THE LINE BETWEEN ALCOHOL USE AND ABUSE…
I do always get puzzled with the motion of getting to know
the line between using alcohol and abusing it. Do you happen to know that
you’ve crossed the line between alcohol use and abuse? What does it mean to use
alcohol, anyway? And what does it mean to abuse alcohol?
Frankly speaking, many of us (yes, yyooouuuu…) often deny
abusing alcohol, with excuses like, “This is nothing compared to what I usually
take”…or “I can NEVER be high simply because of alcohol”, forgetting that it’s
you that shall suffer the direct consequences of your actions and the rest of
us, the indirect ones. Allow me share with you my personal story.
I am the kind of person that has extremely high tolerance to
alcohol and beers have very negligible effect on me. On one night out in 2014,
I crossed that “LINE” having galloped 23 BOTTLES OF BEER.
This is something I was ready to do, having been en-route the path of
depression from a heart-break. What I hadn’t put in mind was how that night was
to directly affect my inter-personal relationships with my close family and
friends, most especially. During the drinking, I kept telling myself that I
would get knocked out but ALAS…nothing like or similar to that happened. The
next day was a Sunday and truthfully, the pain inside me hadn’t gone away, I
was reeking of booze and my emotional state had worsened now. That was the
moment it dawned on me that I had crossed the LINE.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Using alcohol
isn’t bad at all, provided it’s done with the best of intentions, within
socially-acceptable circumstances and under a sound-mind.
Keep in mind, using alcohol may not necessarily mean someone
has to drink it directly from the bottle but could pass it unto others, in
other forms like as food flavouring, in tea, soft drinks, curing of wounds,
seasoning of food…name it!!! Alcohol has immense benefits to humans but believe
me, its side-effects are way more in number, hazardous in exposure and
catastrophic, on a national scale. Am talking a small boost to confidence
levels during social gatherings, bringing up a sweet aroma in our delicacies.
Their opposites include pant-wetting, decline in performance at work, family
breakdowns as well, tummy mishaps as well!!!
SO, the next time, you pick up that bottle to wash down that
sip of a Bell or Heineken, keep in mind that LINE we’ve talked about here. And
to that matter, I leave the matter of clearly demarcating that LINE to you. I
believe, you best know where to place it, in your ALCOHOL-worlds.
