Empty wine glass leads to personal freedom [Freezing Feature Issue No. 1268]

  10 million years ago, human ancestors evolved unique alcohol-processing genes to pick up rotting plant fruits under trees and send them into their mouths.

Human beings and alcohol began to be entangled. Emperors with power, literati with higher hearts, wealthy giants, ordinary people in alleys, there are always people who are dumped by alcohol.

  At present, the number of drinking people in the world exceeds 2 billion, and the per capita consumption of alcoholic beverages in China is increasing by 13% every year. Established wine companies and beverage giants have launched a variety of low-alcohol beverages to snatch people's first drink after the age of 18.

Businessmen with a keen sense of smell open the tavern in the suite of the office building. The bright lattice is seamlessly connected to the dark wine table, and a glass of whiskey starts the get off work time.

A bar owner who has opened a bar in Guomao for 8 years is used to keeping secrets. He has heard billions of orders made in the collision of dice, and he has also helped a white-collar worker who was drunk on the toilet to lift his pants.

  The quarantine life brought about by the new crown pneumonia epidemic has brought many alcoholics back to the glass.

Research data shows that alcohol sales in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States have increased by 3%-5%; the elderly, people with children, the unemployed, and people with depression and anxiety have significantly increased alcohol consumption.

  In our country, there will be a drinking peak in summer.

Compared with two years ago, the number of alcohol-related emergency calls received by the Beijing Emergency Center increased from 271 to 485 in the first week of July, and the patients included dozens of "anonymous" who fell into a coma due to drunkenness on the street and were killed by passers-by. Or "picked up" by security.

  Some of them are likely to suffer from alcohol dependence, i.e. not being able to control their drinking behavior, and experiencing withdrawal symptoms.

"Some alcohol-dependent patients die in the emergency room." Huang Jian, a psychiatrist at the Sixth Hospital of Peking University, found that the treatment rate of alcohol-dependent patients is very low. These patients usually suffer from liver cirrhosis, pancreatitis, gastroenteritis, and peripheral neuritis. and other complications, but they do not know the source of the disease.

  A survey in 2019 showed that the prevalence of alcohol use disorder in my country reached 4.4%.

Huang Jian remembers that more than 20 years ago, most of the alcoholics who pushed open the door of the clinic were engaged in heavy manual labor. They were in their 50s and 60s. They used alcohol to relieve fatigue.

Now, patients in their twenties and thirties appear, with occupations including Internet practitioners, lawyers, entrepreneurs, university teachers and even doctors.

  "We thought alcohol would take us out of one abyss, but we didn't expect to be taken into another abyss," said one patient.

As a chemical substance, the effects of alcohol on the human body are accumulated over time, gradually taking away people's "self-control" ability.

  To regain control of their lives, some try to slam on the brakes and empty their wine glasses.

"can not stop"

  In the alcohol and drug dependence clinic of Huilongguan Hospital in Beijing, Wang Bing, with a dark complexion, walked into the door surrounded by his younger brother, son and brother-in-law.

The 39-year-old has been drinking a pound of 42-degree liquor every day since seven or eight years ago. He didn't eat without drinking. He was aching, upset, and restless. The last time he drank was at two in the morning.

  Worried that Wang Bing was lying, the family members rushed to answer the doctor's questions throughout the process, saying that he had "poor self-control" and "no sense of responsibility".

During the consultation, Wang Bing went to the toilet, and just after he went out, his family slapped his forehead and chased him out, "Don't let him run away."

  Doctor Yang Kebing is used to seeing such scenes.

He always emphasizes to the family members of patients that alcohol dependence is not caused by moral problems, but long-term drinking leads to damage to the cerebral cortex, resulting in weak willpower and a decline in advanced cognitive functions, such as language and memory.

An alcoholic told reporters that after sobering up, sometimes a line of words must be read three times before they can be understood.

  The most typical symptom of alcohol dependence patients is "can't stop drinking", not only psychological dependence, but also physical withdrawal reactions such as insomnia, tremors, sweating, nausea, rapid heartbeat, etc. once they stop drinking.

Many patients went to the hospital with a wine jar, and some patients described the pain of stopping drinking as "sucking half of the blood".

