Tag Archives: addiction

October 4, 2026 · 5:00 am

Cunning, Baffling, Powerful

A nice woman came to my AA homegroup a while back – let’s say maybe late 50s, thin grey hair parted down the middle. She’d first attended a few months earlier, then suffered a “slip,” and now she was back. During that first meeting, she’d told us about the ending up in a hospital and the horrid embarrassment of asking loved ones to help remove the huge pile of empties outside her house.

Then she stopped coming. I live in a small town now, so during her “slip” I heard gossip about her escapades at the local tavern — the same stuff I used to do 31 years ago.

Now here she was back at my homegroup and just incensed. The loved ones were secretly checking up on her! The nerve! She’d caught them at it here and also there, lurking in their cars. And that place where she’d detoxed, they were urging her to attend outpatient treatment twice a week. She didn’t need outpatient, any more than she needed checking on. She was done with drinking. She’d learned her lesson.

That was a couple of months ago, and I don’t know what’s become of this person. What I do know is this: she was not sane at that last meeting, claiming she was done with drinking but failing to grasp that drinking was not done with her. Countless vain attempts had proved she could not control her drinking with willpower, yet she believed the very thing that had failed her all her life was now suddenly going to work.

Consensus reality is defined as “the generally agreed-upon version of reality within a community or society.” There’s another term, conditioned reality, meaning a concept of reality arrived at through social and educational conditioning. Objective reality, as many philosophers have pointed out, is entirely unavailable to us. We have only experiential reality, which is by nature subjective. But when enough subjects agree that their subjective experiences coincide, we collectively subscribe to that common view as seeming objective.

There are two points where I break with consensus reality in the U.S.:

the conviction that any person can overcome alcohol addiction the same way they might any other bad habit, and
the notion that ghosts, spirits, angels, and demons do not exist, any more than god itself does.

I’m going to talk mainly about point 1, but also a bit about 2. My subjective experience contradicts both, and I’ve found communities for both, where enough of us agree to form our own consensual reality.

To buck society’s consensus is a big no-no. These beliefs form the foundation of all social constructs, so nobody wants to look at the idea that the foundation itself is a construct. We punish outliers by labeling them crazy and stupid. I do this, too. For instance, I consider flat-earthers both crazy and stupid, though I myself have never viewed the Earth from space. I nevertheless share firmly in the larger consensus that it’s a globe.

Applying this concept to alcoholism, it makes conventional sense that when someone makes up their mind to NOT do something, as the 50-some visitor to my homegroup had done, they can follow through. These days, lots of online influencers and for-profit organizations are pushing the idea that Alcohol Use Disorder is no different from a tendency to overeat, overshop, hoard, smoke, avoid exercise, or any other bad-for-you habit (in fact, many of these can become addictions also). If you just make up your mind and start a new practice, you can overcome it.

However, the first 100 AA members, through shared experience, developed a DIFFERENT consensual reality — one that flies in the face of the mainstream consensus. They defined 3 distinct “classes” of drinkers.

People who refuse to believe a 1939 text can teach them anything do not read the Big Book, so they don’t consider this distinction. In fact, AA is not for moderate drinkers who want to further moderate. It is not for heavy drinkers, either. A heavy drinker may drink their besotted ass off for decades, but once they decide they’re done drinking, they’re done. And, as the 1939 text says, “our hats are off to [them].”

For me, however, and the generations of ancestors on my dad’s side who died young from this thing, there is no willpower strong enough to save us. For me, and maybe for you, as soon as we take even one drink, alcohol becomes our all-out master. As for getting us to take that first drink, the addiction, that rogue part of our brain seeking its goal, is incredibly cunning, baffling, and powerful.

In the case of my ex-boyfriend, dead now from alcoholism, addiction convinced him he could try a beer with tomato juice in it. Another friend thought he could drink vanilla extract. Another went out on kombucha. Another on cough syrup. The list goes on and on. The first drink wakes the sleeping dragon, one way too powerful for our human resources to fight.

AA is for people like that. We know something contrary to consensus reality. We know we have broken brains.

We also know that asking a higher power for help, opening ourselves to the spirit realm in whatever form we conceive it, can provide the missing power to avoid that first drink. God, source, Gaia, nature, the universe — whatever we want to call it. We ask for support, and we get it. We get it also from our fellows in AA meetings who have had experiences similar to ours.

Which brings me to point 2. I’m coming up on a thousand words here, so I’ll keep this short. But even within this enclave of nonconformists, I am an outlier. Having had a Near-Death Experience that opened me to gobs of paranormal aftereffects that I tried my damndest to dismiss, I know now that we all have spiritual teams. Helping you stay sober, I would say, are your dead loved ones as well as spirit energies in many forms, including angels who’ve hung out with you in various lifetimes and the power nexus of all that is, which I’d call god.

If that kind of talk falls outside your experience and therefore your beliefs, no problem. But if you’re an alcoholic and point 1 falls outside your beliefs, you’re going to suffer a lot — maybe enough to recast your idea of reality.

People Do Die from This Thing

There’s a unique pain in losing someone we love to alcoholism (or any addiction) because it feels like the thing that took them away from us was a cross between insanity, suicide, and disease.

Insanity, because denial is a primary symptom of alcoholism, the loved one remaining fixated on their next drink in the face of clear evidence that it’s killing them. They insist they’re okay, that we’re being overly dramatic in saying they’ll die, that they’ll definitely drink less in the future.

Suicide, because it is they themselves that administer their poison, they themselves who get it and choose to swallow it again and again.

Disease because, to anyone who knows anything about alcoholism, we can see how they perfectly fit the symptomatology that has killed so many, destroyed so many lives, brought about so much unhappiness and desecration of everything inspiring, wise, or respect-worthy in people with the same condition.

AA works because, when we see OUR OWN symptoms replicated in OTHERS, we begin to realize they are symptoms, not lifestyle choices. And if we’re open-minded, we accept that we’re in the grips of something far more powerful than willpower, resolve, or a slew of solemn oaths.

Those of you who’ve been following this blog more than a decade might recall this post from 2015, when I discovered my boyfriend, who I knew had relapsed, was unfaithful. (Duh…) Those having followed since 2023 might recall this post about his death.

This week, I finally finished a video tribute to him. It’s 15 minutes, very personal, pretty woo-woo, and undeniably mushy. No recipe for how to get sober; just a tragic example of what can happen if we don’t. Remember, after retirement (which he’d looked forward to for all his working life), Gerard drank only beer and believed he was safe.

Despite what I know of Al-Anon, my heart still aches whenever I see his last text asking if we could talk. I said no, and I can’t help wondering whether, had I said yes, I could have magically saved him. I said no because A) I was in an AA meeting, B) my sponsor, who is also my Al-Anon sponsor, was sitting right next to me and, just by her expression, indicated talking to a drunk person would help nothing, and C) I knew it would pain me to hear a loved one I’d respected so deeply slurring his words while sloppy drunk.

