Wednesday, October 3, 2007

last Call For Alcohol

Up and down the country , in every city and town the same grim tableau is being ennacted. On Fridays and Saturdays the night is given over to madness.
This article is not aimed at those who appreciate a little drink, who have a discernment for old malt, fine wine , real ale or Belgian organic lagers. Nor for those who can use and enjoy alcohol in an ordered and sensible fashion, but for those millions who just want to get drunk.
Drunkeness is a scourge, it is a scourge that affects not just the individual but the family and indeed the nation.
The church teaches that to voluntarily drink an excess of alcohol ie being drunk, is infact a mortal sin that removes sanctifying grace from the soul .
I am not going to be able to write this article unless I come out of the closet and admit that for well over twenty years I was a drunk, I have plummed the depths of this 'culture', to the n'th degree. I know the people , the places, the times, the prices and have felt the weight of the cost.
I became initiated into the drinking culture from a very early age, I think my first serious taste was about the age of twelve. I visited pubs from around fifteen and became a regular drinker at about seventeen. My Dad , uncles , cousins my friends all drank and so did their Fathers before them, so guess what ? I drank. Believe it or not, the first grip that alcohol has on you is bliss, it is a joy like unto flying. Did I really say that? Did I really do that? Did I really do the things that for ages I was simply to scared of to even try?
Dr Jeckyl becomes Mr Hyde and guess what? Mr Hyde is great company, he is Mr Popular, Mr Fun to be with, he is superman!
Alcohol releases the genie from the bottle and straight into the blood stream , the hidden man that most people never see can finally be revealed. Those inhibitors that are connected to the conscience become steadily disabled as the night progresses, indeed one of the goals of a heavy session is to do exactly that . When those failsafes have been overidden you get to claim your get out of jail card . 'Sure it was'nt his fault he was well drunk last night',' he is'nt really like that when he's sober', ' he was so smashed last night he didnt have a clue what he was doing'.
The mild mannered young white van man who delivered you your new freezer at noon becomes a raving lunatic at midnight. If you bump his elbow at the bar he is quite capable of shoving a glass in your face. The quiet family man that barely talked to a soul throughout the working day has people in head locks and is blabbering complete rubbish during his night shift. The stiff self-conscious youth becomes John Travolta on the club dancefloor [ or at least he thinks he has] His shyness that he thought a crippling disability is spirited away , almost as if he has shed his old skin and everybody just loves the new version, one small problem , he needs the potion and that potion only seems to work through continuing to increase the dose until he has to rely on a four pack a day just to be the shy young man again. Sadly that modern day Frankensteins monster the ' female lad', has surfaced. She drinks, she smokes, she has a tatoo or two, she shows her builders bum and can swear and sleep about just as 'good', as any man. It is almost as if equality can only be achieved by aping mans dark side in all it's ugliness, only for her the price is higher. The morning after for the girl before is one of desolation. The one who she thought she was using , was in reality using her, the things that she thought bought her equality with man only brought her contempt from him . I have seen over the years of people watching from the bottom of a pint jar, young girls become ghouls in a few short years. The morning after pill and multiple abortions cannot efface the carnage of her actions. No amount of make up can disguise the pain the sadness or the ugliness that mark her face.The wages of her sins show death in her eyes. What she thought she wanted she spends the rest of her life regretting.
A drunken girl has an effect on the drinking pack similar to that of wolves at the sight of wounded deer. They see she is vulnerable , they see she is prey! And when she is acting and dressing in a manner that says ' open for business', then she has put herself in very real and serious danger.
Most young men, young bucks on a drinking night out are after two things, a girl or a fight. And those who have found the girl slink off into the darkness while those who havent found one find each other outside the kebab house . The A&E departments of the local hospital bare witness to this ritual late into the night. Broken faces, broken limbs, blood and stitches and sometimes the hospital morgue are the deposits that fill the night-safe of the casualty department .Drunken violence is epidemic. After 9 pm on a Friday or Saturday night Most town centres are no go areas for the sane. The only sign of law and order can occasionally be seen hiding furtively behind a shop doorway radio in hand, terrified that his mere presence might cause a riot. The sight of hordes of seriously drunk or drugged up young people roaring shouting , scrapping and acting in the most foul and bestial way is a truly terrifying sight, unless of course you are one of them., for them this is normal.. Indeed their minds soon lose the ability to think that there are any other options available to them . If I dont do this what else can I do? Nearly everyone of those trapped on the alcohol merry go round cannot think of a single answer to this question and because they cannot think of an answer they buy their ticket to ride every single weekend. The week end becomes the only rationale for the working week. This is fun is'nt it ? And I aim to enjoy it no matter how much it hurts
