It is estimated that there are over 140 million people worldwide who are alcoholics that are either active in their addiction or in recovery from it. Sadly, that number only seems to be growing each year. And lately, I’ve been wondering if this is the case partially due to the way the consumption of alcohol is continuously being portrayed in television and movies.
I watch various fiction based television shows and movies quite a bit. While I believe they can be a healthy escape at times from life, they often show alcohol to be a healthy escape from life too, even though it’s not.
How many television shows and movies can you think of right now where you saw someone use alcohol to numb some type of pain they were going through? I’ve already lost count and there are too many scenarios where I see alcohol being used now to help the characters in these scripts cope with the tragedies that can come in life. Here are just a few of them:
A loved one dies and the character pops open a bottle of liquor to deal with it.
A bad breakup occurs and the character gets mega drunk at a bar to deal with it.
A character is abused in some fashion and they turn to booze to deal with it.
A financial disaster happens in a character’s life and they drown sorrows in alcohol to deal with it.
Some would say that art imitates life and that television and movie scripts are only being modeled after what really happens in the world. But what if life is really imitating the art instead? What if the people who never drank alcohol start drinking because they saw it being portrayed in those fictionalized television shows and movies as a way to cope with the misery that can come in life. I can speak from personal experience to know that there is some truth to this statement.
I didn’t consume any alcoholic beverage until the age of 17. For years prior to that age I saw many programs on the television as well as movies in the theater where actors and actresses drowned their sorrows of life through a heavy consumption of alcohol. I never quite understood why they did nor did I ever quite get why my parents liked alcohol so much. That all changed though when the day came where I completely consumed my first 12 ounce beer.
Alcohol is truly a great relaxing agent. It helps to numb one’s senses and thoughts about all the pains and stressors that come in life. The night I had that first beer, I was able to forget about the mental and emotional abuse I dealt with at home. I was able to forget about the man who molested me. I was able to forget about all the bullies who had ever picked on me. And in general, I was able to forget about everything that wasn’t a good memory. While alcohol was a great inhibitor of pain, it took me five years to see how much of an illusion that was. Unfortunately, those fictionalized television shows and movies never showed me this and I spent those five years doing what most of those characters did when something bad happened to them, I drank alcohol to drown it out.
Unless a scripted program or movie is about a person who develops an addiction to alcohol, normally a viewer will never see the downsides that can come with drinking it to numb one’s senses. They rarely show the domino effect of complications that can happen in life from repeatedly doing it such as getting a DUI, developing serious health issues, getting arrested, losing a job, becoming broke, etc. By the end of the five years I drank excessively, I finally realized that no matter how much booze I shoved down my throat, my pain was never going to be fully drowned out. Scripted TV shows and movies back then, and even today, rarely show this. What they show you instead is how a person will use alcohol to deal with a tragedy for a brief moment of their life and then move on. But what they don’t show you is that there are over 140 million of us out there who wouldn’t be able to put the alcohol back down once it’s picked up to deal with that tragedy. Regardless of whether a person falls into that 140 million or not though, the only thing alcohol really does for a person when a tragedy strikes besides making them feel numb from it, is to delay its healing process within them.
I’ve chosen not to delay my healing process anymore from any of the tragedies I’ve dealt with in life. I don’t want any more decades of my life to pass by with me using alcohol or any other agent to numb me from dealing with the downsides of life. I not only prolonged my healing for years in doing this, I became chronically addicted to just about everything just to numb me from the pain in life. Sometimes I wish those scripted TV shows and movies I grew up watching could have shown me this. Maybe it would have made a difference or maybe not. Either way, they created an illusion that I bought into pretty easily that took years off my life and for many others today they still do.
So it’s my prayer for anyone who reads this that you’ll realize much more quickly what took me years to arrive at. While television shows and movies may glorify drinking and lead you to believe it’s a good agent to use for coping when a tragedy strikes, the reality is that heavily consuming alcohol to deal with them will only do two things for you. One, it will numb you and delay your grieving and healing process. And two, it could lead you to a life of alcoholism. Thankfully, God has shown me both and hopefully those scripted television shows and movies will start doing the same.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson