telling me. Even though I was highly allergic to coke cola which would result in me spending the night in the bathroom with stomach cramps, hot and cold sweats, and then finally diarrhoea until the very last bit was out of my body, and then finally I could collapse onto my bed exhausted, I would still say that I enjoyed rum and coke. It makes no sense that I would be prepared to put up with the side effects of the coke so that I could have a drink of rum – this to me just shows how destructive we can be with our bodies by ignoring the messages it gives us.
Deep down I think we all know there is something wrong with many aspects of our life, alcohol is just one small part of it, it has become normal to disregard ourselves, hurt others, have empty conversations, but I think no matter how normal something becomes, deep down we know it’s a lie and not the truth we know life could be.
Because we live by the decree ‘anything in moderation’ and have well established extreme ends of the spectrum, we allow ourselves to indulge in the ‘middle ground’, the place where the true evil lies by virtue of the fact it goes unseen and thus unchecked because we have an extreme to which to compare it to and say ‘well at least I am not doing that’. The thing with evil (anything that takes us away from the love that we are) is that it is always one and same energy no matter from what end of the spectrum we go to for our supply. And the truth is, at a deeper level we all know this and thus we know the degree to which our demand increases the supply for this all to be so.
Alcohol was so normal in my life too to the point that i just accepted it even though I knew it was not true. It was not the way and humanity is just coping with life not fully living it despite what is seen on the outside and how much alcohol is “enjoyed”. At the end of the day it is normal to have hurts but why is this the case? Why do we all grow up deeply scarred and hurt inside? Why have we not changed the way life is so this does not happen any more?
“I lost trust in myself. I had to. Because everything that I was seeing was contradicting my feelings, thus my feelings must be wrong. Thus I stopped feeling.” This is such a powerful awareness and observation as it is a foundational cause of the woes of this world as this occurs to 99% of humanity. What a difference it would be if children were supported to maintain their connection to their inner knowing and expressed from that Truth.
The false social ‘normal’ is insidiously evil. Until eleven years ago when I renounced alcohol, thanks to Universal Medicine, I lived in the illusion I was not an alcoholic although I would not have owned up to being dependent upon alcohol as my level of consumption was as such a socially accepted norm.
Absolutely agree Matilda, ‘Our acceptance of that which is not true is one of the greatest evils in our world’, time to call out and express all that is not true in this world.
Our acceptance of that which is not true is one of the greatest evils in our world; normalising the abnormal and leaving us further from truth than ever before.
Even though alcohol was part of everyday life for me growing up, and was something I used to help me get through life for many years, i always had one eye on the abusive nature of my relationship with it. I couldn’t imagine who I was without it but my fear of becoming an alcoholic was stronger so I stopped drinking in my early 30s. It was only after coming to Universal Medicine several years later I truly understood what I had been feeling when I hadn’t felt like myself on alcohol, and it was then I was able to let go the fear that had impulsed me to stop and appreciate it was a deeply self-loving choice.
A very ‘sobering’ thought Anonymous – if significant others had more awareness of every single movement being clocked and copied by children, there would be a big change embracing responsibility and true parenting.
“That’s what kids do – their world ends up as only what they see. That is the extent of their boundaries, of their experience, of their influences”.
This is a massive revelation that many would turn a blind eye too. It’s our lack of responsibility and willingness to take it that keeps this way of living ‘normal’.
How this highlights the responsibility we have to not pass on our ill ‘normals’ to our children. Time to delve a little deeper and not simply accept some of our behaviours as ‘normal’… as many of them are very, very far from normal. We have a body that is magnificent in its intricate design and clarity very naturally.. if we let it be.
Yes alcohol is so normalised in our society, we do think that drinking a lot of alcohol is normal, which of course it is not. We don’t actually need it, it completely changes who we are, and not for the better either. We really need to change our views on what is ‘normal’.
When we have a knowing that comes from deep inside as children and it butts up against what society calls ‘normal life’ but every fiber in our bodies are saying this is untrue. It causes a huge disquiet in our bodies and for many of us we have to find coping mechanisms to deal with the trauma in our bodies. And we do become experts at doing, at surviving at coping and we do loose trust in ourselves. It stands to reason that we feel we must be in the wrong as the picture of ‘normal’ we are given is so overwhelming. But this doesn’t mean to say that society is right because we only have to look around us to see that actually the very fabric of our society is breaking down through illness and disease. So something is clearly not right.
Addictions in one form or another are rampant in our society, and most of them help numb us from feeling what is truly happening in our bodies, and so avoid being responsible.
Love it and the ‘norms’ of life are challenged again. This article highlights what is going on for most of us, well I relate closely to it. What happens when something before your eyes consistently shows you that what you are seeing isn’t true even though there is an internal dialogue saying something is up? You break down and eventually join what you see and abandon what you are feeling. Then as you go on the feeling keeps coming back but you eyes are being fooled and so you look elsewhere for answers only to come back full circle and see that the ‘internal dialogue’ was the answer you were looking for all along.
Anonymous thank you so much for writing this blog because it has helped me fit another piece of jigsaw to the puzzle of my childhood.
You say
“I lost trust in myself. I had to. Because everything that I was seeing was contradicting my feelings, thus my feelings must be wrong. Thus I stopped feeling.”
I had a similar experience growing up, I knew there was something that didn’t feel right within the family, but as you say nothing was supporting me to feel the way I did. So I assumed it must be me that was wrong and doubted myself. I lost trust in what I was feeling and so started to withdraw from life little by little and like you I became an expert at surviving and all the time my body was screaming at me that something wasn’t right.
