154 encoding attitudes Effective influence on The Subconscious
Curing of depression, neurosis and alcohol dependence
Ramil Garifullin » Curing Of depression
© Ramil Ramzievich Garifullin
BOOK encoding & Curing Of depression, neurosis and alcohol dependence
154 encoding attitudes Effective influence on The Subconscious
Curing of depression, neurosis and alcohol dependence
Advice to relatives and friends
© R. R. Garifullin, 2004
ON THE AUTHOR
Ramil Ramziyevitch Garifullin is a group psychotherapist, Candidate of Psychological Sciences (Doctor of Psychology), Director of Kazan Psychological Centre (since 1990), one of the founders of Russian Manipulation Psychology. He has developed the conception of the Illusionism of personality, the psychological security of Russia, and also the conception of covered prophylaxis of drug addiction and alcoholism. He is the author of the method of borderline analysis and encoding. The gerontocollapsical theory of drug dependence created by him is to a certain extent used in practice. R.R. Garifullin gave his lectures in the world’s biggest universities. He has defended his thesis on “Psycho-correction of semantic structures of a drug-dependent personality”. He is the author of the first books in Russia on the psychology of manipulation, such as “Encyclopaedia of Bluff”(1995), “Manipulation Psychology and Psychotherapy”(1995), “Illusionism of Personality”(1997), “Illusionism and Tricks of Psychotherapy”(1997). Besides, he is the author of the books “Psychotherapeutic Studies in Verse”(1998), “Covered Prophylaxis of Drug Addiction”(2002) and others.
R.R.Garifullin is the founder of the genre of psychotherapeutic investigations and stories in cinema and literature. He is the author of the short feature films (“Litchina” (Mask), 2002) and stories (“Mordaly” (Ugly faces), 2003).
This book is intended for those, who wants to be delivered of alcohol dependence, and also for their relatives and friends. The influence of the book is concealed. The attitudes devised by the experienced psychotherapist, Candidate of Science (Psychology) Ramil Garifullin reach the depths of the subconscious without touching the conscious. Thus the reader finds himself in a situation from which there is only one way of escape – giving up alcohol.
Besides, this book may be recommended to psychotherapists and psychologists, specialising in the problems of alcoholism.
FOREWORD
Dear reader,
I address those who from time to time drink alcohol and want to give it up. You will never understand why, having read this book you will give up drinking. You will only feel you must do it. It happens so because the influence of the book is concealed and cannot be seen on the surface. The attitudes developed by me will not touch your conscious but will reach your senses and your subconscious whether you want it or not. Even if you resist its influence and think that after reading this book you will easily go and have a drink, as before, you will not be able to do it. You will get into a psychological trap (in a good sense, of course) from which there will be only one way of escape, that is to give up alcohol. Therefore, if you have not decided to give up drinking, you had better not read this book. Otherwise, you will have to stop drinking and begin to convalesce.
It is not necessary to read everything written in this book. It is not necessary to think about what you find in it. It is not necessary to feel desire to know what you must do now. You can read everything in succession or you can read one attitude a day, and you may not remember anything. It is not necessary to do anything on purpose.
You are a man or a woman. Now you are reading these lines. On the surface nothing special is happening but in reality the encoding has already started, for the given reading escapes your conscious and penetrates into the structures that you cannot control. You are reading carefully…And the fact that you are doing it with interest is the evidence that the encoding has already begun. There is nothing more useful for you at the moment than this reading. Therefore, you are reading.
Now you are breathing in and out. Before you learn something important from these lines, take a deep breath.
We are also curious if the processes of your improvement and encoding have started.
Do not forget that the more you try to delay the reading, the deeper you will fall under the influence of this book. The stronger is your embarrassment, the more effective will be the result. The more you will resist, the more intensively you will be involved in the processes of encoding. It is connected with the fact that you have already started reading. Otherwise nothing would happen at all.
Either right now when you are still reading or after you finish it – anyway, you will feel its influence… In any case the influence has already begun.
Surely you want to know what will happen next?
You may possibly realise everything what has happened to you, or you will only realise it partially. You may give yourself an account of what you have learned, or you may remain unaware, or you may understand nothing at all.
But you may possibly want to help some of your relatives or friends to give up drinking alcohol. It is true that most people who stopped drinking did it thanks to their kind relatives or friends who had obtained this book and recommended reading it. Wives of alcoholics must also read the whole book. Their behaviour will change to such an extent that their husbands will gradually stop drinking alcohol.
Besides, this book may be recommended to psychotherapists and psychologists, tackling the problems of alcoholism.
I wish you successful reading!
You psychotherapist R.R. Garifullin.
Dear reader, be sure to read the letters quoted in this book.
Dear Ramil Ramziyevich,
I have decided upon writing to you how your book has helped me. I had taken a course of treatment for alcoholism before, but frankly speaking, it was only due to my will and patience and not the treatment itself that I abstained from drinking. It often happened that after a nervous strain and stress I wanted to relax, but how could I possibly do it? I was encoded!
The doctors said that drinking endangered my life. There was fear. Then I was beginning to feel more miserable. I wanted my drink. I restrained myself out of fear. I became irritable. I bullied my wife for no reason at all. Once she even said that it would be better if I were drinking. And I took to drinking again without my noticing it. And then I began to drink heavily. It turned out that the coding psychotherapists had not helped me. I realised the necessity to get psychological treatment, but remembering that it would come to the same result, I understood that there was no way out. Somebody told my wife about your book, and that many people gave up drinking after reading it. I did not believe that the book could change anyone and even his character and that after reading it he becomes calmer.
Having read this book I realised that the chief cause of my drinking bouts was the restlessness connected with the fear of death. But it was not just realisation, for I felt some inner strength that did not allow me to have a drink. At first I could not believe it. Well, at times I certainly did think of my own death, but I always banished that thought because it put me in low spirits. I remembered that when in my childhood I learned that I would die some day, I was horror-stricken. I realised that everything that happened to me could be divided into two categories: life-oriented and death oriented. Thanks to the book I learned how to tell death-oriented things from life-oriented ones. I discovered that there were more death-oriented things in my being suspiciously worried, in hurrying, in cursing, in being selfish, etc. And on the contrary, when I was calm, when I found pleasure in simple things and felt some purposefulness, I knew that those things were life-oriented. I began to write those things in my notebook. I registered each hour of the day, and sometimes each minute. I remembered that in my childhood I had many life-oriented things. But I also realised, that my drunkenness was in its essence a method of plunging into childhood. Drunkenness was a false vital process evoking many death-oriented things. I understood from your book that one should live by processes and not by goals of life. Now I am succeeding in doing so more and more. All my day yesterday was practically life-oriented. If I start doing something and begin to feel worried, my worries are immediately cut short, for I know that they are death oriented. Now I have made a habit of it. Now I know that you can get drunk without alcohol, being absolutely sober and for that purpose you must find your favourite pastime. I could not believe it at first. Now I have found an occupation that makes me happy even more than drunkenness. And for almost two years I have not drunk alcohol, and do not feel like it, and my mood is quite different from what it used to be. I am coming back to myself. Thank you!
R.A. Mazanov, Kazan.
ADDRESS TO FRIENDS AND RELATIVES OF THOSE WHO SUFFER FROM ALCOHOLISM
Now I address your relatives and friends, and you yourselves should read this address and pass it on to them.
You must understand and do the following:
1. The problem of alcohol dependence of a person who is near to you is a problem of co-dependence. In other words, his dependence is partly your own fault. You are to blame for not creating the conditions for an open expression of feelings and discussions of personal or inter-personal problems with your friend-alcoholic. Your behaviour has been stereotyped and unoriginal. You have put all responsibility on the alcoholic, but he is not strong enough to combat his disease. Due to the above-given reasons your friend had nothing to do but remove his inner conflict by self-destructive behaviour that led to drunkenness.
2. If you are a mother, you suffer from the fear of losing your child, a sense of guilt, and lack of self-confidence before your child. If you are a father, you suffer from sudden changes of your mood, estrangement of your child and lack of confidence before him. That is the reason why you enhance the illness of your child.
3. Yes, you are rushing from one extreme to another. You assert that you have tried everything: you scolded, you beat, etc. Now you want to give it all up. You do not know whether to give him money for a drink or not. You are up to your eyes in your emotional experiences so that you do not hear your friend-alcoholic. You do not understand the role of your own efforts to change your behaviour. You say: “What can I do? It’s not me…” Or you may be doing the opposite: you are carried away by the problems of your relative or friend so that you have forgotten about your family problems. You have become irritable and vulnerable. You have a grudge against psychotherapists, who are unable to help you. Nevertheless, you must brace yourself and go on trying. There will be a good sunny morning in your life, and you will feel more responsible for your life and behaviour. You will look upon your friend in a different, more creative way. You will think more realistically and understand the relations. You will rid yourself of all the clichés and habits that harmed your friend.
4. Think hard in what way you could provoke your friend so that he took to drinking. But instead of doing it you keep saying: “What is it he wants? He’s got everything. I’ll do everything he wants. I only want him to leave me alone and give up drinking”.
You ought to understand that your friend suffers from an indescribably rotten state of mind.
And still, do not forget that alcoholism is often connected with family crisis, which may be the origin of the disease.
5. You are a wife or a mother. You have looked after your husband or son all your life. You have taken such a good care of him that he has got on your shoulders and does not want to get off. You are trying to free yourself, but he clutches at you and scolds you, saying that if you have put him on your shoulders, you must carry him, for he is helpless now. Then you consult a psychotherapist and want him to take your near and dear off your shoulders. The psychotherapist does it, but as soon as you come home your hubby (or sonny) jumps up on your shoulders again. One elderly woman could not even die properly. She died with her fifty-five year old son “on her shoulders”. Her sonny forgot to bury her, because he was on his regular booze. The body of the poor old woman lay in the house for two weeks.
6. You are a young wife. If at the very beginning of your married life you allow your husband to make love to you when he is drunk, it means you do not respect yourself. You must convince your husband that love ought to be sober. It is necessary to do everything for him to come to his natural sexuality and not the one created artificially by alcohol. You must say: “I want to feel your real masculine strength, but not that trash. What if you can’t do it without alcohol?”
ATTITUDES ENCODING AGAINST ALCOHOLISM
INTRODUCTORY ATTITUDES
ATTITUDE 1
You take strong drinks, and on the one hand it is good because there is something in this life that you want: you long for a drink. As for the other things, you want them less and less. It is still worse when, as a result of long drinking you want neither to drink, nor to live. That is why many people ruin themselves by constant drinking so much that they commit suicide.
ATTITUDE 2
You are looking for a place under the sun in your own way. Nobody can forbid you doing it. In your childhood you were just happy to live because every day you received something new from life. As a child you were” drunk” from studying the surrounding world. At that time you rejoiced at everything! As you get on in years your thirst for knowledge grows less because you have already learned many things: you have not become a cosmonaut, learning the opposite sex is in the past, your family life is uninteresting, the children have grown up and live their own lives, and the sun shines in a different way and so on and so forth. You are bored, for you have not managed to find qualitatively new feelings and have not learned to discover life anew. You have lost the ability to create illusions for yourself. But you are thirsty for A SPECIAL JOY AND PLEASURE from life. Do you want to plunge into the world of your old (like in your childhood) illusions? DO YOU WANT TO GET JOY FROM LIFE ITSELF?
ATTITUDE 3
There was a time when you, in search of this joy tasted alcohol and made a “discovery” for yourself. From the day of that discovery a new count of time began for you. From that moment you began to compare the sensations in a drunken state with the sensations you have when you are sober.
So, you have discovered alcohol for yourself. It turns out that for 1 –2 hours after having a drink you may feel joy, lightness, and the perception of life is somewhat “rounded”. It is a “discovery” for some people because the joy of taking alcohol is higher than any other joy the person had when he was sober. For many people this “chief illusion” loses the competition with the illusions of sober life. The EFFECT OF ALCOHOL OR NARCOTIC CONTRAST snaps into action. What is its essence? Due to this effect the joys of life that were significant earlier, now become faded, grey and insignificant. Black becomes more black against the background of more white.
ATTITUDE 4
IN SEARCH OF THE MAIN ILLUSION (EXTREME PLEASURE FROM ALCOHOL) YOU SET ON A “LONG JOURNEY” ONE DAY, THE DESTINATION OF WHICH HAS BEEN THE LOSS OF ABILITY TO ENJOY, THE APPEARANCE OF AILMENTS, THOUGHTS OF SUICIDE AND SO ON AND SO FORTH.
In this “journey” you have made a second “discovery” – you have got acquainted with the hangover syndrome, which in its heaviness is no better than your hard emotional experiences of your earlier sober life. We want to believe that these torments have not made you wish to commit suicide.
ATTITUDE 5
To become a happy sober person the following conditions are necessary:
1. The lifting of the burden of psychical anxiety (groundless depression, etc.)
2. Influence on the subconscious in order to develop indifference and aversion for alcohol or narcotics and elimination of fantasies connected with alcohol intoxication.
3. Becoming better informed about the inner causes and roots of your emotional state.
4. Learning self-regulation and methods of lifting stresses without resorting to alcohol.
5. Finding the meaning of life and its fullness: a). A better sense of responsibility for everything. b). Search of a strain of life. c). Rehabilitation of the lost abilities to perceive and experience the WORLD as in childhood (as before). d). Search of creative activity, which gives emotional and material satisfaction. e). Search of positive illusions.
This book will help you in creating these conditions. So, let us go on reading.
I am a professional artist. Thanks to this book I understood that I take alcohol or narcotic in order to make up for the deficit of joy. I got acquainted with the joy of creative activity and its success, but I experienced lack of this joy. I noticed that if I took alcohol by small portions, I could not stay sober for a long time, and anxiety arose. If I was on the booze and got blind drunk and was in fear of death, then, after getting out of that state I felt as if I was born anew. After such deadly dangerous booze I could abstain from drinking for three months, and during that time I felt a gigantic upsurge of creativeness and painted my best pictures that sold well. For the money from the sold pictures I bought alcohol and began to drink again, and that was not because I had money but because the sense of anxiety appeared and the state of creativeness vanished. And again I was “dying” of drinking. Thanks to this book I have acquired ability to be in a state of creativeness without resorting to alcohol and narcotics. I thank the author.
Nikolai Selivanov, Moscow.
ATTITUDE 6
The effectiveness of your treatment for alcoholism will depend on your ability to foresee the forthcoming emotional anxiety and remove it without drinking alcohol. THUS, IF YOU HAVE SOMETHING THAT WILL OVERSHADOW THE ILLUSIONS OF ALCOHOLIC INTOXICATION, YOU WILL BE ABLE TO DENY YOURSELF A DRINK EASILY OR TO GIVE UP ALCOHOL IN GENERAL. THE PROBLEM OF YOUR ALCOHOLISM WILL BE MORE EFFECTIVELY SOLVED IF YOU CONSIDER IT TO BE A NATURAL STAGE OF YOUR DEVELOPMENT, IRRESPECTIVE OF YOUR SOCIAL POSITION, NATIONALITY, PARENTS, ETC. Alcoholism is not a very successful means of your psychological defence, and as alcohol removes stresses and neuroses but for a short time and, as a matter of fact makes them hide somewhere at the bottom, the final result is negative.