  This is not an exaggeration for no reason.

Because of the enhanced tolerance, the blood alcohol concentration of the patient needs to be maintained at a certain level to maintain the normal function of the body. Doctors often need to determine the drug replacement plan according to the amount and type of the patient's daily drinking to reduce the withdrawal reaction.

  Sheng Lixia, a doctor at Beijing Anding Hospital Affiliated to Capital Medical University, has been in contact with alcohol-dependent patients for more than 20 years. She found that the consultation rate for this disease is less than 5%.

She told a reporter from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily that it is very dangerous to quit drinking on your own. If delirium tremens occurs, the mortality rate is 10%-30%. The causes of death include brain tissue edema and cardiac arrest.

Sometimes family members lock the patient in the house, and after a few days, they find something is wrong and send them to the hospital, where they cannot be rescued.

  Wang Bing, from a county in Inner Mongolia, said that almost no one in his hometown does not drink. Every winter, alcoholics freeze to death in the streets.

Wang Bing's 18-year-old son is in high school. Sometimes he has to accompany guests to two glasses. In order not to let his father drink, the young man will drink eight or nine bottles of beer.

Before he could not live without wine, Wang Bing worked in a factory in Hebei and only returned home for the New Year.

The Chinese New Year is the most intensive time for the wine party. In his son's memory, Wang Bing was almost never sober.

  At first, I only had to drink some wine with lunch and dinner. Slowly, the first thing I did when I opened my eyes in the morning was to drink. If I didn’t drink, I wouldn’t be able to eat.

If his family didn't give him a drink, he went to rob passers-by's wine.

Wang Bing couldn't tell when he crossed "that line".

  Li Yun, who is 6 years older than Wang Bing, took a long time to accept the fact that he can no longer drink.

He didn't understand at first, why did he become "disgusting" because of his proud "ability" of drinking well?

  He could drink two beers in the fourth grade, and his father admired him and liked to bring him to the wine table.

He drank fast, and his mouth was smooth after drinking it. He could remember how full the wine was and what direction the bottle was placed in after listening to it once.

He likes "Water Margin" and appreciates the masculinity of Liangshan's heroes. "Everyone in it will drink when they talk, and everyone has a big bowl in front of them."

  He runs projects on the construction site, and judges Party A's character by drinking alcohol. Drinking fast is a refreshing person. Looking for reasons to avoid drinking is a conscientious person. He believes that "where communication is not smooth, you can communicate smoothly with alcohol."

  After the age of 30, his drinking behavior began to become uncontrollable, and he had smashed stores, fought, and had car accidents.

He wanted to stop drinking, but he felt dirty, and he didn't dare to breathe in the elevator, for fear that others would smell the alcohol.

In order to restrain his addiction to alcohol, he tried the remedies of eel to make wine, and also took two boxes of "Jiji Ling" pills for 1,000 yuan, but it was useless.

  After a familiar drunk, Li Yun woke up and found himself lying in an unfamiliar van surrounded by strong strangers.

It was dawn, and he knew that his family had really sent him to the alcohol rehab center.

"The day it gets worse is as natural as every day"

  After being completely captured by alcohol, some alcoholics hope to find out the precursors of "dependence" from the few remaining drinking memories.

  Sheng Lixia said that the general drinking behavior will have 3 stages: social drinking (infrequent and small drinking), alcohol abuse (continuous drinking, causing damage to health, but no withdrawal symptoms) and alcohol dependence.

Research shows that people who drink alcohol in response to stress rather than recreationally have a higher risk of developing an alcohol use disorder.

  Most drinkers hope to relieve pain or increase happiness through alcohol. The relationship between people and alcohol moves from one stage to the next, which is related to genetics, social environment, cultural background, personal psychology and other factors.

It's hard to say exactly when the drinking behavior went from being under control to being out of control.

  Two years ago, 22-year-old Lin Qing also had nothing to do with the status of an "alcoholic".

After becoming addicted to alcohol, she once spent two weeks in an old house with no water, electricity and leaking heating, with only takeaway lunch boxes and wine bottles beside her.

  She is fair-skinned, with well-behaved short hair and long pink nails, and her big eyes are serious when she listens to others.

