This Naked Mind

I read this book at a time I was already questioning the future of my status as an alcohol consumer. I haven't actually been at peak consumption, lately, but the very act of moderation had me asking: Why? What's the point in consuming this stuff if I'm not actually even drinking it to get drunk?

I was hoping the book would help me wicker out some answers to that, and it did. I found some of the chemical science helpful, but am a natural skeptic because I know studies can be found to back up any point and I wasn't going to PubMed every footnote - so I didn't give it a ton of weight. I found the psychology to be more useful, and used reading this book as a sort of meditation - time to chew on my thoughts and the ideas presented.

Some of the more interesting takeaways, I found, were where she deconstructed the “I like the taste” rationale, and the various points she made about alcohol and having fun. I'll freely admit that one of my last, but biggest, hesitations about committing to an alcohol-free life was imagining certain events - like my favorite music festival - without booze. Re-examining those events with her logic, I see now that the fun I've had in many of them were due to the company or activity, not the alcohol, and the rare occasions where I am unable to have fun without alcohol means the company or activity actually suck and the solution is to be an actual adult and don't be there, not to self-medicate into tolerance of shitty social settings. (I mean... duh, but yes, I required the thought exercise to arrive here.)

I did find her language somewhat heavy-handed at times, like the refrain of alcohol as “poison.” We put all kinds of things in our bodies that are arguably toxic, from the inadvertent byproducts of modern living (chemicals in plastic) to the I-don't-care-because-tasty (bacon). That line of language/thinking might be helpful for others, but it isn't what speaks to me. I'm - maybe wrongly - less concerned about long-term health effects and more concerned about short- and medium-term psychological, social and acute physical effects.

The bottom line is I read this book at a time when I was trying to decide if the best LJ is, or ought to be, a drinker or non-drinker, and how to navigate the concerns I had about choosing the latter. It hit the spot, and I'd certainly recommend it to anyone wanting to do some critical thinking about their relationship with alcohol.