How to quit drinking and stay in control

Disclaimer. The editors of The Global Technology warn that drinking alcohol is bad for your health. We are committed to an exceptionally healthy lifestyle and believe that there is no shame in being teetotalers.
Everything in this article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute a recommendation.

“‘You’re Chep’yuvin!’ I exclaimed. ‘How incompatible it is with your venerable age!’
  ‘Drink it,’ said the old man affectionately. ‘Otherwise you will offend me.’
    ‘And will you tell me the profanity?’
  ‘I will, I will. Just drink it. I’ll tell you everything.’” 



The Unman / Kovrigin’s Chronicles by Vadim Shefner

You, Dear Reader, shouldn’t think that new, sober times have come, which have completely replaced the old, alcoholic times with boiled sausage on the coffee table and cheese of various molds. Alcohol accompanied the average person on every segment of life distance – Birthday, the first independent evening in the apartment, graduation, admission to an educational institution, getting a diploma, a trip to the sea, buying a car, all this was accepted to celebrate with a bang and alcohol. However, it was also customary that hot liquor accompanied failures too, which one could meet much more often on the path of life. 

Alcoholism, lovingly called “drunkenness”, has become something like a modest parasite in the body – on the one hand, it can do harm, but on the other hand, how to do without it? It is always condemned in words, but not in deeds. A person who drinks is always easy to understand – he has worked too hard, he is tired, his heart is heavy or he is just such a companionable guy. A sober person, on the contrary, is always a suspicious type who sits in the corner with a sullen look and sniffs something out. Isn’t he ill with something hard to pronounce? There are so many temptations around – wines, ports, sparkling armagnacs, liqueurs mixed with cognac, but he only sips water without degrees, and glares. A provocateur.

In order to protect themselves from the frightening word “drunkenness”, people began to use a lot of synonyms: “to become enlightened”, “to work on expanding their self-awareness”, “to relax”, “to hit the bottle”, “to play litreball”, “to support the company”, “to show respect”, and even in general, “to gather as a club of fans of the philosophy of Dionysus”. 

In some European countries, traditions associated with alcohol have been formed over centuries. For other countries, it took just a few decades to turn into the world’s drunkest nation. It has become almost impossible to force the citizens of a single state to limit themselves to a couple of glasses of red wine and a shot of cognac on a festive occasion.  

It turns out that it is not so easy to get rid of the bottle yoke. But we still decided to go against the Green Snake and give you some tips on how to become a teetotaler and not screw it up.

Testing yourself with alcohol is much easier than testing yourself with abstinence. A beginning teetotaler should be prepared to be questioned about the true belief in a sober lifestyle by everyone for whom alcohol is a required element of friendship and respect.

If you are ready to say a firm “I don’t drink” to all entreaties to share the bottled paradise and are not afraid of disapproving looks in your direction, say “no”. If for some reason it’s important for you to be “your own man” at any party, there are a few elegant ways to be known as a drinking guru without taking a drop in your mouth.

While the beer drinkers are grudgingly wiping the clear droplets off their mustaches, begin to lament: “I think we’re being disrespected here. Personally, I’ve come to taste cold beer, but instead they brought me an inarticulate warm muddle. You know why? Because the clear glass heats up the drink. Beer, of course, can be brought in an opaque mug with thick walls, but then we will never know what is in it. Who knows what mood the bartender is in? And then, how am I supposed to watch the bubbles? I’m about to tell you a terrible secret: no one can make it so that beer is always in a clear glass and at the same time always stays cold. What do you think all this Euclidean geometry is for? That’s what it’s for. Different summits are created, secret societies, and all to decide – which glass is more suitable for a bar glass. And only one scientist – physicist Claudio Pellegrini – a professor of thermal and hydrodynamic sciences approached the matter responsibly. He focused on the shape of the glass to determine the rate of heat transfer. After doing the calculations, Pellegrini found that the best shape was a glass with a small base and an upward expansion – a pilsner glass. The researcher noted that the really best result for keeping beer cool would be a small vessel with a volume of up to 350 milliliters, but in this case the whole sense of drinking is lost. In fact, it loses the whole sense. That’s it, there was a physicist and there is no physicist”.

As a rule, after such information all beer drinkers immediately put their mugs on the table, go with their heads into inventing new ways to consume the drink without hands and immediately forget about the presence of sober interlocutors near them. And this is exactly what you need.

It is unlikely that the person who just a minute ago saw you as a reliable drinking buddy will understand a word of what you said, but just in case will decide to respect you.

Your status at the event is clearly enhanced, so no one will pay attention to the degrees in your glass.

In a few minutes your companions will recover from the shock and will realize that you have said something clever and drink a toast in your honor. If not, try doing the same thing, but louder. Not everyone is trained in filigree sobriety as well as you are, be indulgent.

If you realize that the people around you are pushing you right to the bottom of the glass with fermented liquid, it’s time to pretend to be a mysterious thing, even if you’re actually a sullen owl.

