Alcoholic

~ Clarissa

The real object of an alcoholic’s desire is not the drink. The happy feelings of intoxication, the lowering of inhibitions, the social ease that come with alcohol are added bonuses but never the main goal. What the alcoholic really craves is the hangover.

The pain and suffering of a hangover fulfill one or all of the following purposes for the alcoholic:

1. The physical pain serves as a punishment for the alcoholic who is profoundly convinced of his or her own badness and desires to be punished on regular occasions;

2. The remorse and the self-castigation the alcoholic experiences take him or her back into the familiar and comforting childhood role of a wayward child being scolded by an adult;

3. The remorse can also be used as a motivating factor the alcoholic employs in lieu of a broken down motivation mechanism;

4. The physical pain and especially the headache drown out the unwelcome thoughts that plague the alcoholic while s/he is sober.

This is why AA works. Alcoholics get to experience public self-flagellation they crave so much without actually needing to  drink. AA gives them one endless hangover without any drink at all. Remember that one of AA’s “steps” consists of the alcoholic making public penance for his or her sins.

Any real cure, of course, has to address the purposes that the hangover serves for the alcoholic.

Some of you have already realized that I’m retelling Eric Berne’s famous book Games People Play. “Alcoholic” is the most famous of games described by Berne but there are many more.

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Published by Clarissa

45 thoughts on “Alcoholic”

    1. Of course, the particularly masochistic will need actual physical pain and the constantly renewed stores of guilt. Many can’t go for decades on ancient guilt and no fresh one.

      Unless people look at what the hangover gives them, theyr will find it hard to get cured. An AA’s life is still all about alcohol.

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  2. I still think it is a lot more complicated than this. For example, I know several people who are self-diagnosed alcoholics who found that after years in AA with no success, they switched easily to being moderate drinkers when they stopped dringing beer and distilled spirits and drank only wine. The urge to overindulge simply was not there with wine.

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    1. If the actual liquor they imbibe is that important, I wonder what makes them think they are alcoholics. The very first symptom of alcoholism is that one doesn’t care about the taste.

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      1. They had never drunk wine. They drank beer and/or spirits for years, even decades, and then discovered accidentally that switching to wine made all the difference. I suspect it is not the taste, but some other chemical in wine that alters the effects in a big way.

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      2. I believe that chemical imbalances in the brain are real but very rare. The meme pressed upon the public by marketers is that they are both real and very common. I think it would be very difficult to prove that they never exist.

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  3. Typically there are two motivating factors in life. The pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Take a guess which one is more motivating for the average person. The vast majority of alcoholics that I have known in my life(quite a few), drank to avoid the painful areas in their lives. It could be stressors brought on by the way they live or the avoidance of deep seated abuses suffered from the past. The reason AA can be successful for some alcoholics is because they reach a point in their lives where the drinking is more painful than the pain they had before. Go to an AA meeting and you can see this scenario played out each time. A speaker gets up and describes how bad their lives were when they drank, and everyone in the meeting nod their heads in agreement.(pain). After the long description they then talk about how much better their life is now that they are not drinking and everyone in the meeting nod their heads in agreement.(pleasure). Simple formula for some but obviously not all.

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    1. “Typically there are two motivating factors in life. The pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. ”

      – You are forgetting the pursuit of pain and avoidance of pleasure. This is the central motivation for a lot more people than pursuit of pleasure.

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  4. Youre missing out on the fact that most pain people seek out is to drown out the other more painful parts of their lives. I see this everyday in my health care practice.

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      1. If that outlook works for you, go for it. My experience with people, most times, is very different from that view. Have you ever been to an AA or NA meeting? Do you have any family or friends in any of these recovery groups?

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        1. This isn’t my “outlook.” I’m simply retelling the basics of psychological science. Berne was writing long before I was even born and he spent decades treating all kinds of addicts with a higher degree of success than AA. He is a world-famous psychologist.

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  5. He’s just one of many. Just like there are more than one reason why people do things. Again, have you ever been to any meetings and do you have any family or friends in these programs?

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  9. I tend to not get too entusiastic about one-size-fits-all diagnoses. I’m sure there are many alcoholics that are in it for the hangovers. But I’m pretty sure that there are other motivations too, especially since some hardcore alkies don’t really get hangovers often.