But what if? What if I’d said the magic words and changed his course?

It helps me to think of his daughter, who, in her mid-20s, flew four times from Virginia out to Seattle, rented cars, and ferried to his home on remote Whidbey Island, trying again and again to get her dad sober. The two of them were close; she was the apple of his eye. Saying goodbye at the end of her last visit, after he’d refused to go back into treatment, she said, “I’m scared this might be the last time I see you.” He waved aside her words saying, “I’m fine.”

I could not have done more than she did. Only his higher power could have. She and I believe that, having binge-drunk from age 11 when his mother suffered a catastrophic stroke, he damaged his brain in a way that made socializing extra stressful. AA meetings were like running a social gamut, so he could accept no help from his fellows.

Alone, he had no brakes, no defense, no way out.

De-Romanticizing Alcohol

I remember seeing cigarette commercials on TV and filling the pages of magazines, campaigns and jingles pushing a story about the kind of people who smoked their brand. Sexy, fun-loving, country-hearted, independent-minded, or, in the case of the Marlboro man, hyper-masculine loners — all of them could discern a truly superior smoke.

Do you know what these people weren’t? Living organisms fueled by oxygen that was constantly diffused into their bloodstreams through the 0.001 millimeter-thin linings of countless tiny capillaries in their lungs. Drawing nonchalantly on white cylinders, these smokers were cool; none cared a hoot about their 1,400 square feet of lung surface getting sullied and destroyed by toxic, carcinogenic smoke inhalation.

In the 1960s, over 40% of Americans were smokers, as compared to 14% today. Proof of harm has won out over smoking’s romanticized images. Similarly, in the 1970s, 71% of Americans drank. Today, the number is 54%, with 66% of young adults aware that moderate drinking harms one’s health.

Can you see where I’m going with this? Alcohol is following in the footsteps of cigarettes. It’ll take longer and never be 100%, but the days when the general public overlooks the carcinogenic, dementia-inducing, liver-killing properties of this poison in order to “take the edge off” or “whoop it up” are numbered.

I started smoking when I was 17, the same age I discovered drinking to blackout. Each habit in its own way seemed to save me from the awkward pain of being me — an insecure, shame-filled, not-good-enough teen. While a lot of that relief was neurochemical, more of it came from the stories I connected to smoking and drinking. Like a costume or special effects make-up, they made me a tough, devil-may-care, gutsy young woman ready to live on the wild side, or a svelte, sophisticated siren able to charm and impress just about anyone — depending on the setting.

All I had to do was suck stuff down my windpipe and esophagus respectively, and all those glamorous, romantic traits became mine! That is, until my 30s when both quit working. In the end, smoking was automatic, and I felt like a dumb loser just as much drunk as sober.

It took 17 years for me to truly hit bottom with drinking, and another 2 years to quit smoking. I knew I had let both go, and yet in those first few years, I mourned them as lost vices, lost friends, lost indulgences.

I would not have believed – nor do I expect you to if you’re newly sober – that one day I would have zero interest in either. I wish I could drink about as much as I wish I could sniff glue. I long to smoke pot about as much as I long to get Alzheimers. In fact, if I had to choose between hanging with some drunk/stoned people and finding myself in a 4-person bobsled at 80 mph, the choice would be difficult — and only because I suffer from chronic vertigo.

I know a few recovering alcoholics who still envy friends and neighbors who drink. I can’t help but doubt they’ve been fully restored to sanity. How can they imagine booze would grant them ease and comfort, make them more fun, enrich their experience? Today, if someone offered me a pill or injection that would let me drink “normally,” I would laugh. I’d ask, “What’s ‘normal’ about swallowing a carcinogenic, dementia-inducing, liver-killing poison to diminish your level of awareness – in any amount?”

My newly sober self would’ve been pissed to hear this, but today it’s THE 12 STEPS that grant me the ease and comfort of trust in god, my LOVE for self and others that make me more spontaneous and fun, and GRATITUDE that enriches my everyday experience. I’ve traded my once rampant anxiety for the first line of the serenity prayer (serenity to accept the things I cannot change) and the itch of discontent for its second line (courage to change the things I can) because living in the 12 steps has taught me enough of the third line (wisdom to know the difference) to just “relax and take it easy” [p. 86].

A 2024 study found that, in the U.S., more people are using cannabis and THC-infused products daily than are drinking daily. As pot has edged out booze, violent crime rates have been falling, as drinking has long been associated with increased aggression.

Marijuana, however, is no angel drug:

Daily marijuana use raises the risk of stroke by 42% and heart attack by 25%, even if there is no prior history of heart disease and the person has never smoked or vaped tobacco, according to a February 2024 study.

Weed has also been linked to cardiac arrhythmias such as atrial fibrillation; myocarditis, which is an inflammation of the heart muscle; spasms of the heart’s arteries and a higher risk of heart failure.

By using cannabis before the age of 25, young people can permanently damage their brains… [CNN]

But here’s the biggest difference, I think, between alcohol and pot: Alcohol has been around for so long that it’s deeply ingrained throughout our culture. It’s a substance infused with romantic STORIES of elegance, connoisseurship, rugged individualism, celebration, and romance.

You can plainly see these stories in advertisements no different than the cigarette commercials. Wine “complements” a meal; beer “belongs” at a barbecue; scotch and brandy are “savored” by an evening fire. Pot has no comparable mystique. When people pop a gummy or take a bong hit, they know they’re self-medicating. They don’t pretend the point is instead to enjoy great flavor or cool refreshment or proud, elegant traditions. They’re just straight up chasing a buzz.

Working the 12 steps frees us from the psychic pain that calls for a buzz to vanquish it. And seeing alcohol for what it is – a toxic drug no matter what form it takes – frees us from buying into the stories that glamorize it and convince us that, without alcohol, our lives are missing something. They’re not. Quite the contrary, being truly awake in sobriety opens the door to a richer, fuller, happier life than any neurotoxin – whether in liquid, smoke, or gummy form – can offer.

Yes, life is hard, like a series of hurdles. But every hurdle can inspire us to fly, just for a bit, boosted by the god in our hearts. The more aware we are, the more spring and strength enliven our every leap of faith.

No Amount of Alcohol Safe for the Brain

Why do Sober Alcoholics Relapse? How can we not?

Recently a visitor to my AA homegoup shared that at 19 years sober, he’d joined coworkers at a business conference and, since cocktails were free and everyone at his table was ordering, decided to have just one. Six long years later, after losing his job, destroying his marriage, impairing his health, and

Alcoholism only sleeps; 1 drink awakens it

having scrabbled at the brink of sobriety in baffled despair as he fell back again and again into drunkenness, he somehow made it back. Sober again four years as he spoke to us, he’d gained a profound respect for the insanity of alcoholism.

