Maybe You Don’t Need To Drink Whiskey In The Morning.
By: Paul M. Blacketer
Tags: Self Improvement, Mindfulness, Bad Habits, Stoicism, Drinking

Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

I didn’t even realize it had become a habit, nor did I know that I was standing at the top of a slippery slope. This was a treacherous slide that could end up on sharp rocks and in cold, lonely waters.

I was regularly drinking whiskey in the mornings to mellow out leftover feelings from all the whiskey I’d drank the night before—just a little, enough to soften the burred edge. My girlfriend at the time- now wife- was the one that got me to stop. She said one thing, and that’s all it took:

“Maybe you shouldn’t drink whiskey first thing in the morning.”

Of course, I knew then, just as I do now, that drinking isn’t good for you- and that drinking all the live-long day is even worse. But that knowledge just doesn’t hold any weight when your brain is fried from drinking every day.

But at that moment, that one simple suggestion planted a seed in my soggy mind.

So, I stopped drinking whiskey in the mornings. I still drank whiskey, but I only did it when warranted…which was most nights. (I drink much, much less these days.)

We Rarely Know What We Need To Hear

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Sometimes, we don’t know what it is that we need to hear. No matter how intelligent or wise we decide ourselves to be, or how bright others think we may be, some things about ourselves are easy to overlook.

These negative actions or habits can be invisible to us unless someone points them out, and if ignored for too long, they can do a lot of harm.

People who smoke cigarettes always seem to say the same things in regards to their addiction.

“Those statistics are meaningless and overblown. I won’t get cancer; only the really unlucky ones get cancer. No one in my family has ever gotten cancer before.”

“My grandad smoked two packs a day, worked in the coal mine, and ate asbestos for dinner! He lived to the ripe old age of 92. He never once complained about that itsy, bitsy, little oxygen cart he dragged around with him.”

This phenomenon is called cognitive dissonance, and it seems to be very prevalent these days, especially with people that don’t treat themselves well. Sometimes the cognitive dissonance is loud, and everyone can see it for what it is, even the sufferer. Those people usually choose willful ignorance or a zealous belief that they are the chosen one and protected from harm.

Sometimes, it’s quiet. Sneaky. Sometimes the belief that you’re free from harm is deeply subconscious. I think that is how many addicts end up at rock bottom. Bad habits will deftly sneak up on their victim. They settle in and go to work.

Chances Are Good You’re Acting Out A Bad Habit Right Now

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It’s unsettling and insidious how things that are bad for us are glorified nonstop. Our western culture has made it commonplace to feed your vices without care. All it takes to notice this is to take a mindful minute.

To sit down and think about the bad habits you might be developing is an uncomfortable thought exercise. But it would help if you did it. Everyone would be better for acknowledging that they are just as likely to suffer at the hands of their vices and bad habits as anyone else.

That is what I do now to protect myself. I contemplate sickness, death, and dying. The human body is resilient and can withstand an incredible amount of punishment. But the human body is, paradoxically, also very fragile.

Our body can succumb to the smallest of inconveniences. There is a single-celled organism, Naegleria fowleri — commonly called “brain-eating amoebas” found in most freshwater that, if introduced to your brain tissue via inhaled water, will kill you. (Source: cdc.gov)

A microscopic critter you accidentally snorted up your nose when you were swimmin’ down the ol’ swimmin’ hole eats your brain from the inside out. Just sayin’. It does happen.

You can die from an aneurysm in your brain. It’s a silent killer because there are rarely any symptoms present before you die. An artery bursts, you bleed internally, and you die. Bing. Bang. Boom.

You could die from alcohol abuse, which is a growing cause of death, charmingly referred to as a disease of despair, along with suicide, and drug overdose. Drinking first thing in the morning has a good chance to exacerbate all of these possibilities.

All of this contemplation of death and disease can seem counterintuitive to my overarching message in that you should quit bad habits that mean you harm. But I think it’s necessary.

It is the ignoring of the facts of mortality that lures us into false comforts. I believe that you need to sense death’s presence, lurking just out of sight, in order to transcend those devious habits that seek to do us harm.

Alan Watts Put It Very Well

There is a song called “Mystery Cloud” by the band STRFKR. At the end of the song, they included a recording of Alan Watts talking about the contemplations of death, something for which he was well known. I found it instantly struck a nerve, in a good way. This is what he said —

“Everybody should do in their lifetime — sometime, two things.

One, is to consider death, to observe skulls and skeletons, and to wonder what it would be like to go to sleep and never wake up. Never.

That is a very gloomy thing for contemplation, but it’s like manure. Just as manure fertilizes the plants and so on.

So, the contemplation of death and the acceptance of death is very highly-generative of creative life. You get wonderful things out of that.”

This idea has done a lot for me in my creative life, but it has done more for my day-to-day life and overall well-being. Thinking of myself and everyone I know and love as finite beings makes it a lot easier to do the right things and to be more kind to myself when I do slip up.

Memento Mori

Photo by Hannah Gibbs on Unsplash

Ignoring your mortality is the easiest way to let those small habits enter you and grow. Without something or someone to point them out, they remain invisible until they’re too large to ignore.

You don’t want to forget about your mortality until the end, forced to contemplate it all at once on your deathbed. That would be an excruciating way indeed to cap off a life lived ignorantly.

When my future wife had pointed out that I was drinking in the mornings, it flipped a switch. It connected two synapses that had never met and got them working together. I’ve written this hoping that maybe, for someone else, it can act as the catalyst that they need to flip their switch.

Perhaps you will develop an itch in your mind. An itch that indicates something is out of sorts. I think it is very likely that everyone has some kind of bad habit that is invisible to themselves.

Without proper help from an outside source or proper inward contemplation, we may never see it, and it will inevitably do a lot of damage to us.

I’m urging you to contemplate death. Observe skulls and skeletons and wonder what it would be like never to wake up. Never.

Think about all the things you could possibly die from and decide for yourself which ones you find unacceptable. You’ll find yourself thinking:

“Not today. I won’t die that way, not from that stupid thing. I don’t want to die because of smoking, or eating, or drinking, or sitting too much.”

We are all doomed for death, so we might as well steer towards something more honorable.

If you’ve found there was something in the back of your mind as you read this, it’s likely that you have a shameful habit of your own. It’s like finding a bulbous tick somewhere unmentionable. And once you find it, there is only one thing left to do.

Cheers

Source: niaaa.nih.gov

Source: healthtalk.unchealthcare.org