MaxOr, I think that in order to *get it*, you have to read the book, so me telling you in a nutshell won't be very moving, I don't think. It wouldn't have been for me. I read the whole book in one sitting, waiting for the "easyway" to be given to me in a quick concise list of instructions, and when I reached the end, where the quick concise list of instructions is, I realized that the instructions would be meaningless nonsense if I hadn't gotten the meat of the rest of the book. To sum it up, though, I *got* that there is absolutely no benefit to me in drinking alcohol, and that I had been programmed by society and advertising, as Peter S C alluded to, to believe that there actually were benefits.
So, the writer is outlining how all the alleged benefits are illusions, and I'm reading along arguing with the writer, telling him how I really do enjoy a glass of wine with dinner or a cold beer on a hot day or etc etc, and by the time I got to the instructions to have a "Final Drink", I got that I was holding on to those arguments out of my resistance to the idea of never drinking again, which I found unacceptable. Of course I'd want to have a glass of champagne on New Year's Eve! Naturally I'd want to have an ale when I find myself in Ireland! How could I think of not helping my sister-in-law celebrate her 50th birthday by drinking her famous Cosmopolitans? How rude would that be?!?
But by the end of the book I could see the other side of it: Why, having lost the desire for alcohol, would I ever want to poison myself again? Why would I want to? The answer is, I don't.  |