This is not a blog post about drinking beer. It is a post about mens' mental health. Are the two linked? Have men historically drank to forget? to become drunk? I know that I used to.
They used to sell mild in the pub round the corner to me. Brains 'mild' at the Grange Public House and the urban myth was that the landlord would put the slops or the overflowed beer back into the mix for the next customer. This probably dates back to when beer was sold in jugs rather than out of pumps. I remember having the odd pint of the treacly tasting mixture but it wasn't the drink rather than the name that struck me 'mild'. Mild mannered men used to drink mild until they had become bitter men and then they drank bitter. Lager drinkers would become louts.
Towards the end of my alcohol drinking days I realised how much by volume a pint actually was because in my early morning stupor most of it had been released on to the mattress via my bladder and penis apparatus. The number of Sundays I spent ironing the said mattress in a fugue of self hate and paranoia. I gave up alcohol and marijuana because I realised that these substances were in fact exacerbating my mental health condition. Well they tell you to write about what you know. I knew that I wasn't right in the head, that I was prone to high and low moods and that I would use substances to ameliorate intrusive thoughts. Even now when questioned I cannot and will not go into the contents of these thoughts. If I did, with the correct therapist, then perhaps I would improve and recover but I have decided to struggle on. Put it this way, these thoughts that used to be on a loop and that used to bash me into submission with their potency are nowhere near as powerful without substances. Personally I do not subscribe to the 'chemical imbalance' in the brain argument for mental illness but I certainly can attest to how alcohol and cannabis can mess about with your mind. Talking about myself in such a way might help other men to navigate their own course. I follow OCD Recovery pages on Instagram and I have to say that I find them very helpful but I am not ready to follow exposure programmes to treat OCD. To that extent, considering that these intrusive, self defeating thoughts have been with me since the age of 13, I'm starting to think that I might be addicted to them. Without them, I might become a success, I might make something of my life and I don't want that because I consider my life to be a statement against competition against striving and against success. Somebody has to be a failure in the eyes of others and to that extent I am prepared to be the fall guy.
Men and Women can live with mental illness. Indeed we are told by mental health charities that 1 in 4 at any one time are struggling. That lets the other 3 off the hook. We all have a brain, we all have a mind so we all have the potential to suffer at any time. We are not taught resilience in schools, we are taught how to cram information and pass or fail exams. You only need a bereavement, a loss of dignity and of face, a period of unemployment and then a lengthy period of low mood and 'depression' is inevitable but in this post industrial revolution era we are still treated as robots where work is considered to be the panacea to cure all ills. If you go back to work, you will forget the loss of your loved one because you will be too busy to mourn. You will be distracted and this is what the modern era is aimed at, to distract us from our own mortality. Enough X Factor, Come Dancing, Celebrity Big Brother in the Jungle with enough alcohol and snacks and you might forget for a fleeting few moments that like the loved one you've recently lost that you also are going to die.
We are not encouraged to dwell on our own mortality as this is considered an indulgence. It is better for the country and for the treasury if we are productive to pay the taxes to keep the country and the ruling elite going. The fact that they care not a fig whether we live or die should make us angry. They'll come after us if they can when we're dead if we have been productive enough with inheritance tax. The ruling elite suffer as well but not in such numbers as the austerity hit poor. It is us that are blocking up the A&E departments because they don't know what to do with us.
Whatever they teach the boys and men of Eton, they should be teaching it in State Schools so that resilience and mental health can be on the National Curriculum.
I am obviously looking at this through the eyes of a jaundiced male. Women suffer high levels of emotional distress but it appears that they generally have emotional networks where they can talk things through. It is 'normal' for women to talk about emotions. It is not 'normal' for men. Keeping face, saving face, avoiding shame, self control mechanisms kick into place and very often these are dis-functional control mechanisms that end up in hurting, controlling or manipulating others in the fruitless attempt to hide the fact that we are vulnerable. The hunter gatherer is vulnerable and I'm sure that given the opportunity he would value the chance to talk with a non judgemental woman about how he is feeling before he can work on strategies on how he can talk about stuff with his mates but we have been conditioned into these stereotypical roles. Stags & Hens and never the twain shall meet.
Before this post degenerates into a ramble I would just like to ensure any younger men who might be reading, that things do get better the older you get. The things that worried you at 30 will not worry you at 50. In fact you will probably be able to laugh at them then. The important thing is, is that you get to 50. That you as an individual find a way to navigate through the hard faces and that you are able to maintain being a mild man in a bitter world.
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