Alcohol: Why Do We Drink? The Consequences of Alcoholism

AVAlexander Volchek

You simply forget about it. You forget that you have problems at home, in your family. You forget that you have problems at work. You forget that you hate your job. You forget that it's hard for you to be with your children. You forget about it. And the worst thing you can do is suppress the stress, because drinking alcohol leads to such gradual deterioration that you become unable to perceive.

AVAnna Volchek

Why talk about alcohol, and why is this subject so relevant? Perhaps I'll share two recent personal observations. First, there's a real boom in nonalcoholic drinks everywhere. It's very noticeable, a huge trend. Nonalcoholic wines are appearing, and now apparently even nonalcoholic tequila, cognac, and everything else. On the one hand, you meet more and more people who don't drink: people who've stopped or have never tried alcohol in their lives. It's simply a very fashionable subject today. The second question comes more from observing people. I keep wondering why someone consumes something they know, one hundred percent, harms them. We know that drinking alcohol harms our bodies, yet we keep doing it. Anyone who drinks knows this. Even someone elegantly sipping a glass of wine knows it, but keeps doing it. We don't walk into a fire because we know we'll burn our hands. We don't jump from the third floor because we know we'll break a leg. Yet we keep drinking alcohol, knowing it harms our bodies.

Why does someone keep doing this despite all that obvious knowledge?

AVAlexander Volchek

Given your questions, I'd probably like to start with the part about a person understanding that they're harming themselves. First, I think you now have a fairly conscious understanding of alcohol's harm, and you aren't drinking at present. But when you did drink, and I told you that drinking one glass of wine harmed you, you would say, “One glass of wine doesn't do any harm.”

AVAnna Volchek

Exactly.

AVAlexander Volchek

So let me clarify: for you, alcohol was harmful when someone drank, for example, a bottle of vodka. But a glass of wine didn't count as harm from alcohol. Now—

AVAnna Volchek

Well, it didn't do any good, either.

AVAlexander Volchek

But harm—we're talking about harm. I'm talking about harm. Why was that happening, and why don't you do it now? Why did you stop drinking even one glass of wine? What carries more weight? What does it mean to drink nonalcoholic wine, or nonalcoholic tequila? All right, tequila. Let's move away from wine. I think half the internet will tear me apart over wine: it's something wonderful and necessary, it's creativity, flavor, love, varieties, and everything else, right? But what about loving fish, floats, fishing rods, different kinds of rods, and all the rest? What does wine have to do with it? There's all kinds of variety. I want to understand nonalcoholic tequila. I stopped drinking thirteen years ago. Thirteen years ago. I remember very clearly the moment I became aware that I wouldn't drink anymore. That awareness didn't come because I developed cirrhosis of the liver, or beat someone up while drunk, or suffered some tragedy, right? I stopped drinking because I became fully aware of what alcohol is. But I remember that period very clearly: for about three or four months after that realization, I still had a psychophysical dependence.

If I went to a restaurant, I needed a glass. I needed a glass of whiskey and cola. It went back to my youth, when I still didn't have money. We drank certain particular drinks; we hadn't gotten as far as wine. I needed some kind of glass. Or take New Year's: everyone needs a glass of champagne, a champagne flute. Everyone needs that, right? It's an automatic action everywhere, simply an automatic action. I remember very clearly feeling awkward. I needed a glass; I needed a certain taste. That taste is very strange to me now. If someone drinks a little—if you drink just a little wine now, just a tiny bit, this much—I'll feel as though you're a damn drunk, a filthy, stinking drunk on the street who... Now someone will think, “Well, you have drunks in San Francisco.” I can smell the slightest amount of alcohol now as if it were an enormous amount, as if someone had held ammonia under my nose. Even worse. Back then, though, it seemed to have a certain taste. But what matters is what prevailed within me, why I took that action.

What was the cause within me? The cause was a certain recognition—that's why I did it. Just as there was some reason you didn't drink yourself into a complete blackout, for example, but considered a glass of wine normal. Now you don't drink a glass of wine, because you consider that not normal either. That's the point I'm drawing attention to again. People don't fully, truly understand what alcohol brings. Today I'll explain what alcohol actually brings, the consequences of drinking it, and what arises from it. Let's return to nonalcoholic tequila. Nonalcoholic tequila is that same habit, that same dependence. It's like something else that became fashionable. By the way, that company has now lost a crazy amount of value. There was this company, Simple Burger, I think—or whatever it was called, I no longer remember—that started making burgers with no meat in them. I keep looking at it and wondering, “What is this nonsense? Who are you trying to fool?” You won't fool yourself. “But there's no meat in it.” Why do it? I don't understand.

