by Julie G., United States

For many years I had what I felt was a strange and challenging relationship with alcohol. I first started drinking as a teenager, when I went to parties at friends’ houses. The first time I drank, the rush was so new to me and felt so ‘freeing’, that I overdid it and got sick. I have been thin all my life, and it never really took much to overdo it, no matter what I drank. One would think that would help me put a stop to drinking ever again, but it didn’t. The feeling I had of being ‘comfortable in my own skin’, to open up and not be shy, seemed to be worth enough that I came back to alcohol again and again all through college and beyond. I had a lot of fun, and I also overdid it a lot and got physically sick and hung over a lot. 

As an adult, when I first got married, I kept drinking socially with my husband, mostly only on weekends, and mostly beer. I drank because I had convinced myself that I liked the taste of beer and it just seemed like the thing to do (i.e., if you go to a bar or a restaurant, you drink). I would watch others drink socially and seem to stay sober, but I would get buzzed so easily.

Eventually, I started to notice that when I drank, I didn’t feel like ME. It felt like some other energy was working through my body. I could feel the moment the alcohol was affecting me. It started as a tingling feeling in my legs and arms and everything around me seemed somehow brighter (i.e., lights, colors). Then there was a bit of numbing, sort of like things were softening, and I felt duller, less aware of what was going on. I started to feel like I was poisoning my body and imagined that I could feel the poison working through my veins. I didn’t stop drinking completely, but it became less and less and I would rarely finish a full glass at a meal. The more I would see the effects of alcohol on the people around me, the less I wanted any part of it.

Then, a few years ago I went to a friend’s birthday party in which we spent the night going to various clubs. Other people were buying me drinks and I ended up becoming very drunk… and very sick the next morning. I hadn’t been that sick since college and decided after that experience that I would never drink again. During this same time, my husband was reading one of Serge Benhayon’s purple books and would read excerpts to me. That was my first introduction to Universal Medicine. What he was reading to me felt so true – and surprisingly, so familiar.

About five months later and after reading the book myself, we attended Universal Medicine courses in the UK. I really felt like I had come home, like I was finding the truth, some of which I could feel I already knew, although at the time I didn’t know how I knew. One of the many things that we talked about in the courses was eating and alcohol. It was a confirmation for me to be presented with the possibility that drinking alcohol truly does prevent me from feeling the true ME, and that there was something I was seeking every time I drank – both self-acceptance and the approval of others. Although I had already stopped drinking by this time, I felt that it may not have taken much convincing to have a glass of wine at a celebration or work event on occasion. Learning the truth about what happens in the body when alcohol is ingested was all I needed to make the commitment to never drink again, and now there is no part of me that would choose to drink alcohol no matter what other people are doing around me.

The beautiful thing is that no-one told me not to drink. I was just presented with the impact alcohol has on the body and supported to reflect on why I needed it, and it was my choice to stop altogether. The only attention, reward or recognition I received from stopping was from me: from the relief and tenderness I felt for myself for making a choice out of a desire to care for me.