After her parents divorced when she was 12 years old, she has been a good girl to her mother.

Before she was admitted to the university, she felt that her appearance was good, her family conditions were good, and her life was bright.

  After enrolling in school, she found that relationships were not that simple.

She was once isolated by senior and senior, and found that 4 people in the dormitory had set up 3 groups.

In an unfamiliar city, she hid in the dormitory without classes, drinking and watching movies, immersed in her own fantasy world.

  The amber-colored whisky once made Lin Qing feel "instantly relaxed". After only a month, she drank half a glass from the bottom of the glass and then drank the whole glass.

Two months later, she found that something was not right. She didn't drink alcohol before an exam, and the withdrawal reaction came along with sobriety. Her hands trembled until it was difficult to write. She used to write a paper that could be answered in an hour.

  Lin Qing wanted to go home, but her mother told her to "persist", so she bought a sleeper ticket, drank baijiu all the way back to her hometown, and hid in an old unoccupied house. Two weeks later, the heater leaked to the downstairs , was discovered.

  This girl who originally loved beauty didn't take a bath or brush her teeth for a few days when she was drinking, and she didn't know whether it was day or night behind the curtains.

She lost her sense of time and described herself as her grandfather with dementia, either sitting by the window in a daze, or lying on the bed after drinking.

She would often fall out of bed, and once dislocated her pinky finger and turned her joint 180 degrees, she didn't feel it at all.

  Slowly, she walked around and vomited when she drank water. She felt that she was about to die and was unwilling, so she decided to go to the hospital.

  Some alcoholics describe it as a process of "boiled frogs in warm water".

"From controlling it and enjoying the fun it brings, to being controlled by it and slowly taking everything away", some people use it for more than ten years, and some people only use it for a few months.

The 32-year-old Yin Qiu never went to the hospital after drinking and felt that he had been hiding well.

  In the eyes of others, Yin Qiu has no reason to drink alcohol to drown his sorrows.

She is an only child and has a husband who is 10 years older than her and loves her.

She had just finished a job, was resting at home, and just took wine tasting as a hobby.

Half a year later, she was out of control, during which she did not suffer any blows or setbacks. "The day it deteriorates is as natural as every day."

  When hundreds of wine bottles filled the windowsill, her husband proposed to her to separate.

After she returned to her parents' home, her parents didn't talk to her, they just stuffed 200 yuan of food money under her pillowcase.

It turned out that her father saw that her daughter was "good in everything", and later did not walk alongside her.

She only eats and drinks, does not exercise, and her clothes are too small.

Her father would help her pull her clothes to cover her body, while sighing, "How fat is this".

  She had no money to buy alcohol. She stole 20 coins from the lottery shop opened by her parents and ordered two beers at the kebab shop.

In the face of her father's dissuasion, she shouted like crazy: "Everyone will die, how good it is to drink to death! 35 years old is my limit!" During the three and a half years of drinking at home, she hardly ever went out, the only one The social is to go to the wedding banquet, in order to drink wine.

  "Actually, I was humiliated to the extreme." She said that she always felt bad about her body, and she deliberately bought fake wine blended with industrial alcohol. "I felt that I was only worthy of eating garbage." In order to make money, she tried to work.

But the thought of drinking always popped into my mind inadvertently.

Any reason can be an excuse for her to buy wine. For example, when the sky is blue, she will walk downstairs to the wine cabinet in the convenience store.

"The bottle made us the same person"

  Many people who try to quit drinking have gone through detours.

Type a place name and add "abstinence" in Baidu search, and the first few results displayed are all non-governmental alcohol abstinence agencies.

During the two months in an alcohol rehabilitation institution in Hebei, Li Yun felt "a little bit better than prison".

Repeatedly taking medicine, taking injections, watching educational films every day, and being instilled in the importance of willpower, "are all emotional nonsense."

If you are not obedient, you will be pressed on the bed, receive sedative injections, and will not be able to lift your eyelids.

Sometimes they were beaten, and many patients were discharged from the hospital with Wuqing's eye sockets.

  What makes doctors feel most powerless is the "revolving door effect": hospitals can only deal with patients' acute withdrawal reactions, and cannot track patients' later recovery for a long time.

