Is That Drink Worth It to You?
I was at a party recently and I was talking to a friend of mine who is a doctor. He was telling me about a patient he had who had a very serious problem with alcohol. This patient had been in and out of the hospital for years with alcohol-related illnesses. He had been diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver and was told that he would die if he didn’t stop drinking.
My friend told me that he had tried everything to help this patient. He had referred him to alcohol treatment programs, he had prescribed medication to help him stop drinking, and he had even had heart-to-heart talks with him about the dangers of alcohol. But nothing seemed to work.
Finally, my friend decided to take a different approach. He sat down with the patient and asked him a simple question: “Is that drink worth it to you?”
The patient looked at him and said, “What do you mean?”
My friend replied, “I mean, is that drink worth the pain and suffering you’ve been through? Is it worth the damage it’s done to your liver? Is it worth the risk of dying?”
The patient thought for a moment and then said, “No, it’s not worth it.”
My friend then asked him, “Then why are you still drinking?”
The patient didn’t have an answer.
My friend told me that after that conversation, the patient never drank again. He realized that the pain and suffering he was experiencing was not worth the temporary pleasure he got from drinking.
I thought about that conversation and I realized that it’s a question we all need to ask ourselves. Is that drink, that drug, that unhealthy food, that unhealthy habit worth it to us? Is it worth the pain and suffering it causes us? Is it worth the damage it does to our bodies and our minds? Is it worth the risk of dying?
I know that it can be hard to give up things that we enjoy, but we need to remember that our health and our lives are more important than any temporary pleasure we might get from unhealthy habits. We need to make the choice to prioritize our health and our lives over our desires.