ATTITUDE 7
TO FIND A WORTHY ALTERNATIVE TO THE STATE OF ALCOHOLIC INTOXICATION YOU OUGHT TO LEARN “SOBER DRINKING”. Therefore, let us analyse what “advantages” the drinking of alcohol gives us:
1. Nice bodily sensations: lightness, warmth, the easiness of movements, and «a meditative and bodily comfort”.
2. The removal of barriers and complexes in intercourse. More prolonged and numerous contacts with people.
3. The illusion that you have found the meaning of life. Suddenly “the fullness of life and its meaning” open before your eyes. Everything becomes rounded. The “roughness” of life disappears. For a time all the mental and emotional anxieties are diminished, a sensation of joy appears.
The first point can be achieved by sports, creative activities, a good bath, meditation, yoga, etc. The second point can be realised by training in communication, consultations with psychologists, etc. The third point is based on enhancing the responsibility, your creative activities and search for the new meaning of life instead of the old one, which was focussed on hard drinking. It is obvious that following the given recommendations takes time. BUT DRINKING IS ANOTHER MATTER, WHICH FULFILS ALL THE THREE ABOVE-MENTIONED POINTS! BUT, THERE IS NO WAY BACK!
ATTITUDE 8
Unfortunately, Nature has created you so that if you receive pleasure by some artificial and fast means, you obtain psychic and bodily diseases. EXTREME PLEASURE SHOULD BE EARNED, THEN IT WILL BE HARMLESS, I.E. WITHOUT BAD CONSEQUENCE. YOU MUST ALWAYS REMEMBER THAT YOU MAY ONLY HAVE GOOD MOOD IN CASE IT IS A REWARD FOR OVERCOMING DIFFICULTIES. Look at an athlete after hard physical loading, or at creative people after long fruitful work, or at the people that have been in a good sauna, or at a woman who has received sexual satisfaction, etc. etc. The example of all those people proves that life can give you harmless joys and pleasures, but they can be achieved by a certain degree of loading and strain. Extreme but harmless pleasure is achieved at the expense of the effect of contrast (relativity). After learning negative phenomena those that seemed to be zero before, may now seem positive. The following saying should become an axiom to you: THERE IS NO ETERNAL PLEASURE, FOR IT MEANS DEATH! An ample proof of that is the following experiment made by psychologists. A mouse was put in a box with two holes. In one of them there was cheese, and the mouse could eat it putting its head in this hole. There were also two electrodes implanted in the brain of the mouse. So, if the mouse chose to put its head into the other hole, a voltage was switched, and the mouse could feel sexual orgasm. It had a choice. The mouse was left alone for a time, but it turned out that it died of orgasm without even tasting the cheese. ETERNAL ORGASM IS DEATH! In the same way alcoholics are bogged down in constant drinking, and there is no way out of it worth talking about. The terminal point is psychoses, suicides, etc.
ATTITUDE 9
At present there is no medical term, which is more widely known among people than “encoding”. On the one hand it is connected with a large scale of alcoholism among people, and on the other – with a search by people of the most efficient methods of treatment for alcoholism. Besides, among other different methods of treatment encoding has become the most advertised method in mass media. All that resulted in great popularity of encoding not only among doctors but also among people suffering from alcoholism. Noteworthy that the encoding method of treatment for alcoholism has acquired a HALO-effect. Therefore, this method is alleged to have properties it does not have in reality. In other words, the positive result of this method is often higher than it is originally conceived to have. THE MOTTO “IT IS DANGEROUS TO DRINK AFTER ENCODING – YOU MAY DIE!” IS VERY POPULAR DUE TO THE LIVE AND TRADITIONAL ADVERTISEMENT. This motto allows many quack doctors practising treatment of alcoholism to use the principle: “YOU MAY DO ANYTHING YOU LIKE TO YOUR PATIENT, AND THEN GIVE HIM THE ATTITUDE: HE WILL DIE IF HE HAS A DRINK, THAT’S ALL…” – THAT POINT OF VIEW IS KEPT BY MANY MEDICAL CHARLATANS. As a result the method of encoding is being discredited nowadays. OUR METHOD HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ABOVE-MENTIONED APPROACH.
BORDERLINE ENCODING – BORDERLINE ANALYSIS
ATTITUDE 10
REMEMBER: ENCODING IS A METHOD OF SPECIAL INFLUENCE ON THE SUBCONSCIOUS WITH THE PURPOSE OF CHANGING THE ATTITUDE OF AN ALCOHOLIC TO ACTIONS HARMING HIS PSYCHIC AND PHYSICAL HEALTH. OUR METHOD, WHICH WORKS IN THE PROCESS OF READING THIS BOOK, IS BASED UPON THE DISCOVERY OF THE MEANING AND CODE OF YOUR OWN EXISTANCE. As you progress in your reading you will begin to learn it and will understand your own life in a different way.
ATTITUDE 11
You must realise that the fear of death is able to influence your thinking and behaviour as no other phenomenon of the human soul is. If you decode the meaning and code of your own existence due to the understanding of your life and death, you will lose the desire to create the illusion of the perception of life through alcohol. Instead, after reading this book you will learn about other harmless and natural methods of creating illusions. The comprehension of the meaning and code of your own existence will allow you to remove the “illusory film” that you have worn all your life. It is in the desire to remove that illusion where the deepest cause of alcoholism lies. Earlier you drank alcohol being lost in yourself, buried in illusions about yourself and not understanding yourself. YOU HAVE BEEN YEARNING FOR YOURSELF. THE TIME HAS COME TO RETURN TO YOUR OWN SELF. THE ILLUSORY UNDERSTANDING OF YOUR OWN SELF IS THE CAUSE OF DRUNKENNESS. After reading this book you will discover your own meaning of life and, as a consequence, will remove this illusory understanding of your own self. You will gain A REAL MEANING instead of the artificial one that was focussed on drinking alcohol.
ATTITUDE 12
It may so happen that after some hard disease that nearly sent you to “a better world”, you reconsidered your life, your own self, your health. The fear of death experienced by some of you allows you to give up drinking alcohol forever. For instance, there are many self-encoded people among those who suffer from myocardial infarction. As the saying goes “Every man is the architect of his own fortune”. Self-encoding may take place as a result of some natural physiological stages of the development of the organism, and the code (indifference to alcohol, smoking, etc.) “appears” unexpectedly. Thus, having woken in the morning, you may feel indifference to alcohol. (You must not try to do anything on purpose!) It will just be a natural protective reaction of your organism, which will begin to produce a complex of biochemical substances that cause repulsion and indifference to alcohol.
This morning I woke up early. I do and analyse everything as you describe in your book. But I did not sleep well last night. I sleep badly after weekends. I do not like to rest. Practically I simply lay in bed for about six hours. All night my head was full of fear and absurdities. My hands and feet were cold. My mouth was dry. There were dark circles below my eyes. What I felt during those six hours might as well be considered to be the state of death. Is this right? I did not live. I suffered all the six hours waiting for the morning and the sun. Then, with a somewhat great desire I rushed outside and began jogging. My feet carried me as if they had a life of their own. I was running away from my own self. I was running away from the dead and tormenting peace. In half an hour I already felt a tide of warmth, the fear and bad thoughts were gone, the sun was shining in my face, and I was smiling in spite of myself. I thought for a moment about the “prison” I was in last night and, feeling the contrast between what I had experienced at night and my present state now that I was running and smiling, I felt tears come to my eyes. Those tears meant a kind of liberation, and I cried of enjoyment. My tears mixed with sweat. It was life. I was really living in those minutes. And I ran with such pleasure for about an hour. So I have a full right to consider that time to be the time of life. When my home was within ten-minute walk, I began to walk slowly. I met a friend of mine. With great pleasure I had a chat with him for the next hour and a half, and did not want to part with him. A desire arose to prolong that joy of human contact. That hour and a half was also the time of life. Then I took my friend home, but my mother was cold and rude to him. An unpleasant contact began between my mother and me. It lasted for about half-hour. After that I could not raise my spirits no matter how hard I tried. I was gloomy for about two hours. Then it was time to go to work. I am a driver. The road is always joy to me. I like driving. For the first two hours it was hard for me to drive, but then I warmed up and began to feel the road and my native town, which I love. For the next five hours I worked easily. And it was life. I came home tired and went to sleep with a smile on my face. I slept with great pleasure for about eight hours. Then I came to your consulting-room for regular treatment… So I had 40 per cent total of real life for the past day. But earlier I only had 5 per cent, and that is why I drank vodka. Now it is better. Why should I drink if I have found a new harmless method of ridding myself of bad mood? And all that is thanks to your book.
Renat Khabibullin, Naberezhiye Chelny.
ATTITUDE 13
You must understand that the method of primitive encoding due to fear (stress) makes a person think about life and death (“If you have a drink, you will die!”) This is one of the drawbacks of the traditional method. The stress programmed in the subconscious in the process of encoding exercises a negative influence on the psycho-emotional health of the patient. OUR ENCODING BASED ON THE READING OF THIS BOOK PLUNGES YOU INTO THE BORDERLINE PHASE BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH GRADUALLY AND WITHOUT ANY STRESS. When reading this book you will think about life and death but these thoughts will be without stress. While getting acquainted with this book THE INNER CAUSE OF YOUR DESIRE TO BE INTOXICATED WITH ALCOHOL WILL BE REMOVED. You will gradually understand your essence, will be cleaned of illusions causing your drinking of alcohol. YOU WILL DISCOVER THE CODE OF YOUR OWN EXISTANCE. Due to this discovery your attitude will change for the better, and your lost ability to rejoice (to enjoy) will return to you by natural means (without alcohol). You will know the reason why you lost the ability to rejoice (as in childhood). The subconscious “gin” of the fear of death will come out of you in the process of reading this book. It will happen because you will begin to realise your fears and thoughts of death, their structure and their deep essence. In this connection the ungrounded depressions, which earlier led to drinking alcohol, will vanish. Do not strain yourself. Do not check the presence of the effect. But at the same time you must be open to our influence. There is no necessity to play an evil game: “Now I’ll read and then go and have a drink!” So, let us read further.
ATTITUDE 14
Until this moment you have just been reading and experiencing what you have read. Now concentrate a little, and beginning from today try to analyse yourself from the position of THE JOY OF LIFE AND THE FEAR OF DEATH. The joy of life should be understood as an activity full of positive emotions. The fear of death causes negative experiences and negative thinking. We hope that beginning from today you will start to analyse your past and present joys of life and your fear of death.
ATTITUDE 15
If you have managed that analysis, you have probably remembered that alcohol caused positive sensations. You ought to admit it. But try to remember if there were positive emotions in your life that were no worse than those caused by alcohol. Were there? Surely there were! Try to fix those pictures in your memory. On the final stage we shall compare and synthesise the emotions of alcoholic intoxication and the positive emotions of sober state. Make the above-mentioned analysis as often as possible and you will learn to tell the joys of life from the fear of death. In the process of such analysis you will begin to limit all your present depressive tendencies (the fear of death). You will understand that it was due to the fear of death that all the values of sober life seemed unattractive and “dull” to you. You will realise that the cause of such pessimistic perception lies in the fact that many things, which you considered to be values were not values at all, for they did not give you positive emotions. Real values must be emotional.
ATTITUDE 16
We are going further. So, we hope that you begin to feel positive emotions gradually come to the foreground. It is these emotions that are your real values. Now you feel that you are living not by the final result (the final result of the vital functions is DEATH), but by the processes of vital functions (LIFE). The values focussed on the final result and understood by reason become of secondary importance. Essentially, in the process of such analysis you have already started to work out the inner purpose to assess your actions and the surrounding world from the position of life and death, but with an accent on life.
ATTITUDE 17
We are going further. The greatest difficulties are left behind. Now it is necessary for you to learn a speedy entrance to the state of reconsidering your past brightest impressions in a drunken and sober states.
ATTITUDE 18
If you have learned this, gradually pass on to analysing the causes of drinking alcohol (the fear of death).
ATTITUDE 19
Now you must try to combine the images and sensations (of the joys of life) in a state of alcoholic intoxication and in a sober state. First, by means of reminiscences try to experience the states of the past alcoholic intoxication and compare them with the emotions of the past joys of sober life. Then again, by reminiscences plunge into a state of the past joys of sober life and compare them with the sensations of alcoholic intoxication.
ATTITUDE 20
Later on you will feel that the joy from alcohol intoxication will be adequately replaced by the joys of sober life. This result will appear due to the fact that in your psyche “suture and coalescence of two separated parts of your broken personality” have taken place.
Generally I go on business trips by train. That time it so happened that I had to go by plane. In those days air crashes happened fairly often, and I frequently thought hard about it and consoled myself by the fact that I did not find myself in those ill-fated planes. Then I was sitting in the waiting room of the airport and watching TV, and as if on purpose the news reported of another air-crash. Besides, it was said that the largest quantity of air–crashes took place at the end of the year. As it happened, I was going on business at the beginning of December. After such information I could not rid myself of the fear that haunted me all the time. Moreover, I saw that fear on the faces of some other passengers. The whole flight became an ordeal to me. It seemed to me that the flight would never end. I listened hard to the sound of the engines. When due to some reasons that sound disappeared, I asked my neighbours about it, and they reassured me. When the airhostess began to walk from one end of the plane to the other I thought it was connected with some troubles of the plane. I experienced the most fear at the very beginning of the flight when the stewardess started telling the passengers how to use life-saving devices and showed them where they were. I did not perceive it as instruction but as a sign of the beginning of an air-crash. Throughout the flight I was covered with cold sweat. Seeing that the other passengers felt the same, I feared the more. All that hell ended only after successful landing. When I came out of the plane, I noticed to my surprise that I experienced a feeling of happiness and psychic pacification, which I had never done before. I took an interest in everything: the grey sky, the trees and the people. I began to see the surrounding world in a somewhat special way. One thought was there, in my head: how nice, that everything was OK and nothing had happened during the flight. I consoled myself with that comparing the hell experienced in the air with the live and beautiful world around. At that moment I was as kind as I had never been before. My communication with other people was so friendly that I caught myself at the thought: “Aren’t I going mad?” One of the passers-by remarked about me to his woman-companion, saying that I looked odd. I looked at myself in a mirror and did not recognize myself. A man with bright sparkling eyes was looking back at me; I recognised the eyes, which I had in my distant childhood. I realised that I discovered in myself the long-forgotten past. But that state of mind was noticeably fading, and in three hours it was so small that I remembered about my egocentric purposes, my mood began to go up and down, and I no longer looked odd and was no longer of interest for the passers-by. I became like everybody else: purposeful and puzzled by everyday and Philistine problems. But I met some people in the street who somewhat resembled me after the flight. They were people who were not sober. And I had a drink just to feel again that flight of the soul that I had felt after landing. But still, the tipsy state was inferior in the level of enjoyment to the state of expectation of the air-crash that was to happen, as I understood later on, in my head.
