Of all human foibles to which we are susceptible, there is one I particularly find very difficult to understand and sympathize with. That one is using your hard-earned money to buy alcohol to drink and to give to those you call ‘’friends’’ except you mean friends in sorrow. And you call that being sociable or enjoyment merriment or relaxation? Does alcohol drinking make anyone to enjoy life? I do not think so. It is only the deception of Satan that makes anyone to think so.
The way alcohol works, as you take it, it begins to weaken your body or give you a terrible headache no matter for how long or how frequently you have been taking it. Sometimes you begin to doze off even in the presence of your so-called friends with whom you say you are together to enjoy. Sometimes you need to be constantly reminded or asked by those your friends, ‘’are you not well or not feeling fine’’? What sort of enjoyment is this that you need to be reminded whether or not you are okay? Is that a good enjoyment?
Acquiring Dutch Courage: Dutch courage is using the bravado acquired from drinking alcohol which deadens your senses to do what you will ordinarily not have the courage to do. I do not know why this type of courage is named after the Dutch people. Is it that they drink too much alcohol? Whatever is the truth, this type of induced courage is responsible for more than 50 per cent of adultery and fornication and many other ills and offences in the world.
A man gets the unusual confidence to approach an inappropriate woman or girl and talks persistently and persuasively and she agrees to his wrong proposal and they both fall. Now that more and more women and girls are in the drinking binge with men, alcohol gives more and more women and girls also the shamelessness to agree without inhibitions and not to say ‘’no’’ to many men that in their normal senses they would have said no to. Many marriages have been lost to alcohol. Many homes have been broken because of this social affliction. And people say alcohol is for enjoyment?
Many terrible diseases have been associated with alcohol. When you mention this to alcoholics, they tell you proudly that ‘’a man must have to die of something’’. Yes, we all will eventually die of something one day except the exceptionally righteous who just get transmitted to heaven without suffering mortal death. But why must I use my money to procure my early departure from this beautiful planet God has used his wisdom and mightiness to build and put me in?
For me, the most painful and inexcusable afflictions we bring upon ourselves and many clearly innocent people is the life-threatening injuries we sustain from drunk drivers whose vision and minds are impaired by alcohol. Sometimes, the drunk drivers themselves do not sustain a small scratch on any part of their bodies! What sort of great social injustice is this?
How many billions of people have died without fulfilling a small fraction of their destinies? The deception of alcohol makes many waste billions of man hours transfixed in many of their adopted favourite corners drinking and boasting about what next they will do and they never ever get to doing those things.
We have heard or read countless stories of men who were hired and wired with alcohol and other mind-bending substances to waste costly lives and some of those men have lived broken lives when they realized the enormousness of their beastly follies.
Of all the satanic devices invented to deceive man, the most effective and ruinous is that of alcohol. It takes Godly courage to resist the lure of alcohol. Pressure is piled on you by friends and the whole of society to succumb to alcohol because you are told daily that it is a manly thing to do. Some societies have even gone ahead to adopt alcohol as their cultural heritage! People who differ are bombarded from all sides to capitulate or be regarded as nincompoops.
A year or so ago when I wrote an elegy lamenting the painful death of a dear brother and friend who died of liver cirrhoses, the whole confederacy of alcoholics descended on me abusing me blue and black, wondering how I knew what killed him as I am not a medic. Some of those people later came to me Nicodemously to say they did it to show solidarity with a dead colleague and to remove the sting from what they said was my brilliant advocacy against alcohol.
Some of my late friend’s children mobilized themselves to abuse me on the Internet calling me a fool. But me, a fool? With the little wisdom I have to see through the deathly and ruinous deception that is alcohol, I do not think I need any further evidence of knowledge or wisdom to be numbered among the wise! Alcohol takes so much from us and gives little or nothing in return. Let us run away from this ‘’enjoyment’’.
