"There Is No Safe Harbor When The Sea Is Alcohol"

There is a certain fleeting sadness within my recovery at times. Reflecting back on the way it was and how it was the necessary and only way that I could be where I'm at today merely softens the blow. So many today are where I was back then and that seems so unnecessary. Addiction doesn't really have to be a part of growing up now, does it? And yet for so many it is. How many stigmas have to be unknotted for different possible paths to unfold in our seemingly increasingly complex world?
I'm not here to prescribe behaviors or create solutions. All I seem able to do is present the feel of it, the real of it, from my perspective, with the hope that it may help others untangle their lives, to fall more gently and recover more smoothly than my particular experiences have allowed me to.
Here, Surimi, describes my progress to his fictional friends, unnoticed by me, at this one uncertain juncture....
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(Surimi): ... Water lifts all boats, but apparently not the same can be said for alcohol. There is no safe harbor when the sea is alcohol. His extremes, his drunken fire and ice. Sobriety, and all that comes with it is more balanced, more centered and less extreme than his active addiction was. His cadence and his rhythm are more clearly a reflection of his life. Addiction is chaos. Sobriety will eventually have a calming effect on almost anyone.
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Of course, I heard none of this as I droned on with my story.... "I drank myself sober sometimes. My mind would seek to find some equilibrium. Despite my drunkenness, my mind stood at cross purposes with my substance of abuse. I couldn't have known that then, or at least, I didn't know that. Did not know that. In the most strange of strangest ways, I finally drank myself sober."
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On the one hand, on a daily basis, I drank to return myself to what had become my level of addiction to feel normal and for brief moments it sometimes felt as if I were sober. About this time, I remember drinking beer to sober up, to drink beer in the shower while getting ready for work, adding more ice to my drink rather than more vodka.
All of this was sort of a fine-tuning of the thermostat in my alcoholic house of horrors. Drinking myself sober and drinking myself drunk, often just one drink off from whatever that insane alcoholic thermostat was set at.
On the other hand, by this point in my story, the life I found myself living became unsustainable. This became the other "I finally drank myself sober." The fabric of my life was tearing apart and no more jumps on the alcoholic trampoline could last. I fell through, time and again and again and again.
I was dead, but by a single thread, survived.
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True, "there is no safe harbor when the sea is alcohol" and I had somehow survived it all. And there remains a fleeting sadness about the whole thing. Life can be suffering at times and addiction absolutely more so and needless, but life sometimes finds a way to flourish beyond all obstacles. Save what you have left and do something with it. That was about all I was left with.
Life can be so good and addiction is not an answer for anyone.
My life of drunken fire and ice has ended and I have reached the far shore. Recovery on dry land with much more living to do.
Connection. Balance. Peace.
Everybody's recovering from something.
Life is good.

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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 passage spoken by Surimi and those in quotes are from my book. Explore More ALL DRINKING ASIDE Here: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO
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