Cocktails

Is that Ron? Cripes, you haven't seen since high school and he's on the other side of the crowded room. You wave your arms like you're lost at sea and there's a helicopter looking for your raft. You look stupid doing it but he comes over and you start to catch up. You're secretly wishing the din of the crowd would dissipate because you want to see what kind of train wreck his life has become. Look at that boiler plate that's become his stomach. The kid threw for 300 yards at homecoming! I guess that's what happens when you knock up the first girl you have sex with in high school. Despite the incredible noise, you can still make out what he's saying.  How? Simple dummy - it's the cocktail party effect.

The cocktail party effect is the phenomenon of being able to focus one's auditory attention on a particular stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli, much the same way that a partygoer can focus on a single conversation in a noisy room. So, despite all of that goddamn racket you can vindicate your terrible high school existence because this is sweet comeuppance. The cocktail party effect is interesting because I think alcohol has that effect on some people. It's the hold that it has on me. For some people, they drink their ways out of reality because they've been hurt by reality. It may not mean facing deep emotional and physical trauma but just enough for a person to throw up their hands and say "FUCK IT. I'M NOT DEALING WITH THIS RIGHT NOW." Alcohol becomes that vessel in which that person can focus on the here-and-now. I know personally, I might get on a jag about whatever topic I've last head in my head before going south to Drunkstown. I'm not thinking about my mundane 9-to-5 life and unmet expectations. I'm probably not thinking about my past failings or relationship with my family or past relationships. I'm probably trying to make sure to keep my hands dry so it doesn't interfere with my video game playing. Once in a while, I go deep and drudge up some buried demons. It's brain lock; which I'll explain in another post. 

Let's take my routine for the past 7 years. It starts off on a Monday, hungover. The weekend has seeped into the week and not in a good way. It's not as though I reek of the drinks drank throughout the week, but I'm feeling those drinks. I decide to get right with Jesus and workout and eat healthy, go to the gym and abstain from the libations but then Friday, the kissing cousin of Saturday, is here to wash away all of your progress like a giant wave wipes the beach clean of your glorious sand castle. Sometimes, you recover on a Saturday; getting back on track in the gym early in the morning with a hour long sauna session. Come home, turn on the soccer game and maybe catch a few zzz's on the couch until that phone rings. Maybe it's that girl you were chatting up and she wants to get a drink? Maybe it's your boys looking to blow off some steam at the titty bar or a few cigars. Whatever it may be, you look back over the course of the week and think, "Why the fuck not?" Seventy-five dollars later, you're in bed the next morning and the only thing to stave off this headache is more. What is all of that? Where does that come from? In short, it's called ego depletion (click the link for more information). In In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Dr. Gabor Mate lays out that impulse-regulation parts of the cortex are poorly developed even before the addiction takes hold and they are further damaged after the use of the addict's drug-of-choice. It's further exacerbated by the user's motivation and capacity to choose freedom and satiating the pains from the past.

To bring this around full circle, alcohol and drugs have a powerful ability to alter the perception of the user. Even the strongest person sometimes succumbs to the powerful urges to change the focus. Why do most people relish Fridays? It gives a chance to take our minds off of whatever is causing us stress. However, no matter the well-laid intentions, we all have the propensity to err from the path we are on in life. This might be a good thing. Motivational speaker Tony Robbins talks about how there is a turning point, an ah-ha moment, where we all make a decision to turn it all around and reshuffle the deck. After a few months of boozing and bruising - I'm taking a deeper look into my motivations of why I drink and why I drink to excess. Is it the deep past? Is it the present or the future? It may be a little of everything. But, as I look back after a "career" in alcohol, I'm not ashamed of the past because it made me who I am today. I do have to change the way I think about the substance all together. To say I'm quitting cold turkey would get a rise out of anyone who know me well and deep down inside, I know I'll have a sip and I become Johnny Goodtimes, Mayor of Shitty City. Perhaps there's a more adult path I can take with beer and it's culture. That the fork in the road I'm at right now.

Until next time, which hopefully won't be too long...take care.