"Whoa" means nothing to a Swedish horse. (Stacy at onesentence dot org)
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There is a certain internal logic to the Language of Addiction.
"Would you like one for the road?" certainly means that you should have so many more that you won't be able to find the road that heads you home and you won't know for sure where you are when and if you come to.
"Yes, just one, please. Better make it a double." Then the usual more than one and more than more. And the next day, or the day after that, when you do finally find your way home, you swear to yourself that you'll never let that happen to you again. Your promise not to means that you will do it again, probably the very next night.
These are not lies when spoken aloud or thought to yourself. They are full of promise and intent, but they become lies and broken promises when the craving for a drink returns full-force. You regret that your promises end up meaning nothing or next to nothing, yet you resent that the world thinks of you as as a liar. The world thinks you're having your way, but really, addiction is having its way with you. Addiction is your ruler. Despite that inevitable fact, you tell others to not tell you what to do, how to act, when and where to drink and a thousand other things until they wonder why they asked, what they asked and why they even cared in the first place.
You know exactly what I mean, of course, because you know "'Whoa' means nothing to a Swedish horse" or to a lush like me, if you are much like me. Promises broken by the language of addiction. Nothing means quite what you want it to mean. Every dream is a broken dream.
Disgust, contempt, hatred all around. Internal, external and everywhere in between. Alcohol is your combustible. What will it ignite next?
I lost count how many times and ways I hated myself, how many promises broken. No clue that it was alcohol I hated. Hated what it did to me. Hated that I could not do without it. Guilt. Remorse. More broken promises and lies. There was only enough of me left to despise.
The lies stack up. The lies were the debris I found myself in each and every morning. Drunk talk. The alcohol talking and the addiction talking. "Blame it on the alcohol," yet through a wall of denial, an alcoholic like me finds a way to drink again. Immediately, if not sooner.
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When I finally got sober, stopping the flow of alcohol took but a few days to end all traces of it in my brain, but the momentum of a 30 year life-style would be harder to change. Change would be slow and over a long period of time. My Booze Cruise could only change direction but slowly. No 180 degree, stop on a dime, about-face would happen here. The momentum kept me going long after the booze stopped flowing. Drunk without the drink for a long time coming.
Recovery, to me, meant learning to live sober by means of incremental changes in the habitual behavior that had been ingrained in me. Everything used to mean another drink to me. The tiniest of incremental changes began to accumulate until eventually I found myself transformed, my brain changed. My life began to flow forward and not be the life of an alcoholic stuck in their drink. Sorrow with no real tomorrow ended slowly.
The lies that had been part of addiction and denial, the ice in every drink, the touch, the smell, the all of everything would change as I changed in my sobriety. Slowly.
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The language and life-style of recovery is learned and earned. No denial there. It is so difficult at first to make life easy without the drink. Things become better slowly.
For me, forming good, sober habits has helped keep my life in balance. Moderation in all things, plus abstinence from substances and certain people, places and things.
Funny, and a little bit not funny at all, in Recovery I got to rewrite my life, free of the addiction that had become written all over my face. It seemed like fate would have me dying in a drink. But Recovery evolves into a life more solvable, doable, livable without a drink.
Recovery suits me well. It became a language I learned through time to understand. There is sanity within the sanity, clean, serene. My Booze Cruise has been turned around. Smooth sailing ahead (minus active addiction, the roughest seas are smooth by comparison). Yes, Recovery suits me well.
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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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This post by the author of ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO
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