Why does this happen? How can we avoid it?

I myself have never relapsed since my first AA meeting on January 29, 1995, so I cannot speak directly to the inner experience of deciding to drink. Instead, I asked a friend in my homegroup who knows the cycle well to offer you guys some insights. Here is Clark’s story. He left out the trauma of his childhood with a Vietnam vet step-father, but trust me, there was plenty.

“I got my second DUI in back 1982 when I was 19, but I really didn’t want to be sober. I was court ordered to go to AA, so I gave it a half-hearted try, but I wasn’t willing to follow directions. Both my mom and sister were in the program, but I’m incredibly stubborn. I thought, ‘AA is for weak people.’

“By my late 20s, I was making great money. I had a wife and kids, a lakefront home, a speedboat, a Harley, all sorts of toys — and all of it felt meaningless. I was miserable and wanted to kill myself. Booze had quit working. My cousin and best friend were doing heroin, though, so I thought, I’ll try that! In a way, it saved my life; heroin kept me from killing myself; but it also took my addictions to a new level.

“I’ve never officially counted how many times I’ve relapsed, but I’d guess about 20. Every time I was in pain or something bad happened, I’d run back to AA because deep down I knew that was the solution. But again, I wouldn’t follow directions. In 1986 I found crack cocaine, and it completely destroyed my life. I checked myself into treatment and stayed sober about 3 months, but my wife gave me a hard time about being away from home for meetings.

“The main recurring theme of my relapses has been that I forget. I forget how bad things got, and I remember the good times — ’cause there were good times. In 1990, I’d left my wife, stayed up all night smoking crack with a girl I knew from high school, and to get money for more crack we decided to rob a gas station. After I eventually got caught, I went back to AA to avoid jail time. That time, I stayed sober about 6 months, and it was some of my best sobriety up to that point. I actually got a sponsor and cracked open the [Big] Book. But then I met a girl in AA, we were both new, and we got drunk.

“In 1997, I started selling crack myself, but pretty soon I became my own best customer, and before long I ended up in prison. I got clean with my second wife, until she died at 26 giving birth to our daughter. After that, I didn’t even try to get sober for years. I just had too much pain.

“Still, the cycle kept repeating. One thing about relapse, with me anyway: it starts days before I actually take a drink or drug. My thinking gets bad, I’m frustrated about something, in some kind of pain. I wasn’t good at reaching out to people, so I’d convince myself that THIS TIME, things were going to be different! I’d manage it. I’d control it. I’d keep it to weekends.

“This last time, I had a cocaine-induced heart attack, went to the ER, got shocked back to life 6 times, and stayed in a coma for 2 weeks. My poor sister, who is not religious at all, went to the [low-bottom AA hall] and asked them to pray for me. I came out of the coma, but within 2 weeks I was back to drinking and smoking crack. Right about then I got a pretty sizable inheritance, so I proceeded to smoke it — about $500 worth every day. I wanted another heart attack. Dying, I’d not gone to the light, but to a darkness completely painless, and I wanted that again.

“I’d wake up mornings feeling I absolutely could not stand another day. The book talks about ‘the jumping off point’ when we can’t imagine life with or without alcohol. I saw a choice between getting sober and dying, and I chose dying — because I didn’t think I could get sober. I’d tried so many times and failed. I never left my place except to meet the drug dealer in the driveway or to get cash at 7-11. I wasn’t showering; I wasn’t eating. I was a wreck, utterly isolated and alone.

“But… my sister kept coming over. She has 38 years, and we’d always been close. She had me write a will; she made me write a letter to each of my children to explain why I was dying. I could see the pain in her eyes. And I decided, for her sake, I’d give this thing one more try.

“Thank god, two or three days later, it dawned on me that I’d never given AA a fair shot. There’s that line in ‘How it Works’: Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program… That was me. Every time, I’d do a little bit of this and a little bit of that, I’d grudgingly drag myself to 2 or 3 meetings a week, but I’d never given it the whole deal. And this time, I decided to give it the whole deal. And it’s been the difference of night and day.

“I went to 2 or 3 meetings a day for 16 months. After about 90 days, my brain began to clear, and I decided I was going to pray, I was going to get sponsor, and I was going to work the 12 steps out of the book with him. And I did all those things. I’ve prayed every day since. I can’t point to one of those three things because I think they’re all integral, but my life has changed because of that decision. I’m so grateful for what I have today that I keep doing those three things. People I’d known in AA for over 40 years, they always welcomed me back. Given a choice, I wouldn’t pick me as a friend because I was so slippery. But they were always there for me.

“Today at 2 years and one month sober, my life is completely different. I just got back from an AA Roundup in Port Angeles, and I loved it! I went to meetings, fellowshipped with friends, went out to dinner, walked on the beach. It’s a blast. I’m still kind of shy about making new friends, but I feel I belong.

“I never had a higher power before, but praying and really listening in meetings to how other people were approaching the higher power thing, that opened the door. I have some decidedly un-Christian views (pro-choice, pro-gay rights, etc.) but I’ve found a liberal church where I’m welcome and we don’t talk about those things. Prayer centers me.

“If someone wants to get well, I would say, ‘Give yourself to AA completely. Do the work laid out in the 12 steps.’ Not in your first week! But you can’t keep putting it off, either — working the steps with a good sponsor to the best of your ability.

“My happiness and equanimity are at a level I’ve never had in my life. Ever! I have so much gratitude. Finally being done, having a life that is manageable, friends who care about me, being able to look at myself in the mirror, not feeling like a piece of shit, sleeping good every night. I have a life today that I never could have imagined. I still go to a meeting every day, sometimes two. I walk my little dog — she loves me. I’ve steered away from relationships so far, but I figure when I’m ready, God will give me one.

“Every day is an amazing journey.” ❤

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Filed under AA, Addiction, Alcoholic relapse, Alcoholics Anonymous, Alcoholism, Drug relapse, Recovery

Tagged as AA, addiction, Alcohol relapse, Alcoholism, Drug relapse, Long term sobriety, recovery, sober, sobriety, Staying sober

March 6, 2024 · 6:00 am

Third Step: Next Right Thing

The first three steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are pure logic:

Step 1: “I can’t” (drink in moderation, manage my life, etc.)
Step 2: “A higher power can” (restore me to sanity)

Therefore

Step 3: “I choose to let it” (by turning my will over to HP)

In Step 2 alone there’s plenty to ruffle our prideful alcoholic feathers, right? Not just the higher power thing, but this insinuation that we’re currently not sane. Hmmph! For years, maybe decades, we’ve defended our passionate reliance on alcohol by assuring everyone, including ourselves, “I’ve got this!” I can remember thinking, “And even if I don’t quite have it, I’m saner than most people.”