After such a brief excursion into history they will not want to pour you any more, because they will decide that you have had enough.

It’s evening, all the day’s troubles, competitors, road signs and unspoken wishes to a picky boss are over, and a can of craft beer is languishing seductively in the fridge. How can you resist? Frozen brown water, covered with a thin crust of frost, insistently begs for your mouth. ‘Cool amber on a hot tongue’, ‘Bright present’, ‘Don’t miss it’, ‘Beer of easy mood’ – marketers have worked hard to leave you no choice and to draw you into the game called ‘Take just a sip’. You get sucked in. The game begins. 

First, the heat hits you. That’s the law of diffusion taking effect, which distributes the alcohol throughout your body. It easily penetrates cell membranes, especially in the brain, where it affects neurons. Then there’s a nice buzz in the head and from there, the bad thoughts start to come out in rows. I wonder how they got there in the first place. Everything is actually good. We can thank the effect of GABA receptor inhibition for that. Alcohol increases the activity of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), which slows down neural signals, which is why thoughts become muted. This phase is commonly referred to as the “sleepy” phase. 

We could have stopped there, but no. The anxiety is gone, the problems are gone, what could be a better reason for another sip? The game continues.

After biochemistry has had its fun with your brain, you put your body to physics, which is heavier. At first it will remind you about the law of conservation of inertia by the fact that it will be very hard for you to get the key into the keyhole, or you will carry the fork past your mouth a couple of times, or you will look for the right button on the remote control for a long time. Alcohol has dulled your thoughts and weakened your cerebellum, which is responsible for balance, so your coordination is gone. 

After that, physics reminds of itself again and rewards you with a loss of balance. It is almost impossible to get up from a comfortable place and there is no reason to do so. Moreover, your face is already taken care of – it is welcomed by the salad. Don’t worry, it happens.

And physics goes away only when you courageously gather the rest of your strength, grab the only surviving thought, which in time reminds you of your dignity, and with cries: “I am a Man!” make a last attempt to stand up, but immediately fall to the floor. And what is there to be done? When gravity goes away, brain injuries tend to come.  

You should quit this stupid game, but you don’t! The game is no longer played by your rules. 

The speed of reflexes decreases, impulses between neurons are transmitted more slowly, causing sluggishness of movement and speech. Alcohol suppresses the activity of the central nervous system, which leads to a slower reaction to external stimuli, and you become trapped in your body. 

You will then inevitably have to experience the Law of Osmosis, because alcohol will draw all the water from your cells into your bloodstream, causing dehydration. After that, acidity will begin to build up in the blood, which will bring on headaches and nausea. 

You will inevitably experience resonance effects due to a slowed nervous system that affects the vibration of the vocal cords, making speech less clear and louder. Rash actions are waiting for you due to the fact that under the influence of alcohol the activity in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which is responsible for self-control, is reduced. Your liver will remind you about its existence, which is able to process about 10 g of pure alcohol per hour, and you have already run 10 times 200 through it. 

And if the liver does not remind you about it, then the traffic police will remind you, because you will suffer from a hangover for a long time. 

Good game. The people who were around you are delighted – you made their evening! In gratitude for this they will long quote your picturesque expressions, invented when you let yourself out.

Photos in your phone will eloquently remind you about how you were exploited by all laws of physics, chemistry, biology, neurophysiology and sociology.

And common sense, which, for some reason, wanted to wake up right now, will silently reproachfully watch the whole picture.  

One small can of beer has drawn you into its dubious nets. A date with alcohol is always a blind date, a chase for luck that always results in you losing.

A true teetotaler has a calm attitude toward alcohol and the people who consume it. He calmly walks past the alcohol section at the store and attends parties just for socializing. The novice teetotaler is sure to always have a reason to drink. And after all, how boring people around are! This one is a bore, that one is a fool, and that one is just a bastard. But once the magic drink gets inside, the world immediately begins to shine in different colors! The fool turns out to be a good guy with a hard fate, the bore becomes a philosopher, and the bastard shows himself as a naive boy from a country town, who you don’t mind teaching intelligence to. But let’s better talk about you. Now you become a philosopher yourself and realize that now you are finally being listened to. But this is not enough for you, so you take a higher stool, stand in a circle and begin to show yourself exorbitantly. Here it is, your finest hour! Dispersing boredom in this way, in a year or two you will have to drink even before climbing the coveted stool, but who cares?

Or there is a situation of uncertainty. How can you not have a drink? The future seems anxious and frightening, but literally two or three drinks, and you already feel better. To insult the boss? Oh, please. To kiss the unapproachable object of your passion? Easy. To talk first, to make a difficult decision, to loosen up and not to care about other people’s opinions – now you can do anything, at least for a while. In the morning you will feel bad, but you still resort to this tool more and more often. Anxiety is not a pleasant feeling, but soon you will be anxious for no reason at all, and this will mean that the alcohol trap has slammed shut.