    I think that (to get back a favorite? theme of yours) some are simply looking for an identity and alcoholic gives them one that they prefer to others (and when AA works it’s because it offers a more attractive identity, for a time at any rate).

    A lot also depends on how you define alcoholic too and IINM the busybodies have been steadily widening the diagnosis over the last 15 or so years.

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    1. “But I’m pretty sure that there are other motivations too, especially since some hardcore alkies don’t really get hangovers often.”

      – Yes, Berne talks about this sub-category, too. Of course, their payoff is completely different.

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  10. I should read the book — always thought it was pop psych of some kind but perhaps it was interesting.

    In high school, I was mildly eating disordered and I knew full well it was displacement, i.e. I could not afford to address actual life problems so needed a false one to focus on, in 2 parts or so: trying to lose weight, on the one hand, and trying to get over the eating disordered behavior, on the other. Moving out of family house I did not need this coping strategy any more…

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  11. I’m sorry to inform you, but you totally and sadistically misinterpreted negative stroking and life scripting that you got from TA. I am schooled in TA and in drug addiction and I am telling you that there are other SEVERE factors at work. Hangovers are a type of withdrawal sickness which occurs when the drug (alcohol in this case) is leaving the users system! Alcohol is a drug that has a VERY FAST effect cycle and metabolism! It’s why people get violent only 1-2 hrs after they start. Their bodies are sensitive to the first dose leaving the system and they get defensive. This causes the violence. Well, hangovers are several hrs later and ALL the alcohol is leaving the system. Alcohol is a depressant. Depressants activate something called GABA, which is a inhibitory neurotransmitter that shuts down primary nerve cells. To compensate, while drunk, the body activates a different type of neurotransmitter called glutamate. Glutamate is a stimulatory neurotransmitter and the balance between GABA and glutamate regulates alertness and even the drive to breath. When GABA action is too strong, your body up regulates glutamate via something called NMDA so you just don’t pass out and stop breathing! When the alcohol leaves the system the GABA effect diminishes,BUT THE GLUTAMATE EFFECT REMAINS! The hangover is caused from this excess of GLUTAMATE and its SIMULATING EFFECTS. This is why any alcoholic will tell you that nothing relieves a hangover like another drink! This is because alcohol acts like GABA and balances the excess of GLUTAMATE it produced to balance the excess GABA earlier. Unfortunately Glutamate is a LONG-ACTING STIMULANT, ALCOHOL IS A SHORT-ACTING DEPRESSANT (AND DEPRESSANTS ACT LIKE YOUR BODY’S GABA) GABA is short for Gamma Amino Butyric Acid. There fore hangovers are a mild form of drug withdrawal JUST LIKE KICKING HEROIN!!!

    Excess glutamate is involved in many kinds of neural damage, from strokes & recovery from complete heart stoppage (asystole) , to dementia, PTSD , most drug addictions, and many other forms of neurological illness! And GABA is the body’s way of balancing it. A person having a hangover is experiencing a MILD form of addictive withdrawal, and NEED LOVE, COMPASSION and MEDICALLY WISE GUIDANCE!. Not some TA-based excuse to BLAME THE VICTIM!
    TA is a wonderful way of understanding human behaviour, but if you take out the big picture, like biochemistry, IT CAN DO TREMENDOUS DAMAGE!

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    2. And here is the perfect example of the phenomenon I described. A hysteric claims she is a victim of her own boozing and angrily demands love and attention. Classic.

      Tragically, an addict always has a bunch of co-dependents who swallow this self-pitying act and sits there for years, stupidly listening to an insane rant about glutamates.

