Alcohol – the poison we love and die for!

Aug 05, 2018 Countryman, Features / Columnists

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By Dennis Nichols

Three weeks ago, a fisherman of Dartmouth, Essequibo, had his throat slashed at Kumaka in the North West District. Just another statistic? Well, not to me; he was my wife’s nephew. He worked hard at his job, but like many in his line of work, he ‘liked a drink’. Both he and his alleged killer had been imbibing. They were said to be friends, and the incident was described as a rum shop brawl. Had they not been drinking, he may well have been alive today.
Liquor-fueled violence continues to be a huge problem in Guyana, and people will continue to make the point that at least some alcoholic drinks should be deemed illegal, mostly because of the tendency for them to be abused.
When contemplating the argument, I slip into a kind of twilight zone in which common sense and medical science are turned on their heads, and bow to history, profits, and social conventions. Millions have been done in by the use and abuse of alcohol, and we have the broken relationships, diseased bodies, tortured minds, and mute graves to remind us.
The thing is that the negative effects of alcohol are usually so obvious that even children (those unsophisticated little humans) see, understand, and feel what many intelligent and so-called responsible adults deny, instead perceiving its effects as the collateral casualty of an irresistible human proclivity starting long before nosey researchers tried to frustrate their fun. Too often though, the fun can lead to a funeral, and those same children who observed the obvious, are left to live fun-less lives.
Alcohol kills, directly and indirectly. It is the cause of alcoholism – recognized as a disease, and alternately a mental disorder, by several health agencies including the Journal of the American Medical Association, although there are many who disagree. They feel that labeling it as either gives alcoholics a dependable crutch, causes them to think they are powerless to fight it on their own, and strips them of the responsibility to do so.
Others zero in on the purported health benefits of alcoholic beverages like wine and beer which, according to some researchers, can actually prolong life by decreasing the risk of cardiovascular disease and dementia, not to mention the more immediate joys of a legal high and the romantic pleasures that may follow an evening of dining and wining. (Not the hip gyration kind)
Here are some fun facts – About two billion across the world consume this legal poison including, some say, almost the entire population of Russia. Millions have died from it, and over 70,000,000 suffer from related disorders like alcohol dependence. That’s when the brain’s neurotransmitters become so accustomed to alcohol’s effects on it that it can no longer send proper signals to the rest of the body without its presence. So the thing you need to tell you you’re an alcoholic is the very thing that needs alcohol to do so, and since its function is impaired … well you get the point.
We’re all familiar with the effects of alcohol; body temperature lowered along with concentration, reflex, and response time, poor coordination, slurred speech, and sleep disruption. (Think of motor vehicle DUI accidents)
More serious effects, even for a first-timer, include nausea, vomiting, blackouts, loss of bladder control, loss of consciousness, coma, and in extreme cases, a trip to the netherworld. By the way, who can forget that wonderful, heady experience called a hangover.
Among ‘side’ and long-term effects listed by experts are the death of brain cells, depression, (including of the immune system) reduced sexual performance, hypertension, stroke, cirrhosis of the liver, and cancer – not good company for the body to keep. But then again when some people are in denial about the causes of these conditions, they blame everything and everyone but themselves.
A friend told me he used to drink heavily, and that he liked it. He spoke on another occasion about an uncontrollable, but in his mind justified, anger that led to several violent confrontations to the point where he dealt physical blows and cutlass chops to his opponents. He never spoke of a connection between the two; it was always others who provoked his wrath, whether or not he’d been drinking.
So, with all we know of alcohol’s deadly lure, why is it still legal almost everywhere on the planet?
Tom Head, an American writer for the education website ThoughtCo., neatly packages a few straightforward reasons, and I get all of them.
First, he says, simply too many people drink, and asks how can you outlaw something that so many people do? Remember American prohibition, and the idea that drinking is seen by many as a recreational relaxant and social glue.
Secondly, he says, the alcohol industry is too powerful, employing nearly 4 million people in America, and contributing more than $400 billion to the US economy. The next one targets Christianity, with alcohol production being Jesus’ first miracle, along with the ceremonial drinking of wine in the Eucharist.
Next, he says, archaeological evidence suggests that the fermentation of alcoholic beverages is as old as civilization, and that there was never a time when it wasn’t part of our experience.
His fourth is that since fermentation is a natural process, alcohol is pretty easy to make, and in the old days a housewife’s ‘education’ included knowledge of brewing. (Water, sugar, and yeast are the basic ingredients)
His final reason was prohibition. He quoted the writer and cultural critic, H.L. Mencken, as saying in 1924, “… There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but greatly diminished.”
Head adds that the prohibition of alcohol was such a complete and humiliating failure, that no mainstream politician has advocated restoring it since its repeal.
So there you have it. If the world’s ‘greatest’ and biggest countries (America and Russia) can’t stop people from abusing liquor, what chance do we have here in Guyana, where alcohol flows like our multitudinous waterways, and is as much a stress-buster as it is a violence trigger.
I can think of two responses; The first is the clichéd ‘drink responsibly’ and the second is prohibition Guyana-style. Good luck with them, and Bottoms up!

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