The Snake Pit of Addiction

*****
A snake pit is a place in European Legend where those considered insane were placed. It was thought that being lowered into a pit filled with snakes would terrorize them back to sanity. Failing that treatment, the insane could then be abandoned to die.
Waking up in the hospital (coming to, really) and not knowing how I got there should have scared me sober too, but alcoholism "is a subtle foe." I would not be scared sober so easily, despite addiction being a snake pit of insanity, too.
"If I had know then what I know now" is an old refrain. But my experience has shown me that the stigma of addiction perpetuates further victimization of addicts and alcoholics. Stigma = Silence = Death. I could not hear what was not spoken.
Suffer in silence.
I learned to accept that I was an alcoholic and would likely die an early death and that would have to be good enough. It is an odd acceptance of a condition when it is not fully understood. I did not understand addiction by any means, so, naturally, I would drink again.
Deep in my addiction, I knew no people in recovery. Furthermore, the stigma of addiction would contribute to the silence of many of those who had found recovery before me. Stigma would be self-perpetuating. Ignorance would continue. Suffering would continue. Recovery would have to be a longer and more drawn out process that it might have to otherwise be.
For me, recovery has become my life-long calling.
Silent sobriety is dead. I can remain silent no longer. So I keep my sobriety alive by sharing far and wide, expressing as best I can that I am an alcoholic in long-term sobriety and not only is it possible to find and maintain sobriety, but it is worth every effort to pursue the sober path.
*****
SOBRIETY IS A GIFT
*****
I had reached a tipping point by around the second decade of daily drunkenness. Periodic binges seemed to only end in hospitalization. Coming to in the hospital repeatedly was my snake pit. How did I get there? I was a blackout drinker who would continue drinking long after my ability to form memories had dissipated. Presumably I would have died from my blackout drinking had my physical body not given out before my brain's desire for more alcohol. You see, my brain wanted more alcohol than my body could survive consuming. The ultimate hamster on the ultimate wheel, destruction or death were the only end alternatives (or so I once thought). I would never have willfully chosen to stop drinking in these instances. Imminent death put a temporary hold on my downhill slide.
Sobriety was truly a gift in these too numerous cases. The gift of near-death survival. Survival by luck, not by choice.
*****
RECOVERY IS EARNED
*****
I learned through repeated relapses that sustained sobriety would require a concerted effort by me with the help of many others. I would have to take action, make many changes.
Sobriety is a gift. Recovery is earned.
The air around me today is such that I breathe recovery on a daily basis. Fourteen-plus years of daily holding onto my life with a gratitude for each accumulated day of sobriety. Action. Recovery has become a way of life, of living, of doing, of action.
Sobriety was a gift.
My recovery has been earned.
Snake pit, a European Legend, lived and learned.
*****

#Alcoholism #Addiction #Recovery
*****
"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."
*****
You may also enjoy ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO 
Recovery Tweets: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4

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The Downside of Optimism... Re-Blossomed in Recovery

*****
"It is hard to get enough of something that almost works." - Dr. Vincent Felitti

"My drinking was broken and could not be unbroken." - My visceral response to Dr. Felitti's quote
*****
Eternal Optimism was part of my 50,000 drinking history and part of my 8 years of Perpetual Relapse. My hope would have me believe that after brief periods of sobriety, I would become the master of my drinking and not its slave.
Vivid early childhood memories are not my experience, but the adults around me as the years passed on always described me as the happiest child. Can optimism be inherited in your genes or is the environment the more determining factor? I don't think it matters much in my case, but optimistic seems to describe me to a T.
I carried my natural born optimism fully into my drinking career. And optimism prolonged my descent even as my life became a living hell. You see, each bad outcome from drinking had me optimistically determine the consequences would be different the next time. As denial slowly crept in and took over, the inner parts of my essential self would continue to believe that I would eventually learn to control my drinking and conscientiously improve in my ability to reign in adverse consequences.
Where might a more realistic hope begin then? For me, it began in recovery. Sustained sobriety renewed my broken hope, transforming it into something other than an unrealistic pipe-dream. The hope of an addict deep in their addiction is unrealistic, deceived into thinking that MORE will somehow make it all better. False hope. False life. Nothing more than lies.
The naive hopes of my childhood morphed into the unrealistic hopes of addiction protected behind the myriad fortresses of denial. In recovery, a realistic humility and a hope based on fruitful outcomes will slowly arise in those who learn in whatever ways they must (staying connected with the recovering communities was my must).
Hope works best when Under the Influence of Recovery. In my addiction, hope was always defeated by the next drink or drug. Accepting the many responsibilities necessary for a sustained recovery were, are and will continue to be the conditions necessary for hope to remain alive, to grow and to flourish.
Now I have true hope, known it and felt it. Hope is lived. Recovery is possible, doable, irreplaceable.

*****
HOPE: Our Most Human, Truly Renewable Natural Resource
*****
"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."
*****
#Alcoholism #Addiction #Recovery
*****
Explore ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO
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The Insane Logic Inside Addiction

*****
"Whoa" means nothing to a Swedish horse. (Stacy at onesentence dot org)
*****
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.
*****
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.
*****
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. 