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    3. Oh brother…
      Josephine, I’m all for figuring out what happens chemically in a brain exposed to alcohol or whatever other substance you want, but please try to make sure what you’re saying is correct and not just hanging acronyms on a pile of CAPS LOCKed superstition to make it seem plausible. If you are schooled in drug addiction as you claim, I find it frightening that you say people turning violent under the influence of alcohol is due to “the first dose leaving the system” rather than the lowered inhibition alcohol causes combined with some drinkers being barely under-control assholes. Also, different drugs have different withdrawal mechanisms and symptoms, so it is disingenuous to claim hangovers are just like kicking heroin. Also, I sure hope you don’t treat people’s addictive withdrawals with love&compassion – the least thing I want during a withdrawal from alcohol or caffeine (which are the only things I’ve taken that had noticeable withdrawal symptoms) is having to deal with someone else’s love and compassion, and I imagine harsher drugs make people even less inclined to deal with others’ emotions. Seriously, if the hungover dude or gal doesn’t require rapid medical attention and you want to help them, just refrain from making loud noises in their vicinity and maybe cook them a good breakfast. Love&Compassion can wait until their heads stop hurting.

      By the way, I’m unfamiliar with the TA acronym in this context. What does it mean?

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      1. “If you are schooled in drug addiction as you claim, I find it frightening that you say people turning violent under the influence of alcohol is due to “the first dose leaving the system” rather than the lowered inhibition alcohol causes combined with some drinkers being barely under-control assholes. ”

        – Exactly. I thought everybody knew this.

        “By the way, I’m unfamiliar with the TA acronym in this context. What does it mean?”

        – Transactional analysis. Which this person definitely knows nothing about because, according to Berne, people who give love and compassion to alcoholics are playing the co-dependent game.

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      2. By the way, I’m unfamiliar with the TA acronym in this context. What does it mean?(Stille)

        Well, if my memory serves me correctly….T&A stand for………….. 😉

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  12. David Bellamy: “I believe that chemical imbalances in the brain are real but very rare… I think it would be very difficult to prove that they never exist.”

    Given the complexity of the brain I think it would be extremely odd if they didn’t exist. I do imagine they’re a lot less common than the drug hucksters would like us to think.

    As many people have pointed out, a lot of modern medicine isn’t about identifying and treating illness as figuring out something (mostly though not always harmless) that drugs do to the taker and then defining the lack of that as an illness.

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    1. The brain is a chemical machine, and like any machine it responds to input. As in computers, when there’s a problem with the brain it might be something wrong with the machinery, but most of the time it’s something wrong with the input.

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      1. There is my analysis and then there is a rant about glutamates and victimhood here in the thread. It is everybody’s own choice which type of narrative to subscribe to. It is also everybody’s own choice whether to offer love and compassion to these “victims.”

        I’m from Ukraine, so, tragically, I have many alcoholics in my family. After years of looking at them, I am convinced that neither they nor their adult partners are victims of anybody. The only victims are their small children.

        Sorry, if the comment appears in a weird place. I can’t control where they go on this device.

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      1. Do you mean that some people with no hangovers pre-30 years old tend to develop hangovers in their thirties, or that people can’t reliably figure out if they’ll get a hangover before actually getting it prior to turning 30.

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        1. “Do you mean that some people with no hangovers pre-30 years old”

          – Yes. It does happen that as the body wears out, hangovers appear. Up to a certain age, I also boasted that I had no idea what a hangover was. Until I did. 🙂 🙂

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      2. Bah, tell me about it. I barely knew what a hangover was prior to turning 22 either. Granted, it was probably because I was biking 20km every morning and any hangover I might have woken up with was reliably gone by kilometer 11, but why should I let external factors get in the way of a proper histrionic pining-for-my-lost-youth session 😛

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        1. I was so sure that I couldn’t get a hangover that one New Year’s celebration, I just kept drinking and drinking. And then I spent the entire January 1 lying helplessly on the couch watching American football on TV because I was too incapacitated to get up and turn it off. I don’t know what was more painful, the hangover or the football game.

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  14. I can drink a lot so long as I don’t get dehydrated, which can happen during pollen season. Then I get an allergy cycle, where my mucous membranes in my sinuses become inflamed and I can’t get hydrated again, because this dryness and inflammation increases my sensitivity to pollen, and the allergy itself dehydrates me.

    And unlike some people, I drink to remember, not to forget. I can travel more extensively into the past and the future, and more deeply into myself after a few drinks. It’s like gaining extra REM sleep and works to integrate the various levels of my psyche. If I don’t drink at least every eight days or so, I start to feel brittle and irritable, like one deprived of sleep. I love sleeping.

