Isn't It Ironic

We Are Numbing Away Our Best Moments

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During my greatest struggles, using alcohol to cope was always my Plan A. Relationship issues, in parenting, even in tragedy. It was the first place I went and the last place I left. I never needed to find an excuse to drink; it always found me.

I wasn’t alone in this thinking, either. Alcohol was often the first thing people recommended or encouraged to cope. Drink through the divorce, drink through the hard day with the kids. Drink through the heartbreak or the grief.

Maybe this is unsurprising. Life gets hard; we numb it out. Life breaks us down and alcohol fuels that spiral. We feel like a victim and alcohol echoes our darkest voices. But explain to me the other side of this, because — Alanis Morrisette, take note — this is where real irony starts to set in. Unlike a black fly in our Chardonnay, irony is that we intentionally consume alcohol during the best moments or just the happy in between. Joy, calm and even boredom… we undenyingly use alcohol to celebrate, to inaugurate, and to acclimate.

Alcohol is everywhere and all the time. We infect each other with the ideas, assumptions and collective dissonance around alcohol like a virus. Alcohol holds a space at every function, every holiday, and on every menu.

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We talk people up to drink or tell them to drink to wind down. We sip it slowly and call it sophisticated, or down it with drinking games and call it good fun. We drink to feel happy, or drink to wallow in our misery. And wherever we go, there it is. Giving us exactly what we want — everything and nothing — til our consciousness fades down the sink drain of time. Leaving us with a little bit less of ourselves.

What is alcohol and why does it hold such a grip over us all?

Last week I went on a Disney cruise with the family. And even at six years sober, I still felt like Mario in a Nintendo game jumping over goombas, under bricks and through tunnels to avoid alcohol at every turn. I declined alcohol every day for five days, listened to a tour guide hash out jokes about “needing alcohol” to genuinely enjoy vacation, and opted out of at least six different wine, tequila, and beer tasting events on the boat.

I’m not complaining about staying sober through this trip either. Quite the opposite - it was my saving grace. I can’t even imagine how stressful a Disney cruise would be hungover or tipsy. Disney-crazed mouse eared families everywhere, Cinderella and Goofy trying to drag me in for a picture, and kids pumped up on all-you-can-eat fro-yo squealing and scampering up and down narrow passageways. Don’t even get me started on Pirates of the Caribbean night. That shit was hard enough sober. But nursing a foggy brain and headache to boot? No thanks.

Forget rain on our wedding day… We drink a mind-numbing substance during our most memorable moments. We consume alcohol — a numbing agent and a depressant — in some of our biggest life moments. On vacation, at weddings, parties, and social gatherings, we imbibe in a carcinogen that is not only toxic and addictive, but it’s scientifically shown to increase anxiety and negatively affect our mental health. Alcohol kills 178,000 Americans every year, but sure… let’s “party right with Bud Light” (an actual beer slogan).

Make it make sense. Because when you take off the rose tinted glasses, it doesn’t. It’s years of social conditioning that alcohol fuels a good time. It’s advertising, media, biased health studies, and generations of reaching for something to help us numb out through it all — good and bad. It’s the human consciousness that seeks connection but fears rejection. And it’s a modern era of 24/7 stimulation where we are so overloaded with information we need external help just to turn down the volume.

If you got stuck on this addiction runaway train, it’s no wonder. This train track runs through every town, and in most homes. Alcohol has a seat at our family tables and in our mainstream thinking through it all, from baby showers to end of life memorials. We can’t avoid it even when we want to (believe me, I’ve tried). But we can see the madness for what it is. We can laugh at the absurdity of it all. We can crank up the volume on the 90’s hits playlist and think “Alanis are you listening? This is pretty freakin ironic.”

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