Some people even went to the canteen outside the hospital to buy alcohol between the family members' office and discharge.

Re-drinking, hospitalization, re-drinking.

  Some people give up resistance and go to the end of their lives with wine.

Like a baby, many patients will only repeat one action before they die, that is, holding a wine bottle and sending it to their mouth, "regardless of whether it is urine or wine."

Some people didn't even have the strength to lift the bottle. The family members put the wine next to his head and asked him to take a straw to suck it.

Some people never had the will to quit drinking, and their family members sent him to a mental hospital in order to "live a few more years".

  Doctors will emphasize that motivational development is a crucial step in addiction recovery, that is, the willingness to accept treatment from the heart.

Dr. Yang Kebing from Huilongguan Hospital told China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily that the motivation is related to the degree of disease progression, personality characteristics, education level, family environment and other factors.

Long-term cognitive-behavioral modification is required to strengthen motivation to quit drinking.

  The best way is to insert motivational reinforcement into the patient's daily life.

A man who has stopped drinking for 14 years has received calls for help for 10 years. Some people want to commit suicide, some people want to drink less, some people want to stop hitting people after drinking, and some people just want to throw a drink after drinking, and ask him " Who are you looking for?"

  He captures the faint "motivation" on the other end of the phone and tries to keep it there, with the ultimate goal of not drinking.

Some people were worried that the leader would know and would not want to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital. He said it very directly: "Death or shame?"

  Many Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) members have taken such calls.

Before an alcoholic is discharged from the hospital, some psychiatrists will recommend that they take AA.

It originated in the United States. Voluntary abstinence is the only condition for joining the group. There is no leader here. The service positions are voted by members, no membership fee is charged, and everyone is equal. The old man with white hair may have just arrived a few days ago New members, little girls in their 20s may be senior.

  Li Bing, a doctor at the Sixth Hospital of Peking University, brought this model back to China in 2000, allowing patients to stay awake while communicating and encouraging each other.

Before the outbreak of COVID-19, the Sixth Hospital of Peking University, Anding Hospital and Huilongguan Hospital all had AA branch venues.

Doctors found that several alcohol-dependent patients who had been hospitalized and relapsed many times could keep abstaining from alcohol for many years by regularly participating in AA meetings and communicating with their counterparts. obviously decrease.

  An AA venue in Room 501 of Beijing Yuanjia International Apartment is only 30 to 40 square meters, with rows of chairs facing the green trees and red walls outside the floor-to-ceiling windows.

There are drinks, candy, learning materials, and camel dolls. It is said that camels can drink nothing for a day.

Many members stepped in the door for the first time and saw a few big men playing poker and chess around, and they would suspect that they came to the wrong place.

No one was sitting upright in the meeting, some were playing mobile games, and some had their eyes closed and Erlang's legs crossed.

  The speech always begins with "Hello everyone, I'm an alcoholic".

More than one person has said, "The wine bottle makes us the same person".

Everyone shared the madness after being drunk, such as jumping into a river, going to prison, chopping hands, and putting a knife on the neck of a loved one. Some members said: "Although there are some things I haven't done, I know that if I continue to drink, I may be Do."

  No one is afraid to expose "dark history".

It is not special to drink cooking wine, medical alcohol, toilet water, balsamic essence or perfume.

An older member recalled that when he drank more than 10 years ago, there was no takeaway, and his family asked all nearby canteens not to sell alcohol to him.

  "It's really not at the right time!" he teased, and everyone laughed relaxedly.

  In addition to sharing their willingness and experience to quit drinking, members will also read aloud learning materials together, including stories about alcoholics and philosophical reflections on alcoholism.

Some members said that the relay of the voice made people feel "reassured".

"I'm easy to dry with a drop of water. But when I'm in the river, it's not so easy." They also eat together, help members move, go to the suburbs to make skewers, and female members will go shopping and take pictures together.

  In order to maintain sobriety for a long time, in AA, most of the members will find a helper. This person has generally been abstinent for a long time and can provide help and guidance when the other party encounters difficulties in quitting alcohol.

This role is sometimes expected to be a aunt of the neighborhood committee, a teacher, a psychological counselor, a bank, a job agency, etc., but they should focus on responding in a timely manner and offering a helping hand when the person being helped ask for help.