What's the logic? Want a burger with no meat? Eat a bun with onion, cucumber, tomato, and everything else, without meat. Put some cheese in it. Make yourself a sandwich. What's the point of this deception? Who are you deceiving? You know it isn't meat. Incidentally, that company's shares really did collapse. I don't know whether it went bankrupt or something else happened to it. But it has serious problems. It's deception. So a person drinks alcohol, and even when they give up alcohol, they move to these nonalcoholic drinks. The world lets a person keep their dependence, replace one dependence with another, but keep the dependence. Drinking alcohol involves different forms of dependence. One isn't connected with the physical state, but with a habit and the sensations associated with particular actions. Another, of course, exists at the psychophysical level. When we start looking into alcohol and its harms, an important aspect is to look at what happens to people when they drink. What actually happens to them? If a person comes to understand this, or at least acknowledges it or starts observing, it will open their eyes to many things.

Including why it's often impossible to be in a group where people are drinking. Here's an interesting thing. I remember when I stopped drinking. You arrive at a club late at night, and everyone is drinking but you aren't. In a Moscow club, you could at least have tea. Here, of course, you can't get tea in a club, right? You can't get water here. They'll look at you and maybe pour you some tap water with ice. That'll be it. You won't have anything else. There you could at least have some nice tea. Generally, at least, right? I was already living in Moscow then. You arrive and realize how hard it is to be in that space without alcohol. As time passed, after a few years, I could arrive and easily jump around, dance, do anything without drinking. Remember the wedding? We were at Yana and Dima's, and I danced for eight hours. I danced all eight hours. I think people who didn't know me must have thought I was definitely on drugs, never mind alcohol.

People don't understand how someone can enjoy themselves without alcohol. You feel it directly: you can't pull yourself together. Why? Because you aren't in control of your body. When you're under the influence of alcohol, your perception fades and narrows. You stop perceiving the space around you and start doing things that aren't characteristic of you. For example, it would be much easier for you to be on camera after drinking. When you're on camera without alcohol, your perception is there; you feel a huge number of things. Filming may be difficult because you feel certain traumas, problems, or psychological characteristics that prevent you from being at ease on camera, right? The more we film, the further we move past that and the less we focus on it. If I don't say, “You're behaving strangely,” and so on, you relax more and film comfortably, but your perception doesn't diminish. When you drink alcohol, your perception of your various personal problems diminishes, and the problems disappear. Your perception diminishes; your problems disappear. But the problems don't actually disappear.

They're still right here, just as they were. The person with the assault rifle is still standing there, just as before. You simply stop seeing them. You simply forget about it. You forget that you have problems at home, in your family. You forget that you have problems at work. You forget that you hate your job. You forget that it's hard for you to be with your children. You forget about it.

AVAnna Volchek

Listen, what you're saying now is fairly—I don't really want to use this word—obvious: the consequences of alcohol. Many people drink precisely to forget things to some extent, to take the edge off.

AVAlexander Volchek

No, this is very important. People drink. I'm not talking about obvious things. That's your perception. I'm talking about a completely different mechanism.

AVAnna Volchek

It's simply a different question.

AVAlexander Volchek

Look, I want—I want to add something here. I'm talking about a completely different—

I'm talking about a completely different mechanism, a different mechanism. A person thinks they're reducing stress with alcohol. I'm saying they're reducing their perception. Perhaps that's what you meant, but it's very important for everyone to understand that this isn't obvious. Everyone thinks they're reducing stress. Someone says, “How else am I going to relieve stress?”

AVAnna Volchek

That's what everyone understands.

AVAlexander Volchek

No, they don't understand. They don't understand it that way.

AVAnna Volchek

I think they understand—

AVAlexander Volchek

Anya, once again. Anya. No.

AVAnna Volchek

To forget.

AVAlexander Volchek

Of course not. Of course not! It's the same as what you said at the beginning: that you believe everyone knows about the harm of alcohol. Of course they don't. A person thinks they've simply reduced their stress, not their perception. They're still just as knowledgeable. “Sure, if I drank a lot, maybe I forgot something.” Once again: they haven't merely failed to reduce the stress; they've increased it. They haven't reduced the stress; they've increased it. When your perception diminishes, your energy decreases. Later, when your previous perception returns, it doesn't always return to the same state, either.

AVAnna Volchek

I don't think everyone understands what perception means here. What exactly do you mean by perception?

AVAlexander Volchek

It's when you truly recognize the problem behind your stress, when you're capable of recognizing it at all. Take my example of feeling self-conscious on camera. There's a specific cause: you're self-conscious about being on camera, and you feel stress. You'd say, “I'll have a drink now to reduce my stress, not to stop feeling self-conscious on camera.” Those are different things. It's substituting one idea for another. You're suppressing the stress.

AVAnna Volchek

Do you realize how few people truly understand the causes of their stress? That isn't even the issue. They may think that; it's a misconception born of not knowing.