From the age of 20 my lower back was incredibly sore, which was my body telling me that I was carry a great deal of sadness and there was no support in my life and that was true. It is only since finding Serge Benhayon and having sessions with Universal Medicine practitioners that I am rebuilding trust within me. That I do know exactly what is going on in life and that as ugly as it currently is, I don’t have to participate in it but live with integrity, decency and respect for myself and all others and reflect to everyone I meet that there is a different way to live.
Society has normalised alcohol, it is accepted and considered to be part of everyday life, and this is the reflection children get as they are growing up if their family is part of the normalisation. I wonder what it will take for society to wake up to the fact that alcohol is a poison, that it is making many people sick, it is the reason for a huge amount of abuse, especially family violence and that there is nothing about it that benefits our bodies in any way? All the evidence is there pointing to the fact that “alcohol is not normal, but it appears that despite the truth being right in front of us society finds a way to justify the continued drinking of this poisonous substance.
We have come to accept things like drinking alcohol as normal, but don’t look at the reasons behind why we need to drink in the first place.
We use alcohol to “get out of it”, that is avoid responsibility. It all come down to not wanting to be responsible for the divine beings that we are.
“Society accepts alcohol.” This is so very true and there is so much hypocrisy that comes with alcohol and peoples views of it. I was talking with someone I know recently, whereby they were at birthday function for her uncle, who is and has been an alcoholic for a large part of his life. His grown children have had to contend with his alcoholism for a lot of their life, so at times not very kind or forgiving of his behaviours, rightly so when hearing of what those behaviours are. However, my friend was expressing how hypocritical it was for these 2 grown adults to arrive at the birthday heavily hung over from the night before. Yet they were always so critical of their father. Alcohol divides and it doesn’t matter for what reason it people use it for, its use can be manipulated to be drunk for very individual and selfish reasons.
When something has been accepted and practiced as normal for so long by the majority, it can be very hard for our logical mind to question its stand and rightfulness, but our body does know. It has always known the truth. It is our choice and very often we don’t even know we are making one. Now that I do know there is a choice to be made, it now is my responsibility.
Great blog Anonymous. There are many things that are not normal that children grow up with. Television, sugar, drugs, alcohol, even our education system is far from normal. When I felt sad and empty as a child I assumed something was wrong with me. Now I know that there is nothing wrong with me. I have been in reaction to the lies I’ve been sold about normal.
It really highlights how we live sets the boundaries of what others will then follow. We don’t really live in bubbles, our choices do have an impact or inspiration on others.
Thank you Anonymous- you remind me that things are not normal simply because they are common or accepted by many.
In a deep sense, we are all addicts. We are addicts of avoiding to feel energy passing through our body. This is our main addiction. What we add on top of it is another choice and not everyone adds the same. Yet, we all know how to play ourselves, to alter us in one way or another (at the levels of particles, chemically, etc). This is important to be acknowledged.
Beautifully said Eduardo.
Hear hear Eduardo, sometimes it is not so blatantly obvious yet the addiction of avoidance in its many variations may still playing out.
The normalcy of alcohol is the starting point for a long road of pain, misery, illness, abuse and violence. Time to say it how it is – alcohol is a poison that is at the root cause of many of our societal issues.
Along with alcohol being considered normal, we also seem to have accepted many of the accompanying societal issues as “normal”. We all know they are not normal, and are we prepared to be honest and accept that “alcohol is a poison that is at the root cause of many of our societal issues”.
It’s a great point you make about giving up our inner knowing (especially as children) because everyone is living a life that though feels so very wrong because of the loveless choices, is considered normal because of the amount of people participating in the same behaviours.
Anonymous you bring up some great points here, especially how alcohol is accepted as being perfectly normal, when we use alcohol to numb ourselves, it should be ringing alarm bells within ourselves, because the alcohol masks what is truly being felt, and by numbing the feeling we are not dealing with what needs to be dealt with.
Questioning alcohol and what it brings is never personal, but seeing the truth. But it is defended very strongly when it is brought up and turned into something that is seen as personal. It’s a very sad state of affairs when we defend our usage of alcohol and yet allow relationships and people slip away. That alone convey’s the evil of this substance. It’s ok if everyone is drinking, but throwing a few non drinkers in the mix and then those who say no drinking in my house, then watch the defenders rise. People do have the right to make their own choices in how they live, but we also have the equal right to be able to call out the truth of something.
I find people start explaining their alcohol intake to me when they find out I don’t drink. Its as if they feel judged and I’ve noticed they do get defensive.
Many people feel uncomfortable being around us if we don’t drink, I wonder why this is ?
‘Its acceptance as normal is what is important in what I am saying’ – Accepting what society told me was normal really messed with the way I have been in the world, it added many layers of illusion and lies which clouded my connection to what was true. But the truth is always there and when the space is allowed and the choice to re-connect to our own breath, to breathe our own breath then re-connecting becomes easier and allowing what is not true is no longer a possibility. The numbers of people choosing to live in disregard or choosing to make alcohol a way of life does not make it normal and never will. Once the truth of who we are is re-connected to, there is no other way to be.
Yes is having a glass of wine every weekend with dinner not also a dependency on alcohol? What would happen if we could not have that glass (or two) of wine? So many things are seen as normal because everyone is doing it, but are they really? There really is a big force that comes through when many are doing something that is not true, it can seem like it is true because everyone is doing it. Yet truth is truth and not defined by how many people are saying/doing it. A really great blog to read, thank you anonymous.