The helper and the person being helped are always equal.

  There is also an unwritten rule that the helper can only be of the same sex, and it is forbidden to fall in love between members.

Based on past experience, it is easy for people to "drink together".

  This relationship is more like a "comrade-in-arms".

Watching the growth of new members, help people also remind themselves that no matter how long we quit, we are all the same.

"Freedom by Surrender"

  Even when the motivation is strong, the road to quitting alcohol can't be smooth.

One AA member described alcoholics as planes in the sky, mutual aid as fuel, and addiction as "always on" like gravity.

  For them, being tired, hungry, thirsty...all may trigger their own craving for alcohol.

People who have stopped drinking for more than 10 years will also have "re-drinking dreams". After a sip of alcohol in the dream, the feeling of dryness and dizziness is extremely real, and they are "directly woken up by fright".

When a member who had quit drinking for 15 years was cooking, her husband sprayed some red wine on the steak, and in an instant, greedy saliva filled her mouth.

  There is a skewer shop downstairs in Yuanjia Apartment. The wine cabinet is facing the door. There are new products on the market. Everyone should take a look.

Someone mentioned that the price of the wine they used to drink has been reduced, which aroused a voice of regret, "I often beat my thigh for this."

  They know that it's not the alcohol that's the problem, it's themselves.

In AA's 12 steps to quitting alcohol addiction, the first step is "surrender".

"We admit that we are powerless when it comes to dealing with alcohol. Our lives are out of control," concluded one member. "Freedom by surrendering."

  Most alcoholics were initially reluctant to surrender.

They are not losers in the traditional sense. In AA, there have been top students from Peking University, senior engineers of state-owned enterprises, girlfriends of CCTV hosts, and contestants of "Happy Boys".

  They can feel the dissatisfaction of the outside world and their own loss of control, and they just habitually want to hide in the hallucination created by alcohol.

Many members have an inexplicable fear of the "outside world". Some people have to lock the door before they can fall asleep, and some people lock their mobile phones in the cabinet.

  A returnee with a master's degree claimed that he was afraid of disappointing people and being judged.

After coming to AA, she once took a phone call that lasted 40 minutes. She just listened and didn't say a word. Before ending the call, the other party said a special thank you, and she felt much better. ".

  Before the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia, AA held a national conference every year, and it was the first time for some people to fly to other places.

After the meeting, 20 or 30 people could be squeezed into one room of the hotel. There were people sitting on the bed and those lying on the ground. Everyone chatted all night.

  Today, online meetings are more frequent, with multiple time slots per day, with 20-40 people online at the same time, all over the country.

People complained about work, body, and emotions, and some members claimed: "Start accepting life as it is, instead of seeing an ant as an elephant."

  When she went to AA for the first time, Yin Qiu was so nervous that she felt stiff. She drank 6 bottles of AD calcium milk without saying a word, but it was also the first time that she felt respected and freedom of expression.

After getting familiar with AA, Yin Qiu learned that the process of quitting drinking is like cleaning a closet, forcing her to take out worn and moldy clothes to dry.

  She had an unpleasant childhood.

Her mother beat her on the street and watched her kneeling on the ground shivering, hugging her legs and begging for mercy, "with a glorious face".

When she was in her 30s, her mother decided whether to eat rice or steamed buns. She always heard her mother say: "It will be good when you die" "I will let you ruin my life".

  Now, she can face those memories and learn to distance herself from her mother and recognize her worth.

She also signed up for a reciprocal relationship (referring to an unbalanced state of attachment between the caregiver and the person being cared for - reporter's note) group, learning to heal the damage caused by the family of origin.

  After three years of abstinence from drinking, Yin Qiu still feels that the kill switch and recovery switch on alcoholics are very close, and they may press the wrong switch if they are not careful.

  Once, her boss prepared a box of Maotai and asked her to arrange a banquet.

She was sitting in the car to the hotel, and it was pouring rain outside the window.

She imagined the scene of opening the bottle cap and sobering up. Worried that she would not be able to withstand the temptation, she immediately got out of the car and waded home with water that reached her calf.

