"It doesn't matter how you cut the cake: It's still a cake. And I'm an alcoholic, straight or iced...."
*****
Addiction changes everything.
Everything.
Despite 14+ years of continuous sobriety, I cannot be convinced that I could somehow be trained to be a social drinker. Pavlov's dogs are apparently one up on me!
("Go ahead. Have just one.... " ... Slurp, slurp. )
The risks are too great. The potential consequences, too devastating. Besides, truly, this sober life fits me fine. Like it was always meant to be this way, sober and serene.
My sober satisfaction will not to be toyed with. Don't try me with "a drink will cure what ails you." Drinking was my old go-to reflex action for everything. Every drink a cul-de-sac, no turning back.
A path forward, my path forward, cannot include alcohol. Alcohol is that solvent that solved nothing for me. In fact, it could no longer soothe, salve or solve anything. Nothing goes better with a drink. Nothing.
I've been there. I've been there.
Think.
*****
What could fill the absence that only alcohol once filled?
Recovery.
Only Recovery can fill the centers in this box of chocolates.
Addiction's spell is the deception of being on fulfillment's edge. The deception that one will get you THERE. In the unreality of addiction you turn left at every intersection. A thousand left hand turns - the spring is wound too tight, another drink in hand. The insane watch stops. Or breaks.... Too tight. Loosen and unloosen change hands down this rabbit hole and everything comes to mean nothing. Every drink is an overdose for me.
Ask a rat, a rat in a maze to self-destruction. The rat will not answer, cannot answer. The rat seeks only its drug to the totality of all else. Every path leads to self-annihilation.
The rat is dead, as good as dead. Not knowing. It only knows to get the next drink. A question of survival whose answer is killing it.
This is why I think I cannot drink. It leads me here, a cul-de-sac of infinite zeros and one-too-many left-hand turns. Too many enough's enough where it simply cannot be enough.... Too many nothings.
*****
More alcohol gave "the illusion of the same high. But it was not the same high. Could not be the same high. Addiction takes what is lost out of the equation to give the appearance, the trompe d'oeuil of sameness. But it is never the same high that is achieved because the highway of more becomes littered with loss. The equation does not factor in loss because the equation is owned by the addiction and not by the dispossessed.
Comfort should be for the dying, yet, there is, in the end, no comfort in this...."
*****
Yes, my behavior was observed.
But I did not know for years how others really saw me. I didn't hear the social drinkers' warnings to slow down. I would not heed them when I could no longer hide my addiction, my inability to control. My blackout drinking, at times, could last for days, consciousness flickering in and out like houselights in an electrical storm in my alcohol-drenched brain. Right up to the solitary end of my drinking, no one believed my lies were not really lies, just addictive self-deception and false promises. All dreams of self-control broken.
Still. somehow, some way, finally, I did get and stay sober.
Finally.
The madhouse ended. Thirty years of daily drinking subsided.
*****
To any and all who think that I could somehow be convinced that I could be trained to be a social drinker, I would say this:
Not me. Not today. Find another rat in another maze on another day.
My recovery will not be deposed. Recovery is irreplaceable.
Not today. My only drink is to Recovery. Only Recovery can quench my thirst. No alcohol today. Alcohol-free. Free.
*****
Can this Alcoholic in Recovery be Trained to Become a Social Drinker?
Know No.
Recovery, uncovered, cannot so easily be put back in the bottle.
Know No! I will not drink today.
*****
"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."
*****
#Alcoholism #Addiction #Recovery
*****
Passages in quotes from ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO
4,444+++ Recovery Tweets here: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4
99+ Recovery Posts here: https://goo.gl/fmzt9b
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