Fun while it lasted
Your usual fare from me on Saint Patrick’s day is literature extolling Irish history and talents for one thing or another. One of their talents I personally experienced in Boston is drinking. They and my Welsh ancestors are celebrated for their rollicking contributions to music and poetry extolling the delights of their habit. Richard Burton, the talented actor who courted Elizabeth Taylor, was Welsh and noted for it.
A Boston Irish pol introduced me to life enlivened by drink that lasted 42 years. It was fun while it lasted but given the choice I wouldn’t do it again.
Energy does what it’s told
Matter is stored energy and brains are matter that operate by electrical impulses. Energy acts at the direction of Mind. When our minds tell our bodies to say awake too often they’ll start staying awake and make getting to sleep harder. When we tell our brains with drink, psychedelics, or other substances we want to alter them so we think or feel differently they’ll get in the habit of altering. It’s sometimes obvious that bodies and brains made of matter are doing what our minds tell them and these are two examples.
The grateful brain
Good judgment depends on brains not altering. Too much altering is physical and mental abuse that leads to misjudgments. Misjudgments that accumulate over time degrade performance. Human history is replete with examples of talented personalities like Richard Burton whose lives and careers ended prematurely because of physical abuse that involves brain-altering. Personality differences kept us entertained with his and Elizabeth’s dramatics but drinking would have had a hand in it too.
By the standards of my Welsh ancestry my drinking life was hardly worth the name. I was reasonably disciplined though not always aware that too much is too much and it shows. When I quit fourteen years ago, there was a noticeable improvement in physical performance -- quality of sleep, energy, appetite. Then, three years ago, a great leap forward in every function of mind. Almost overnight I got better with creativity -- insight, free association, imagination. It was as if a better mind than mine took over or else potential that was always there had broken free.
What is my brain telling me? What yours might tell you if you quit altering it. Thank you!