Of course I had no clue how insane I was: I wasn’t SANE enough to! Today, however, I can affirm with perfect certainty that I was bat-shit crazy and had been for years. Confusing self-poisoning with self-care on a daily basis was only the tip of the iceberg.

But then there’s that whole “God” thing. Many newcomers choke on the word, so they never really nail down this crucial foundation of Steps 1-3. Religion’s claimed monopoly on spiritual life is largely to blame. It has bamboozled so many into thinking a higher power must involve religion.

Quite the opposite, in my opinion. As Carl Jung observed, “One of the main functions of organized religion is to protect people against a direct experience of God” (emphasis mine). Religion miscasts god/HP as an external authority figure, when in fact god is “living” us 24-7, living the trees and grass and little rolly-poly bugs and bunny wabbits. God loves us all sooooo powerfully that we’re animated by it. That wondrously complex arrangement of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and trace elements you see in a cold corpse is inexplicably enervated with god’s love to become… YOU!

God speaks within us, not through any text or religious authority. Disagree if you want, but I guarantee you, no religious authority can keep an alcoholic sober! Only we, waking up to god’s guidance through Step 3, can manage that one day at a time. In fact, the more religion has been forced on someone as a child, the more difficult finding god within can be.

God at work!

My ex-boyfriend recently drank himself to death with beer — Indian Pale Ale, to be exact. He’d gone through detox and treatment to emerge gung-ho sober, but multiple handicaps blocked him from tapping into a power greater than himself. A) He’d been raised Catholic; B) he was left-brained to an extreme, having impaired his brain interconnections with binge drinking as a teen; C) he felt extremely awkward and uncomfortable in socializing, also due to B.

A made him keep reverting to seeing HP as an authority figure; B kept him from feeling his connection (8:00) to everything else, and C kept him from hearing or seeing god through his fellow alcoholics.

Below are his last texts to me. Before you laugh at the ‘Subaru’ thing, recall that while sober this man could carry in his mind the full schematics for a Boeing 787. These texts are crippled with drunkenness because… he was less than a week from dying.

You can imagine how often I weep that I didn’t agree to that last call, as I might’ve if I’d not been sitting right next to my Al-Anon sponsor. But in truth, I didn’t want to witness him in that state, slurring his words, awash in vague emotions, making little sense. It was too painful. Besides, I couldn’t have helped him find his HP any more than you could. A week later, on his 60th birthday, he died of a gastric hemorrhage.

“Do the next right thing” was one of those resonant 3rd Step sayings I heard early on in AA. Strangely, “right” did not equate to “most desired.” It steered me away from what I thought would feel good, make me look good, or bring temporary relief, and toward a deeper sense of right and wrong. **

We all carry that sense within. It’s a feeling in our gut. We often have to quiet the chatter of our thoughts before we can make contact with it, but it’s there. Initially, I grasped only few “next right things” like so many flimsy reeds: go to a meeting; stay out of bars; don’t meander toward the store’s booze section or hang out with users.

Today, though, I have a huge, rich bouquet of next right things to choose from every day: practice gratitude; call a friend (instead of texting); exercise/ hike/ do yoga/ walk the doggies someplace new; do service work or donate; tidy or fix something; meditate; notice beauty; be kind, be kind, be kind.

On my favorite sleep podcast, in a book entitled, The Princess and the Goblin, I recently listened to a description of how a child princess, who has discovered her own magical great, great grandmother in a remote tower of the castle, is led by the grandmother’s wisdom even in her absence. When afraid, she’s supposed to put a ring the grandmother gave her under her pillow and feel with her index finger for a gossamer thin thread connecting the two of them. It’s a perfect metaphor for always being connected to our higher power.

But here’s the cool part. The thread at her fingertip doesn’t just lead to the safety of her grandmother. It leads her deep into the goblin mines, into terrifying pitch darkness, across underground streams and through narrow passageways where she’s filled with doubt and urgent desire to turn back but can’t because the thread leads only forward. To her amazement, it leads her to her friend, a courageous boy the goblins have all but buried in a cavern, shows her the way to free him, and guides them both back to daylight and safety. In fear for herself, she’s led to rescue someone else. While boy insists her idea of “grandmother’s thread” is nonsense (right up til the end when he finds it himself), she trusts it beyond her own thinking.

So, I find, goes life after one makes a solid 3rd Step. We are led forward, often scared, but guided to greater outcomes.

I alone can sense where my “god-consciousness” leads. Many don’t understand why I’m about to move away from this city where I was born 63 years ago — to I don’t even know where. I’ll find out soon enough. I trust my thread. It’s just the next right thing.

As I describe in my Die-Hard** book –> the first two communications I heard from my post-NDE guardian angel, having just driven home horrifically drunk, were: “This is the last time I can help you; you DO know right from wrong!” Hearing him opened space for what has unfolded as 29 years sober.

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Filed under AA, Alcoholism, living sober, Recovery, Step 3

Tagged as 12 steps, 3rd step, AA, addiction, Alcoholism, sobriety, Step 3

May 30, 2022 · 6:00 am

Alcoholism and Rats

Alcoholism is a master of disguise. That is how it kills. It shows up on the doorstep of your consciousness dressed as an ordinary thought — a good thought, in fact, a good idea that seems to be coming from your own free will. So you welcome it in. It says, essentially, “Hey, a drink is a good idea!”

It’s nicely dressed. It’s friendly. It seems perfectly sensible and justified — justified because, dang it, you do deserve a drink. Chatting with it, you discover you agree on so many points: all this abstinence stuff is an overreaction. Right? Other people make such a big deal over something so simple as a [beer / glass of wine / cocktail]! It’s not their business. Can’t you just do what you want? Of course you can! This is your life and… You know what? A drink is a good idea.

So skilled at disguise is this visitor that the alcoholic never suspects the truth: its aim is death. Your death. It wants you to drink, and keep drinking, to kill yourself while screwing over everything you ever did to STOP drinking, including treatment and step work and soul-searching — all you’ve done to get well. As long as you still have the strength to raise that drink to your lips, Alcoholism has more work to do: “Fuck that,” it chuckles. “C’mon, my friend. A drink is a good idea.”

Impulse — that’s what the visitor relies on. Though we vaguely sense that we’re “being none too smart” [36], we pour whiskey in the milk, decide to have a highball, prescribe for what ails us, rebel, say fuck it, or just mechanically take that drink. We are truly defenseless against the first drink.

So are alcoholic rats.

I recently came across this fascinating medical study of alcoholism conducted on rats: https://www.nature.com/articles/npp2017105.