Everyone around you is drinking and nothing bad happens – no hangovers in the morning, no shaky hands, no headaches. But we had a lot of fun at the party or the prom. You only drink purely to get in the mood, how else could you? Everybody drinks. Addiction doctors call it the most dangerous excuse, and if you do not accept the fact that you can not drink at all, then after a while you will find that in your life there is nothing but hangovers, unfulfilled plans destroyed by the bottle dream, and cirrhosis. Alcohol will work clearly here. It will indeed remove the things you once cared about from your life, and along with these things, all the interesting moments – walks, reading books, traveling, discovering, falling in love, shopping, joy and emotions – will be gone from your life too. But now it will be you who will remove these moments from your life.

Life rule of a teetotaler

Let fools remain fools, no one forces you to remake or retrain them. No one forces you to socialize with them.

Life rule of a teetotaler

It’s okay to be anxious about your future. Not being able to do something and worrying about something is also normal. You really will never become superhuman because you are an ordinary person and have to make mistakes. You’ll do fine.

Life rule of a teetotaler

Life rule of a teetotaler

As strange as it may sound, but in the habit of reaching for a glass in any incomprehensible situation, there is no alcohol. Unless you have already reached the stage of physical dependence. You had some tense situation, you had a glass or two, you felt better, and you acquired the skill to deal with it like that. But instead of alcohol, it could have been anything, a glass of water, for example, or a song on repeat in your headphones. Yes, not as romantic as the splashing liquid in an unclouded glass, but no less effective.

On the way of future teetotalers can arise a lot of obstacles. For example, if the ubiquitous fermented drink still got into your mouth, and you do not like the state of alcoholic intoxication, it is better to become a teetotaler at once. You can do that, too.

This is a test that all beginning teetotalers go through. Even such an insignificant detail, as untouched pants, can very much spoil the next morning, and even the rest of the future. To avoid unwanted consequences, your pants should always stay with you.

The main reason why pants fall down is gravity pulling them down. Gravity acts on the mass of the pants, pulling them toward the center of the Earth. Pants can only be held up if there are counteracting forces.

Pants are held on your body by the friction between the fabric and your skin or underwear. If the coefficient of friction is insufficient (e.g., smooth fabric or slippery materials), the pants will slide down.

Elastic elements of clothing, such as elastic bands on a belt or suspenders, work on the principle of elasticity. They stretch and create a force that will inevitably tend to return them to their original state. Without elasticity, holding pants would be impossible.

For pants to stay in place, the sum of all forces acting on them (gravity, friction, belt tension) must be in equilibrium. Violation of this equilibrium leads to slippage.

A real teetotaler knows how hard it is to atone for drunken sins – do somersaults forward to make the hangover go away faster, rub your torso with lemon, cuttlefish saliva and loose black soil to relieve unnecessary swelling, drink coffee with cucumber brine and hot pepper to make your brain work faster. Especially since nothing good can come of it. Alcohol relaxes blood vessels, and all these experiments with physical activity, and even with elements of acrobatics, simply provoke the development of vascular crises, and if a person is ill, for example, hypertension, or angina pectoris, he can easily get a serious exacerbation.

In case you need to bring your party friends to their senses and set them on the true path of self-control, a hardened Soberman always has a ton of worldly wisdom and a few proven recipes at hand.

A recipe proven over the centuries

It’s hard to say how the elongated pasta will absorb the excess alcohol in your system, but you might feel like an aristocrat in the morning for the first time in your life.

A recipe recommended by the Baltics

• When eating pickled wursts, you can shout “Žijeme!” and smooth your mustache
• You can, of course, shout other phrases, but with a Czech accent

A recipe for real cowboys

After a while, you’ll want fries with young brine cheese and spicy chicken wings with sweet gravy. You might want to put on your cowboy boots and ride a mustang. As luck may have it.

A recipe from the scientists

Scientists have proven that this particular prescription reduces symptoms of discomfort and anxiety, relieving nausea, thirst, dry mouth, tremors and irritability. But if you prefer rich broths and scrambled eggs and bacon, we won’t judge you.

A recipe praised by the Prussians

You can also do the following – on a plate, put in layers: beets, carrots, potatoes, herring, then again potatoes, carrots and beets. But then it will be a New Year’s salad. And as you know, it is ridiculously awkward to celebrate New Year being sober.

The hardcore teetotalers, as well as real drinkers, know that there is always tomorrow, and everyone is powerless facing this fact. The conversations that seemed unbearably important to you at the party just yesterday are fading away. The music, to which you were catching a complacent mood all evening, is silenced. The lights, which shone brighter than any sun and did not let you go to the sober world, are going out. And the fools remain fools.

You can’t sustain a nighttime free life and then live a quiet addictive life during the day. You can’t allow yourself alcohol, which destroys the body, and expect the body to function forever with minimal destruction. A candle that burns at both ends can certainly spread the brightest light, but the darkness that follows will be long lasting.