I am not an alcoholic, but I have read your book. You are right: an analysis of life and death allows one to start life in a new way. Your method makes it possible to be born anew without such shocks. You should simply not forget that death and life are near to us.
S.K.Trofimov. Saratov.
ATTITUDE 21
Now you have broken out of the exclusive circle of needs connected solely with drinking alcohol, and in some time you will have many new needs. If you have failed to fulfil everything that has been offered above, do not get upset. The mere fact that you have been acquainted with it influences your subconscious. And we shall continue giving informational codes.
ATTITUDE 22
Now try to feel and understand more in detail your joys of life and fears of death. Contact with God (when a person is in good health) is contact with death. Communicating with God man realises his place in the surrounding world, his way and his end (final analysis). FAITH reminds man of his death each day, “PACIFYING” him, making him calmer and helping him not to get entangled in petty values. FAITH allows man not to be psychologically near-sighted in the perception of the surrounding, favouring integral perception of the WORLD. Thanks to FAITH the thoughts of man are added by thoughts about death, and that allows him to treat himself and the others in a different way. Thoughts about death and life are always present with man even if he is not in a borderline situation connected with death, suffering, fear, fault, and struggle. When he is young, the fear of death and the joy of life form a combination, which is quite unlike pure meditations about life and death. With age the fears of death grow in number and gradually begin to prevail, therefore the thoughts of death (life) become more pure and true. In the end, when man is on the border of existence and non-existence, he cognises the pure idea of death and life, which was installed in him genetically, but due to the encodingness (complex mixture of the fear of death and the joy of life) was inaccessible before.
ATTITUDE 23
Turn your attention to what place the cognition of the world took in your life. When man is young, the process of cognition prevails over the others. Therefore COGNITION is a process in which the joys of life prevail. A state of depression is a state with a prevalence of the fear of death.
The state of FAITH in THE MOST HIGH is a prevalence of the fear of death. Sexual feelings are a prevalence of the joys of life. Any illness is a prevalence of the fear of death.
ATTITUDE 24
Try to understand that in the process of physiological life a struggle takes place between the elements of life and death. Biologists have already decoded these elements on the cellular and biochemical levels. It is obvious that in a young organism there are more elements of life than death. The biochemical balance is biased to the formation of the elements of life. As man becomes older, processes start in his organism with the prevalence of the fear of death. It happens after the physiological middle of the life of organism. Like physiological life, psychological life also has its middle and periods with a prevalence of the joy of life or the fear of death. The physiological and the psychological middles do not always coincide. For instance, a youth may have the views of an old man, and vice versa, an elderly person may have the views of a young man. Thus, within a young man psychological processes may take place with a prevalence of the fears of death, and he may become old of his soul before his time. The index of this may be his unwillingness to cognise the surrounding world. (Cognition is a joy of life). Before the psychological middle joys of life prevail over fears of death. And vice versa, after the psychological middle fears of death prevail over joys of life.
ATTITUDE 25
THINK OVER THE FOLLOWING: MAN AGED BETWEEN 20 AND 30 THINKS ABOUT DEATH EVERY OTHER DAY. PEOPLE AGED BETWEEN 30 AND 40 THINK ABOUT DEATH EVERY 1.5 DAYS. AND THOSE WHO ARE BETWEEN 40 AND 50 THINK ABOUT THE FUTILITY OF ALL LIFE AND ALL THINGS ON THE EARTH TWICE A DAY. THE OLDER AND WISER ARE PEOPLE, THE MORE OFTEN THEY GIVE THOUGHTS TO INEVITEBILITY OF THE FUTURE. AFTER 50 MAN THINKS ABOUT DEATH 3 OR 4 TIMES A DAY. AFTER 60 THOSE WHO WERE INTERROGATED THOUGHT ABOUT DEATH ALMOST EVERY HOUR!
ATTITUDE 26
And now you must learn to calculate the percentage of the fear of death and the joys of life for the past day. Approximately, of course. To do that, you will have to watch the clock and assess how much time this or that state of mind has taken. Learn to assess which was more during the day: LIFE (L) or DEATH (D). Learn to trace how D and L alternate and how they play with each other. It is very simple. Activity (L), Attraction (L), Imagination (L), Memorising (L), Will (L), Interest (L), Love (L), Self-actualisation (L), Conscience (L), Humanness (L), Striving (L), Temperament (L), Euphoria (L), Game (L), Creativeness (L), Humour (L), Responsibility (L), Reminiscence (D), Forgetfulness (D), Illusions (D – it depends), Generalisation (D), Reflexion (D), Auto-suggestion (D), Temporary insanity (D), Pain (D), Agitation (D), Hallucinations (D), Hypnosis (D), Complexes (D), Melancholia (D), Tenseness (D), Detachment (D), Prejudice (D), Absent-mindedness (D), Rigidity (D), Passion (D), Fear (D), Stress (D), Shame (D), Uneasiness (D), Stubbornness (D), Tiredness (D), Fatigue (D), Phobias (D), Apathy (D), Frustration / Depression (D), Egocentrism (D), Authoritativeness (D), Genius (D), Fanaticism (D), Depression (D), Ambition (D), Conflict (D), Hatred (D), Psychic defence (D), Thirst of life (D), Suicidal desires (D), Neuroses (D), Psychoses (D).
ATTITUDE 27
COGNIZE IN YOURSELF HOW YOU PLAY WITH DEATH AND LIFE, HOW THEY COMBINE IN YOU DURING THE DAY. EVERY HUMAN HAS A DIFFERENT MELODY WEAVED OF DEATH AND LIFE. IT IS THE CODE OF YOUR EXISTENCE. As you realise D and L you will change your attitude to the surrounding world and there may be changes for the better in your emotional and psychological health. The main task is to remove the disguise from your meditations on death and life. The above-given analysis will allow you to cognise the “code of your existence”. In the process of such observations YOU will EACH TIME APPROXIMATE TO MORE TRUE COGNITION OF YOUR OWN INDIVIDUALITY AND THE REAL MEANING OF YOUR EXISTENCE. THUS, SUCH ANALYSIS WILL ALLOW YOU TO ORGANISE A BORDERLINE SITUATION BETWEEN EXISTENCE AND NON-EXISTENCE WITHOUT ANY PROFOUND SHOCKS. A world of real existence will open before you. Everything you lived by before will appear to you as something illusory, as a world of similarity.
IF YOU FAIL TO LEARN TO OBSERVE YOURSELF THROUGH THE PRISM OF LIFE AND DEATH, DO NOT UPSET YOURSELF. THE MERE FACT THAT YOU HAVE READ AND LEARNED ABOUT IT WILL CHANGE YOU, AND YOU WILL ACHIEVE THE DESIRED EFFECT. THEREFORE, LET US READ ON.
ATTITUDE 28
Not only you alone make such analysis. Many talented priests are partially able to make analysis of joys of life (L) and fears of death (D) being unaware of it. If a priest has a well-developed ability of self-analysis of death and life, he is a man of deep faith. This kind of analysis is developed in some people as a defensive reaction to external reality. A priest, who has not deciphered the code of his existence, is a false priest. An ascetic way of life helps the deciphering of the meaning and code of one’s existence, and so does the cognition of LIFE itself, not only the Scriptures. If the given analysis goes in a proper way, you will develop in yourself true RESPONSIBILITY and HUMANENESS to everything that SURROUNDS you. You will gain the true meaning of your existence, and your L-index will be very high.
ATTITUDE 29
IF YOU HAVE DECIPHERED THE CODE OF YOUR OWN EXISTENCE (DRINKING EXISTENCE, AS THE CASE MAY BE), ILLUMINATION MUST COME TO YOU IN THE FORM OF INDIFFERENCE OR SOMETIMES EVEN AVERSION TO ALCOHOL. You will begin to rejoice at life without alcohol. You will gain positive illusions and as a consequence, the meaning of life.
ATTITUDE 30
IF YOU HAVE FAILED TO FEEL THE ABOVE-SAID, IT IS NECESSARY FOR YOU TO DISCOVER NEW POSITIVE ILLUSIONS OR RESTORE THE FORGOTTEN OLD ONES. TO DO THAT IT IS NECESSARY TO CREATE AN ILLUSION OF “A NEW BIRTH”. PEOPLE WHO HAVE EXPERIENCED CLINICAL DEATH KNOW WHAT IT IS. INDEED, IT IS A SECOND BIRTH. ALL THAT HAVE BEEN LOST: ILLUSIONS, GOALS, EXPERIENCES, ATTITUDE, — IS RENEWED. This book arranges your second birth, and you will be “born anew”. And you shall “dig out” the hidden mechanisms of your depression because of which you drink alcohol. You are aware of the thoughts of death you used to have in your early childhood. The deeper you plunge into childhood, the more will be the probability of the restoration of the lost illusions of childhood. It is the subconscious and conscious thoughts of death that cause the loss of the illusions of childhood, the youth of life. In the process of the borderline analysis the analysis of everything takes place that has happened and is happening to man through the prism of D and L (death and life). Man turns over in his mind all possible versions of the main thought of death that was “impressed” in his soul and determined the development of the personality in the mental and psychological direction.
In our village many women drink alcohol. It is depressing. Sometimes a feeling of emptiness seizes you so that you want to howl like a wolf for everybody in the village to hear. I never knew what to do with myself. So I drank. At first, just a little, for high spirits, and then more and more. Besides, they did not give us salaries on time. Worries again. Having read your book I somehow remembered how my grandfather wove baskets in my distant childhood. And generally, something began to happen to me after reading this book. I began to work hard. In my childhood I had learned to weave baskets a little. I decided to earn some money by doing it. I went to the river, gathered some twigs and sat down to weave baskets. It was very hard at first, but then I felt that I just couldn’t do without that job. If I did not weave, I immediately began to worry. It was a mere mania! In a week’s time my laziness vanished as if it had never been there. I became more patient, I grumbled less, and the children began to get closer to me. Not only my neighbours, but I myself began to wonder at those changes. I regained myself again. Money appeared. I had planned to spend it on alcohol, but somehow I didn’t want to. The thirst for vodka disappeared. I went to the nearest provincial town, bought some smoked sausage and sweets there and returned home. While I was on my way back, I was thinking about those baskets I intended to weave – big and small – all kinds of baskets…Even when I am going to sleep at night I imagine how I shall go to the river-bank in the morning and gather good twigs. Then I will come home, sit down by the window and start weaving my baskets. I am alive by these baskets. I have begun to look at the world in a different way. As soon as I remember my baskets my spirits go up. I have begun to believe in myself and in my abilities. I have not touched alcohol for two years. I have found the attitude I needed. I even know its number and often read it over. When I first read it, it even gave me a start. Thank you.
Polina Chernova, Nizhny Novgorod.
ATTITUDE 31
NOW ONE OF YOUR MAIN TASKS IS TO REALISE HOW YOU CREATE NEGATIVE ILLUSIONS (DECEIVE, MANIPULATE, CONFUSE, DELUDE YOURSELF, ETC.). IT IS NECESSARY TO REALISE YOUR EGOCENTRIC ILLUSIONS THAT DRIVE YOU INTO THE “BOG” OF DEPRESSION. They are the main cause of your alcoholism. You have had difficulties with your harmless illusions. You probably have a good position at work and in society, but you have no illusions that would make you happy. That is why you often drink alcohol. You are bored. The only thing that removes your boredom is the alcohol illusion or the illusions you create for the surrounding people. You delude people and you yourself are a victim of deception. How can you help yourself in acquiring harmless illusions that would give you REAL JOY and creativeness?
ATTITUDE 32
To be at an advantage you delude yourself and the others to this or that extent using some false methods. It is obvious that not every illusion you create is a BAD thing. But there are ILLUSIONS really harmful, for they can drive you into a deadlock (loss of the meaning of life, all kinds of neuroses etc.). You are a personality who always creates illusions, and it is desirable for you to have such forms of thinking that would develop you in a positive direction (of joys, self-actualisation, creativity, etc.). Unfortunately you often created such illusions about yourself or others, that you finally began to suffer from neuroses and depressions. That, in its turn led you to drinking alcohol.
ATTITUDE 33
Since when have you had an ability to delude others? Since birth. When you were still a child, you could delude your parents by your artificial crying in order to achieve a desirable result. All your life you have deluded yourself and others, taking part in the big ILLUSION called life. CONFESS TO YOURSELF THAT YOU ARE A CONJEROR MAKING TRICKS NOT ONLY WITH THE SURROUNDING PEOPLE BUT ALSO WITH YOURSELF. You are an illusionist playing with life and aspiring to create for yourself a salutary illusion. You bask in your own delusions more willingly than in the realities of life, which is nothing without illusions, i.e. you form an exclusive circle leading to illusions. To rejoice sincerely for someone else you should break out of your own egocentric delusions and create real positive conceptions of the surrounding world. There are people who are busy all their lifetime creating an opinion of themselves of being clever and knowledgeable. They do it among people who cannot see their real educational and cultural level. But the thing is that by the end of the day his self-delusion wears out the person, and he falls into depression. There are women who demonstrate their femininity by pretence. A woman who possesses this ability is unaware of it, but everybody somehow notices her femininity. The worst deceivers of their husbands are Russian women. According to statistics they often simulate orgasm without experiencing it. They do it to prevent their husbands from going to hotter women. It often happens that after learning the truth husbands take to drinking. In most cases it is deception in a family that causes alcoholism of the spouses. Negative illusions (harmful delusions) lead to the creation of alcohol illusions. Man begins to suffer from them. That is why it is necessary for you to create positive illusions, positive conceptions of life.
ATTITUDE 34
THINK HARD: WHY DO YOU CREATE ILLUSIONS ABOUT YOURSELF?
Because:
1. You are a man who finds the meaning of life in illusions, no matter what they are. If there are none, there will be no tension leading to activity.
2. There is another reason of creating illusions – everyday survival under the burden of the hardships of life (conflict of individual and environment).
3. Your delusions are a reaction to the illusions (delusions) created by surrounding people. Most people distrust the surrounding.
4. You experience fear when you open your soul to others. That is why you create an illusory shell round your soul, as people put on clothes to cover their bodies.
