- Chris Bakken
- Dec 19, 2021
- 6 min read
Updated: Dec 21, 2021
I am not being ironic or clever when I tell you that I love alcohol and I am equally sincere when I tell you to stop drinking right now! I have been in a complex love affair with alcohol since I was 15 years old. I have used and needed it for many reasons but mostly I love drinking with friends, the taste, and how it makes me feel. I did not stop drinking after my accident because the reasons I need booze were amplified by recovery. I am not a fast learner, but I have been on the planet long enough to know at the very least that I like it here. I want to grace the earth with my presence as long as I can. To continue what I consider the generosity of my existence, I have made the sacrifice of stopping drinking. You should too.
Our first Dates
One of my claims to fame is that I have always been a hard worker. During my 5th 6th and 7th grade summers, I worked on my family’s sugar-beet farm in Eastern Montana. Every year a neighboring farm had a big branding with cowboys, cutting horses, lots of people, BBQ, music, and icy pools of booze. My first alcohol high was on Anny Green Springs strawberry wine yoinked from a 500-gallon horse trough brimming with water, ice, beer and wine. I drank it with a pretty neighbor girl, in the hot sun, behind sage brush, on the top of a dusty cactus strewn bluff nearby. The hot sun, the illicit buzz, and the quaintly exciting, shared adventure combined to etch this fantastic memory vividly in the Bakken internal mythology.
Continuing the work theme, my first paying job was building concrete walls for a friend of my father. In the “first world” laying concrete is one of the most difficult and dirty jobs you can do. My father arranged this challenge so I would always know what “hard work” was. Before I met my boss, my father made him promise that he would not let me drink any beers with the boys. After a long hot day in the sun, watching me work like a grown man at one of the hardest jobs one could have, his dedication to justice overpowered his honor and he offered me “after a solemn promise to never tell my dad” a heavenly ice cold Keystone Lite from the cooler. Again, the heat, my thirst, and the illicit offer to join an elite and manly club remains one of the clearest and most treasured memories of my life.
Since then, booze and I have been through many phases in our relationship. Early on I needed beer to get up the nerve to dance. With this bravery augmentation technique, we worked together for many years to talk to and get the attention of potential conquests and then a mate. For much of my life it stripped away work stress and the world’s worries every afternoon so I could find calm and sleep through the night. I have loved cheap beer, expensive foo-foo-beer and tasty cocktails of many sort. Most recently, I realized how lovely the feeling and taste of a fine (or trailer park fine for you snobs) whisky is and presently this is what I miss the most.
Moving On
Since my accident I drank 2 to three drinks a day and since then my health has chipped away at the FULL BAKKEN to a level where I was asking “what’s the point?” While I was in the basement of my depression my Medical Professional shouted down at me to stop being a baby (my word not hers), and get my shit together. After reading Dr Hasse’s book, Curiosity Heals the Human which essentially said the same thing, I researched doctors in my area and found a Doctor who practiced functional medicine. One of the cornerstones of the functional medicine creed is to start with the most effective and least intrusive interventions first. During our first long tele-med interview he rudely added up my weekly drink total and added on an extra drink per day because he suspected my claimed amount was bullshit. Then he said flatly “Drinking hinders brain healing and 21 drinks a week was too much.” Not liking his answer and never one to take someone’s word without challenge, I set out to find research that disproved his opinion and protected my sacred love affair with booze.
Unfortunately, my attempts to debunk my Doctor’s inconvenient recommendations were met with stark and apparently universally accepted facts that alcohol significantly retards brain healing and amplifies dangerous symptoms. My primary source is MSKTC Model Systems Knowledge Translation Center (MSKTC) “ …a collaboration of research from 16 renowned universities and hospitals. The purpose of this organization is to gather cutting-edge research and provide that information to patients.” I focused on this source because its, free, credible and they present their findings in executive summaries and bullet points, so I don’t get bored.
The key bullet points in the article on Alcohol Use After TBI for me are:
· Recovery from brain injury continues for much longer than we used to think possible. Many people notice improvements for many years after injury.
· Alcohol slows down or stops brain injury recovery.
· Not drinking is one way to give the brain the best chance to heal.
· People's lives often continue to improve many years after brain injury. Not drinking will increase the chance of improvement.
· Depression is about 8 times more common in the first year after TBI than in the general population.
· People who have an alcohol-related TBI are more than four times as likely to have another TBI. This may be because both TBI and alcohol can cause problems with vision, coordination, and balance.
· Avoiding alcohol improves sexual ability and activity in men and women
FINDING FULL BAKKEN
If you remember, I started on this path, because I had lost my trademark good nature and optimism and was contemplating life like Hamlet did in his most famous monologue. I had never thought this way before because one of my best self-preservation traits is that I can’t imagine the universe without me in it. After analyzing the depth of my sorry condition, comparing it to the bulldozer of love that was the FULL BAKKEN, and verifying the likely negative effects booze was having on my health, I stopped drinking. So that no one calls me a liar and makes me feel like more of a knucklehead than I already do, “stopped drinking” means that every couple of weeks, I will guiltily sneak one drink at an event. This is good because now I can compare the effects of even a small amount of alcohol to how I feel with a clean system,
How do I feel?
Just one week after I stopped drinking, I had a watershed day where I felt as alert, smart, strong and sexy as I have felt in a couple of years. On our recent 14 day trip to Italy I drank two drinks on 3 different occasions. Each time I felt unstable, confused, tired unmotivated and dumb. These observations are useful because I had not started taking supplements yet, I was not fasting and I could not hit the weights on the road so I am confident that the positive and negative effects I felt were entirely due to alcohol consumption.
Steady State
In the month since our return from Italy I have been fasting 12 and eating 8 hours a day, I’ve been working out hard 6 days a week and taking many supplements; so, it is hard to say exactly what is making me feel great, but I do feel great. The other day, I had a moment where I realized that my brain was doing impressive things, specifically I observed myself appreciating music in a way that was much more complex and inciteful than even the FULL BAKKEN had ever been capable. In comparison last night at a lovely Christmas party, I had one IPA. My night’s sleep after the party was sweaty and fitful. When I woke this morning, my wits seem less sharp, and my energy level is low. As we discussed in another blog, we should consider this evidence nonscientific and anecdotal, but I sincerely think it is true. I can’t know how you will compartmentalize and deploy this information, but for me the evidence and path are clear. Drinking halts and apparently retards TBI recovery, and I will strive to not drink at all from this point forward.
