A sober New Year

Happy new year, everyone!

The column-inches of the Standard are filling steadily up with drink-related stories of every kind. In response to "Hungover staff blamed for Notwork (sic) Rail fiasco", 3 Jan 08 page 9, and other such horror stories, this is my take on the media obsession with booze.

There isn't anything new about national insobriety. This time four hundred years ago, everyone in the land used to drink beer morning, noon and night, because the water was so filthy. In those days, if you lived long enough to develop liver trouble, you were very fortunate; we were all dying like flies from infectious diseases. The average life expectancy was between 25 and 35 years. Over time, other drinks such as tea and coffee began to be introduced to Britain, the water supply began to be cleaned up, and industrialisation demanded a sober workforce. Now that work patterns have changed, and we also don't have to behave ourselves properly to impress imperial subjects, we are reverting to the way that we have always behaved in the past.
It is now becoming clear that way isn't helpful for us.

The question is whether you can enjoy life without chemical intervention. Many of us feel that we are lacking something. Life doesn't seem exciting, stimulating, peaceful, or whatever, enough, and something seems missing. In order to fill the gap we put all sorts of substances in our bodies, legal or otherwise, which have no business being there.

This is because we weren't taught how to go within. The idea that somehow we aren't complete is a fallacy. With practice in the art of cultivating our inner life, we can find inside ourselves all the stimulation, or relaxation, that we want. That wasn't the way we were brought up. We were taught, consciously or not, that we have to get something from outside ourselves in order to be happy. That something will inevitably cost money: there is a fortune to be made out of human discontent, you just have to be creative in inventing more things to be discontented about. Or else it will affect our health: there's no effective drug without a side effect, which means a lot of people will earn a good living dealing with the side effects, or pretending to.

People used to talk about the military-industrial complex, in which our economy depends so much on the production of weapons that we have to go around creating war and commotion to maintain our customer base. The discontentment-chemical complex is just as real. We are fed with thought systems that make us depressed. Most of us will look for a mood-altering substance, sooner or later, to get us out of the depression. Once we come to see it isn't working, we may have become dependent on the substance, so we carry on using it anyway, even though it may be costing us more than we can afford.

By way of another example, I went on a course in employee relations recently, in which the speaker touched on the subject of depression. He said that the most common reaction to feeling unhappy is to get a take-away meal and watch a video. He also said that is about the worst thing you can do to deal with such feelings. It may give you a lift now, but it does nothing about the causes of sadness. Well, if you're like me you probably get a bit of junk mail every day advertising one or another fast food outlet, which in my home goes untouched from doormat to recycling bin. Some people must be making a fortune out of reactions to being depressed.

Therefore, once enough of us to make a difference master the art of enjoying a satisfying inner life, the economy will take a considerable knock. We will have to prepare ourselves for having to change our ways of living, and for finding something interesting and creative to do that won't be part of the discontentment-chemical complex. The people who earn the most from it, including the media, won't like to see us all going within. Expect large amounts of black propaganda against meditation, and against non-invasive forms of healing, in the media in the near future. And when you see it, smile: you've started to make an impact.

My opinions on anything are subject to change. My love for you will not change.