ATTITUDE 35
You are a man deluding other people, and you can only see your own illusions. You are blind staying in your own egocentric delusions. You can only see what you want to see. Besides, if you do not trust anyone, keeping all and sundry under control, it all ends in depression that often leads to drunkenness. You drive yourself into CONFINEMENT and do it on your own will because you do not know the final result. That is why you had only one choice before – escape from the confinement by alcoholic intoxication. You are always in search of illusions. ILLUSION FOR YOU IS THE MEANING OF LIFE, WITHOUT WHICH YOU LOSE VITAL ACTIVITY. YOU WHO HAVE FOUND THE MEANING OF LIFE DO NOT GIVE IT A PROFOUND THOUGHT. YOU JUST LIVE. YOU LIVE THANKS TO THE ILLUSION YOU HAVE CREATED ON THE GIVEN STAGE OF YOUR LIFE. YOU OFTEN CREATE IT SUBCONSCIOUSLY AS A DEFENSIVE REACTION. MOREOVER, YOU DO NOT OFTEN UNDERSTAND THAT IT IS JUST AN ILLUSION. HAVING ACHIEVED YOUR GOAL AND HAVING REALISED THAT IT HAS VERY LITTLE IN COMMON WITH WHAT YOU HAD IN YOU DREAMS, YOU USUALLY DO NOT GRIEVE BUT CREATE OTHER ILLUSIONS AND DREAMS. In any case, that is what a normal from the psycho-emotional point of view man does. ONLY BY THE END OF THEIR LIVES MANY PEOPLE BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND, THAT ALL THEIR LIVES THEY CREATED ILLUSIONS AND TRIED TO ACHIEVE THEM. THEY DID ACHIEVE WHAT THEY WANTED, BUT THEY FELT THAT IT WAS SOMETHING DIFFERENT FROM WHAT THEY HAD IN MIND AT THE BEGINNING. SOME OF YOU GOT TIRED OF THAT SELF-DECEPTION AND BEGAN TO DRINK ALCOHOL.
ATTITUDE 36
Why do we call whatever we want to achieve in life illusions? Because usually, having achieved the set goal you understand that it is not what you wanted to achieve. In any case the achievement causes sensations different from those you had in your mind. At this moment man understands that he has been deluding himself. If man had known at the beginning that he was deluded, he would not have gone to that goal. Therefore the understanding of the fact that something was illusory comes after the achievement of the goal. This is just one of the paradoxes of the phenomenon of illusions. It is known that prisoners in concentration camps before they were put in gas chambers tried not to speak about it, because they hoped for the best consoling themselves with illusions. They formed those illusions subconsciously. Thus, man has an inborn ability to build illusions as a defensive reaction to external influences. Moreover, MAN IS A SUBJECT CONSCIOUSLY AND SUBCONSCIOUSLY DELUDING HIMSELF, CREATING ILLUSIONS AND EXPOSING THEM AFTERWARDS.
ATTITUDE 37
REALISE THAT YOU ARE ALWAYS IN SEARCH OF THE MEANING OF LIFE THE CONTENTS OF WHICH ARE ILLUSIONS. THUS, YOU ARE ALWAYS IN SEARCH OF DELUSIONS. YOUR MEANING OF LIFE CONSISTS OF ELEMENTS, WHICH ARE ILLUSIONS. THE TERMINAL POINT OF THE SEARCH OF THE MEANING IS SOMETHING SEEMING. IT IS THE ILLUSIONS THAT YOU PERCEIVE, NOT THE MEANING. THE MEANING IS A MORE COMPLEX NOTION, WHICH YOU WILL NEVER REALISE DURING YOUR LIFETIME.
ATTITUDE 38
All your life you perceive various illusions. You live and console yourself by illusions. Some of them are the MAIN ILLUSIONS OF LIFE, some of them are of secondary importance. EARLIER IN YOUR LIFE THE MAIN LIFE’S DELUSION FOR YOU WAS THE ILLUSION CAUSED BY DRINKING ALCOHOL. It was the brightest and most joyful of all that you created before. And still, according to the analysis of the fears of death and joys of life, that you made earlier following our recommendation (see above), the alcohol illusion is inferior in its brightness to the non-illusory pictures of your childhood. You want to get into your childhood and create the illusion of it by drinking alcohol. In any case, that was what you wanted to feel when drinking alcohol earlier. Drunkenness is a voluntary building of illusions (sensations of childhood) by drinking alcohol. But remember: only an illusion that favours the personality’s development is good for you (positive illusion). Also, an illusion is good if it maximally approximates you to the truth and satisfies you.
ATTITUDE 39
YOUR ASPIRATION TO SEARCHIG, BUILDING, REALISATION AND EXPOSING ILLUSIONS IS YOUR INHERENT ABILITY. Absence of illusions causes a state of psychical emptiness. In the life of a teetotaller as in the life of a drunkard there is also a state of drunkenness that is filled with non-alcohol illusions created by other methods. If he is not able to create those illusions, a state of psychic emptiness arises. If it lasts long, it may end in a suicide. That is why people create alcohol illusions “on the spot”, to ensure themselves against suicide. A DRUNKARD UNDERSTANDS THAT HE BUILDS HIS ILLUSIONS ON HIS OWN WILL, AND IT SUITS HIM. EVEN A TEETOTALLER UNDERSTANDS CONSCIOUSLY OR SUBCONSCIOUSLY THAT EVERYTHING HE LIVES BY IS A SELF-DELUSION (ILLUSIONS) SERVING HIS SPIRITUAL SELF-SURVIVAL. Noteworthy that illusions may be positive or negative depending on how they favour the development, activity and spiritual survival of the personality. Thus, alcohol illusions may be negative for some people and positive for others. Even in case of people who do not drink alcohol certain illusions may be positive for some of them and negative for others.
ATTITUDE 40
You must realise that the potential conditioned by the thirst for illusions is always with you, and if you do not discharge it on time, it is fraught with great psychological tensions. That is exactly why many of you discharge this potential by alcohol illusions.
Your understanding that they are only illusions allows you not to stop after their exposure but create new ones. THUS, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE PERSONALITY OF AN ALCOHOLIC IS BASED UPON THE PRINCIPLE OF NECESSITY OF ILLUSIONS (SELF-MANIPULATION). MAN IS ASPIRING TO CREATE ILLUSIONS, AND IF THIS ASPIRATION REMAINS UNREALISED, HE FEELS FRUSTRATION OR VACUUM ENCOURAGING HIS ALCOHOLISM.
Creation of positive illusions is a question of vocation. An invented world is subjective. Man invents it being himself in reality. That is why illusions can be called the main subjective elements of the meaning of life. The complex structure of the elements (illusions) forms something that we call the meaning of life.
So, an individual creates in his soul something seeming, which helps him to find the meaning. This something is what we call illusions.
ATTITUDE 41
Remember how in the past you banished the thoughts of death, creating illusions (delusions). If you can do it, it means that you have found the meaning of life. Thus, the meaning of life are illusions, which keep you off the thoughts of death and eliminate them. These are illusions of creativeness, creative activity. Man sees in his labour something bigger than earning money, creating round his work an “illusory shell”, from which he derives energy for new creative discoveries. Ask any creative man (artist, writer, actor, turner etc.), if he would be able to create without a highly developed illusory perception of reality. Of course, the answer will be in the negative.
I have drunk alcohol for eighteen years, especially lately. My wife suggested that I should be treated for alcoholism, but I was sure that I could manage it myself. Therefore, I gave it up tens of times, but then began all over again. Once, when I was travelling in a trolley bus I suddenly felt bad. I began to shake, and my hands went white. I thought I was going to die then and there. But I somehow survived and decided to do away with drunkenness for good. Once I saw your book on a counter. After reading a few attitudes I felt much better. My brain sort of got rid of anxieties that had tormented me before and led to sleeplessness. I began to take an interest in the things I had never been interested in before. Now even little things give me joy. In the mornings I take my son to school, talk to him with great pleasure, listen to him and miss him when he is out. Earlier I did not even notice him. How good it is that I have a SON. The therapeutic reading was very interesting and useful. I was just curious to study myself and to discover something I had never known before. Now I can restrain myself, I have become strong-willed not because of patience, but because of some wisdom and peace that opened in me after reading this book. When I was reading it, I could never imagine vodka or my companions with whom I drank. I had a strange sensation that my alcoholic past was deleted from my memory. Afterwards, even if I brought vodka to mind, I had not the least desire to drink it. I perceived it as a thing that was of no interest to me. Now I got less tired. Some of the attitudes presented in your book began to influence me. The situations due to which I felt stress earlier now do not cause in me any anxiety. I have an even mood. To my surprise I have begun to take an interest in religion and philosophy. I can stay in a company of people who drink for a long time. They do not irritate me, I just feel sorry for them. Even if my drunken companions make me feel tired, it is only due to their unnatural behaviour. To be sober is more interesting for me now.
V.A.Sharonov, Dzerzhinsk.
ATTITUDE 42
You must agree that the chief among all illusions is love. Imagination and dreams play the leading role in love. The fact that love was just an illusion man only begins to understand when love is gone. Being deluded, man creates for himself this beautiful illusion. On a certain stage of his life an individual transfers all the beauty of his overflowing emotions on another individual who does not agree with the created opinion about him (her). However, in the perception of a lover there is something that allows the other lover to change in accordance with the opinion created about him (her). This reciprocal illusory process between lovers increases love. If there are failures in the construction of such illusions, love begins to fade. The “blind” begin to “see” again, and the main illusion (love) disappears. That is why love is but an instance. There is no eternal love, as there are no eternal illusions due to the genetic ability of man to expose them. Eternal may the reminiscence of the bygone love. It is possible to assume theoretically though, that if a lover does not expose the illusions, he may carry love throughout his whole life. ONE MUST NOT SEEK ILLUSIONS IN OBJECTIVE REALITY: AN INDIVIDUAL CREATES THEM HIMSELF AS A DEFENSIVE REACTION THE DEGREE OF WHICH DEPENDS ON THE VOCATION. You must learn to see the whole spectrum of potential illusions, which may arise in any life situation. Man must be open for dreams and he must consciously try to see all possible illusions (positive and negative) and choose the necessary one. ON FINDING IT THE INDIVIDUAL MUST FULFIL HIS DREAM WITHOUT BEING AFRAID OF THE FUTURE EXPOSURE. The view on the meaning of life as an illusion allows man to keep up his spirits and create new illusions, i.e. to find new meanings of life after the exposure of the old ones.
ATTITUDE 43
Stop affirming in yourself the view of life through the category of “the meaning of life”. Such a view stops its course, whereas the view of it through the category of “the illusions of life” allows you to move on in life. The cause of the movement lies in eternal self-delusion. If man organises it successfully, he gains the real meaning of his existence. Till his last moment man does not know if he has accomplished his meaning of life, and he DIES WITH ILLUSIONS.
Due to his well-developed illusory perception man more rarely thinks of the futility and absurdity of all things, he is easier at peace with the surrounding. For this purpose he should create a SUPER-ILLUSION. What a pity that for many people the SUPER-ILLUSION is the one caused by alcoholic intoxication.
ATTITUDE 44
Communication with GOD must become your SUPER-ILLUSION. Man has never seen HIM, and he creates HIS image according to his knowledge, talent and conscience. God is the main illusory object. All the other illusions depend on how man builds this SUPER-ILLUSION. Their formation must proceed through the prism of the super-illusion of God. Thus, interdependent influence takes place of super-illusion on low-level illusions, and vice versa. These combinations and additions of illusions are similar to a telescope (or microscope), performing magnification (creating double illusion) due to the addition of images from two magnifying lenses. We shall further call this combination (“instrument”) a SUPERSCOPE.
A MAN WHO IS ABLE TO FORM ILLUSIONS OF LIFE THROUGH A SUPER-ILLUSION (GOD), POSSESSES SUPERSCOPIC PERCEPTION. When man is visited by inspiration, intuition, “contact with the Space”, “contact with God” – all that is superscopic perception. Genuine works of art are only created with this perception.
The invention of the microscope and telescope was useful for mankind. No less useful for man is the discovery of the SUPERSCOPE, an “instrument” for integral and philosophical perception of EXISTANCE. Every man during his lifetime must discover his own SUPERSCOPE.
ATTITUDE 45
Realise that illusions created by drinking alcohol, unlike superscopic illusions are similar to perception through dirty, turbid glass. In other words, alcohol illusions can be identified with the impression of turbid glass, whereas the illusion of superscopic perception – with a high-resolution telescope.
Man can lose illusions under no circumstances. Illusions can always be found.
My name is Vladimir. Exactly two months ago I learned about my lethal diagnosis. I learned that it was because of drunkenness. During the first two weeks I could not even speak to myself about it, to say nothing of other people. During the first two weeks I did not want to believe it and tried to deceive myself. Now that I am writing to you I do not believe that I have managed to brace myself to write about it. I do not believe that in exactly three months I will cease to exist. You will read these lines, and I shall not exist. And this very thought has supported me to some extent and given me the strength to write to you. When you told me that by my letter I would be able to teach the alive to live, that there is an inscription on the anatomical theatre that goes: “Dead Teach Alive”, I got frightened at first. Then I remembered that great scientists gave their bodies for the sake of science and research, and we give our souls, our perception, our world, and our sensations so that they can be of some use – all that has allowed me to write to you now. I shall be frank. All my life I have been a parasite and a sponger. I did a lot of sports in my youth, I was fond of skiing, I had rather a strong will power, but my mother loved me a lot, and perhaps she was to blame for spoiling me. I had what I wanted to have very easily. Then, as I grew up I drank on her money, did not work, and generally lived on the money of my mother, an old-age pensioner almost till I was thirty-nine. My mother sort of put me on her shoulders, and she would have gladly pushed me off them, but I would stay on. I was so ill, that I tormented her, living like a brute, from booze to booze. All my hobbies and all my life only consisted of sex and drunkenness. Besides, I liked good food. In childhood I liked a lot of sweets, living in a world of pleasures without feeling any responsibility. Somewhere in the subconscious I felt that I was a sponger and sometimes cried because of that. But I could not do anything about it. I had never had any permanent sex partners, as women guessed immediately that I was a selfish parasite. I just used them, although there were women who loved me very much, but I could not communicate with those I did not love and with whom I did not sympathise. As a matter of fact, I turned into a big “sonny” who sucked from a bottle filled with vodka. My mother continued to behave in the same way and treated me as a boy, a sonny, but only a big sonny-alcoholic. And finally she ruined me by her love. But in spite of all that I do not blame her. I love her as I loved her before. Mother presently died, and I remained alone. Then I understood what I had lost, and I sobbed for three days. I have communicated with my mother to this day: she comes back in my dreams, and I cry, hug her, kiss her, and I cannot forgive myself for what I have done to her. Her death had a sobering effect on me, and strange as it might seem, I did not drink for rather a long time – for half a year. But I did not become healthier. I fell ill. I had trouble with my liver, but now it is in a critical state – a tumour has been discovered. Cancer! Some inner anger to myself probably allows me not to be afraid, and I dislike myself and do not care to such an extent, that I am not afraid of death. I spit on it! I am nothing, but a parasite, mould. I shall die like a dog! And I feel no fear. I do not even think of who will bury me and where. As a matter of fact, I only now began to understand that I did not only love others, but I did not love and did not respect myself. And drunkenness showed my couldn’t-care-less attitude to myself. The world opened to me in a new way. Yes, it has opened. I see it in a different way now. I have become more kind, and I have begun to talk in a different way. But what is it all for? All the same, I shall cease to exist in two months. My relatives come to see me, and they say that I have already changed, that I have begun to communicate in a different way. Yes, it is so. But I have left nothing; I have not worked lately. I know that my son is growing somewhere, and the thought of it sometimes keeps me warm. My image walks somewhere, and he knows about me. I did not want him to know about me. I do not want to be pitied by others. I do not want, that’s all. I think that only now I begin to understand that my drunkenness was masochism towards myself, and I sort of understood that I was ruining myself in that way, only gradually. Well, I have achieved my goal. Now I am writing to you, and there is spring outside. The snow is melting, it is dripping, and the sun is shining. This spring has been for me the spring of my soul. It somehow reminds me of the springs that came to me in my childhood. Yes, I am coming back to myself. I am coming back. You will probably be surprised, but in spite of the fact that I have only two months to live, I have begun to work, and you should see with what pleasure I am doing it. I sort of make up for what I have not done before. I began to communicate with my relatives and I have visited them all. They do suspect that I come to say good-bye, and my uncle told me directly: “I have a feeling that I shall never see you again. You talk that way.” He has probably guessed. Moreover, you will probably be surprised, but I am sort of pleased to be in such a state. I have never understood that people, who want to commit a suicide, want it with pleasure. I think that I am that very self-murderer, only I will not murder myself.