Because it’s rather dry and scientific, here’s a cheat sheet.

First, the scientists isolated rats like us, that is, “alcohol-preferring rats,” which they call P-rats. An alcohol-preferring rat is one that would rather drink booze than water (sensible, right?) until they are quite hammered and, I assume, pass out. Next, they taught these P-rats to “work for” their booze: when a light went on they had to press an initial lever that would give then access to a second lever which they could press to get booze. All the P-rats learned this.

Now, here’s the kicker: They started giving the rats painful electric shocks some of the time when they pressed the “seeking” lever — the lever that brings them nothing but an opportunity to press a second to score some booze. The breakdown was this:

30% of P-Rats greatly decreased use of the “seeking” lever
36% of P-Rats moderately decreased use of the “seeking” lever
34% of P-Rats, the true alcoholic rats, did not or could not give a shit about the shocks. Increasing the frequency of shocks did not deter them. Ten months’ abstinence with no alcohol available did not untrain them. The instant the booze was back, they were back at it, getting fuck zapped out of their little ratty feet, anything just so they could have a drink.

That’s us, guys! That is us. I think of the first 30% as normies who love to drink. I think of the second 36% as hard drinkers who get told by a doctor to decrease their drinking and are able to do so.

But that last 34% of rats — those the scientists termed “compulsive,” meaning that for them the drive to get alcohol is stronger than any other. And that is alcoholism in a nutshell.

Were the compulsive P-Rats of a lower moral fiber than the other 66% of booze-loving rats?

Might other rats who loved them have convinced them not to press that seeking lever?

Could they maybe have tried more mental control?

No, no, no. They were simply alcoholic rats, and they were screwed.

A higher power is our only hope

Back to that master of disguise, alcoholism. How can we possibly gain the perspective to slam the door in its friendly, affable face? There are these things called “steps.”

Give up being special. Identify as alcoholic. Know we are no different or “smarter” than anyone else who died of alcoholism.
Open our minds to something greater than us, a power beyond our thinking.
Follow that power. Stop believing our thoughts about anything to do with alcohol and ask instead for help. Make a bone-deep commitment to do what is right and good, no longer what we want. Good Orderly Direction. Group Of Drunks. God as we understand it. Opening deeply to any of these will let in the light that heals us.
Complete the next 9 steps with aid of a good sponsor.

Louisa checking in

I write this today with a heavy heart — crying, actually. All I write here is what I long to say to one person — one who has never listened.

I love this person very much, though I shouldn’t because he’s an ex who done me wrong. He is near to dying from alcoholism. Yesterday he checked in to detox and treatment. Ever since one of his relatives texted me that he was “skeletal and shaking,” I’ve stayed mostly in the background, asking sober friends he’s lost touch with to call. But last night I kept waking and just praying for him to find a higher power.

It’s unlikely. His chances of survival are slim not only because he’s one of us 34% compulsive P-Rats but because his right brain is weak. The left brain is the bullhorn of ego and fixing things; the right takes in a bigger picture. People with right brain strokes, relying on their left brain’s assessments, often deny that anything is wrong with them, that limbs are paralyzed, sometimes even that their paralyzed limbs belong to them. I believe the right brain is also the seat of our spiritual connection, without which we cannot get sober.

Below is a series of photos of George Best, the famous Irish soccer player.

Here he is in 1972 at the height of his fame, enjoying a brewsky.

Here he is in 2003, robust at 57 after a successful liver transplant necessitated by alcoholic cirrhosis.

His liver transplant was so successful and Best felt so great that he welcomed in that friendly visitor, Alcoholism, when it appeared on the doorstep of his mind assuring him a drink was a good idea — “C’mon, George! Just one on a new liver couldn’t hurt!”

Here he is just two years later at 59, a day or two before he died of massive organ failure brought on by alcoholic relapse.

George Best did not mean to commit suicide. His mind was co-opted, and, for whatever reason, he could not reach god to restore him to sanity.

I fear my loved one will follow this same progression. Please pray for him — that he find a way to reach a god of his own understanding that can override the P-Rat compulsion. His name is Gerard.

Thanks, guys. Love is the most powerful force in the universe.

Afterword: Gerard did indeed die of alcoholism on July 12, 2023. Drinking enough Indian Pale Ale gave him an unsuspected peptic ulcer which hemorrhaged on what should have been his 60th birthday.

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Filed under Addiction, Alcoholism, Drinking, Heavy drinkers

Tagged as AA, addiction, alcoholic rats, Alcoholism, drinking, sobriety

April 20, 2022 · 6:00 am

Compassion’s Spark: a 12th Step Call*

On a dark, rainy winter’s evening about ten years ago, I found myself in a run-down urban trailer park trying to find a particular trailer. I don’t remember how I was supposed to identify it, but I do remember a man stepping in front of me whose face I couldn’t see in the dark. “I got some stuff. You want some?” “No, thanks,” I replied, moving on. By the light of trailer windows, I saw more shadowy figures moving about in the downpour, and I remember holding my AA Big Book in front of my heart like a shield, asking god to keep me safe. I was on a full-fledged 12th-step call, one of only a handful in my life.

Twelfth-step calls are less common today because treatment centers tend to be a first stop for addicts wanting help, but the woman whose trailer I was seeking had just been released from the most labor-camp-like detox/treatment center in Seattle – Sedrunar. A friend had called me about her. “Lena doesn’t have a car to get to meetings. She’s got two kids, and she’s gonna lose them if she uses again.”

I called Lena, though I was going to insist she take the bus to my house. But Lena, like any addict, was persuasive. She didn’t know anyone in the trailer park she could trust to watch her kids – who were seven and two. Could I please come just this once?

The seven-year-old opened the trailer door. She stared at me from eyes circled with dark shadows, silent as a spook. I heard yelled from inside: “Let her in!” I tried to greet the child cheerily, though to inhale the stinky, steamy air in there felt like an assault. On the floor was an old TV with a beanbag chair in front of it – that and piles of clothes. Bare walls. In came Lena, the toddler on her hip naked besides his diaper, food all over his face. Lena was a bit shorter than me and chunky, about 25. She shook my hand, apologizing for the mess, and handed the boy off to her daughter, pretty much barking at her to go in the bedroom and shut the door so she could talk to this lady – me.

We sat down at the yellow kitchen table. On the stove, mac & cheese dribbled from a saucepan in a way that reminded me of vomit, and smeared noodles dotted the table. Lena sat across from me and folded her hands expectantly as though I were about to recite poetry.

All I could say was, “Does that window open?” I gestured toward a dark pane at the the table’s end, the glass dripping with condensation.

Lena looked perplexed. “I’m trying to save heat.”

“I’d really appreciate it.”

