JAPAN: If you are unhappy, don't drown your sorrows

OSAKA (Asahi Shimbun), March 8, 2008: In "Shushoku Seikatsu" (Life of drinking and eating), published by Kadokawa Haruki Corp., novelist Hitomi Yamaguchi (1926-1995) has a lot to say about boozers. "They are pure," he writes. "That's why they reach for the bottle. They are easily hurt. That's why they drink." The self-proclaimed founder of Dai-Nihon Shuran-to (Heavy drinkers' party of Japan), Yamaguchi shows considerable spirit. I, being mediocre, am still far from attaining Yamaguchi's state of inebriated enlightenment. Drinking to drown one's sorrows makes for a wretched morning after. Whether one has been jilted by a lover or passed over for promotion, getting drunk doesn't change reality in any way. All it does is to give one a hangover and leave a hole in one's pocket thanks to the previous night's binge. According to a story that appeared Friday in the science section of the vernacular Asahi Shimbun, drinking apparently intensifies the memories one is trying to forget. This conclusion was drawn from animal experiments by a research team led by Norio Matsuki, a professor at the University of Tokyo. The team placed mice in a box and gave them a weak electric shock. When the animals were placed in the box again later, they cringed, even though no electric shock was administered the second time. After the mice had been thus conditioned to fear the box, Matsuki's team separated them into two groups, and gave alcohol injections to only one group. Two weeks later, the mice were placed in a box with no electric shocks. Those mice that had not been injected with alcohol stopped cringing in about half the time they used to take. But the group that had been injected with alcohol took the same amount of time to calm down as in the previous experiment--showing that alcohol apparently reinforces bad memories. "If you keep dwelling on your bad memories while you drink, you may not remember your friend's words of encourage, but your unhappy memories could become etched more deeply in your mind," Matsuki says. Drunks believe in the "benefits" of drinking away their miseries, but science seems to have proven them wrong. As the mice demonstrated, even painful experiences and bitter disappointments fade over time. Perhaps this is nature's way of helping us keep living on day after day. In this spring season, many companies hand out transfers to workers, generating mixed emotions. Some people may cringe in their work cubicles. They should instead refresh themselves by taking a look around and reflecting on the things that trigger their happy memories. --The Asahi Shimbun, March 7(IHT/Asahi: March 8,2008)