Not long ago a friend of mine and his colleague were in Russia on business. One time, at the end of the day, they were invited to a client's home for dinner. After dinner, the client offered each of them a shot of vodka. My friend explained that he didn't drink alcohol. But his colleague, feeling awkward and nervous about possibly losing this client's business, said he would drink for himself and my friend. What followed was a game of toasting and drinking, shot after shot. My friend's colleague finally fell, knocking over the television and VCR. He lost the game.

Of course, the pressure to drink doesn't occur only when we're dealing in business. Often it begins early in life, continuing through high school and college and well into adulthood. Once one has begun drinking, it can seem difficult to stop. Yet, whether one is aware of it or not, God's Christ is already stirring deep inside an irresistible yearning to stop drinking. Becoming conscious of that yearning is the start of prayer.

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy comments on the value of such heartfelt desire: "Desire is prayer; and no loss can occur from trusting God with our desires, that they may be moulded and exalted before they take form in words and in deeds" (p. 1). The simple desire to improve gently leads us to communion with God, the source of good. And this communion changes things for the better. To be exact, it changes thought, and when one's thought changes—becomes more God-based—one's life also changes—becomes more God-based. The temptation to drink can end naturally, then, just as the caterpillar leaves behind its chrysalis once it becomes a butterfly.

Contrary to what we're educated to believe, the appetite to drink doesn't begin with the body. Like anything else it begins in thought. If we desire to cross the street, we first have to think of crossing it. If we want to play basketball, we first have to think of playing it. Just so, before taking a drink, one must think of doing so. What's needed, then, is a way to watch our thinking so that we can arrest the thought that says drinking is either a good or a necessary thing.

But how? It takes more than manipulating one's thought to resist the pressure to drink or to stop drinking. It takes real power—the spiritual power of Christ. The Christ enables us to realize that, in reality, each of us is a child of God. This affords us the might of divine Mind, another name for God. And there is no other actual power able to resist God. When you think about it, that makes perfect sense. After all, if God is all-power—and He is—there's nothing else able to compete with Him. So there's nothing outside of His allness to make us desire anything harmful.

We stop thinking about drinking, then, by starting to understand God. Communing with Him, we find His care and help reaching our thought—and thereby governing our experience. Step by step, our growing understanding of God and of our relation to Him stops us from doing anything detrimental or degrading.

No matter how much pressure there is, we can choose to turn to God. Nothing can keep us from making that choice. In fact, God, Himself, helps us choose Him. He helps us simply by being God. Yielding to all that God is already doing—governing us, guiding us, loving us—is what's needed.

This takes practice, but it is not a halfhearted proposition. The goal is not merely to drink less but to stop drinking alcohol entirely. Mary Baker Eddy minces no words on this subject. In her Miscellaneous Writings, she states: "Whatever intoxicates a man, stultifies and causes him to degenerate physically andmorally. Strong drink is unquestionably an evil, and evil cannot be used temperately: its slightest use is abuse; hence the only temperance is total abstinence" (pp. 288–289).

Instead of seeing these words as too authoritative or old-fashioned, we can take them as a reminder of man's God-given desires. Would God have us buddy up with evil to even the slightest degree, claiming that we'll be better or happier as a result? No, the desires God gives us are entirely good and spiritual. In reality, they already exist within each individual's consciousness, and it's natural for them to blossom into full-fledged confidence in our ability to be the way God makes us—pure, perfect, free from anything that would diminish or degrade us.

I could see that I couldn't get any happiness from a totally false god.

Joy Osmanski
 A RECENT COLLEGE GRADUATE