"After I completely accepted myself, I gradually regained the ability to choose freely."

  Doctor Huang Jian suggested that in the early stage of quitting alcohol, "it's like having a bad cold, and the resistance is still very poor."

"Several forces can resist"

  Li Bing knows that quitting drinking is not a one-person battle.

"Alcohol addiction is a very powerful thing. It has the power of AA, the power of doctor's talk, and the power of drugs. Several forces can be combined to fight." Doctors never criticize patients who resume drinking. They think that alcohol dependence is like high blood pressure, Diabetes can attack at any time and requires long-term control.

  Some people try to divert attention, such as drinking Sprite mixed with vinegar, which has bubbles and a color like beer.

Such as playing games, dating.

A patient in his 20s who was admitted to the hospital once drank 6 bottles of 2-liter Coke brought by a friend in one night.

  Yang Kebing believes that patients who have stopped drinking for more than one year, even if they resume drinking again, as long as they pay enough attention and are willing to come to the hospital, receive evaluation and diagnosis from doctors, and do not affect their quality of life and health, they can be regarded as improving.

  During this process, neither the AA nor the doctor were close to family members.

There was once a patient who had a strong desire to quit drinking, but no matter how hard he tried, he always encountered cold violence from his family.

Before a hospitalization, the patient was overwhelmed and chose to commit suicide.

  Dr. Huang Jian of Peking University Sixth Hospital said the long-term effects of alcohol can make patients fussy, irritable, lying and violent.

He likened it to "poisoning", and after the patient stopped drinking, he could return to his original character.

  "Alcohol is the patient's crutch. When he loses this crutch, he will be very vulnerable." Sheng Lixia hopes that after quitting drinking, the family can give more care to the patient, "to treat him as a patient for the rest of his life."

  After giving up drinking for more than two years, Lin Qing tried to explain to his father that alcohol dependence "is a disease", and the answer he got was, "Young people should be sunny and happy, and don't always feel that they are sick".

Some members said that they were always accused by their family members, saying that a friend had become a sommelier, had two houses and a job as a daughter-in-law, and he was just an alcoholic.

  Many family members were also "very ill" during their long-term tugging with alcoholics.

The family meeting, derived from the AA meeting, has one of its tenets: "Whether the alcoholic is still drinking or not, it is possible for us to be here to feel content, even happy and joyful."

  A family member was afraid to let his alcoholic son out of sight. He had to take a few bags of cold medicine and bombard him with phone calls if he couldn't get in touch for half an hour.

Now that her son wants to go out alone, she no longer stops her, "live by myself and let others live."

  In some cases, doctors and family members are powerless.

As the first group of doctors to study alcohol dependence in China, Li Bing still feels depressed and helpless when preaching in various provinces.

She once went to a hospital ward in Yunnan for ward rounds, and she couldn't answer a patient's question: Everyone in our village drank, and the village cadres took the lead in drinking. I don't have to drink in the hospital.

"I can't solve the problems in his village," Li Bing said.

One of her patients claimed to be a forensic doctor in a small county in Heilongjiang. He received more than a dozen corpses a year who had died from drinking and drinking. Usually, he was at home alone.

  After Yin Qiu quit drinking, he likes to take the opportunity of business trips to participate in AA chapters all over the country.

She once went to a county in Guizhou. On the way, she encountered an old man who was drunk and driving, and the traffic police who stopped him was also drunk.

Some alcoholic families there, with crying newborns, "drink a few sips".

  Yin Qiu recalled that the venue was in the psychiatry department of the county hospital. When the door opened, there was a smell of urine, "It's really stupid."

A big brother had a big blood blister on his eye.

A father and son, both of them are alcoholics, their hands are shaking so badly that they can't even turn over the book, and they read a sentence and repeat it back and forth.

Even if they are so sick, they still use alcohol as a talking point and joke about the amount of alcohol.

"He didn't know it was this thing that ruined their hopes and killed them."

  At the end of the meeting, patients lined up to go out like elementary school students. Someone told Yin Qiu that they were willing to come because the hospital gave out apples every day, and the doctor said that if they came to the meeting, they would also give out peaches.

  There are no patients who have successfully quit drinking in the local area, but the attending doctor still wears suits and leather shoes every time he meets, and puts PPTs page by page.

