Piss Heads Of Europe

So said the producer of BBC's harrowing documentary on alcoholism last night, referring of course to the UK's shocking statistics of alcohol abuse.

Why do people drink was the question posed and one comment - that the drinker is seeking to drown his inner gremlins came pretty close to an answer. Victims of past abuse can temporarlily blotto out painful memories but they end up pickling themselves in a agonised protracted slow motion suicide rout. Others resort to different forms of self medication such as legal or illegal drugs -all with the same woeful result: chemical psychosis, disease and death.

Denial may be a river in Egypt but its pellets of posion are flooding our waters and there is always payback time when the chickens of denial come home to roost.

The cost to the NHS in hospitalising these walking wounded scarred human beings is phenomenal and the institution is at the sharp end, left to patch up as best it can the car wreck lives of people unable to address their inner demons.

What is old peculiar to the British people that makes them so prone to this insane solution and failed salve to the human condition? Could it be the social autism, residue of the stiff upper lip repressive anal conditioning that renders the average Brit tongue tied and awkward without the liquid sollution to oil the social wheels?

Moreover, what deeper causes lead people to act in such a self destructive fashion in the first place? People do not suddenly become drunks over night. Childhood issues and bad parenting obviously play a key part. Very often the most intelligent people are alcoholics and cannot stand the phoniness of the adult world, its hyposcrisy and plasticity. They seek refuge from the horrors of 'reality' in alcoholic haze. As the great Keith Moon once said drink 'gives you a pleasant blur'.

An improper resonse to the stress of human cruelty - which is really another fancy word for evil - is a capitulation to that evil whereby the victim becmes an extension of the will of his tormentor - usually a 'loving' parent. Now the victim is seen to be the one with the problem and the people who projected their problems onto him the innocent party. What a fiendish and devilish plot!

Rewind the tape at this point of the psychodrama and imagine a scenario whereby the victim is given to know that such a dynamic is in play and doesn't respond to the temptation of doubt and hate and resentment in the face of such cruelty but remains unmoved and unfazed. Where does the projected poison go but back to its source - the poisoners who are thus hoist on their own peturd.

Human beings are thus the battle ground upon which the ancient struggle between good and evil are fought. Free will gives us the choice to decide whether we shall be the victims of evil or its vanquishers.