Fighting Problems With Bigger Problems
Drinking was never a solution, so why did I tell myself it was?
I started listening to the musician Elliot Smith when I was in high school, just a couple of years before his tragic suicide.
He quickly became my all-time favorite singer and his song “Baby Britain” became one of my favorite of his tracks.
The song’s lyrics are a melancholy depiction of alcoholism. As I got older and started struggling with my own drinking problem, the song took on an even greater significance to me because it was such a clear reflection of my experience. The opening verse in particular was all too relatable.
If you have a few minutes, I’d encourage you to give the entire song a listen. I’ve added the music video as an embed here, but if you have any trouble getting it to play, you can find it directly on YouTube. In case you’re unable to listen to the song right now, I’ve also included the lyrics to the first verse below.
Baby Britain Lyrics (first verse):
Baby Britain feels the best
Floating over a sea of vodka
Separated from the rest
Fights problems with bigger problems
Sees the ocean fall and rise
Counts the waves that somehow didn't hit her
Water pouring from her eyes
Alcoholic and very bitter
To me, every line of this song is a masterpiece, but the one that hits the hardest is the one that I’ve adapted for the title of today’s newsletter: “Fights problems with bigger problems.” Have you ever heard such a succinct and spot-on description of an addict?
Back when I was a drinker, I used every problem in my life as a justification for getting drunk.
When I had a bad day at work, I’d get home and tell myself that I needed to drink and unwind.
When I arrived at a party and felt overwhelmed by social anxiety, I’d convince myself that getting drunk would be the perfect way to loosen myself up.
I even used alcohol as an attempted solution for more serious, long-term problems, like my struggles with depression and anxiety.
The way I saw it, alcohol was a way to forget about these problems for an evening. When I got drunk, I could just relax and take a break.
I don’t want to be a reductionist—I think that alcoholism is a complex problem, and I’m not saying that the only reason I drank every night was to attempt to fix my problems. What I am arguing, however, is that these problems provided a convenient excuse that allowed me to justify my drinking to myself.
Bigger Problems
Of course, drinking is not a good solution to our problems. For one thing, it almost never really solves them. Sure, getting drunk might have gotten me through a single anxiety-ridden party or stressful night after work, but it didn’t do anything to address the root causes of these issues. Instead of solving problems, it just pushed them back to another day.
However, the even bigger issue is that the drinking itself became a bigger problem than any of the difficulties that I thought it might help. It was damaging my life far more than anything else.
Drinking doesn’t solve our problems, it just adds yet another problem to our lives.
Alcohol felt like a necessary escape, but it really made everything so much harder.
When I was still drinking, I was so reliant on alcohol that I rarely spent any time trying to make big, significant changes to my life. This led to the sense that my life was getting worse each year as everything that was going wrong piled up.
I don’t think there was any way that my life could have gotten better if I kept drinking. Fortunately, about eight years ago, I stopped.
I’d be lying if I told you that getting sober solved all of my problems overnight. In the short term, sobriety just felt like one more challenge.
However, in the long run, it gave me the space I needed to start tackling other issues more head-on. Year by year, my life has begun to get better, rather than worse.
When I was in the midst of my addiction, alcohol felt so necessary for me. I didn’t see how I could get through life without getting drunk each night.
In retrospect, seeing it from the outside, that thought process is downright absurd. I was just throwing one more problem in the mix, and making everything else even worse.
I still love to listen to the song Baby Britain. It isn’t a complex, long argument about alcoholism—it really only has a few key lines. And yet, something about the emotion in Smith’s voice perfectly captures how I used to feel. It’s a great reminder of what I escaped from and an amazing motivation to stay sober.
If you’ve never heard it before, I hope you’ll find time to give it a listen and that it is just as meaningful for you as it has been for me.
Lastly, I want to thank you for reading. We’re approaching the winter which is when a lot of people try to get sober. If you’re new to this newsletter, I hope you’ll find it helpful. Please make sure to sign up and feel free to share it with your friends.
If you’ve been reading for a while and haven’t yet tried the paid option, I hope you’ll consider it. I keep the paid version priced as low as Substack allows, and these paid subscriptions allow me to take time away from my business-to-business writing and spend it on this newsletter instead. Thank you!