This ironic question will help reduce the desire to perform certain actions that aggravate neurosis. All people on planet Earth use so-called coping strategies. These are actions that help cope with stress. And as you probably already guessed, the vast majority use unhelpful strategies. The most common action is media (TV, gadgets, social networks, games, etc.) 60% of Russians use media as their main “lifeline.” Alcohol takes second place. According to various estimates, alcohol abuse among Russians varies from 15 to 30%. And up to 60% use it occasionally. Next comes sports. And only 2% choose meditation as their main coping method. Today we will talk about alcohol. We have already discussed media in previous posts. ALCOHOL. Up to 30% of Russians abuse alcohol. 60% drink occasionally. Alcohol is the most common and accessible “antidepressant”. To drink or not to drink, that is the question? I'll say no. At all. Never. But many will object to me: “Well, how can this be? Our ancestors drank from time immemorial, it is in our blood. This is our gene, passed on from generation to generation. There is a culture of drinking, etc.” Winston Churchill said - I took more from alcohol than it took from me. Avicenna generally classified alcohol as a medical substance. Diogenes said that people who quench their thirst with wine rather than water gradually become stupid brutes. Otto von Bismarck argued that those who drink alcohol become lazy and stupid. “First you drink alcohol, then alcohol drinks alcohol, and then alcohol drinks you.” - these are the words of the American writer Francis Scott Fitzgerald. So who to believe? In any case, the choice is yours. I will share my thoughts and my experience. I’ll tell you how alcohol prevents you from getting out of neurosis. Before drawing conclusions, I propose to plunge into history and discuss several myths about alcohol. - Myth No. 1. Alcohol is our national trait. “Russians drink more than anyone in the world, our national drink is vodka, no one in the world can outdrink us.” I often hear it from everywhere. Some even talk about this with some pride. I heard similar statements from professional athletes, which was most striking. I suggest we find out if this is true? In 1859, pogroms of drinking establishments, breweries and wineries swept across the Russian Empire in more than 32 provinces, more than 2000 towns and villages. People refused free vodka. This is the so-called anti-alcohol riot. The people opposed the soldering of the nation. The initiator of such a movement was not competing firms that were trying to solve their problems in the alcohol market. The initiator of such a movement were ordinary people, ordinary residents of the Russian Empire, who were sharply opposed to alcohol and everything connected with it. No country in the world knows such an event. Determination reached such a level that people were ready to defend their interests with arms in hand. Despite the fact that the alcohol irritant in those years, by today's standards, can be called sobriety: children, adolescents under twenty-one years old and women did not drink at all, and men drank no more than two or three liters of alcohol per year. The riot reached such a level that Tsar Alexander II had to send troops into these provinces in order to suppress the anti-alcohol riots. These events can be called a civil war. As a result, more than 11 thousand people were thrown into prison. Also, the king was forced to turn to the church to temporarily stop the denunciation of drunkenness as a sin. The population of the Russian Empire was sharply opposed to alcohol, so even the so-called “promotions”, when drinking establishments gave away vodka and other strong alcoholic drinks for FREE, failed. People simply ignored drinking. Imagine a similar action now. What kind of line is there to line up, of those who want to drink “for free”? In any bar that sells 3 cocktails for the price of 2, the demand forThis cocktail grows many times over. therefore, for more than three centuries, Russia, together with Sweden, were the most non-drinking countries in Europe - here you have a national trait. By and large, the national trait is that Russians are the most non-drinking European nation from century to century, this was always the case until the nineteenth century. - Myth No. 2. Vodka is our national drink. Vodka is fundamentally different from all other strong drinks that exist in the world. As you know, all strong alcoholic drinks are distillates, and vodka is the only strong drink in the world - rectified. What does it mean? For example, cognac, whiskey, and brandy undergo preliminary rough purification and leave a lot of traces of the original raw materials. Tequila is a distillate of fermented blue agave juice. Brandy is a distillation product of grape wine. Gin is a grain distillate distilled with juniper berries and some other plant components and so on, but with rectified alcohol the situation is completely different. The feedstock goes through multiple distillation processes. First they evaporate, then they condense, then they evaporate, and then they condense again, and this process happens many, many times. As a result, in the end we get a pure chemical compound, rectified ethyl alcohol. The compound is so impersonal from the original raw material that even in laboratory conditions it is not possible to determine what this ethyl alcohol is made of. It turns out that no matter what bottle you pour the liquid into and what label you put on it, the contents will be the same inside. One day one of the TV channels decided to conduct an experiment. The representatives purchased the cheapest Ossetian vodka and Kremlin vodka for several thousand rubles. The contents of both bottles were sent to the laboratory. It turned out that no differences were identified. Those. the price of vodka is made up of marketing and not differences. You pay money not for the contents, but for the beautiful packaging and for what they say specifically about a specific vodka. All over the world, and especially in Russia, they believe