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  16. It appears that many of you are at least thinking about the information I presented. I can provide numerous references if that will help. But first I think I must address certain misunderstandings about Transactional Analysis, what games really are, and how these are related to a person’s biochemistry.
    TA is based on a few basic ideas.

    First, ALL people are Ok and are equally important & Respectworthy. Second, positive reinforcement increases these basic OK feelings. 3. At our core everyone is basically lovable & capable of positive growth. 4. All emotional difficulties are curable.

    The basic need for validation is as necessary as oxygen is to live. Without some form of validation a person will die. But validation can take 3 forms. Positive & negative (and the subforms of unconditional & conditional in more modern treatises) A friend of Eric Berne, Claude Stiener, likens these to “Warm Fuzzies, Cold Prickelies & Plastic Fuzzies” in his classic, often quoted in TA circles story called The Original WARM FUZZY TALE by Claude Steiner.

    In TA they are called Strokes. One KEY point in this story is in the absence of positive Strokes, a negative one is BETTER THAN NONE!! I quote “People who don’t get Warm Fuzzies regularly were in danger of developing a sickness in which caused their backs (spinal cords) to shrivel up & die”. At the time Steiner & Berne developed TA they didn’t understand the biochemistry, but much evidence gathered during WWII & other studies did indicate that indeed the entire nervous system is dependant on some kind of recognition or a process called apoptosis (ap-o-to-sis) which means programmed cell death results to the brain & CNS. Apoptosis is a process that, during growth, cells use to shut off excess cell growth to prevent malignancy! In the CNS, glutamate is the chemical that triggers this! Remember I said that many systems can trigger excess glutamate. In small amounts, glutamate triggers brain stimulation, but in large amounts it triggers CELL SUICIDE! That is why a person recovering from a hangover is so ornery. Glutamate is actually triggering the suicide of their brain cells! You’d be ornery too! You see, to prevent the CELL DEATH that glutamate triggers, a negative stroke will ALWAYS BE PREFERED TO NO STROKES. In other words, negative recognition or validation is better than none!!! The glutamate equation was studied in the 1980’s & ’90’s & is now the subject of much research into addiction, loss of circulation to the brain from Ishemic strokes (no relation to TA strokes, Ishemic ones are loss of oxygenated blood flow, a different usage of the word), ageing, dementia, cancer, much else!

    Because a person MUST have this personal validation to survive, it seems obvious that in an ideal world these Validative strokes should be unconditional & abundant! In real life it’s not always that way. So a STROKE ECONOMY develops where people learn to PLAY GAMES to get the attention we all need & should have a right to. Often these games are rigged to enable only NEGATIVE strokes (validation, attention, recognition) are available. This causes people to learn life attitudes or “SCRIPTS” that reaffirm a position of “I’m not OK” to meet their stroke needs. These I’m not OK stances or strokes don’t really meet their real need for validation, but it does enable them to survive another day! So they feel they have no choice but seek out negative strokes compulsively! This life scripting, combined with the biochemistry of addiction is what makes the cycle of addiction so difficult to break. YOU CAN BREAK IT HOWEVER!!!
    You see TA takes the analysis of transactions much further. They divide personalities into 3 pts. 1. Parent. 2 Adult. 3 Child. This goes way beyond Freud’s id, ego & superego. The parent is the guiding part of a person, the adult is the analytical part, and the child is the feeling/emotional part. When someone tries to bait you into a game, you can cross their transaction up by saying something to a part of their personality they didn’t expect. A crossed transaction! Now this can be also used negatively so you need to study this stuff to apply it. But the goal is to find the good deep inside a person that they try to keep secret, praise that, & ignore the negative trigger they sent. By doing this you can plant seeds underneath it all, you know they are a good and valuable person, & simply don’t acknowledge their bait to join their “kick me” game. If enough people do this it will make a person curious about real medical & behavioral therapy to overcome their addiction. Lately, other forms of therapy have developed from humanistic psychology other than TA that can be helpful. Another one is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or CBT. Like TA, it stresses the intrinsic value of all people, and helps people find ways to get their needs met without all the negative crap getting in the way!

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