Reluctantly she rose and slid the moldy aluminum frame aside about an inch. While she was up she grabbed a sponge and wiped away most of the noodles at my place, apologizing that she’d just fed her son.

I’d made up my mind that I would stay 30 minutes only. I began as I always do, by asking Lena to briefly tell me her story. Clearly practiced from treatment, she launched right into it – how she’d grown up picking crops in Yakima in a Hispanic community; how she’d gotten into meth as a teen. She was proud that both kids had the same father, but he was a drug dealer. She’d lost them twice to CPS – once for leaving them in the car outside a bar.

“I’m clean, now, 60 days. The judge told me this is an extra chance with my kids. I shouldn’t even have them now. I gotta stay clean. I gotta stay sober.” Here she changed, muscles in her face and throat working hard. She looked right at me and spoke distinctly: “I can’t… lose… my kids.”

“Well, you’ll need to find a sponsor,” I breezed, “but, unfortunately, I’m full.” This was somewhat true – I had a few sponsees. But, of course, I really said it to push away all this squalor. I wasn’t even sure whether this woman should have her kids. All I knew was that only 21 minutes stood between me and escape.

I sketched my own story briefly, Lena nodding attentively at every phrase. I explained that I couldn’t not drink on my own, but by working the 12 steps I’d accessed a higher power that had removed my craving for alcohol and kept me sober eleven years.

“Eleven years!” Lena marveled. “That’s what I want! I wanna know how you did that!”

I was starting to explain how I’d worked with a sponsor when we heard a ruckus and the squalling toddler, chased by the spooky girl, burst out of the bedroom. Hardly taking her eyes from me, Lena scooped her son into her lap and held him close. She gave the crown of his head tiny kisses and asked him if he wanted a bottle.

Right then – that’s when the voice started. Not really a voice, but an urging: Help her. Sponsor her. Love her.

No fucking way! my ego countered. I was busy. She was hopeless. Just eight minutes and I’d be outta this dump, back to the fresh air and my nice, clean life!

Lena nodded toward her son. “He don’t talk,” she said. “They told me he’s disabled, but it ain’t true. It’s just all he been through.” Watching the boy’s eyes, the way they moved from Lena to me and back again, I sensed she was right. Meanwhile the spooky girl joined us with a coloring book, promising to be quiet and asking where her crayons were. Lena grabbed them from the same box that had held her Big Book.

“It’s not me,” I heard myself telling her. “God has given me a life better than I ever dreamed of.” Some of the people who’d helped, giving me time and guidance, flashed through my mind. “I’m not the same person I was.” Lena nodded intently. She was not begging. She was not pleading. But every cell in her body was straining to hear me.

Just help her. Just love her.

But I was helping, dammit! I was steering her toward the program, right? Just not toward me. Anyone but me. But, with just three minutes to go, I made a big mistake. I looked into Lena’s eyes. Really looked. I saw there desperation and terror, but even more, a fierce love for her children. My own son was five. How were we any different?

The wall crumbled, compassion washing over me. “Okay, I’ll sponsor you,” I heard myself saying. Lena’s face lit up. “But not here! You’re gonna have to come meet me at a coffee shop!”

The rest of the story is like a fairy tale. Lena and I met every Friday to read the Big Book at a Starbucks while a sober neighbor watched her kids, after which I’d drive us to a meeting. She had a job riding in a municipal truck, collecting garbage, and within a couple of months she qualified to drive that truck. She moved into a shitty apartment not far from the trailer park, where I met with her for a while until she found childcare. She bought a crappy car and started driving herself to meetings. Whenever I showed up at her homegroup, her kids would ambush me either in the parking lot or when I came in – the little girl now beautiful and clear-eyed, the little boy talking up a storm. Their laughter still seemed incredible to me – a miracle.

In a little more than a year, we’d progressed to Step 9 when Lena, who was apprenticing as municipal gardener, leased a nice apartment too far north for us to keep meeting. I drove up and visited her there once. It was near Christmas. I remember white carpets, a new sofa, pictures on the walls. I remember the children bringing me a gift from under the Christmas tree and grinning while I opened it, and my own embarrassment that I had nothing for them. But I had given them something – and we all knew it.

Last night after eight years I went again to that meeting – Lena’s old home group. But she wasn’t there. Where she’s gone, what she’s doing, I don’t know. But I’m hopeful. I sent them prayers. Today, I’m so grateful that god opened my heart, and that it’s still opening.

…

Postscript: I had to find out… 🙂

Republished from 12 /2016

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Filed under Addiction, Alcoholics Anonymous, Alcoholism, Recovery, Sobriety, Sponsorship, Twelve Steps

Tagged as 12 steps, AA, AA Sponsorship, addiction, Alcoholism, recovery, sobriety, Twelfth Step Call

August 8, 2021 · 10:42 am

Broken Brains; Divine Rescue

Yes, the brains of alcoholics and addicts are indeed broken. We can resolve not to do the thing, we can mean it with every fiber of our being, and then — BOOM! — we’re doing it: we’re getting drunk, popping pills, acting out, smoking whatever we meant not to. “Did I do it AGAIN? Dammit! Well, just this one last time…”

Of the 14 years I drank to excess, I spent the first 2 college years content with my frequent bouts. For the last 12, however, I was caught in this cycle:

Step A: WAKE feeling like absolute shit.

Step B: RESOLVE to not drink (or whatever you do) for X amount of time.

Step C: DETOXIFY just a little, feel less shame/guilt

Step D: Imagine as a FINE IDEA yourself enjoying a lovely cocktail or single cold beer (or whatever)

Step E: PICK UP a drink (or whatever)… and soon decide to have more, and more, and more…

Revisit Step A with just a skosh more shame, remorse, and self-disgust.

I rehashed this cycle literally thousands of times. THOUSANDS. And every time I reached Step D, I convinced myself this time I’d manage better. To grasp that it’s not our true selves but our addiction itself compelling this “choice” seems pretty extreme, almost like a split personality. Aren’t we the masters of our own behavior?

In fact, we are NOT. Addiction overrides even the most heartfelt resolve.

Last November, I woke in the night to find my house full of smoke. I dashed down from the attic, where I sleep, to the basement, which I rent out, and pounded on the door. My new tenant, the 29-year-old half-brother of a friend, opened it. Winnie — his nickname — was calmly cooking, the whole apartment opaque with smoke.

“What happened?!” I said.

“Oh, there was something on the burner.” He gazed at me with beautiful, innocent eyes.

When I objected that my home was full of smoke, he corrected himself: There’d been some spilled food in the drip pan. He just hadn’t seen it. He was so sorry. It took about a month for me to arrange a mini-intervention with Winnie’s mom, who lives in Florida, via video on my phone, much to Winnie’s shock and horror. “Sweetheart, do you want to live or die?” she asked him point blank. To my astonishment, Winnie wept. He nodded, wiping tears and struggling to contain his sobs. “I want to live,” he managed.