What shall I say to other people that would be of use to them? I would rather give no advice. I just thought that if I were born anew, would anything change? I think there is something: advice or no advice, but every man has his own destiny. Man follows it. And all that I have told you here is a sort of advice.
What a pity I got hold of this book too late! My future death has encoded me, but alas, there is so little to live.
V.Chekurin. Yekaterinburg.
ATTITUDES CONSOLIDATING THE RESULTS OF THE BORDERLINE ANALYSIS AND ENCODING
ATTITUDE 46
The complexity of the treatment of your alcoholism consisted in the fact that:
1. It was difficult to define what ailed you. The analyses did not indicate anything negative. Your soul is ill. But you could not point to the sore place.
2. You could not define the moment when you fell ill. When your illness was revealed it had been neglected for some time. It came imperceptibly.
Now you have made it clear.
ATTITUDE 47
Note to yourself that illusion is often perceived as objective reality but not as something generated by one’s own brain. Therefore, illusory images cause the same psychological processes as the real world does.
All illusions can be conventionally divided into two types: a). Positive; b). Negative.
Their positive or negative character is determined in this case by the criterion of usefulness and the development of a personality, but not by its attractiveness. (Thus, narcotic illusions may be attractive, but not positive. And vice versa, TORMENTS OF CREATIVITY are possible, the causes of which may be positive but unattractive illusions).
For many creative people illusions are objective, as due to them people create, feel, are overfilled with ideas and possessed by thirst for action, etc.
Illusions seize only part of the personality, i.e. man stands with one foot in the real world and with the other — in the illusory one.
If illusions have subjected a personality completely, they change into something dangerous for this personality and for the surrounding society.
In their turn positive and negative illusions may be attractive or unattractive.
Seized by attractive illusions (for instance, alcoholic intoxication, creative inspiration) man assesses himself and his possibilities in a different way. A sense of power, inspiration and joie de vivre appear. Artistic people may have similar feelings. On the contrary, imbued with unattractive illusions man feels collapse, discomfort and depression.
In its activity and influence on man’s behaviour illusory perception can exceed other influences.
ATTITUDE 48
The effectiveness of your treatment for alcoholism will be low if you contrast a sober way of life to alcoholic one, i.e. when you try to combine, mix and in the long run put together alcoholic and sober illusions (illusions of a sober way of life). As the long experience of the drinking Russia has shown, there is nothing positive in this contrasting.
THE WORLD OF ALCOHOLIC ILLUSIONS is a world with its internal and independent laws. It is necessary to study this world SEPARATELY, out of touch with a sober way of life. Then you will really understand the alcoholic and be able to help him. That is why the author considers, that the strongest psychotherapists are those who have cognised this world and left it.
The psychology of a drunken man has its internal laws. It is a special science. It is only when a psychotherapist has cognised it that he can help a person who is ill with alcoholism.
ATTITUDE 49
REMEMBER THAT THE WORLD OF ALCOHOLIC ILLUSIONS HAD FOR YOU A VALUE AND INDEPENDENCE OF ITS OWN, FOR IT WAS VERY OFTEN THE ONLY MEANING OF LIFE FOR YOU. A psychotherapist ought to understand that curing a man of alcoholism he takes away his meaning of life from him – his alcoholic illusion. Therefore, before taking it away, it is necessary to think of substitution of this illusion by a worthy one. The more correct is the choice of illusion, the more effective is the treatment.
One should look upon alcoholic illusions from the point of view of these very illusions, i.e. from within. It may advance the cognition of the deep cause of alcoholism.
Alcoholism often serves as an illusory compensation by an individual of his complexes, his psychic conflicts and loss of the meaning. Man is unaware of this loss.
The world of alcohol can consist both of the elements of sober life singularly, and with additional images that only appear after alcoholic intoxication.
ATTITUDE 50
Do not believe some physicians and experts in narcology, who are far from understanding the sources of alcoholism. The trouble of all the science about alcoholism is that it cannot understand that a man, who has known the joys of alcoholic illusion, is incapable of coming back into the real world, in which he lived before his drunkenness because:
1. The effect of contrast works here, i.e. the reality becomes more faded against the background of alcoholic illusions. The man comes back into a different world. The reality is perceived in a different (unattractive) way.
2. “You cannot come into the same river twice”. While a man is treated for alcoholism, the world changes. The man “sets on a journey” in search of nostalgic feelings, but the world has already changed for him. Many creative people that have known creative joy and illusions see it as unattractive and begin to compensate this replacement by alcohol. Therefore one of the causes of drunkenness of creative people is the occupation itself or, to be exact, the impossibility to feel creative joys in large doses.
ATTITUDE 51
There are two ways for you to come back to the real world (avoiding a drive to the world of alcoholic illusions):
1. To find the most attractive illusion, which can be compared with the alcoholic illusion and exceeds it. For instance, it is possible when man finds himself on the borderline between existence and non-existence, or he creates such a situation himself.
2. To make a “real world” of alcoholic illusions, i.e. to make them unattractive. To turn alcoholic images into ordinary ones. By the way, it is due to this very reason that many people ill with alcoholism come for treatment.
I am an alcoholic and will soon kick the bucket. It’s a cert. The doctors said so. Just wanted to write to you. I feel some emptiness, I don’t want to do anything, and it gives me a fright to think that I shall have to exist in this emptiness for about two months. This emptiness was getting at me before, when I was younger. Once (I was thirty-one then) I was seized by horror. It was the horror at the thought of death. It was that sort of period in my life. Then, in three years I forgot about it and lived on normally. But now the feeling has returned to me, but it is somewhat different. It has turned out to be not so terrible as the one I fancied before. As a matter of fact, I am not very frightened. It may be because I have lived rather a long life (I am already sixty-six). And still I do not consider myself to be old. I want to live, and I say it again, I want to live and, as a matter of fact, I do not believe that I shall no longer exist. I simply do not believe. Sometimes at night I feel so horror-stricken and so lonely that I wake up and cannot understand what is wrong with me. There are my children and grandchildren nearby, all peacefully asleep. Well, quite recently on the dacha, they were all near me, but still, I felt lonely. I am just unable to express this unbearable loneliness. Then, when I was thirty-two, it was the same loneliness, I remember it, and I was in such a state for two years. Now it has returned. Especially in the evening the loneliness becomes particularly acute. I wake up and take a sedative. I’ll tell you frankly: it’s very hard. Twice I even wanted to commit suicide. I went to the toilet, but my wife watches my every step. She is sort of half-asleep. It is impossible to get away from her. I would, of course, if I wanted to, but I evidently have some sort of barrier. I would leave my wife, and nobody would notice it. Perhaps I am an atheist. I met a friend of my childhood, and he told me that if I prayed, everything would be much easier. I have always been a communist, and now I am displeased because they have not put me on the phone, and I keep swearing, and it seems I do not really need it. I swore about it yesterday, for I have been on the waiting list for the telephone for seventeen years already. A question arises: what do I need it for? Once I even tried to learn to pray, to communicate with God. I stood, looked up at the sky and raised my hands. But I failed to do it. I do not believe that some day I shall live again. I believe neither in Christianity, nor in Islam, nor in Buddhist teachings. Now they are writing a lot about karma, but I do not believe in it. But nevertheless I have some hope that I shall somehow live, only in different forms – in my children, grandchildren – I shall live, I believe in that. I also believe in a biological continuation of my life. I live all the same, and it gives me joy and comfort. I have six grandsons: when I say “six grandsons”, I feel better, and I am not afraid. Even now that I am writing, I have a photo on the table: I am hugging my grandsons. They are all unlike one another. The eldest is twelve, the youngest is six months old. Once I walked into a church, or, to be exact, my wife took me there. I began to talk to a priest, looked at him and noticed that he was obviously a sinner himself – he was not listening to me, whereas he ought to listen. So I did not want to open my heart to him. There was emptiness, emptiness again. Sometimes it so happens that I forget about it and begin to do something, especially in the morning: wash, shave myself, but it only lasts me an hour and a half, and then the miserable state comes back. And this heavy thought is with me. It’s hard, very hard indeed.
All that I am writing to you I would never tell anyone else. I try to speak as little as I can, I keep everything in myself. Honestly, I just want to complain to someone, I just don’t know – to whom. Maybe, I am just preparing myself, maybe I shall find the one to complain to. Maybe, this is God. May be, in this way He will reveal Himself to me. Perhaps, it is strange, but I sleep soundly. But, as I have already said, when I wake up, I feel some loneliness. And in my dreams I have only seen my childhood of late. I see the happiest moments of my childhood. What I would advise to all the other people is as follows: live every moment, live every second the really big way. Do not think about your bad past and do not hurry into the future. Live every second. Even now I feel that I live well. And, by the way, the time passes slower. I am sure that it can all be changed. Time passes slower.
I tried to communicate with old people, who are twenty or twenty-five years older that I. As a matter of fact, they are in a similar situation. I know that they have very little to live, and still, their communication is a little different: they are somewhat tired of life. They are so tired that they are not afraid of death. Well, and besides, many of them lack health. It is some weakness and weak-headedness. And their fear is different. Can weak-headed children have any fear? I want to live. Absurd. The only thing that consoles me now is that in time I shall have imbecility, too, and then I shall not be able to realise what is happening. I shall feel worse, and it will be for sure, the doctor told me so. Now that I have written you the letter, there is less emptiness.
I have read your book. It has calmed me down. But I no longer drink even without the book: what’s the use of drinking if you know that you will soon cease to exist?
Polikarpov. Kazan.
ATTITUDE 52
A question may arise on your part: how long must you stay in THE WORLD OF ALCOHOLIC ILLUSIONS to lose ability to return to the real world (not a faded one)? This is an individual question. According to the author’s research, it takes less time for women, for instance, than for men.
At the initial stage of alcoholism taking alcohol is necessary for improving one’s mood, removing the complexes, increasing the level of creative activity, etc. Short-time illusions are created, facilitating these or those psychological processes.
At the later stage these illusions are no longer short, but are turned into life, i.e. man lives entirely in those illusions. Existence in alcoholic illusions becomes the goal of life. In this case the world of illusions is simplified and contains a small number of elements, such as the processes and situations of drinking, bottles of wine, etc.
There are positive illusions that improve man. They are creative illusions. The person, who creates them, begins little by little to perceive that they spread on to his whole life and on other spheres of his activity.
At the mere thought of a drink a person ill with alcoholism begins to perceive alcoholic illusions: his spirits rise, temporary purposefulness appears, etc.
ATTITUDE 53
Try to find out what stage of alcoholism you had? To do it, try to understand the signs of all the stages mentioned below:
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE FIRST STAGE OF ALCOHOLISM. A teetotaller has both attractive and unattractive illusions. Even if he has a drink, his ATTRACTIVE ILLUSIONS (CREATIVE, COGNITIVE, SPORTIVE, ENTERTAINING, ETC.) can exceed alcoholic fantasies. Thus, so far this does not harm the personality because such alcoholic illusions are of short-lived character, and after them man returns to the real world without bad consequences (i.e. becomes sober).
Illness comes at the moment when the experience of alcoholic illusions becomes a value in itself, and man prolongs this illusion by taking additional doses of alcohol. If alcoholic intoxication is of short-lived character with a healthy man, an alcohol-dependent man, feeling the lowering of the level of alcoholic intoxication, drinks more alcohol thus restoring the lost illusions.
Man stays in a world of illusions on his own will, therefore he can “play back” one and the same attractive (or vice versa) scene, i.e. he can “switch it on like a gramophone record” a thousand and one times. He is unable to do that in reality. He can laugh for a suspiciously long time, and cry, etc., etc. There is no getting accustomed to something in illusory reality. This “kaleidoscope” of alcoholic illusions is hard to stop. Therefore man takes an additional dose. AND A BINGE BEGINS. A BINGE IS A CONTINUATION OF ALCOHOLIC ILLUSIONS, IN WHICH MAN CHOOSES AND “PLAYS BACK” CERTAIN PLEASURES OR TROUBLES OF LIFE. When a teetotaller makes his creative illusions, he takes an active part in them due to his external activities, whereas an alcohol-dependent man only “participates” in his own fantasies. As the term of drinking alcohol grows, man begins to look at his aims of life through the prism of alcoholic illusions, and adjusts himself to them All the aims of life are replaced by one – to take alcohol and plunge into the world of illusions generated by it. At the first stage of the disease all non-alcohol events are still perceived adequately, e.g. responsibility at work, birth of a child, salary, etc. An alcohol-dependent person at the first stage is simply carried away and begins to feel joy at a prospect of a drink. There is an interest, but there is also an interest to other things. Man does not yet exist in alcoholic illusions because he seldom sees them.
THE SECOND STAGE OF ALCOHOLISM. At this stage of the disease ILLUSORY REALITY begins to exist as an autonomous reality. The world of alcoholic illusions becomes a considerable item in the life of man. There is no life without this world. The world of alcoholic illusions becomes wider, non-alcoholic – narrower.
By the end of the second stage man goes over to EXISTENCE in a world of alcoholic illusions. Man is well aware of the negative sides of drunkenness, but he drinks hard in spite of that. He leads a double life, and suffers from this duality.
Man discovers for himself A WORLD OF ALCOHOLIC ILLUSORY REALITY AS AN AUTONOMOUS REALITY. Man sort of lives in two worlds. This alcoholic illusory reality is similar to a non-alcoholic one and therefore has ITS ATTRACTIVE AND UNATTRACTIVE ILLUSIONS, ITS INTERNAL LAWS AND CHARACTERICTICS. To understand a person in this “reality” it is necessary to plunge into it. That is why a drunken man always understands another drunken man, whereas a drunken man cannot understand a sober man (or vice versa). A sober man becomes an outsider in drunken company.
At the second stage alcoholic illusions become a norm, therefore they are a reality in a sense.
THE THIRD STAGE OF ALCOHOLISM. At this stage periods without alcoholic illusions are hard experiences for a sick person. The world of alcoholic illusions no longer consists of attractive and unattractive ones. Man has no strength for their perception. He drinks alcohol often, but in little doses. At this stage he degrades as a personality. He is left with but primitive actions and experiences.
ATTITUDE 54
On the basis of what has been stated above you can come to a conclusion that systems of influence are necessary, which:
1. Would remove the images (fantasies, reflections, notions, and associations) about alcohol, the contents of which are alcoholic illusions experienced before.
