HIGH-FUNCTIONING ALCOHOLIC? It was my degree of DYSFUNCTION that I never questioned.....

(sandiegoaddictions.com)

High-Functioning Alcoholic?
I was high, alright. I was functioning. To a degree.
But it was my degree of dysfunction that I never considered. Not for years, anyway. Not until the downward progression of my addiction had me totally non-functioning did I even begin to consider the possibility that I had been dysfunctional to varying degrees - for years.
You see, for years "I thought that there were two different kinds of alcoholics, those who did function (have a job, a place to live, friends, relationships), like me, and a second kind of alcoholic who was quite unlike me [like the brown-bagging beach bum I eventually did become!]. I was unaware that there is only one kind of alcoholic and that they are all 100% alcoholic and that if they are functional at present, it is only a matter of time until that progressive, downward spiral jettisons them from whatever functional path that they may have thought that they were on."
As I progressed on my downward slope, denial of my worsening condition was easily glossed over. I could forever blame my failures on bad breaks or dumb luck and the undulating hills and valleys of addiction could convince me for a time that things would get better and that I could continue being the high-functioning alcoholic I imagined myself to be.
"What will I become?" slowly turned into "What has become of me?"
"By the time I had a reason to stop drinking, reason no longer had anything to do with it."
*****
I don't mean to discourage anyone who identifies as a high-functioning alcoholic except to suggest one simple little question to ask yourself: How much better might you actually function if you were to delete alcohol from your life? And I might proceed to add that perhaps your alcohol use (which you describe to yourself as an aid to your performance) is actually a hinderance to your performance.
*****
Try sobriety and you just might find that it suits you better than you might ever have imagined.
In sobriety, I am high-functioning. I am an alcoholic who is in recovery. But, truth be told, high-functioning alcoholic was not ever in my portfolio, although I could have sworn it was.

*****

"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."

*****

Passages in quotes are excerpted from ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal

On Amazon.com. Book it here: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO 

A DRINKING MAN'S GUIDE TO BAR EXERCISE

There was a time when no one could have convinced me that I would ever stop drinking:
*****
"I sort of imagined myself as some ancient, noble Eskimo, wandering off into the northern lights with bottle in hand to die some unknown, tragic, heroic and drunken death.
I romanticized my disease when I was drinking until the reality got so bad that the romance had to die, with me following on its coattails.
At each step in my slow, downward progression, I would tell myself that it couldn't get any worse and that however bad I was, it wasn't anything that another drink couldn't fix.
But it did and could and would always get worse. Never would I think to stop drinking. Attempts to modify my drinking to a more reasonable amount of consumption failed on a nightly basis.
My resolve dissolved [with each and every drink until eventually my ideas for...] A DRINKING MAN'S GUIDE TO BAR EXERCISE lost all momentum on the stillness of my barstool."
*****
You see, drinking replaced everything.
Now, Recovery is my Everything.

*****

Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more.

*****

Passages in quotes are excerpted from ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal

On Amazon.com. Book it here: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO 

"MAN, I REALLY WISH I DIDN'T GET SOBER," said nobody ever.

"There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way." - The Tao
*****
"Alcohol is my poison, my prison. A brick wall, a trap door, a cancer, a bad joke, an empty bottle, an excuse, a leaky faucet, a loan shark, a broken promise, a cracked mirror, an earthquake, an avalanche, a train wreck, a recurring nightmare. Alcohol is my insanity."
I didn't know when I wrote this that a decade later I would be diagnosed with cancer and that I would survive it. One lesson in recovery serves another (your own recovery from whatever else may come down the pike or someone else's recovery from addiction or anything else).
Also, I could have added something about the epidemic proportions addiction has taken in our world, "an epidemic" [not sure where exactly I'd insert it in the quote] suggestive of our other epidemic, this whole Covid-19, Whole-Earth event.
*****
"MAN, I REALLY WISH I DIDN'T GET SOBER", said nobody ever.
*****
"There was a time when I was not there, but I did not know it yet. I would drink to forget, forgetting what I did not know. Not yet. I did not know yet. Where was I then, when I was not there? For years I lived somewhere between myself and the next drink. I would drink to forget what I could not think, halfway to nowhere and another drink. I was grieving and I did not know it. Someone was dying, but I could not feel it, feel my own dying. I could not own it because it owned me. Denial is so hard to feel, yet, there it is, standing next to you. You: Halfway to nowhere and another drink."
*****
"MAN, I REALLY WISH I DIDN'T GET SOBER", said nobody ever.
*****
"Addiction is godless, headless, insane. It rejects faith, reason, feelings. Addiction is heartless, the blackest night. No light. No sun. No stars. In its nothingness, we feel nothing and accept that nothingness is acceptable and true. 'Cunning. Baffling. Powerful.'"
*****
I'll stand by my words because "nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."

*****

Passages in quotes are excerpted from ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal

On Amazon.com. Book it here: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO