The alcoholic
Given the right circumstances, almost anyone can become addicted to alcohol. However, there are two types of alcoholic. The first are ordinary people who become addicted through regular use because they:
- Self-medicate with alcohol to relieve depression, anxiety, grief, or some other emotional distress.
- Belong to some group that encourages heavy drinking. Some occupations are notoriously likely to produce alcoholics and males in our culture are ‘supposed’ to drink to be real men.
- Use alcohol to bolster low self-esteem, overcome shyness or social awkwardness.
- Are raised in families where heavy drinking is the norm and is accepted and expected.
The second type of alcoholic, which is the majority (around 70% of them) has an ‘alcoholic personality’. No matter what their life experience, they become alcoholics because their personality makes them prone to it.
Studies into male alcoholics (across all age and income levels alcoholism is still predominantly a male problem) and the psychological meaning of alcohol consumption have found that the main motivation for drinking is ego enhancement.
Studies find that many alcoholics drink because alcohol:
- Makes them feel bigger and stronger than they are.
- Makes them feel invincible.
- Encourages enjoyable fantasies of power and sexual prowess.
- Makes their weaknesses and faults disappear.
- Makes them feel they could do anything, beat anyone, and solve any problem.
- Makes them feel vigorous, expansive, influential, important.
- Provides them with the positive and pleasing company of a boozy brotherhood.
- Produces a feeling of power without them having to really do anything to achieve actual power (the alcoholic’s ‘magic’ power).
- Makes them feel uninhibited, impulsive, reckless and free.
- Encourages ego displays such as boasting of their prowess at work, sport, or with women.
Studies find that the men with the biggest egos, strongest need for power and the least inhibition, are the heaviest drinkers. The power such men crave though is not the type that requires any responsibility or effort. They want personal dominance, aggrandizement, glory and a powerful reputation—egotistical power, and drinking provides a quick, if delusional route to it.
Even when their drinking has adverse consequences people with an ‘alcoholic personality’ refuse to reduce their consumption. As long as they feel ‘powerful’ they don’t care about anything else. They don’t want to change, and defiantly resist efforts to make them. Avoidance or denial of reality is an essential part of their make up.
In one study, alcoholics actually believed that excessive drinking made them more attractive to women and enhanced their masculinity. They were under the delusion that wanting, believing, or feeling something made it so.
Alcohol is the ‘Ego’s Elixir’ because it blocks any information that contradicts a positive self-image. It lets the drinker experience self-approval, even self-inflation while at the same time, because alcohol impairs perception and thought, it limits awareness of all the reasons to feel insignificant. Alcohol makes us feel good about ourselves, which reinforces its addictiveness, especially in people who need to always feel good about themselves.
Researchers find that certain behaviours are almost universally present in alcoholics and other addicts. Such people are commonly impatient, impulsive, immature and self-deceptive, with a false sense of control. They are intolerant of negative emotions, have a sense of entitlement and grandiosity, and justify their behaviour by denial, rationalization and minimization. They have a tendency toward antisocial behaviour, self-centredness, showing off, a lack of self-control and concern for others. They are charming but superficial, gregarious, exploitative, impulsive and undisciplined. This ‘alcoholic’ personality has many of the elements of narcissistic or even psychopathic personalities
If we believe we are superior and wonderful, we cannot bear any indication of the contrary. When we are driven to avoid awareness of our shortcomings we might well seek to escape self-awareness and attempt to stop unwanted thoughts about our less than perfect selves by focusing narrowly on some physical sensation (such as drinking). In such a way, we can reduce our attention and thinking to a minimum, narrow our perception of time, and suppress emotion. Alcohol is so often used to escape self-awareness because it effectively impairs thought and concentrates attention on the present.
People close to alcoholics frequently blame alcohol for all bad behaviour and relationship problems. Most people mistakenly believe that childhood trauma causes addictions and so are sympathetic and tolerant and do not hold the addict responsible for their ‘illness’. But most alcoholics have no special trauma in their lives. It is estimated that no more than 30% of alcoholism is caused by external influences. Substance use and abuse is something people consciously decide to do, it is a choice to escape reality rather than face it.
Those closest to the alcoholic usually assume that if alcohol could be eliminated then everything would be fine but addiction is often only a symptom of personality. Even if the alcoholic gives up drinking there is often no huge improvement in his behaviour because the narcissism that drove the addiction is still there. Alcohol abuse is not the cause of a disordered personality but a symptom of it. The ex-alcoholic may still behave selfishly, may still exploit and manipulate, only now he does these things sober instead of drunk.
Less than 8% of alcoholics (or other addicts) ever recover. They suffer from the delusion that unlike other people, they can avoid reality. They believe they can continue to drink without ever having to suffer adverse consequences. A neighbour of mine who drank a bottle of whiskey a day was shocked and surprised to learn she had cirrhosis of the liver—‘I never thought this would happen to me’ she told me.
Most alcoholics don’t believe they should have to endure anything they don’t want to, or that they need ever deny themselves anything. Addiction is deluded self-indulgence, a magical escape into a fantasy land of intoxication, euphoria, peace and comfort, which the addict believes should be the normal state of existence for him. Unfortunately, addiction stunts emotional growth and the age at which a person begins to abuse drugs or alcohol is the age at which their development becomes stuck, which further lessens the likelihood of insight into their problem.
So those who share their lives with an alcoholic (or other addict) need to ask themselves what lies behind the addiction? Could it possibly be the result of a disordered personality (a 70% chance that it is). If that is the case the likelihood of improvement is slim and even if sobriety is achieved other problems are almost certain to arise.
For further advice see Al-Anon, Buzzle.com, SOS, or Empowered Recovery
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