3 Pieces from the Puzzle of What Once Was: A Witless Sampler

Just because you can see it in the rear view mirror does not mean it was inevitable. 

Just because you lived it does not mean the next generation must.

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3 Perspectives on Addiction:

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A Blind Man Descending a Spiral Staircase Leading to Nowhere:

"My brain knows my disease. My brain loves my disease and my brain will never forget my disease because my disease has carved permanent grooves into my brain that no amount of sobriety can ever putty shut. The grooves in my brain lay waiting for me to pick up again so that the grooves can progressively deepen. I must depend on the help of others. Acting alone, I will be devoured by my disease. For addicts, alcohol will devour memories of the past and anxiety about the future, drowning them in the unreal, insane world of addiction. A living lobotomy. A blind man descending a spiral staircase leading to nowhere. No past. No present. No future. Addiction will survive by eating you alive."

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Scratch the Surface Until the Truth Runs Clear:

"Here you are drunk and walking the hallways of the Taj Mahal Casino, picking cigarette butts out of ashtrays. You break off the filters and re-roll the butt ends with new cigarette papers. This is a way to survive, to think that you're surviving. This is when the only food is the juice in this vodka and cranberry. This is when it takes you two solid hours to get out of bed and put on a pair of shoes. This is when there is no next drink, there is just this one long drink that goes on forever. This is where there is no up or down and you can only move sideways. This is where waking up is like falling through a stage prop wall. This is where you carry your addictions in a cardboard box as if you were moving to another location. This is finding no location and the box is empty. This is standing and not being able to move. This is drunk and crashing, falling, falling through a bottom, tumbling. This is where a hospital wakes you up and you do not know who you are or where you are..." 

Scratch the surface until the truth runs clear.

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Different Pasts / Different Paths:

"My younger sister's addictions came on harder, faster, and stronger than mine. A certain frailty, susceptibility, took over Betty sooner than it took over me. Our common genetic predisposition could have led to my death instead of her suicide, but that's not the way the addiction balls bounced. We had become too distant, detached. Our addictions kept us apart. I dissolved into mine. She dissolved into hers. There was no "We" as "She" and "I" dissolved into our addictions. It was distance that kept us apart. Not the distance between Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The distance of disease, if you please. The distance of disease if you don't please."

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Just because you can see it in the rear view mirror does not mean it was inevitable. 

Just because you lived it does not mean the next generation must.

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"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."
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#Alcoholism #Addiction #Recovery
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The passages in quotes are excerpted from ALL DRINKING ASIDE: 
The Destruction, Deconstruction and Reconstruction of An Alcoholic Animal http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO
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140+ Recovery Posts: https://goo.gl/fmzt9b