He brought from his room a bottle of benzos. Since abrupt withdrawal from such drugs can be fatal, Winnie agreed to inpatient treatment, and I began the process of finding him a bed. About a week later, in the midst of cooking French toast, he suffered a seizure. With the basement door open, my son somehow heard his head hit the concrete floor. I burst in, found him convulsing without breath, and dialed 911. By following the dispatcher’s instructions to prevent his suffocation, my son and I both got potentially exposed to COVID-19 before the paramedics arrived. My son said the first thing Winnie did when he recognized his surroundings was sit up and switch off the French toast.

I rented him a storage unit, and on a Saturday while he stayed in a hotel that his mother paid for, Winnie’s half-brother, my son, and I transported all his belongings. Only months later, when he’d finished treatment and came by to pick up the storage unit key, did I understand that Winnie was going to die — and soon. He was surly, even as he uttered polite thank you’s.

Last week I got the news: Winnie’s father found him dead in the bathroom with a syringe still in hand. He’d just turned 30.

DIVINE RESCUE is a partnership.

How did I know Winnie would die? It was his energy. He gave off a vibe of “I’ve done what everyone wanted; now I’ve got this.” He did not look at me, really. He had no interest in seeing me, in seeing anyone. Spiritually, he was still at a Cartmanesque ground zero: “I do what I want!”

He had not absorbed in treatment what I somehow began to pick up in my first AA meetings, what working the 12 steps in conjunction with life pulling me through pain, loss, and joy has taught me: of myself, I am nothing.

God can help us only when we pry open our armor, cast off our god-repulsing sheath of self-sufficiency. We open in two ways: 1) by asking for god’s loving, compassionate help and 2) by regarding other living things with that same loving compassion. Once we begin to intuit that god is within us, animating our cells and fueling our very consciousness, we begin to realize that we are no more separate from god than a plant is from the Earth.

Addiction is the almost inevitable outcome of attempting to live as a picked flower. Without connection to god, we languish and grasp for quick fixes, even knowing they’re poison. In truth we are designed to absorb love from god and radiate it to others; once we make practicing this way of life paramount, addiction loses its luring power. We become immune.

Remember: “What we really have a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God’s will into all of our activities” (85).

For me, carrying that vision led me last week to hike over 100 miles in the mountains of Northern California (despite the threat of fires), where I connected not only with glorious nature but with countless wholehearted PCT hikers coming the other way. It led me to return to my AA home group in person this past Friday and take joy in seeing my fellows again after a year and a half.

I remember trying to articulate this way of life to Winnie just before he left for treatment. Our RING camera actually recorded my urging voice and his impatient acknowledgements. The enormous gift I cannot give to others is my unshakeable understanding that meeting weekly with those neighborhood ex-drunks to contemplate yet again the themes from our hokey 1939 book is indeed what channels me the god-power to love others and savor life’s far-reaching beauties.

Much-needed dip in a cold mountain lake.

Video of our hike: https://youtu.be/m-d-LWGA21Y

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Filed under Addiction, Alcoholics Anonymous, Alcoholism, happy, joyous, & free, Recovery

Tagged as addiction, hiking, recovery

April 26, 2021 · 6:00 am

Unlearning Our Delusions

Three weeks ago I adopted a rescue-pup, Alice, from Texas. She’s adorable, 10 months old, but was severely and heartlessly abused from the get-go. She can’t tell me what she endured, but her terror at the sight of any sort of leash or cord speaks volumes, as does her dissolving at the sound of a raised voice. She shuts down. She turns to jelly. She trembles and piddles and clearly wants to sink away into the Earth, which she tries to do by hunkering as low as possible and looking at nothing.

At some point, Alice and her siblings were dumped in the desert near the Rio Grande, where they starved so severely that she’s forever stunted and her teeth are tiny. At about four months, she and two siblings were found, too weak to flee. Little Alice was the worst off, so skeletal that the rescue vet doubted she’d pull through. But she did. Never will Alice grow into those great big ears and paws of hers, yet somehow her brain was spared; she’s smart! Her love for play survived as well. She prances in the back yard among imaginary friends.

But humans – they’re all Freddy Krueger. Her original Texan owners did not believe in love. They thought they knew best how to “break” a puppy by showing that tiny creature who was boss and just how much power the boss wielded. When the puppies failed to learn by these methods, they were abandoned to die.

And here’s the connection to this blog: it’s no joke that if little Alice were a human being, she’d be a prime candidate for addiction – a way to escape her fear and trauma, just as she tries now by freezing and going glassy-eyed. In those moments, she’s just like a human who, whether consciously or at the gut level, considers the world untrustworthy, loveless, and scary. Not to be present and vulnerable is all she wants she wants, and she wants it desperately.

Friends remark, “Alice is so lucky to have found her way to you!” But I see it the other way ‘round: I’m so lucky to have found Alice. In her sweet nature, I see every spirit wounded through no fault of their own. It’s up to me to help her unlearn what her most foundational experiences taught her: that the world is full of cruelty, and that she’s helpless against it.

Like Alice, I’m still unlearning my own false beliefs about life – unconscious ones that drove me to nearly drink myself to death, desperate for a way out.

Why do alcoholics drink in the first place? To find relief.

Like Alice, we don’t trust life because, no matter what we do, we can’t control it. Initially, we quell that stress with a drink or two to “take the edge off.” And though early on, alcohol works reeeaally well, whatever we’re not dealing with tends to get worse, and before we know it, addiction itself is calling the shots. Now we drink because drinking is just what we do. We dig ourselves deeper and deeper, until we hit bottom.

Maybe things get horrible enough that we consider going to AA, even though we’re way cooler than that.

If we listen in AA, if we open our minds even a little not just to what’s said in meetings, which are a component, but to the Big Book’s text and 12-step instructions, which we read and follow with a competent sponsor, two ASTOUNDING things may happen.

1) We realize it’s not the world, but our thinking about the world that is AFU.
2) We realize that, try as we might, we can’t change these thought patterns on our own. We need a spiritual connection to something greater than ourselves to break out of the rut neuropathways have dug for us – the ways we keep trying that keep not working.

Here’s the thing. The less conscious we are of a belief, the more it controls us.

And if assumptions we’re unaware of, those landmarks by which we interpret our experience, other people’s actions, and how best to navigate life, are delusional, the world is going to seem like an asshole.

Learning to SEE and QUESTION our delusional assumptions, that’s what the 12 Steps are all about, particularly 4 – 10. There we shine a light on the patterns of a self-centeredness we’ve been way too self-centered to see and the failed coping skills that we thought everybody used.

Only once we’ve arrived at enough humility to admit we don’t know how to live can we turn to god and ask for help. Like Alice, we have cynical reflexes that have slammed the door on values like goodwill, honesty, and trust. But as we unlearn the old ways, we recast reality. There’s actually a whole ‘nother way to live, and with it, a new world opens – one that’s not an asshole, one that doesn’t require that we numb out to “take the edge off.” Rather, it’s so beautiful that we actually want to be awake to it.

The first time I tried taking little Alice for a walk, she flattened herself on the pavement and, as a neighbor approached to greet her, spontaneously peed herself, unable to even look at him. My rehabilitation plan is simply to love her, provide stable structure, and treat her to countless fun experiences until she’s able to trust first me, then others, and finally life itself. Surprisingly, a first sign that she was unlearning helplessness came when she decided to bark at strangers approaching the house. With my love at her back, she’d found the pluck to at least pretend she might defend herself (and me?) from future harm.

Finding our sense of basic dignity, Alice has shown me, can be a first stage of healing. I remember finding mine as newly sober woman with the faint love of god and community of AA behind me. I can’t wait to see Alice shine!

Clockwise from top left: When she’d finally let me hug her; so many smells!; first time she felt safe showing her tummy; what is this huge puddle?; and friends make life sweet (Alice far right).

She has a nervous tic — but she’s getting braver!

UPDATE: What two months of love has done — Alice’s first time off leash near the summit of Mount Teneriffe in May:

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Filed under Addiction, Adult Children of Alcoholics, Recovery, Trauma, Trauma

Tagged as addiction, Fear and addiction, PTSD recovery, Rescue dog, Trauma

January 3, 2021 · 6:00 am

Hard Drinker vs. Real Alcoholic

Moderate drinkers have little trouble in giving up liquor entirely if they have good reason for it. They can take it or leave it alone.

Then we have a certain type of hard drinker. …If a sufficiently strong reason — ill health, falling in love, change of environment, or the warning of a doctor — becomes operative, this man can also stop or moderate, although he may find it difficult and troublesome and may even need medical attention.

But what about the real alcoholic? He may start off as a moderate drinker; he may or may not become a continuous hard drinker; but at some stage of his drinking career he begins to lose all control of his liquor consumption, once he starts to drink.

Chapter 2, “There is a Solution,” Alcoholics Anonymous

Unfortunately, most of the public is clueless about the difference between a hard drinker and an alcoholic. Hard drinking is a habit that can be overcome with willpower. Alcoholism is a condition no amount of will power can cure. As the Big Book says, “If, when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take, you are probably alcoholic.”

Few perches in life are more uncomfortable than knowing you’re an alcoholic but refusing to accept that fact. Denial is, however, a primary symptom of the disease. I myself spent a number of years there before I hit bottom, i.e. the point when all fight for what I wanted was drained from me and I had to square with what was true.

If you’re an alcoholic still clinging to whatever pretext will enable you to drink, I have bad news: Certain things really are true. Regardless of what props you drum up to disguise it, the truth is still there. And if you’re a real alcoholic clinging to the delusion that you’re only a hard drinker, the fact is that no matter how ironclad your resolutions to stop or control your drinking, only two outcomes are possible:

A) After a short pause, you drink again.

B) A rarity, but it does happen: you manage by sheet obstinacy to remain dry but are permanently restless, irritable, and discontent — i.e. “dry drunk.”

Hard Drinkers
Before they resolve to stop drinking, hard drinkers may appear indistinguishable from alcoholics.

For example, two of my relatives drank hard for over a decade. This couple worked so hard and lived at such a frenetic, globe-trotting pace that they simply could not wind down without cocktails. When staying for a visit, they would put away a gallon of vodka in a matter of days. More than once they announced they were going “on the wagon,” only to be drinking hard again in a few months. They were gradually gaining weight, their faces often flushed and bloated. I suspected alcoholism.

But then one day, one of them was informed by his physician that his alcohol intake was harming both his heart and his liver. The doctor warned that, if he wanted to regain his health and live into old age, he would have to stop drinking. The two, who love each other deeply, took this diagnosis seriously.

Here’s the astounding part: They both stopped drinking, slowing the pace of their lives to reduce stress levels. A year later, they’re both slim, healthy, and happy teetotalers. Perhaps COVID-19 has helped out a bit with the easier pace of living, but the fact remains that they simply decided to quit and it has stuck.

Why were they able? These two were hard drinkers — not alcoholics.

Real Alcoholics
Now let’s look at my dad and me.

Twenty-four years before his death to alcoholic cardiomyopathy, my dad developed gout while touring Europe with my mother. A Spanish doctor diagnosed his condition and advised him to cut out alcohol and fatty foods, so my dad decided the doctor was a fool.

Twelve years before my father died, his doctor warned him that alcohol consumption had enlarged his liver (see How Alcohol Fucks Up Your Body) and shrunk his brain (see How Alcoholism Fucks Up Your Brain). My father’s reaction? The doctor was exaggerating. As his condition progressed and these warning grew more severe, Dad switched doctors. His new doctor — what a coincidence! — insisted Dad cease drinking for two weeks. During this time Dad consumed many bottles of alcohol-free wine and was so tense, angry, and miserable that Mom couldn’t wait for the two weeks to be up so he could drink again, which he continued until heart failure took his life.

Chip off the ole’ block that I am, I’d begun trying to decrease my drinking by the age of 23. My few friends had cut back on drinking post-college, so I tried to as well — except when I didn’t! Yes, I made resolutions to drink less, not just at New Years but ANY time I was ghastly hungover (i.e. most mornings) — resolutions I was able to stand by for a good 5 hours! After that, a drink began to sound, for the zillionth time, like a good idea. So I “changed my mind” and drank.

As the Big Book explains,

“We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink.“

As my ability to cope with life deteriorated (see Addiction Memoir), various therapists diagnosed me with alcoholism. I dismissed them as fuddy-duddies. In retrospect, I’m fortunate that I was less able than my father to maintain a stable work and home life, as the pain of my dysfunction eventually led me, at age 34, to seek sobriety in AA.

Free at Last
I adore and respect the memory of my father, who lived with honor despite his suffering. When Dad’s spirit came to me about a year ago (as I’ll describe in an upcoming post), I was seeking to make contact with the man I’d lost twelve years before. To my amazement, my father’s energy burst upon me with the vitality he’d radiated in my childhood: he was powerful, confident, and — I’ll just say it — charismatic as he delivered to me his message of unconditional love. On the other side, no longer buried under the poison, lies, and pain of our shared disease, his spirit was proud of me, his look-alike daughter, for my now (in 3 weeks!) 26 years sober.

We two in 1978