often feel weak and incomplete, yet nothing is further from the truth. Despite drinking poison in increasing quantities, usually daily, we still function. By believing we are weak, we foster the misconception that we need something more to thrive.
We are not weak; we are strong. We represent the very pinnacle of existence, stronger and more capable than anything we know of. We populated and explored the entire planet and even the moon before most of our modern medical discoveries.
It’s a miracle I survived all my years of heavy drinking and am healthy and thriving. It’s a testament to how strong we are. When I decided to stop drinking, I expected to lose weight and improve my health. I was not disappointed—I lost ten pounds in the first month. The real surprise was how my life improved in ways I didn’t expect. For one thing, my confidence skyrocketed. Also, when my body healed, I found myself amazed at the difference in how I felt every day. During my years of drinking I didn’t feel particularly sick, but I didn’t feel physically great either. I completely forgot how it felt to have tons of energy. Now I’m often surprised by how much I can get done, while still feeling motivated and happy. It is staggering to realize what we are capable of when we are mentally and physically strong.
We know more than ever about the dangers of alcohol and drugs, yet addiction is on the rise. As a society we find this confusing. The “Just Say No” campaign, introduced by First Lady Nancy Reagan, remains one of the most famous anti-drug campaigns of all time.51 Between 1998 and 2004, the U.S. Congress spent almost $1 billion on national anti-drug media campaigns. Why? Because we continue to see addiction on the rise, and we just don’t understand why. Youth today drink more than they did in the ’80s, and though we are concerned, we can’t seem to understand why the rates of drug and alcohol use are increasing. I believe part of the reason is that we inadvertently condition ourselves to believe we are weak. We believe we lack some vital ingredient necessary to the enjoyment of our lives. We conclude that we are deficient; we need substances to enjoy life and deal with stress. We’ve been unconsciously conditioned to believe alcohol helps us compensate for this deficiency, that it will help us feel strong, uninhibited, creative, and confident. Or maybe we think it will help us deal with the pressures and hassles of daily life.
Your Warning Mechanisms: Symptoms
Now let’s look for a couple minutes at the most common way our body warns us when something isn’t right: symptoms. When we feel a symptom of illness, we usually hurry to the medicine cabinet or the nearest doctor to make the discomfort go away. The pharmaceutical industry has never been bigger.
Imagine you are on a ship, and you sail into a storm. The captain can no longer see the shore or the stars and is completely dependent on the ship’s navigational systems. A bright red light starts flashing. This light lets him know one of his navigational instruments is low on battery. He can’t accurately navigate without it. What if, instead of replacing the battery, he removed the red indicator light? Did the captain fix the issue? Nope. He compounded it.
My mother is a health nut. She ate organic food before most people knew what organic food was. She won’t even take Advil because she believes our ailments can and should be healed through natural, herbal, and food-based remedies rather than with chemicals. Although I ignored her guidance for many years, especially in college when I rebelled against my healthy upbringing with a diet of Taco Bell and Nerds candy, I have come to realize how poignant and true her advice is: We must exercise caution before doing anything that alters our normal functions. It can be terrifying to realize how little we know about the inner workings of our bodies and minds. When we mess with the functions of our bodies or numb our senses with alcohol and other drugs, we act like the captain, inviting catastrophe.
Tommy Rosen, founder of Recovery 2.0 and an addiction specialist, teaches that we have an “infinite pharmacy within,” meaning inside we have every instinct, hormone, and drug we need to help us live long, healthy, and happy lives. If you look at your body’s ability to produce adrenaline or endorphins, you see they are supplied in the perfect quantity at the exact time needed. We possess a phenomenal system.
Your immune system is your single most powerful weapon against disease. It is significantly more important to your health than any modern medicine. Ask any doctor and she will tell you the same thing. We’ve discussed how alcohol severely damages your immune system’s ability to function. Drinking is like removing the red indicator light on your immune system.
A rare genetic condition aptly referred to as Congenital Insensitivity to Pain prevents a person from feeling pain. At first this might seem like a good thing. A life with no pain, who’d complain about that? It is actually one of life’s scariest disorders. You wouldn’t realize the shower was scalding until your skin reddened and blistered. You wouldn’t know your bone was broken until it protruded from your arm. People suffering from this disorder have no chance of living a normal life. It would be hard to make it past childhood unless you lived inside a bubble. Pain gets a bad rap, but it is our friend—it keeps us alive.
As kids we longed to be older, to have our own houses, cars, and money to spend. As adults we wish we were young again because we are always tired and life seems to get increasingly stressful. It shouldn’t be this way. During childhood and adolescence we undergo more changes than at any other time in our lives. In every other animal, childhood is much more stressful than adulthood.52
Think about how tough high school was. Remember the mental strain of the changes you underwent. As a child you don’t feel in control of your life and your destiny, which generates fear and stress. When you are mentally at peace and physically strong as an adult, you experience the best of both worlds. You regain the vigor of youth, and your actual age no longer seems to matter. You feel more comfortable in your own skin. You are wiser and better adjusted. These are the best years of your life. You have more energy, joy, vigor, courage, and self-respect than ever before. Alcohol steals this from us. We drink more and more and become sicker and sicker. It is gradual, and we don’t realize we no longer feel our best. We become accustomed to it and actually believe it’s normal to feel fatigued, stressed, and somewhat unhappy. Now, granted, exhaustion can be caused by many things besides alcohol, but if you are drinking, there is no doubt it exacerbates these stresses, making exhaustion and even regular hangovers an unpleasant way of life. There is not a clear sign that we are doing something to hurt ourselves other than the hangover. Perhaps this chronic exhaustion is the body’s way of saying that something’s wrong.
These days I have so much energy it’s incredible. It took time to regain my energy, but over time I healed from years of drinking poison. When you are physically strong, you feel on top of the world. You are present to fully enjoy the great moments in life. I handle stress better too. Before, my stressors multiplied because, instead of dealing with my problems, I ignored them by drinking. When left unattended, they grew inexplicably large. Without drinking, I can mindfully manage stress. In fact my ability to handle the things I once drank to ignore can be empowering. I don’t mean to say I never have hard days—of course I do. But when you are healthy and happy, everything becomes easier.
Your Warning Mechanisms: Instincts
We have a staggering intellect that both helps and harms us. It’s helpful when we use that intellect to recognize our bodies’ warning lights—symptoms—and search for the root problems. It’s harmful when we rely solely on our intelligence and ignore our bodies’ instinctual knowledge. Instinct is the work of our bodies’ senses alerting us to what will harm us. Sadly, we often ignore this most basic warning system.
When something goes wrong with our body, we visit a doctor. Doctors will tell you that we understand relatively little about how we are made and how to heal ourselves. We continuously learn more, disproving existing medical theories. We used to think that bloodletting— draining blood from a sick person—would cure illness by draining the malady from the body. We now realize this actually harmed the patient, sapping vital strength from an ailing body. Now, of course, our knowledge and technology is growing at an unprecedented rate. We are more informed than at any other point in the history of the world, yet we would be stupid to imagine that our knowledge is complete. You only have to read the news to realize we are constantly discovering new things and disproving existing theories.
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