Alcohol is a dangerous drug.

[Junko]

You can die from it.

[Gerard]

Eventually it will kill you as you stated but prior to that, regular consumption and or abuse leads to:

 

1. Heart and Spleen deficiency

2. Damp-Heat in Liver/Gallbladder

3. Liver Qi stagnation

 

These imbalances will place an extra burden on the Kidney network (any stress in any organ network will lead to slow depletion of the Kidney function) with the end result of:

 

4. Kidney Yin and Yang deficiency

5. Jing depletion

Edited May 2, 2016 by Gerard

[Spotless]

From Ell:

 

[That being said, and, again, from my outsider's perspective, here are the two most corrosive things about alcohol, to me:

 

1) It's dangerous because it's socially acceptable. People look at me like I have two heads when I espouse the opinion that alcohol is a worse drug than heroin, but I guess what I really mean is that alcohol is a more dishonest drug than heroin. The abuse of either is going to take you to the same place, eventually but at least the use of heroin in our society is like calling a spade a spade.]

End Quote

 

-----

 

This is an extremely good point - and one everyone runs from.

 

it would be easy to make the point that alcohol is worse than heroin for so many reasons. Obviously taking heroin everyday will present problems after quite some time - but only a month ago a close friend lost their nephew to alcohol on his first use of the car at 16 and nearly his first use of alcohol.

 

We are lead to believe that heroin is completely addictive in a very short time - yet when was the last time someone on a morphine drip for a long time was released from the hospital and they had to allow for a few days of extreme withdrawal symptoms?

 

If you have ever taken heroin - you would not have any thought of driving or driving someone nuts in some wild conversation or becoming completely uncontrollable with anger - quite the opposite - it has a positive effect on your entire body/being for several days and is absolutely not a problem for your body or hard on it - the complete opposite of getting drunk. It can make a guitar feel like liquid strings.

 

It is like entering a stillness you have never known before - a relaxation not thought possible - it is delightful. Am I recommending it - hell no - but have you ever heard of it explained like this before? And you really have to take it for a very long time to become addicted physically - it is easy to take it here and there for an entire lifetime - and you would live longer no doubt if you did it and never became addicted because becoming extremely relaxed from time to time on a drug that is not harsh on your system will logically lengthen ones life. (I am speaking of a hypothetical use of medical grade morphine).

 

Alcohol is cool - it is taught in virtually every action movie from the West in existence - the tough guy takes swigs of hard liquor.

Nearly everyone that drinks alcohol is addicted to it on at least several subtle levels.

It is implicated in the vast majority of physical abuses, car accidents, suicides, rapes, and every sort of anger related abuse and murder.

 

For the awkward it is medicine, for the timid it is medicine, for the isolated it is medicine and apparently for all cold climates it is the favored form of slow suicide - but it is "harmless and only a bad thing if abused".

 

Whats the scariest thing about heroin - where you have to go to get it and what types of people you have to deal with and the lack of qualitative assurances.

 

What's the scariest thing about alcohol - my son can find it on our shelves and all of his friends can - his hero's in the movies love the stuff and use it in full glasses only - and if he ever wants to steal some - it would be a piece of cake - (though we actually only have some wine laying around - I am pretending to be someone who has some other bottles laying around like Rum and Vodka). And if he tries to do the best thing at times and say no - or his friends driving the car try to do the best thing at times and say no to drinking - they are ostracized for it and heavily demeaned as lightweights or chickens or some other push in the wrong direction.

 

What we all know is that - when we are in a spot where we need optimal high performance - the last thing we would do is drink a full glass of hard liquor - yet all action movies practically require this ritual.

 

(on a side note - if you look up the effects of Heroin on the body it is 100% negative - yet if you are a physician and reading a medical journal on morphing it is nearly the opposite other than dosage concerns.

Edited May 7, 2016 by Spotless

[Junko]

Is anyone here considering alcohol can cause brain damage?

[Gerard]

Maybe you could start throwing away all the alcohol you keep in your place, that'll provide a positive role modelling to your son.

 

Yes addictions run deep in humans, all sorts.

 

...and I live in a drinking culture: Australia, which inhereted its legacy from England. Don't know how bad it is in the US.

 

Britain's binge drinking levels are among the highest in the world
 

In this country, alcohol is seen as a cool thing and if you don't drink you face social exclusion.

 

Now, every time you listen to people who drink:

 

1. Look at their faces, eyes and ears. Check their colour

2. Listen to the pitch volume of their talk

 

Liver, gallbladder and heart are directlt involved. The Qi is damaged and yin and yang balance are broken.

 

People don't know and don't care, they are unfortunately unawakened to the "Universal Truths." Nothing you can do, just keep cultivating and feel compassion (quietly in your meditation practice) since it is developed naturally after extended practice.

 

My next door neighbours (two girls in their very early 20s), every time they drink start raising their voices to the point you could easily hear how loud they are from a distance of 250m. They just start yelling. Their livers have become already too hyperactive and that fire that is being generated is sent to the House of Fire (the Heart) where it accumulates.

 

Wood generates Fire element. So imagine how much yang can alcohol raise and how it affects the Mind (as stated by The Buddha, but he wasn't a Taoist, his reasoning was a lot more simplistic, just pure wisdom rather than following the scientific way of Taoism).

 

Overtime all that alcohol consuption drains the Kidney and the Jing and hardens the Liver (the Hun is impaired, the Hun being the gate to higher states of consciouness). Once this happens you'll have closed the gates to the Heaven planes. This is visually observed in the upper back and shoulders (if you have your Heavely Eye open); you can see that spiritual seekers have nice and straight backs with a fully open gallbladder channel (runs up to the shoulders, neck and around the ears to both sides of the head). Normal people who don't cultivate and those who indulge in alcohol and drug consumption (including excessive sex) have the neck and backs hunched, more like an animal. Its hard to explain this stuff in words, one must see this in person to understand how this whole mechanism operates.

Edited May 3, 2016 by Gerard

[Junko]

People just go with thier tongue.

[futuredaze]

In my view, alcohol in moderation can be a nice tool to facilitate socializing and creativity (I have heard drinking can make brainwaves go from more beta to alpha from this, may be why it helps assist with this), might even have health benefits especially if high quality (e.g. homemad3 hard apple cider, herbal beer, good wine) but only in moderation.

 

Most people abuse alcohol, drink shit quality stuff and combine it with unhealthy lifestyle. Drinking a bit can (not always) loosen the ego, but higher amounts it feeds into ego and becomes an escape.

[Rakiel]

I've devoured entire novels during a nice buzz.

[Pavel Karavaev]

It all depends of what alcohol to drink and how to do it.

 

Avicenna said about wine:

 

"But the fact is that when wine is taken in moderation, it gives rise to a large amount of breath, whose character is balanced, and whose luminosity is strong and brilliant. Hence wine disposes greatly to gladness, and the person is subject to quite trivial exciting agents. The breath now takes up the impression of agents belonging to the present time more easily than it does those which relate to the future; it responds to agents conducive to delight rather than those conducive to a sense of beauty."

 

And:

 

"Is it the fault of wine if a fool drinks it and goes stumbling into darkness."

Edited December 29, 2017 by Pavel Karavaev