2. Would reduce the attractiveness of alcoholic illusions, i.e. reduce the attractive elements of their world.
3. Would not “grab” a person ill with alcoholism quickly and “drag” him into soberness. Earlier, this “grab” was external, i.e. without a deep psychological understanding of the phenomenon of alcoholism and there was an opposition of alcoholism to a sober way of life (an authoritatively imposed norm). There is no norm.
ATTITUDE 55
TO MAKE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF YOUR TREATMENT FOR ALCOHOLISM HIGH, ILLUSIONS OF REAL LIFE ARE NECESSARY, WHICH ARE NO WORSE IN BRIGHTNESS THAN THE ILLUSIONS OF ALCOHOLIC INTOXICATION.
ATTITUDE 56
Now, perhaps you can recognise yourself? To confirm this, we shall quote the chief methods, delusions, myths and manipulations used by alcoholics to justify their drunkenness:
1. ABOUT 32% OF THE PEOPLE, WHO ARE ILL WITH ALCOHOLISM DO NOT ADMIT THAT THEY ARE ALCOHOLICS, ASSERTING THAT THEY HAVE COME FOR TREATMENT UNDER THE PRESSURE OF THEIR RELATIVES. AT THE SAME TIME THEY SAY THAT ONCE THEY HAVE HAD A DRINK, “IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO STOP”.
2. “I AM NOT AN ALCOHOLIC. I MAY DRINK, AND I MAY NOT. RECENTLY I ABSTAINED FROM DRINKING FOR A WHOLE MONTH” etc., etc. (11%). IN REALITY THEY DO NOT REALISE THE FACT THAT THEY DRINK PERIODICALLY.
3. “I’M NOT AN ALCOHOLIC, BECAUCE I DON’T GO ON A BINGE FOR SEVERAL DAYS RUNNING, BUT I DRINK EVERY DAY” (6%).
4. “CAN’T I ALLOW MYSELF TO HAVE A DRINK ONCE A DAY AFTER A HARD DAY’S WORK? MY FATHER ALWAYS DID IT, AND EVERYTHING WAS ALL RIGHT IN THE FAMILY” (32%).
5. “RUSSIA DID DRINK AND WILL DRINK. EVEN THE PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA DRINKS” (4%).
6. “IT IS USEFUL TO HAVE A DRINK. ALCOHOL PURIFIES THE ORGANISM. I’VE READ THAT DOCTORS RECOMMEND IT”, etc., etc. (9%).
7. “MY FATHER DRANK ALL HIS LIFE, HE LIVED TILL THE AGE OF 80…AND EVERYTHING WAS OK” (5%).
8. “I DO NOT WANT TO DRINK, BUT THEY OFTEN COMPEL ME TO. IF I REFUSE, THEY’LL BE OFFENDED” (22%).
9. “THEY POUR ME ALCOHOL FOR A PERFORMED JOB, FOR THEY HAVE NO MONEY TO PAY” (9%).
10. “VODKA REMOVES STRESSES VERY WELL” (19%).
11. “IT IMPROVES YOUR APPETITE” (5%).
12. “IT MAKES YOU SEXUALLY STRONGER” (3%).
13. “AREN’T I A MAN, AND CAN’T I HAVE A DRINK?” (16%).
14. “I AM NOT AN ALCOHOLIC LIKE SOME OTHER PEOPLE, WHO LIE ABOUT ON THE GROUND AND DRINK WITH A COUPLE OF OTHER ALCOHOLICS ROUND THE CORNER” etc. (9%).
15. “I AM NOT AN ALCOHOLIC, FOR I HAVE NEVER BEEN IN A SOBERING-UP STATION (2%).
16. “I AM NOT AN ALCOHOLIC…” (AND THEN HE BEGINS TO LIST ALL THE SIGNS OF ALCOHOLISM – (10%).
17. “I DRINK BUT ONCE A WEEK. AM I AN ALCOHOLIC?!” (7%).
18. “EVEN GREAT PEOPLE DRANK ALCOHOL” (AND THEN HE ENLISTS OUTSTANDING PEOPLE OF THE PAST, WHO ABUSED ALCOHOL – 4%).
19. SOME PEOPLE, WHO ARE ILL WITH ALCOHOLISM (8%) PREFER TO BE BROUGHT FOR TREATMENT BY OTHERS TO JUSTIFY THEMSELVES ALLEGING THAT THEY CAME ON THEIR OWN WILL (THEY DO NOT CONSIDER THEMSELVES TO BE ALCOHOLICS). IN CASE THE TREATMENT FAILS, THEY PUT ALL THE BLAME ON THOSE WHO HAVE BROUGHT THEM TO THE DOCTOR.
20. “I LOST THE MEANING OF LIFE AND THEREFORE BEGAN TO DRINK”. BUT IN REALITY THE OPPOSITE OFTEN HAPPENS: ALCOHOLISM RESULTS IN THE LOSS OF THE MEANING OF LIFE. (6%).
21. “I AM NOT AN ALCOHOLIC BECAUSE I NEVER EAT THE HAIR OF THE DOG THAT BIT ME”. A QUESTION ARISES OF HOW TO DEFINE WHETHER HE IS AN ALCOHOLIC OR NOT, IF HE TAKES ALCOHOL EVERY DAY?! (10%).
22. “I’M A SUPPLIER (OR SOME OTHER TRADE). DRINKING IS NECESSARY IN MY BUSINESS” (4%).
23. “I AM NOT AN ALCOHOLIC, I HAVE A DISEASED NERVOUS SYSTEM” (11%).
24. THERE ARE ALSO SOME OTHER METHODS OF JUSTIFYING A DRINK.
A fear for health brings 52% of the “green serpent” lovers to narcological consulting rooms. They wish to do away with their disease. The second place is held by the fear of losing a job (21%). A pressure from wives, children and relatives urges 9% of the questioned people to take a treatment. And only one tenth came to such a decision by a rational way.
ATTITUDE 57
WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR RELATIVES ARE WORRIED ABOUT CONCERNING YOU?
IN THE FIRST PLACE (62%) IT IS THE PROBLEM OF THE TREATMENT OF THE SICK PERSON WITHOUT HIS KNOWING IT, I.E. THE POSSIBILITY OF TREATMENT WITHOUT VISITING THE PSYCHOTHERAPIST (BECAUSE YOU DO NOT WANT TO SEE THE DOCTOR). IT IS CONNECTED WITH THE FACT THAT MANY ALCOHOLICS DO NOT WANT TO TAKE A TREATMENT.
62% OF CORRESPONDENTS SENT THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF ALCOHOLICS WITH THE PURPOSE OF RECEIVING A HEALING INFLUENCE THROUGH THE PHOTO.
34% OF THE CORRESPONDENTS NOTED THAT THEY CANNOT BE THE WITNESSES OF THE “GRADUAL DYING OF THE SICK PERSON”.
28% FEEL COMPLETE ALIENATION TO THEIR ALCOHOLIC RELATIVE AND DO NOT WANT TO LIVE WITH HIM EVEN AFTER THE TREATMENT.
EVERY FIFTH LETTER (20%) IS WRITTEN BY THE CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS (AGED 10 – 16). PRACTICALLY, IN ALL THEIR LETTERS CHILDREN EXPRESS HOPELESSNESS AND PITY FOR THEIR MOTHERS.
19% OF THE AUTHORS ARE WORRIED BECAUSE THEIR SUFFERINGS CAN LEAD TO A MURDER OF THEIR ALCOHOLIC RELATIVE (91% OF THEM ARE WIVES AND CHILDREN).
AND STILL, PITY FOR THE PERSON ILL WITH ALCOHOLISM IS FELT IN 80% 0F THE LETTERS.
31% 0F WIVES CANNOT UNDERSTAND: “WHAT ELSE DOES HE WANT, HE’S GOT EVERYTHING…MONEY, CHILDREN, HOME, ETC.”.
ATTITUDE 58
WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO BE TREATED FOR ALCOHOLISM?
1. “Bad health. Nearly died…”
2. “I am sick and tired of it. No good, only ill all the time.
3. “They threaten to sack me. Made me take a treatment.”
4. “My family is disintegrating. Something must be done”.
5. “Have some plans in life”.
6. “Want to try and live without alcohol”.
ATTITUDE 59
Try to understand that alcoholism is a natural selection of the strong of spirit. God removes the weak of spirit, and He does it with the help of alcohol.
Having read your book, I realised that during all my life I have been missing myself badly, and all that due to vodka. I am very advanced in years, and it’s about time for me to die of my old age. I forget who I am and what I am. And now, just now being in such a situation I understand what I am and who I am. Some realisation has come to me. I have been missing myself, but now I am feeling as I have never felt before. My essence is opening in me more and more from day to day. It turns out that I am not such a goner, I have so much good in me. I believe in God. To tell the truth, I only recently told myself so. And now, only now I understand that I have something that allows me to speak of myself as a religious person. I am really sorry that I did not believe before and I have almost lived my whole life without God. Generally in the USSR there was an opinion that there was no God, and I just happened to be the victim of our system. Therefore, I would like to address people and wish them to discover God for themselves and the faith in Him. It is good. Do I really believe that after death I shall be re-born somewhere again or go to some other world? More likely, I do not, but somewhere at the bottom of my heart there is some tiny belief. In spite of my being a Christian I have read books about rebirth of souls, about re-incarnation and about karma. There are many books of this kind nowadays. I want, of course, to re-appear some day somewhere. I want it because many people accept this idea. Moreover, I have read the Bible and I am reading it now. I have found many places there about man coming into the world more than once. In any case I read so. I sleep very badly – one hour, sometimes two hours a day. Some nightmare interferes. There are some visions; I begin to notice something in front of me. They say that some people see angels, but I don’t know. Personally I see some absurd pictures, not more, and that depresses me. All kinds of nonsense get into my head. I hear some sounds, but I cannot remember what kind. You asked me once to make a note of them, but I could not, because I forget them immediately. I suppose that all the pictures arising before me are a product of my past experience. They come from within me, and I obviously cannot sculpture the angels that are supposed to fly to me. Maybe, I will manage to sculpture them. I have read somewhere that if some white angels appear, a man calms down. Maybe, it is still to come. My best friend died in his sleep. And now I only think about this. Perhaps, I shall have a bit of luck. I do not want anything. I only want to go to sleep and not to wake up again. This dream is always with me, and I think about it every day. What can I do to go to sleep not to wake up again? And I still sleep badly.
I shall tell you one thing: now, as never before, I say the words of prayers, read the Bible – quite in a different way, and all that thanks to your book. It has shown me many things in a different, new light. I even put it under my pillow.
It is interesting that I do not envy people who are alive. I am absolutely devoid of this wicked envy, and I am surprised at it. I have no malice to people. But what I would like to wish them and to say to them is this: do not go away from yourselves, be yourselves, do not bury yourselves, do not surround yourselves with things, which make you forget who you are. So, I say it again: I have missed myself greatly. Only now in my life I feel who I am and what I am. And I would like all people to have this feeling during their lifetime, and it is not necessary for them to get into a situation similar to my present situation.
V.V.Yegorov. Astrakhan.
ATTITUDE 60
Do not forget that we are all born being drunk. All children are drunk.
ATTITUDE 61
Realise that the sources of alcoholism and drug addiction begin with the division of man into adult and child. The soul is one, and it does not change, i.e. there is neither child nor adult in the space of the soul. There is something singular – the soul of man. When the differentiation begins, psychic problems appear, and as a consequence – alcoholism or drug addiction.
ATTITUDE 62
Realise that alcoholic intoxication is AN ILLUSION OF UTMOST FREEDOM THAT LEADS TO UTMOST ABSENCE OF FREEDOM.
ATTITUDE 63
To stop drinking alcohol it is necessary for you to:
1. Keep yourself from internal destructive and emotional dependence on alcohol.
2. Keep yourself from destructive dependencies coming from without (from the manipulations of the people with whom you drink).
ATTITUDE 64
You will not drink alcohol because of:
1. THE PURPOSE ATTITUDE “not to drink because it is necessary for something important…”
2. REASONABLE ATTITUDE:
a). If you have a drink, you will face the consequences, therefore “why should I do it?” (Opposing attitude).
b). The mood is fine as it is, life is good as it is (replacing attitude).
ATTITUDE 65
Realise that the problem of your alcoholism – is a problem of your PSYCHOLOGICAL OLD AGE.
ATTITUDE 66
Suppose that mankind has learned to cure drug addicts quickly and efficiently, returning them to their normal initial psycho-emotional state. Consequently, a great temptation arises for the people on the planet to take narcotics and then be cured. It may be disastrous for the planet. Therefore God has created drug addiction as a disease, that can be cured at the expense of life, or during the whole life.
ATTITUDE 67
Does it not seem to you that you have stuck in your childhood? In reality it is not only on a psychological level, but also on a biological one. The brain regresses under the influence of alcohol.
ATTITUDE 68
Maybe, you suffer from allergy to life? Then, be careful! Suicides and alcoholism are often a consequence of ALLERGY TO LIFE.
ATTITUDE 69
To understand your own self, your essence you get tipsy drinking alcohol without noticing it. When you do it, your essence is being revealed – for others.
Only in a STATE OF UNWILLINGNESS, which may only be present in a meditative state (but not in a state of alcoholic intoxication) can a personality realise the ESSENCE OF HIS THINKING and himself as a human being. But it seems to you that it is only possible in a state of alcoholic intoxication. Do not you drink for that purpose? Thus, you get drunk not to get away from your essence, but on the contrary, to cognise it?! Think hard about it.
ATTITUDE 70
The hangover syndrome is for you the CONCLUDING BARRIER arising as the price you have to pay for not learning to live and enjoy life overcoming barriers.
ATTITUDE 71
With all your heart accept the fact that alcoholism in Russia is a concealed civil war. The theatre of war is played in drunkenness in families, in streets, in flats (when they are burgled) etc.
ATTITUDE 72
Don’t you think it is time for you to “COLLECT YOUR REMAINING BRAINS” and do away with drunkenness once and for all?
ATTITUDE 73
You will have difficulties…Because of all the struggles the most complex and painful is a STRUGGLE…WITH YOURSELF.
ATTITUDE 74
When you drank, you felt you were beginning to love everything and everybody. You have to pay a heavy price for that illusion of love, for after it comes a “punishment” in the form of DISLIKE FOR EVERYTHING AND EVERYBODY.
ATTITUDE 75
At first you had abrupt changes of your mood. Then they turned into BREAKING OF MOOD. In the end it all leads to the hangover syndrome and for some of you – even to alcoholic psychosis.
ATTITUDE 76
Some religions of the East consider our usual thoughts to be harmful for us. They are destructive and sinful because of the influence of the socium and ego. If a child could initially think in nirvana thoughts (it is thinking in a state of real creative illumination, catharsis, purification. It is close to spiritual thinking), he would never become an alcoholic. Alas! That is beyond us, therefore, we go further on.
ATTITUDE 77
It is necessary for you to train the special “MUSCLES OF THE BRAIN”. It is only possible with the development of the willpower.