*****
"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more." 
*****
#Alcoholism #Addiction #Recovery
*****
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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My 5***** Star Review of MEDITATIONS ON SELF-DISCIPLINE AND FAILURE by William Ferraiolo

*****
In the Introduction to MEDITATIONS ON SELF-DISCIPLINE AND FAILURE: Stoic Exercise for Mental Fitness, William Ferraiolo asserts that "you may have a very different experience than another reader of the same text." Well-stated and true, I read this 300-paragraph volume of meditations through the lens of a recovering alcoholic and addict.
My own early recovery placed me on the square fuzzily marked 'Cynic' (in the Modern, twisted use of the word cynic, not the classic Cynicism of Ancient Philosophy). My emotional detachment was a direct result of addiction and of hitting bottom, not a part of my essential nature before or after. Years of recovery have helped me to rejoin the human race and brought me to the doorsteps of Stoicism and the Ancient Philosopher Epictetus. The Serenity Prayer, which is part of the last chapter of the last book of MEDITATIONS ON SELF-DISCIPLINE AND FAILURE: Stoic Exercise for Mental Fitness, is for me a great summary for most of the content of the preceding 29 Books.
Ferraiolo's use of language is polished, the truths exposed, unvarnished. His brilliant use of italics and exclamation points acts to heighten a reader's appreciation of the Narrator's voice. Truly, this book sounds best (My use of italics, pun intended) when read aloud. In fact, it was nearly impossible for me to read from MEDITATIONS... without reading passages aloud to whomever was in earshot!
"Just about anything could (His use of italics, spot on) go wrong" (Book V, Chapter 1) and (Book VI, Chapter 1) "Grow up! Admit that you are no one special" are two short examples of his italics and exclamation point use and brings the Narrator's voice upfront and personal to great effect.
Each reader will find their own quotable clusters of brilliance in MEDITATIONS.... I'll cite "Genuine gratitude is incompatible with arrogance" (Book VI, Chapter 9) and (Book XXI, Chapter 6) "Gratitude must never be far from your mind" as two of my favorite short examples worthy of further Meditation.
This book's prescriptions for a good life, "a life governed by reason," maintain a consistent voice throughout, a string of 300 pearls of wisdom masterfully constructed and delivered with a drumbeat's measured, rhythmic cadence. The Meditations found herein fit snugly into the Self-Help category. As author William Ferraiolo notes, "Stop whining and get to work (Book XXI, Chapter 10)."
Book XXVII, Chapter 6 notes that "Human character has not improved over the ages" and I must insist on adding that this 5***** Star Book is among my favorite reads in a dozen years. I hope that will be YOUR experience, too!
*****

#Enjoy my first book, an Autobiographical Fiction, ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal. Find it on Amazon here:  http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO 

My Non-Fiction, BECOMING UNBROKEN: Reflections on Addiction and Recovery is also on Amazon and may be found here: https://lnkd.in/dkF767RT 

Both books are available in Print and Kindle editions.

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#alcoholism #addiction #recovery #books

"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....
*****
(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.
*****
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."
*****
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.
*****
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.

*****
"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."
*****
#Alcoholism #Addiction #Recovery
*****
The passage spoken by Surimi and those in quotes are from my book. Explore More ALL DRINKING ASIDE Here: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO
Recovery Tweets: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4
140+ Recovery Posts: https://goo.gl/fmzt9b

"I... Did... My BEST... When I Was DRUNK" Exemplified!

"My un-defining moment was being plastered and bowling a 276. Seven drunken strikes in a row in my bar's bowling league. At that time, I really did do my best physically when I was drunk because drunk had become the new normal. My brain was used to drunk. My brain needed drunk to be in familiar territory. The liquid I had become used to navigating through was alcohol. Liquid me in a liquid dream swimming through alcohol. Alcohol bathed each and every cell in my body, separately and lusciously. Caressing each cell like a little warm oil rubdown at an expensive spa. Alcohol, the ultimate masseuse. I bowled a 276, plastered, shortly blacked out and still drinking, swimming through alcohol like Marlee Matlin [Children of a Lesser God] swimming in stunning silence. There was no before or after, only this oblivion."
*****
Scary, isn't it? How I romanticized it! Christ, are addicts "Children of a Lesser God," too? Haunting. To say the least, I was incomplete without my alcohol back then. Today, "Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."
If I were to bowl today and got seven gutter balls, I'd still be happy because my head would not be in the gutter like it used to be. 
Alcohol, a perfect zero. Recovery, a perfect score!

*****
#Alcoholism #Addiction #Recovery
*****
The passages in quotes are excerpted from ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction and Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO
Recovery Tweets: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4
140+ Recovery Posts: https://goo.gl/fmzt9b

"WHEN I DRINK, THE ONLY WORLD THERE IS, is ALCOHOL."

