Zvone – Inner Dialogue

Anxiety, Alcohol, Pills, and the Illusion of Easy Solutions Fear of Pills I do not believe that tranquilizers and anti-anxiety medication can truly solve anxiety in the long run. Maybe they can help for a while. Maybe they can calm a person down during the worst moments, when panic, insomnia, or inner chaos become unbearable. But deep inside, I have always felt that chemistry alone cannot fix something that slowly grows out of life itself, out of fear, habits, stress, unresolved thoughts, and the way a person learns to survive. Perhaps I think this way because I already had my own experience with addiction long before anxiety became a problem. I was barely eighteen when alcohol started becoming more than just occasional drinking. Looking back now, I can honestly say I was already seriously drinking myself into the ground in those years. By twenty-two, I stopped drinking completely. At least for a while - for 30 years. At that age, I sometimes wondered whether some other substance...

Drunk By Obligation Yesterday one of the younger nephews celebrated his eighteenth birthday. The family organized a proper village-style celebration. A maypole was raised, long tables appeared under a canopy, crates of drinks materialized from somewhere mysterious, and relatives operated with the quiet efficiency of people who have organized exactly the same event at least forty-seven times before. Most guests were his generation — classmates, friends from town, loud boys pretending to be men already and girls pretending not to notice them pretending.  The atmosphere started warming up already in the late afternoon. Naturally, the first thing served was whisky. Because apparently in human civilization the transition from “child” to “adult” is traditionally marked by immediately poisoning the liver. The Ritual Begins At first everyone behaved relatively normally. People laughed. Music played. Someone grilled meat. Someone carried chairs around nervously as if chai...