Rugby League has given me an insight into how alcohol affects the human brain

I don't like National Rugby League and I consider myself fairly different from the average football player, however I share one common trait with them. I, like most rugby league players, love to go to bars and turn myself into a drunken dribbling mess.

Now there is one particular NRL player who outdoes even me with the ability to drunkenly embarrass himself, his name is Todd Carney.

If you don't know who Todd Carney is he can be pretty much summed up as an arrogant bogan asshole who tells women that he is a professional rugby league player within the first sentence of meeting them.

Toddy Carney's story plays out like this:

He was an alcoholic menace when he played for the Raiders and got in to trouble for pissing on some guy in a bar toilet, doing doughies around Goulburn in his car and vandalizing the front window of a phone shop. He eventually got sacked from the Raiders because he wouldn't stop drinking and later signed on with the Roosters.

After another drunken night as a Roosters player the coach told Carney to give up booze or he's out. Todd Carney gave up alcohol and was subsequently named International Player of the Year.

This scares me.

Why?

Because as much as I detest the persona of Todd Carney there is no denying that I probably drink myself into very similar drunken states which would imply that my body and mind receive the same affect of alcohol abuse as his. However, unlike Carney, my boss isn't forcing me to stop drinking so obviously I don't stop with my drunken gallivanting.

As much as I love drinking I really don't want booze to catch up to me and whittle down what's remains of my wit. Although I don't really feel any negative affects of booze now, I fear that if I could only stop drinking I would be sharper, smarter, and fitter than my regular self and this could be the tipping point towards a successful life that I would have otherwise missed out.

It reminds me of a parable in some holy book where a man is told by God that the water in the river will soon be poisoned and it will make all the townspeople insane. Well (pardon the pun), the man tried to warn the other townspeople but they didn't listen so before the day came the man stockpiled his own fresh water and refused to drink from the river.

Soon, all the townspeople became insane and only the man was left sane. However, since the man's mindset wasn't in tune with mindset of society, all the townspeople thought he was that he was insane and he was outcast.

In the end, the man couldn't bare the loneliness and ridicule so he drank the water from the river and became insane so that he could fit in with society.

That man in the parable is me. Alcohol is the poisoned water and Todd Carney is the only sane one left in the town.