(cgtrader.com)

The utter emptiness of my world spilled out and I was left with nothing. Alcohol was my everything. It replaced all else, in turns quickly and slowly. I consumed Alcohol. Alcohol consumed me. An Alcoholic Animal, an Alien in the World of the Not Addicted. Sympathy and Empathy were beyond my slightest comprehension.
I could only write this later, much later, many years later: "When I drink, the only world there is, is alcohol. I will drink until I blackout and I will continue drinking until I pass out. More is the only word I know. More, until I blackout and then still more until my body shuts down and I pass out. And somehow, even then, more is not enough. My disease cannot ever be satisfied. When there is nothing else, there is always more.
More is everything... and nothing.
I will never be like most normal folks.
When I drink, the only world there is, is alcohol."

*****

#Enjoy my first book, an Autobiographical Fiction, ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal. Find it on Amazon here:  http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO 

My Non-Fiction, BECOMING UNBROKEN: Reflections on Addiction and Recovery is also on Amazon and may be found here: https://lnkd.in/dkF767RT 

Both books are available in Print and Kindle editions.

#alcoholism #addiction #recovery #books 

If I Couldn't Have Smoked Cigarettes, I Would Have Relapsed & Died

"So much is known and so much unknown about addiction and recovery. But I do know this much: If my very first rehab had not allowed me to continue my addiction to smoking cigarettes as I tried to remain sober, I most likely would have bolted out of there, no fourteen day stay. I would have left. I would have smoked. I would have had a drink, and I may have died. Trial and error is frightening when you confront the fact that one small error can change the entire course of your life. Today, not drinking and not smoking are mutually reinforcing. Lose one and I would most certainly lose both.
I did not drink today."
*****
That was me 22 years ago. Much has happened since then. I relapsed off and on for the next 8 years and today have accumulated nearly 14 years of continuous sobriety, ten years nicotine-free. Besides being 22 years older, I am not the same person today. I have changed.
*****
I hate when a politician says that they've evolved. It sounds so uppity and false. But since I'm not a politician, truly, and with a realistic humility, I can say, yes, I have evolved since 1996. Had to... or I'd be a drinking, smoking corpse, cowboy!

*****
Glad to be alive to tell the tale!
*****
"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."
*****
#alcoholism #addiction #recovery
*****
The passages in quotes are excerpted from ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction and Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO
Recovery Tweets: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4
130+ Recovery Posts: https://goo.gl/fmzt9b

"AT LEAST I'M NOT AN ADDICT.": THIS Alcoholic Once WAS that STUPID!

"'At least I'm not an addict.' That's the sense of moral superiority I once had. Today, that statement would be absurdly laughable. Too hung over to carry a bar tray full of drinks without spilling them. I would co-workers to place the straight up martinis in front of the customers' placemats because my daily shakes wouldn't allow me to do so without spilling. Spill. Spill. Spill. Spill. Spill. Avalanche.
If alcoholism isn't addiction to alcohol, what the hell is it?
Spill. Spill. Fucking spill."

At this point in my drinking career, I believed that my addiction to alcohol was manageable. My ability to diminish the dimensions of my large and small daily disasters illuminates the power of denial. And at each point in my downward progression, I'd slowly become accustomed to that state, always believing that it would never get worse, that it could not get worse. And then, inevitably, it did get worse, I got used to each new normal in my progressive downward slide.

Today, I feel no sense of moral superiority over those addicted to substances other than alcohol. They all offer their own particular versions of hell. And I truly have no sense of moral superiority over my alcoholic past.
After all, it was alcohol that brought me to where I am today.

My more recent cancer diagnosis, treatment and recovery has been a certain kind of breeze, another progressive disease to surmount. When I got sober and remained so after 30 years of daily binge drinking (and a few relapses), the road to cancer recovery was already well paved. 

Spill. Spill. Spill. Spill. Spill.
Today, rather than dread, I live in anticipation of tomorrow.
Recovery (and alcoholism) has taught me that I can and will deal with whatever life presents to me.
I will keep you posted because I am not toasted, 
*****
The passage in quotes is excerpted from my Autobiographical Fiction ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal. Find it on Amazon. Book it here:  http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO 

Also #enjoy my second book, a Non-Fiction, BECOMING UNBROKEN: Reflections on Addiction and Recovery. Find it on Amazon here: https://lnkd.in/dkF767RT 

BOTH books are Available in Print and Kindle editions.

(saturdayeveningpost.com)

For the Verse Averse: Addiction Lines Realigned

"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."
*****
There. I did it. Unpacked a poem and repackaged it as prose for those averse to verse. ALL DRINKING ASIDE may not be for you. Verse infiltrates that text as prose because as everyone knows, don't pose a poem except as prose. Otherwise, who knows? The patient may take a turn for the worse.
It's only poetry if I say it is. It's not. It's the Destruction, Deconstruction and Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal.
Build with it what you will.

*****
#alcoholism #addiction #recovery
*****
"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: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO
Recovery Tweets: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4
130+ Recovery Posts: https://goo.gl/fmzt9b