that vodka is an original Russian drink, the history of its creation goes deep into history. The distillation column was only invented in 1885 at the end of the nineteenth century. Only with its help is it possible to produce ethyl alcohol. Rectificate was originally invented for industrial purposes and no one considered this chemical as a drink, except for Russia. Why did this happen? In 1895, a state monopoly on all distillates was introduced in the Russian Empire. It was impossible to produce and sell to anyone except the state. Many people got burned by this. Entrepreneurs lost a lot of money and had to somehow get out. And they found a solution that seemed very elegant to them at that time: we cannot produce distillates, we will produce industrial rectified alcohol, and they began to produce and sell the industrial chemical compound rectified ethyl alcohol. Only in 1936 did it receive the name vodka. Before that, it was sold simply as a strong table wine of 40 degrees, and here you have the original Russian drink vodka. In the 60s, vodka began to be exported abroad. But it is difficult to sell a cheap chemical compound at a high price. It is necessary to add value to the product. So the myth of primordiality, antiquity, generations was born. Vodka as we know it is a little over 100 years old. MYTH No. 3. ALCOHOL REDUCES STRESS AND DEPRESSION. Few people know how Gost evolved. Until 1972, ethyl alcohol had the following designation - a highly flammable, colorless liquid with a characteristic odor, classified as a potent drug that first causes excitement and then paralysis of the nervous system. But in 1972, everything changed. The definition has been shortened a bit. Ethyl alcohol is a flammable, colorless liquid with a characteristic odor. For some reason, they forgot that it is a drug. But that's not all either. In 1993, a new, different explanation appeared - rectified ethyl alcohol from food raw materials - a colorless, flammable liquid. That is, lessIn less than 50 years, alcohol has turned from a drug that causes paralysis into food. A reasonable question arises: What has changed since 1972: the formula of ethyl alcohol or the human body? The WHO (World Health Organization) defines drugs as a chemical agent that causes stupor, coma, or insensitivity to pain. In my opinion, alcohol fits this definition. Why does a person feel good when he drinks? The body releases dopamine, which relaxes the body and improves mood. Therefore, Alcohol is often classified as antidepressant, but this is not true. The effect is very short. Subsequently, the body adapts to the production of the hormone, and more and more of it is required to achieve the effect. Increasing the dose leads to addiction and personality destruction. And if you are a representative of northern peoples, then this dependence arises much faster than among southerners. The point is an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase, which breaks down alcohol products. And the further north the people are, the less of this enzyme they have. Therefore, representatives of Chukotka, Komi, and the indigenous peoples of Yakutia are not at all adapted to drinking alcohol. Based on the above, one conclusion can be drawn - alcohol is the most depressant there is. MYTH No. 4. YOU CAN DRINK “CULTURALLY,” “MODERATELY,” AND SMALL DOSES OF ALCOHOL HARMLESS AND SOMETIMES EVEN USEFUL. This is probably the most common myth. Each of us has heard about “drinking culture”. This myth exists and is supported by the media. Remember the days before the New Year, on federal channels they tell you how to drink correctly. How long before you need to eat, what you need to eat, how often you need to pour poison into yourself. Most people, accustomed to trusting TV, have the feeling that this is the norm and do not think that there is anything wrong with this mechanism. “Cultural”, “moderate” use is the most insidious term. It is enough to encourage people to drink “in moderation” and tell them that it is harmless, and they will readily follow such advice. Promoting the possibility of “cultural”, “moderate” consumption of alcoholic beverages causes enormous harm to society, public consciousness in general, and the consciousness of the younger generation in particular. A “culturally” drinking person also destroys his health, just like a “non-cultural” drinking person, only slightly slower. The very fact of “cultural consumption” of alcohol is wild: how can one be culturally poisoned by a substance that is poison in any dose?! It's like culturally beating your head against a wall, or culturally eating sand. Yes, many will object. But alcohol can be tasty and enjoyable. This does not change its essence in any way, because... It doesn’t matter what kind of alcoholic drink a person drinks, only one thing is important - how much alcohol in terms of pure alcohol enters the body. The main price to pay for “moderate” consumption of alcoholic beverages and the promotion of this possibility is the deterioration of the health of future generations and their involvement in the vicious circle of alcohol poisoning with all the ensuing consequences for them. MYTH No. 5. WITH ALCOHOL YOU CAN GET WARM QUICKLY. Why are alcoholic drinks called strong drinks? People are sure that alcohol has a warming effect. “Well, it’s on fire,” many will say. “If a person is cold, what could be better than 100 grams? The best "medicine". Frankly, there is a small grain of truth in this statement. The fact is that when cooled, approximately 50 grams of vodka or cognac contribute to short-term improvement. Alcohol dilates blood vessels and normalizes blood supply to internal organs. Subsequent doses of alcohol increase blood flow in the skin, which turns red and a pleasant feeling of warmth appears. But it is very deceptive - because in this case, heat transfer increases, and the body begins to cool down even more. The most insidious thing about this type of procedure is that it preserves a subjective feeling of complete well-being. First it cools down, you have to increase the dose of alcohol. Next he.