The cost to the family is another almost unquantifyable price paid . So many families are suffering. If there is love in the family than that love feels the pain. Dads leaving the children ophans and their wives widowed as they put the counterfiet fraternity of their drinking partners above duty . However slowly but surely those comrades in arms start to disappear until the drinker finds that the only company that will tolerate him are those who are prepared to be bored by him for the price of a free pint . Indeed I know of Fathers whose only drinking partners are underage sons who are forced to keep their Dad company late into the night because no one else can stand being near him.
As the drinking habit becomes more and more regularised and the quanitties increase what began as a voyage to escape the bounds of normality becomes the only way to hold onto the appearence of normality. The crushing lows , the panic attacks the waves of neurosis and phychosis . The debilitating bouts of depression that can only be escaped when the very cause from whence they came is shakily administered. alcohol then becomes a deadly poison as well as a vital medicene. When you reach that stage it is almost as if it were not you drinking the pint , but the pint that is drinking you.
Steadily the self that you thought you knew becomes progressively more and more a stranger to you. Your ability to deny yourself becomes steadily weakened until the mere thought of a day without at least a few drinks brings on a cold sweat. A functioning alcoholic is a pitiable creature, like the lukewarm he cannot be spat out. He manages to creep along for years despite the regular morning soul desolation that follows on the heels of each bender .Every promise he makes he breaks not only to himself but to those who he curses for being concerned about him. Indeed if he could but realise it is that very soul desolation that the Good God uses as a spark to convince the despairing alcoholic to seek out his hand . however time and time again that hand is knocked away only to grasp at the next can or bottle.
The hounds of heaven are constantly on the trail the alcoholic and it is their baying that he try's to drown out , but they will never give up on him no matter how far away he thinks he has got from them. It is the weeping of his guardian Angel that has released them for the pursuit.
The pages of the Hib are perhaps not the best place to share personal and painful story of ones twenty year captivity with that old cell mate the demon drink and my eventual release under the parole of God's grace, however I would like to finish on a positive note. Hope . Most alcoholics hope, they hope someone will save them from themselves.Like a drowning man flailing about in the water threatening to take down all who might attempt a rescue. He hopes that someone will be stronger than him and win for him the victory that he has been unable to win for himself. That hope has a name and a name that you can trust and that name is Jesus Christ.
Could I leave you with the last part of a poem that I feel has real power in it's pages, because those pages were written by a down and out Victorian opium addict as he battled with his addiction. He was a Catholic and his name was Francis Thompson . The poem ' The Hound of Heaven'.
' Now of that long pursuit
Comes on at hand the bruit
that voice is round me like a bursting sea
'And is thy earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard ?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest me!
Strange, piteous futile thing!
Wherefore should any set thee love apart ?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught
and human love needs human meriting;
How hast thou merited-
Of all mans clotted clay the dingiest clot?
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee
Save Me, save only Me

All which I took from thee I did but take
Not for thy harms
But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms
All which thy childs mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home
Rise, clasp My hand, and come.
Halts by me that footfall
Is my gloom after all
Shade of his hand, outstretched caressingly?
'Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I Am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou drovest love from thee, who drovest Me'

It seems as if I can't get away without a scripture quote and this is one that I say regularily throughout the day , especially when tempted .
Luke9;62
' once the hand is laid to the plough anyone who looks back is not worthy of the kingdom of heaven'

Lord keep me your ploughman

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