*The Debatewise Blog
Drunken cerebral hemispheres
Another weekend gone and another series of embarrassing moments to forget, all courtesy of too much alcohol. Why do we do we do this to ourselves? If we really sat down and thought about it, it is hard to come up with an answer. We know that drinking harms our liver, just as we know smoking harms our lungs. Yet so many people partake in one or both of these activities. This phenomenon is not only among the uneducated, students are well known for their drinking habits, and people with highly stressful jobs are well known for smoking. But why?We are spending money to kill ourselves! Socrates put this really well by stating that people have a problem in perception. A cigarette, or an alcoholic beverage, whatever your tipple is, looks big when it is close in front of you. Whereas death seems so far in the distance that it seems small. So, when weighing up whether to smoke or drink, the intoxicant looks more appetizing than the threat in the distance.
I think it is for this reason that the Government is commissioning adverts which show not the health effects of drinking but the social effects. You know the ones, with the girl who goes out with ripped clothes, a broken heel and a nice dose of vomit in her hair and the catchy tag line “you would not start a night like this, so why end it this way”. I thought this advert rather poignant, yet to be honest; I have not changed my alcohol infused habits.
Who is to blame for my misdemeanors? Surely the government have done all they can? Do we really want the nanny state to bend us over its knee and slap us on the behind with a massive tax on all the things that are bad for us? Where is the human dignity in that? Then again, where is the human dignity in getting drunk?