AVAlexander Volchek

And that's why, Anya, when someone isn't aware—as you say, a person isn't aware of the causes of their stress—when they aren't aware of the causes of their stress, once again, they aren't aware of what happens when they drink alcohol. You have the wrong cause-and-effect structure. Once again: if you aren't aware of the causes of stress, that doesn't mean you need to suppress it with pills or alcohol.

AVAnna Volchek

Well, and—

AVAlexander Volchek

When you aren't aware of the causes of stress, you need to work on that stress and become aware of those causes. The worst thing you can do is suppress the stress. If you suppress the stress rather than address the cause, the cause won't disappear; it will develop even further.

AVAnna Volchek

We're talking about drinking alcohol because of stress, but people don't drink only because of stress. They really do very often drink when they're in a very good, festive, even joyful state. It's a kind of tradition.

AVAlexander Volchek

The thing is—

AVAnna Volchek

To sustain that state.

AVAlexander Volchek

The thing is, everything has causes. From the outside, it may look like a tradition; from another angle, it may look like a psychophysical way of suppressing stress. Look at it this way: someone approaches it as a tradition, saying it's a damn great thing, while in reality their psychophysical makeup is operating in a way that makes it perfectly clear they're suppressing their own stress. That's called a habit, Anya. That's called dependence, Anya. It's dependence. They think they're doing it because they feel good, because it's cool, because it's great. But they're doing it because they can no longer live another way, because they can't deal with stress any other way. It's their only escape from it.

AVAnna Volchek

So you mean—

AVAlexander Volchek

That's one of the problems.

AVAnna Volchek

That alcohol always equals stress?

AVAlexander Volchek

Of course it doesn't always equal stress. Basically, it doesn't always equal stress. By no means always. It's one form, one mechanism, one possibility. You asked why people drink alcohol while understanding there's a problem with it. First, they don't understand the problem. If they did understand it—we'll get to that. I'll explain what the problem really is. There's another problem a person also doesn't understand. Look, we've already started approaching it; it just isn't the primary problem. One major problem is that a person suppresses the real reasons they end up drinking alcohol at all, what's actually happening, what's taking shape in their life. They could be working on completely different things. Of course, when someone first starts drinking or encounters alcohol, it may happen through chance circumstances that are nothing more than chance. Imagine I don't eat a particular food—say, I don't eat chips. Imagine we go and eat chips. I'm just eating chips by chance. I'm not eating them to eat away some problem, or because I'm dependent on food, or anything else, do you understand?

In theory, that situation can exist without any problem, too. But we're looking at drinking alcohol as a recurring association. By that, I don't mean drinking every day. I mean, for example, drinking once every two weeks, or every Saturday. Or when people get together and can't help drinking alcohol. I know that when a certain kind of guest visits us, my wife will definitely have wine or champagne with them. There are other guests with whom she won't drink wine or champagne, and we'll have a wonderful time. With certain people, a kind of automatic behavior arises. It's automatic, it's a habit, and you don't understand the consequences of that habit.

AVAnna Volchek

We've talked quite a lot about the narrowing of perception.

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes.

AVAnna Volchek

What else? What other harm does alcohol cause?

AVAlexander Volchek

As I said, there's a narrowing of perception.

AVAnna Volchek

There's a substitution of concepts.

AVAlexander Volchek

There's a substitution of concepts, a lack of understanding—in fact, a refusal to acknowledge—what alcohol brings in general, as a whole phenomenon. When you act from the position that alcohol is cool, you conduct the discussion as though you're playing a game of proving something. You close off the possibility of your own development, because drinking alcohol leads to such gradual deterioration that you become unable to perceive. That's a slightly different matter, Anya. One thing is having a drink, narrowing your perception, and at that particular moment taking some wrong action, doing something wrong, or suppressing the wrong thing. Another is narrowing your perception and then becoming unable, in general, to take action to perceive and assess actual reality. Every time you drink alcohol and narrow your perception, you put yourself in a position where you'll make decisions you don't need, or take actions that aren't genuine. If you clearly know that alcohol narrows perception, you need to understand clearly that, at the moment you do it, you may make decisions that will be problematic.

You're making decisions that aren't true. By definition, you're making decisions that aren't true: in work, partnerships, what you say, your dreams, your desires. You're expressing decisions that aren't true. Just remember this. At least acknowledge it. Acknowledge it. There are other things, major things it leads to. I'm not even—not even that, I don't even want to talk about alcohol being a dependence, or how drinking a great deal damages your health, or how drinking a great deal presents your children with your model of behavior. If you drink, you may periodically reach an extreme state of intoxication. In that extreme state, you may become aggressive, destroy your relationships, and so on, right? There are a great many consequences, other things as well.