Yin Qiu was the first out-of-town member to come here, and the doctor watched her go down the mountain.

She had walked a long way, and when she turned around, the doctor in a white coat, wearing a suit and a scorched yellow tie, was still standing there.

  Yin Qiu stood alone at the foot of the mountain for a long time.

At that time, she had just stopped drinking for 3 months. She called the helper on the mountain and cried and said that she was really lucky.

"Even if I get things done, I still get zero"

  An international study showed that more than 10% of excessive drinkers (defined as drinking 4 or more drinks on any occasion for women and 5 or more drinks for men) develop alcohol dependence.

Sheng Lixia said that ordinary people do not know whether they have alcohol-related genes. If they do, coupled with frequent exposure to alcohol, they are likely to develop alcohol dependence.

  Today, more and more people are aware of the health risks behind excessive drinking and are choosing to keep their distance from alcohol.

In a recent hit drama, the plot about wine table culture has been hotly searched, and netizens have complained about the harm of wine as a social tool.

  某银行客户经理徐振喜欢陷在酒吧沙发里,背对酒柜折射出的七彩光芒,点一杯柠檬水。这里只是他放松的地方。

  尽管平时喝酒不算太多,他依然坚持戒酒一年多。2020年年底,他工作调动,业务打不开。核算季度奖金是他最绝望的时刻——那是一张列满存款、贷款、信用卡、信托等细小的指标的表格,“就是告诉你,你是怎么无法拿到属于你的钱”。

  酒帮他带来客户和奖金。他曾一晚上喝吐4次,转月就多了4万多元的奖金。喝酒能和客户热络情感,“就看你能不能豁得出去”。

  连续半年的熬夜应酬、加班后,他发现身体变得笨重,脸肿,没法弯腰系鞋带,走几步楼梯都要喘气。他也曾在应酬之外,短暂投入过酒精的怀抱,因为酒精让他身心“轻快”。但他发现清醒后,人会变得“更丧”。

  一次偶然的机会,他迷上了只有7根弦的古琴,觉得弹琴时才是真正的“清醒”。周末他不再回应约酒的消息,一个人在家喝茶、弹琴、健身,瘦了十几斤。有时候去酒吧陪朋友聊天,他不喝酒,有人说他“没劲”“是不是个男人”,他就笑一笑:“改变不了世界,但能改变自己。”

  在业务交流中,一些互联网公司的员工告诉他,他们也不喜欢这种酒桌谈事的方式。再约客户,他会挑选大家相同的爱好,比如登山、远足、骑行。

  李运现在很少参加饭局,之前像“梁山好汉”一样簇拥在身边的朋友不见了,他才发现这些所谓“人脉”从没真的存在过。他发现即使不喝酒,能谈成的项目还是会成。对于那些不喝酒不给办事的人,他会直接放弃,“我即便把事儿办成了,我得到的还是零”。

  开始戒酒的日子是嗜酒者的另一个生日。在A.A.开会,一个固定环节是会员自愿分享清醒天数,数年或数天,都会得到掌声。只有相熟的会员才会互相开玩笑,“你是不是快成功了”。因为到死不喝才是成功。

  清醒后的生活又开始正常运转。和尹秋戒酒“同岁”的朋友,有的送外卖送进了北京前五名、有的出国继续读研深造。而她也瘦出了瓜子脸、穿上了漂亮的小裙子,找到一份能发挥自己幽默和创造力的工作,她开始觉得世界可爱,而不是危机四伏。

  In the AA Association, a girl who drank, drove a car, took drugs, and got a tattoo 15 years ago is now the mother of two daughters. She mentions her daughter with a happy face.

She said that if she saw herself when she was young, a woman in her 40s who weighed 150 pounds and went to the vegetable market to buy vegetables with a backpack, "I would definitely die."

  "But now I'm not going to die, I want to live too much. I'm willing to give everything in exchange for a sober life."

  (Except Huang Jian, Li Bing, Yang Kebing, Sheng Lixia, the rest of the interviewees are all pseudonyms)

  China Youth Daily, China Youth Daily reporter Jiao Jingxian Source: China Youth Daily