I stopped drinking alcohol
It’s been over a year now since I drank my last drop of alcoholic beverage and I thought I’d share some thoughts on what led me to make the decision.
From a Hindu perspective I don’t think refraining from drinking is a prerequisite to being a “conscientious Hindu”, and I feel quite strongly that it is counter productive for Hindus who don’t drink to make a big deal about Hindus who do drink (or vice versa, as the case may be). Yes, there is a story in the Mahabharata which discourages drinking but it is hardly laid down as a religious pronouncement.
The decision to drink or not to drink comes from personal understanding and experiences. My Hindu spiritual and ethical understanding of life developed over time and eventually made me want to stop drinking.
Of course we all know that drinking doesn’t do anyone’s health any great favours, so that is one factor. But then again there are other things such as eating chocolate and ice cream that aren’t great for health either.
There are a couple of spiritual reasons why I stopped drinking. One is that I believe that human life is defined by possessing a level of consciousness that enables us to be in control of what we do, as well as to think, feel and perceive higher things. We are blessed with this “above animal level of consciousness”. I felt it to be ungrateful to have been blessed with human birth to spend my time dulling my consciousness back to a lower level of consciousness (perhaps what could be described as an “animal like consciousness”) by being intoxicated. I felt it to be karmically negative behavior for me.
Also, Hindu philosophy says that pure divinity resides at the innermost core of every person’s being. So the body is like a temple. I would feel wrong taking alcohol and drinking in a temple, so I began to feel that it was inappropriate to put alcohol in my body.
These insights (and the accompanying conclusion that I should stop drinking alcohol) are quite personal and I wouldn’t want to force them on others. They don’t apply to people who have the control to just have an odd glass of wine or beer here and there, but are more about intoxication, which is a totally different matter.
My battle with the drink
I was never an alcoholic or anything like that but I was known amongst friends as quite a drinker. I started drinking aged around 14 (the reasons I started drinking at an early age are not black and white and require a separate account so I won’t go there now). I drunk quite a bit until 17. It was at this age that I developed the kind of spiritual ideas I describe above, at a Hindu youth camp. This was when I first kicked drinking and one or two other bad habits. In the next few years I would go though phases where I would drink for a few months and stop for a few. I went through a particularly long spell of about three years without drinking from end of my first year at uni. Then I had a relapse that lasted for about 3 years (from 2005-2008).
Over time I felt a clear Karmic pattern that every time I had significant amounts to drink something dark from my past which I had tried to escape would come and bite me from behind. Back biting, negativity, conflicts from almost a decade ago that I had long grown out of somehow resurfaced while drinking.
Call me superstitious, but I sincerely felt a divine or cosmic pattern to events I experienced. It was like I was being told: “Prabal, you have the understanding and education more so than most, yet you insist on keep intoxicating yourself, so face the consequences.” The voice grew loud and clear through successive events in my life. It was a year ago that I last stopped drinking and I am very happy for the decision. Wish me luck that I can make this the last time I quit!
Why over preaching is not the way to create a change in behaviour
When you tell someone what to do in a condemning kind of way you naturally make them defensive. I don’t think that is the Hindu way of trying to create change.
There was once this community of fisher folk in India, amongst whom gambling, crime, drugs and intoxicants were highly prevalent. This community was highly despised by other communities, and very deprived. They lived in poverty and squalor and were looked down upon by wider society.
Swadhyaya (a social and spiritual movement based on the philosophy of the Gita and the Upanishads) decided to try and build a relationship with them. Over time, with much perseverance and selfless service, the Swadhyaya workers managed to win the trust of the fisher community. This could never have been done by having been preachy, but by showing them that you care and don’t have ulterior motives.
The fisher community were never told “you should stop this or that”, but they were provided with education in Hindu philosophy and participated in joint worship, festival celebrations, social projects etc. Gradually the community’s social problems and economic problems improved. Over time, it is said that the whole community, though their own evolved understanding of life, chose to give up drinking and other vices without even once having been told to.
That, in my opinion, is the Hindu way of change – and is much more effective, enduring and spiritual than prohibition.
Author: Anonymous