ATTITUDE 78
Realise that drunkenness is a special form of philosophising existence, which is mainly based on feelings, not on reason. Therefore the words of drunken people are insane. Though, laymen take the sayings of any philosopher as mad. To understand a drunken man it is necessary to be drunk. In Russia such “philosophical circles” gathered most often near beer-houses. But nobody has written the philosophy of drunkenness yet. When the common philosophy of drunkenness is created, it will become the beginning of real curing of alcoholism. When we cognise drunkenness with reason, but not with feelings, we shall rid ourselves of alcoholism in a real way.
ATTITUDE 79
Some of you drink because of bad mood, others – because of good mood, which they are afraid to lose.
ATTITUDE 80
For some of you drunkenness has become an operative method of philosophising.
ATTITUDE 81
For some of you drunkenness is a consequence of the surplus of good and evil.
Some drink because of the surplus of internal evil, others – because of the surplus of internal good. Is it not so? Think hard about it!
ATTITUDE 82
If you are a creative person, do you not think that to make your soul create it is necessary for it to “DIE WITH MEASURE”, but so that it can be “born” again? That is the reason why your drunkenness (as well as that of other creative people – writers, artists, poets) seems to you to be the main motive force of our art. THE HANGOVER SYNDROME IS A GAME OF DEATH. The way out of it is birth. Earlier, when drunkenness did not have such menacing dimensions, the Russian soul was pacified with prisons, penal servitude, GULAG. Now there are no such things. But it is drunkenness that has come to take their place. Realise it, and do not fall into that extreme.
ATTITUDE 83
Some of you develop a wish to drink because of ENVY TO PEOPLE WITH MENTAL DISEASES, who are always in a good mood. Is it not so?
ATTITUDE 84
Realise that drunkenness has long become for you a method of creating emptiness. You want to get rid of it and you begin to create. In other words the emptiness is filled with a creative process. Without realising emptiness man cannot create. Emptiness is a necessary component of creativity, as a pause is in music (the music of life). It is only on a white sheet that something black can appear, and real creations can only appear against the background of emptiness.
ATTITUDE 85
Can we say that you were sometimes so full of sin that you could not weep? Tears were hidden somewhere very deep, and to make them flow you had to POUR VODKA ON YOUR SOUL.
ATTITUDE 86
Sometimes you drank in order to look in a different way (having different thoughts, images) at your unfortunate past. And indeed, such an assessment was sometimes positive.
ATTITUDE 87
So, we can say that your drunkenness is a game of a sinless person (a child) leading to sin?
ATTITUDE 88
Can we say that your drunkenness is a “game of insanity” leading to real insanity?
ATTITUDE 89
Don’t you think that to cure you of alcoholism your sober consciousness is required to make your perception childish?
ATTITUDE 90
If you feel a deep and healthy meaning of life only in a state of alcoholic intoxication and have forgotten how to feel it in a sober state, that is a sign of alcoholism. Though, some interesting phenomena occur, such as: a man feels the meaning and fullness of life due to his REMINIESCENCES OF A CONSCIOUS STATE OF ALCOHOLIC INTOXICATION. He sort of retains this image, as it is the core of the meaning of sober life. Thus, it is not the state of alcoholic intoxication itself that is more important for a man and his meaning of life, but the image of that state.
I feel very miserable for I cannot find the meaning of life. Those losses of the meaning I used to have in my youth look quite absurd even now that I am facing death. They look absolute nonsense. It is now that I have really lost the meaning of life, and those losses were just mere games. I do not know why, but I would like to begin my letter with these lines. I have bought your book so that it would help me to find the meaning. I want to find the meaning of life to leave this world with it. I also wanted to understand if it is possible to leave this world having some goals. Thanks to your book I understood one thing yesterday: I ought to remain a human till the end of my days. I know that I shall be raving, I shall feel bad. You told me and I have read somewhere that man gets run down, he is fatigued, he is so tired that sometimes he wants to be relieved of life and dreams of his own end. Now I am in a state of normal conscience, I reason, I write, I manage to encourage myself, and it is up to you to judge how I succeed in that. I want to do nothing – neither watch TV, nor read. Nothing at all! All those talks and things on the screen seem empty and absurd to me. There is some veil on my eyes that screens away everything, and I no longer feel the joy I used to feel before when I watched TV. And I did like to watch TV! I want to communicate, and do you know with whom? I want to communicate with people like myself, people who are doomed. But where can I find them? Go to hospital? Oh! If I did not drink vodka, I would not have such a terrible diagnosis because of which I am to leave this world soon. I fear most of all other things to spend the last moments of my life in a shabby miserable ward. Till today I have not yet decided with whom I would like to spend my last days. I would think there is no such person. What a pity! My wife? No. Nor I want to spend my last days with my children. Frankly speaking, there is one person, a woman, whom I could trust, but it would be treacherous to my wife and children. I do not want to hurt their feelings. This woman has visited me twice, and my wife has seen her. I don’t know, she will probably appear, and I just hope that my wife and children will understand me. I cannot say anything to people. No, I can’t. Even if I do say something, it will be somewhat insincere. I am not ripe for it. But I read your book and feel better.
F.I.Gataullin. Kazan.
ATTITUDE 91
Some of you make the truth out of alcoholic intoxication, and aspire to it, and see the meaning of life in that aspiration. Some people enter this truth once a year; some do it more often. Others do it so often that it ceases to be the truth, and the meaning of life is lost. This is rather a wrong choice of the meaning of life.
ATTITUDE 92
It is necessary to consider both your external and internal phenomena of your drunkenness.
Your internal drunkenness is not the drunkenness itself, but your intention (disposition) to it as a natural stage of the development of your personality. With age man acquires internal “cavities” that can only be filled with intoxication (in the broad sense of the word, not necessarily alcoholic or narcotic). This is a phenomenon of an illusion of the meaning of life. It is temporary, but a personality can be “extinguished” without it to such an extent, that a suicide is possible. Discovering for himself a world of a state of intoxication, man will aspire to it. The meaning of life will be in this aspiration. But it is not worth drinking alcohol. It is necessary that man should carry the image of a state of intoxication through all his life without drinking alcohol, but only trying to remember his experiences of intoxication.
Your external drunkenness is drunkenness in the traditional sense of the word.
ATTITUDE 93
Don’t you think that your drunkenness is the impotence of your soul?
ATTITUDE 94
When everybody turns you out — your wife at home, your colleagues at work, etc., you get into a trap (deadlock). Besides all these, an internal deadlock is added, caused by your negative attitude to yourself (i.e. the hangover syndrome). As a result you want to rid yourself of all that either by committing suicide or by being treated.
ATTITUDE 95
Realise that in spite of the seeming similarity you are all different like coloured felt-tip pens, filled with alcohol. But you are all united by the state of a plain pencil – it is the hangover syndrome. THE HANGOVER SYNDROME IS THE AUTUMN OF A PLAIN PENCIL. A normal person who does not drink alcohol is also a plain pencil, but he has summer in his heart. But still, he is far from the beauty and variety of the felt-tip pens filled with alcohol!
ATTITUDE 96
Realise that a drunken felt-tip pen filled with alcohol lies on the table, and a plain pencil, which is not filled with alcohol also lies on the table. The moral is this: not every man who lies on the ground is a drunkard.
ATTITUDE 97
Your alcoholism is a disease of one minute. The minute comes when you have a drink without realising it (subconsciously).
ATTITUDE 98
If you are not encoded by a psychotherapist, you are encoded by life itself after a time: attempting a suicide you cut your veins.
ATTITUDE 99
Don’t you think that communication with men who also like a drink is a kind of homosexuality?
ATTITUDE 100
Your confidence in your desire (i.e. YOUR ONLY DESIRE TO HAVE A DRINK) is wrong. You come to drinking in the long run because you do not know what you want.
ATTITUDE 101
Remember your drunkenness at a funeral repast. It was a litmus paper that showed your real attitude to the deceased. Someone bitterly wept, and someone heartily rejoiced.
ATTITUDE 102
Have you ever thought that your consciousness is like a filter, choosing only those wishes that can replace alcohol?
ATTITUDE 103
Have you ever thought that a Russian person enjoyed a fast ride in the first place, and only after that it was transformed into enjoyment from alcohol. And everything began with the fast ride. A fast ride and vodka are two connected things.
ATTITUDE 104
Remember that an alcoholic who has a real attitude for soberness says: “It’s good to be sober!”, and an alcoholic who has stopped drinking for a time says: “It’s good to be sober because it is bad to drink”.
ATTITUDE 105
Remember that to be cured of alcoholism a patient should SIT SOBER WITH A TEETOTALLER AS LONG AS HE SAT WITH ALCOHOLICS IN A BAR.
ATTITUDE 106
Near to you there are people who do not drink but have the soul of an alcoholic (i.e. they have neuroses, selfishness, anxieties and motives similar to those of alcoholics). There are also people who drink alcohol but have a healthy soul of a teetotaller. Are you this kind of person?
ATTITUDE 107
Realise that spirituality is the only thing that can cure you of alcoholism. Spirituality is an ability to face death without fear.
ATTITUDE 108
Doesn’t it seem to you that your way of thinking is determined by the factors, which allow or do not allow you to have a drink?
ATTITUDE 109
Remember that most rich men in the first place invest their money into business, then into their numerous marriages and only then, being disappointed in all those – into drunkenness.
ATTITUDE 110
Do not forget that the alcohol dependence of your spouse is often connected with the CO-DEPENDENCE OF THE OTHER SPOUSE who suffers from the disease of his (or her) alcoholic spouse: he (she) looks after her (him) as one looks after an alcoholic. All this is aggravated by the worse alcoholism of the alcoholic spouse. A wife is ill with the alcoholism of her husband, or vice versa. It is necessary to treat a person for co-dependence, like it is necessary to treat for alcohol dependence.
ATTITUDE 111
Take into account that many actors and actresses are alcoholics. For some of them drunkenness is the continuation of the acting. If such an actor is not an alcoholic, the motive of his acting is not true, but pragmatic. Therefore his drunkenness allows him to act everywhere, and perceive the world by his heart, not by reason.
ATTITUDE 112
You must agree that very good people with a clear conscience often drink alcohol. They drink it because of their weakness.
ATTITUDE113
Drunkenness is for some of you a method of dying leading to a possibility of a new birth.
ATTITUDE 114
Some of you drink to exhaustion, nearly to death, finding the meaning of life in this dying, for after that they are re-born and begin to enjoy life, but only for a time. Thus, AN ALCOHOLIC ORGANISES HIS BIRTH MANY TIMES in his life, and drunkenness almost to death becomes for him the only form of life-asserting psycho-dynamics. IS IT ETHICAL TO TAKE AWAY FROM MAN THE POSSIBILITY OF BEING BORN MANY TIMES? OR WILL YOU INDULGE IN THIS EXTREMITY?
ATTITUDE 115
Take into account that to reveal the mystery of the Russian character it is necessary to take into account the attitudes conditioned by drinking alcohol.
ATTITUDE 116
Do not forget that God created alcohol to kill “SPIRITUAL WEAKNESS”, i.e. those who cannot live without artificial support of the spirit.
ATTITUDE 117
Think hard… In rural areas of Russia the PHENOMENON OF SUICIDE OF ALCOHOLICS has appeared, affecting those who used to drink together. They hang themselves at the funeral repasts of one another.
ATTITUDE 118
You must agree that an alcoholic committing a crime unconsciously in a state of alcoholic intoxication must be punished because before committing the crime he developed in himself a criminal psychology (the psychology of a drug-dependent personality).
ATTITUDE 119
What do you think an alcoholic and a felt-tip pen have in common? They are both filled with alcohol, and they are both able to draw beautiful pictures of life.
ATTITUDE 120
Your drunkenness is a false sincerity.
ATTITUDE 121
Do you agree that drunkards are WALKING MONUMENTS of the absurdity of mankind?
ATTITUDE 122
DO YOU AGREE THAT MAN IS DOOMED TO DRUNKENNESS, AS HE HAS COME OUT OF A DRUNKEN CHILDHOOD? The aspiration for childhood is the strongest of all other aspirations.
ATTITUDE 123
Take into account that the budget of Russia is refilled due to the sales of the vodka and other strong drinks. This is drunken money, and anything drunken is never serious. THE DRUNKEN ROUBLE CANNOT KEEP PACE WITH THE SOBER DOLLAR.
ATTITUDE 124
Realise that the phenomenon and secret of the Russian soul is in the fact that for it alcohol is both the highest value and a decisive protest.
ATTITUDE 125
Think hard: why are we born drunk?
1. IN BABYHOOD WE ARE DRUNK and insane to such an extent that we do not remember that time (the phenomenon of abstinence, as after ordinary drunkenness).
2. Children do not become drunk from vodka, but only go to sleep. It is superfluous for them: they are drunk as it is – from life.
3. WE LOOK UPON CHILDREN AS A SOBER PERSON LOOKS UPON A DRUNKEN ONE. Children find much sense in little things. Similarly, drunken people find much sense in any trifle (the phenomenon of the “drunken bazaar”).
4. From his birth a child is given an emotional contact, a natural inborn euphoria.
5. All the rest in the life of man is an aspiration to return to childhood, into the state of freedom and life full of meaning. Those who succeed in doing it are happy, those who are not ruin themselves by drinking.
6. Mankind has lost its natural inebriating cradle, has gone away from its cradle where it was possible to live without drunkenness. Nowadays children are born more and more depressed and joyless.
ATTITUDE 126
Is your alcoholism a consequence of your emotional stupidity?
ATTITUDE 127
When they say that degraded alcoholics are like animals, it is not correct. The likeness is purely outward. Don’t you think that your eyes are far different from the kind sinless eyes of animals?
ATTITUDE 128
Haven’t you noticed the fact that not only a sober person stops communicating with a drunken one because of lack of understanding, but also a drunken person stops communicating with a sober one seeing that the latter does not understand him.
ATTITUDE 129
Not all suicides want to be killed with their own hands. Not all… Are you different?
ATTITUDE 130
At times your search of strong experiences is a disguised form of desire to destroy yourself because of the absurdity of existence.
ATTITUDE 131
Don’t you think that for some personalities missing their essence causes a desire of suicide?
ATTITUDE 132
Learn to tell a bad mood from fits of alcoholic depression. Alcoholic depression has no cause (inexplicable anxiety arises). A bad mood depends on the situation, and it always has a cause.
ATTITUDE 133
After a course of treatment for alcoholism do not forget, that it is necessary to watch your mood, and in case of the appearance of neuroses, depressions and groundless anxieties you should consult a psychotherapist. Keep watch on your fits. Teach your relatives and friends to do it. For instance, your wife can see the coming fit of alcoholic depression. REMOVE THE FIT BY NON-ALCOHOL MEANS. ALCOHOL DOES NOT REMOVE NEUROSES.
ATTITUDE 134
Do not forget that most people committing suicide are alcoholics, who are in a state of hangover syndrome. By no means go to this extreme. It is possible to help you by non-alcohol means. Call the doctor. Relatives, who do not exclude the possibility of such an outcome, must give urgent help.
ATTITUDE 135
Remember that God, Allah, Nature created man so that he cannot be permanently in a state of ORGASM (also in a figurative sense of the word) without earning it by strain and suffering. Nature does not allow man to ENJOY WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT, AND GIVES HIM DISEASES.
ATTITUDE 136
If you have come to joy and orgasm (figuratively) through work, strain and suffering, you will never have illnesses from such an enjoyment.
ATTITUDE 137
DO NOT FORGET ABOUT THE EXPERIMENT WITH THE MOUSE, WHO DIED OF ORGASM WITHOUT TASTING THE CHEESE. ETERNAL ORGASM IS DEATH.
ATTITUDE 138
If the psychotherapist treating you for alcoholism humiliates you and calls you names, leave his consulting-room at once. It may be harmful to you.
ATTITUDE 139
Remember that a degraded alcoholic is a PSYCHIC CADAVER that has lost an ability to live and simply enjoy life. He is sinking every day. It is a DEATH game. It is acceleration of departure for ANOTHER WORLD. THIS CADAVER CAN BE REANIMATED. Do not believe those who say that treatment is useless.
ATTITUDE 140
After drinking look at yourself in a mirror for 15 minutes. It is difficult to do it because you are unnatural in your reflection. Look at yourself through tears. Stand it for 15 minutes! It is a good way of cleansing your soul.
ATTITUDE 141
Remember that vodka does not remove stress; as a result, it becomes worse (on the next day).
ATTITUDE 142
Do not forget the method of “Scales”. Before an offer to have a drink, put all the “positive” sides of it on one scale, all the negative ones – on the other. Believe me that the negative will always outweigh.
ATTITUDE 143
Remember that the chief meaning of life is responsibility and the necessity of being needed by others. Fill your life with meaningful contents.
ATTITUDE 144
Remember that alcoholism is SELF-SPOILING caused by:
a). Loss of the meaning of life;
b). Absence of defence from outward psychic attack;
c). Pathological childish egoism (to get pleasure by all means).
In the second place stands spoiling from the outer world: distress, inter-personal contacts, etc.
ATTITUDE 145
Remember that in most cases the treatment for alcoholism is favoured by the mutual understanding of spouses. But quite often wives treat their husbands as alcoholics, although they have not drunk for a long time. It is bad.
ATTITUDE 146
Ask yourself: “Is Russia a country of alcoholic idiots?”
ATTITUDE 147
It is DANGEROUS for you to be without activity. It is necessary to be always on the way somewhere, always in strain.
ATTITUDE 148
Set goals, go to achieve them, find temporary meanings and illusions. It is not accidental that people say, “He is happy who dies travelling”.
ATTITUDE 149
Remember that the alcoholism of women is more difficult to cure. This infection sticks to them much easier, than to men. The percentage of alcoholism is higher among frigid and single women.
ATTITUDE 150
Remember that vodka, like cement smoothes the roughness of life, but only for a while. This cement is not strong. After destruction the roughness will grow, and more cement will be required. It is a chain reaction.
ATTITUDE 151
Remember that alcoholism sticks to one group of people and does not stick to another. If you have grown as a dull depressive child, the acquaintance with alcohol is dangerous for you, for you may discover for yourself a “ROSY WORLD OF JOYS” and it will always attract you. That is alcoholism. That is why children of alcoholics often become alcoholics themselves.
ATTITUDE 152
Do not forget that we all come into this world being inebriated. It is just so. We are drunk in our childhood. A little man has in his brain a high concentration of substances, creating a good mood. Therefore children see much in little things. We wonder at them just as a sober person is wondering at a drunken one (but as it turns out, a drunken person finds in «drunken bazaar» meanings, which are beyond the understanding of a sober person). Children are drunk by nature. Therefore, if they accidentally taste alcohol, they go to sleep at once. It is superfluous for them because they are drunk as it is. Thus, it is not alcohol that makes a person drunk but substances produced in his organism. Alcohol only extracts these mood substances. This is just why a person often feels miserable in the mornings: his organism lacks the substances creating a good mood.
In other words, after an effective psycho-correction an alcoholic must concentrate on new attitudes and values with the intensity and frequency he concentrated on alcoholic illusions. As a matter of fact, harmless attractions should take the place of alcoholic mania: such as love-mania, book-mania, God-mania, non-pathologic mania of ambition, self-actualisation and other manias promoting spiritual and creative activity. Only in this case the attitude “not to drink alcohol” works. If this condition is not kept, a setback is possible. The problem of defining of this minimal intensity and frequency of cyclic recurrence of new attitudes, values and motives is very urgent today.
The life of a person, which depends on different kinds of pathological and non-pathological manias (superiority, love, religion; sexual, bookish, narcotic and other goals-images) is a life with active potential and in an active image (of a star, a beloved one, God, genitals, heroes, champagne bubbles, etc.). This image sort of stands before the eyes of the personality, and all the other images are passive and faded. We may suppose that if a drug-dependent person forms some new non-narcotic mania, he will be able to do without alcohol for a long time. Indeed, there are many examples of alcoholics, who started suffering from “starry diseases”, attending the meetings of religious groups, fell in love and thus lost interest in drugs or alcohol for years and years. The length of these periods much depends on the intensity and frequency of this active goal-image, i.e. on whether the virtual reality is formed or not.
ATTITUDE 153
Believe the author. You are not fully strayed people. The structure of your personality still has a hard core. The structure of a personality disintegrates completely after terrible sinful acts, such as murders, frauds, etc. How hard it is for soldiers who have fought in Chechnya! Many of them, suffering from nervous breakdowns, drink heavily. But this book helped even them.
THE CONCLUDING ATTITUDE.
It is time to come back to your own self… It is time…for you have been missing yourself and you are angry with yourself for losing the ability to live according to your natural moods…as you lived before…in your cloudless childhood!
I DO NOT WANT TO BE THE LAST ONE
Such a dialogue occurred between me (PSYCHOLOGIST) and alcoholic patient (MAN):
MAN: Yesterday I was supposed to commit a suicide, but I didn’t do it.
PSYCHOLOGIST. You did the right thing… But why? What’s the problem?
MAN: I don’t want to be the last one!… The problem is that yesterday I was supposed to commit a suicide… But I don’t want it!
PSYCHOLOGIST: Supposed to… supposed to… Is it possible to be under obligation to somebody in your own suicide? Ah…You were probably under obligation to yourself?
MAN: No, no. No obligation to myself.
PSYCHOLOGIST: Did you promise anyone to commit suicide?
MAN: No, I didn’t make such promises to anyone.
PSYCHOLOGIST: Then whom are you obliged to?
MAN (with a sigh): To my friends.
PSYCHOLOGIST: So it means you have promised them to commit suicide?
MAN: No.
PSYCHOLOGIST: OK… What’s wrong with your friends? Do they really want you to die? Tell me about them. How many friends have you?
MAN: I had five…
PSYCHOLOGIST: What’s happened to them? I’m listening. What kind of friendship is it?
MAN: A friendship of countrymen. It’s a special kind of friendship. It’s all in the public eye… Really, everybody saw what good friends we were. Somebody would think that we were just drinking together. Yes, we did drink…vodka and beer. And who doesn’t drink nowadays? But even if there were no vodka and beer, we would have been friends all the same. Of course, when we were younger, we could do without alcohol. After doing our housework we gathered on our favourite glade on the bank of a small river. It was our favourite place, and the whole village knew about it. It was a glade with a big old oak-tree on it. Even geese and ducks didn’t defecate there and by-passed that place, as if they knew we gathered there. An onlooker might think that we just played games or communicated like everybody else. Perhaps, it was so. And still, our friendship was a special one. There was everything in it: joys and sorrows. We told one another everything that happened during the day. We rejoiced and joked. Our voices were heard in the village and rang till late in the evening. I remember going to see each other off when we were called up for the army. Some of us were older and joined the army earlier. Then we drank heavily. Of course, parting is not a pleasant thing. But looking at the drunken boys one could wonder at our unity and organisation. One could also wonder at how we helped and supported one another. We were devoted to one another.
PSYCHOLOGIST: Yes, you can hardly find such friendship nowadays…
MAN: We cared not only of one another, but also of our parents and of our friends’ parents. We did everything together, only together. Our parents were even worried that we took everything to our company. If somebody wanted to do something, he asked our company and no one else for advice. All kinds of things happened. There were misfortunes and deaths, too… Somebody’s parents died. You may just think there’s nothing much in it, just country fellows communicated and drank beer together, not more than that.
PSYCHOLOGIST: No. I don’t think that way.
MAN: I remember, Andrey had trouble. A cow gored his mother to death, piercing her stomach with its horns. Andrey could not understand how their favourite cow could do it. All that happened before his eyes. Andrey didn’t know what to do and ran to our glade. We listened to him, calmed him down, and life went its usual way. Andrey came back to his life again. If it wasn’t for us, I don’t know what would have become of him.
I remember Vasya was drowning. He had got entangled in the weeds. He was shouting so that the whole village could hear him. It was early spring. The water was still very cold. It was Andrey, who saved him. And there were many other such cases. There were fights with strangers from other villages, and we all had to stand for one another. In a word, our friendship was proved. If somebody had said to us at that time that we loved and valued one another, we would have felt disconcerted, but we would have agreed to it. When you have something, you don’t want to talk about it. But, as they say, life was in full swing. We joined the Army, then came back, got married, and then got divorced and again gathered under our oak-tree on the bank of the river. None of us left for the town. None of us gave way to temptation because we valued this friendship. For a time everything went well. But hard times came on. There was lack of money, the unfaithfulness of wives, and some other misfortunes. We began to lack something. Some emptiness settled inside us, and we began to drink more. We felt it, and to make our friendship stay within us we drank and sort of came back to our old experiences. But when we came together without drinking, our communication failed. I don’t know why, but we could not stay together for a long time. Some conflicts arose, and a split began.
PSYCHOLOGIST: But still, what happened?
MAN: We all worked in a team of contractors. We were six including me. So, as a rule we drank heavily after work. Worked and drank. We drank on our earned money. So we went on working for about three years… And all of a sudden one of us hanged himself. It was Sashka. But we had felt before that there was something wrong with him. He had looked miserable for a long time. He was fading, getting thin and he looked pale. On the second day we buried him… During the funeral repast we got blind drunk from grief. And on the next morning another one of us hanged himself. It was Vaska. We found him on a glade near to our construction site.
PSYCHOLOGIST: After that you probably suffered a great deal?
MAN: I did. But some of our friends joked about it, saying: “Who’s next?” It was a sort of foul drunken game. But Seryozhka said that he would be next. We didn’t take him seriously. But he hanged himself, too.
PSYCHOLOGIST: So, it looks like some big solidarity, doesn’t it?
MAN: Yes, we were a very united team. We had all been friends since childhood: one for all and all for one. It was so.
PSYCHOLOGIST: But what happened next?
MAN: Well, we found Seryozhka hanging.
PSYCHOLOGIST: So, now you were only three?
MAN: My closest friends remained. We had a talk and decided to put a stop to it. I knew the remaining friends very well… But after the funeral repast Andrey disappeared. We thought he had gone away, but in a day we found him poisoned by carbon monoxide in a bathhouse. Was that accidental or…? This time I thought hard. Wasn’t there anyone who was killing us one by one for something like Agatha Christi’s little Negroes? I was horrified, as I had never been before. No, I had feared before, but I somehow thought that this would not happen to me. And now I understood, that it might happen to me, too. From fear, I suggested to my friends that we should keep together and defend ourselves.
PSYCHOLOGIST: Against whom?
MAN: I wish we knew about it… We even said that somebody had hanged our friends… (The man sighs). But in a week Ivan went on such a binge, that they could not save him. He died. After his funeral my last friend Grigoriy also committed a suicide. He hanged himself. I saw him being in low spirits and suffering. He drank too much again. He had looked happy since morning being in a state of hangover. But I still doubt it: maybe, somebody hanged him. Near the tree, on which he hanged himself, were found pieces of his belt. One may suppose that they belonged to abortive attempts, but…
PSYCHOLOGIST: Yes, in some cases, after abortive attempt suicides do not want a suicide. Such things happen. Well and what happened next?
MAN: Next?… Here I am, left alone. I also went on the binge because of those experiences. When I woke up this morning, I felt misery and emptiness. I also wanted to hang myself, but… I went to you instead, just so.
PSYCHOLOGIST: All your friends got into a dangerous psychological trap — a long-time alcoholic depression, and it washed them off the Earth’s surface. Add to it the example of your friends, who are already dead. It worked in the subconscious, as an attitude. It worked on the basis of that foolish solidarity, that foul game that grew on the soil of emptiness, sufferings and depressions conditioned by alcohol. But you were thrown ashore. You are like Robinson Crusoe, and you are to survive. Do you want to live? I shall treat you for alcoholism. But there’s another question: Why didn’t that wave wash you off?
MAN: Perhaps, it’s because everything’s all right at home. My wife isn’t an alcoholic and she’s faithful to me. We have enough money so far. That is why nearly all my friends suffered. To be cuckolded in a village is a tragedy for a man, a disgrace. And, generally speaking, I drank…in a different way… But I will surely take a course of treatment.
PSYCHOLOGIST: What does it mean: “drank in a different way”?
MAN: I just wanted to say, that I’ve been saved many times. It often happened that I drank and drank… And then I began to die and thought I was a goner and then – they saved me… and I was sort of born anew. And after a new birth you begin to value life and enjoy it. And then again you get sick and tired of it. And you begin to drink again, and the circle repeats itself.
PSYCHOLOGIST: And how many times a year are you born anew like that?
MAN: About four times.
PSYCHOLOGIST: Do you mean to say that due to the deadly binge you are born for a second time and begin to live with a good mood?
MAN: That’s just it.
PSYCHOLOGIST: It turns out that your friends were not born anew… Yes… You are playing dangerous games. Your friends have already kicked the bucket.
MAN: It turns out I’m a lucky one.
PSYCHOLOGIST: I wish you would be… But stop these games, the sooner, the better. Of course, your ability to play with death has saved you. Your friends couldn’t do it. So, shall we go on playing with death?
MAN: NO. Now I understand that it was the drunkenness of my friends and the game they played that caused their death. I already feel that… I’ll stop this game. Enough. I’m fed up with it.
In a year, during the next meeting with him he had no complaints of emptiness, and his unwillingness to live was gone. He had the book with him, the one you are holding in your hands now. The man confessed to me that this book had cured him of alcoholism. He was only sorry that vodka had killed all his friends. He was sorry, but not to such an extent as to follow them. He did not become the last one.
We hope that you, Dear reader, will not become the last one!
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
AUTHOR’S ADDRESS TO THE RELATIVES AND FRIENDS OF ALCOHOLICS
ATTITUDES ENCODING AGAINST ALCOHOLISM
Introductory attitudes
Borderline encoding and borderline analysis
Attitudes consolidating the results of the borderline analysis and encoding
I DON’T WANT TO BE THE LAST ONE
ON THE AUTHOR
Attitudes Effective influence on The Subconscious Curing of depression, neurosis and alcohol depende 