Very important meeting this morning. There is a Big Book meeting about a 1/4 mile down the street from my house, it's a sunrise meeting, so if I'm awake (and I usually am awake early on Saturdays, it's one of my curses) I can make the meeting. I had planned on going but time got away from me and I arrived late. Not late enough to avoid doing any reading, but late enough to miss the first few paragraphs of the story.
The reading was "The Keys to the Kingdom", and next time I'm at this meeting (next week!) I'm going to slip a couple of pieces of paper in the cover of my book and take some notes. There were a lot of things that spoke to me, but what spoke to me loudest this morning were the words "Arrestment" and "Retrogression".
I had forgotten that sobriety is a process, not a cure. It's not magic, it is never going to be possible for me to have a normal relationship with Alcohol. Sobriety is a way of life. Boy, have I been hearing that a lot lately, not just about sobriety but about a lot of things in my life that have fallen by the wayside, including being healthy, taking care of your body and soul, exercising, eating good food, even brushing my teeth! It's A Way Of Life. I am making a lifestyle change.
Alcoholism is a disease, not just of the body but of the mind and spirit. I've been so very fortunate that my alcoholism hasn't done much permanent, lasting damage to my body. I've got some memory issues from time to time, and with the Alzheimer's that runs in my family, that's not something to mess up any more than it is! I have a fatty liver, not sure if that's from my drinking or from my lifetime of an unhealthy, processed food diet. Liver and kidney issues also run rampant in my family, along with diabetes, so truly I need to pay attention now, before it's too late to stop damaging myself. Some diseases, such as bronchitis or pneumonia, can be treated with drugs, and the patient gets better. Other diseases, like asthma, need daily treatment. And some diseases, like leukemia, are never completely gone - they just go into remission. Sometimes the remission is a long time, so long that people can forget that the person was ever ill.
With my disease, I can experience remission, or "arrestment", with daily treatment. My treatment consists of going to meetings, keeping in touch with other alcoholics in recovery, doing my daily readings and meditations. Writing in my journal also helps. I picked up again because I stopped treatment of my disease, and then I started to feel as if I didn't really have this disease after all. I can never forget who and what I am. I can never forget I have this disease, and that I need to treat it every day if I hope to experience arrestment of my symptoms, if I hope to never desire to drink and have the compulsion lifted from me.
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Control
I got a bit annoyed at work today. This is my usual state of being when at work, mostly because I am a control freak who isn't allowed to exert control.
Today's lesson in being patient and letting go came from a co-worker who was having problems printing off copies of items from our web page. I needed these to be included with a bid I am preparing to send out, but there are still two more days to do the printing so it's not a huge hurry. Our boss, on the other hand, wanted these done NOW so they would be done.
A little background first; I have been playing with computers since 1976. I taught myself how to program in BASIC, have since forgotten most of it, and have actually been paid to do technical support for at least 5 years of my life (internet tech support over the phone and through email.) I'm not afraid of new technology and I'm not afraid to try things to see if I can figure out how it works or how to make it work if it's not working.
So, when co-worker couldn't get the pages to print properly, she immediately called our PC support group. She had been printing screenshots and emails from other programs, so she wasn't having a problem with her connection to the printer. She had been printing other items from other web sites all day. She never shuts down her computer, ever, so I suggested maybe she do that first to see if that helps. (RAM might have needed a short break.) It didn't, so she called the PC Helpdesk and essentially took herself out of the work queue so she could fix the problem with her computer.
Any attempts I made to help were rebuffed or redirected by our Supervisor. She wanted me to "butt out", even though it was directly affecting my project and threatening my sanity listening to the technophobe blaming the new dual monitor system, her computer and everything else under the sun but the actual culprit.
Long story short, there's a problem with our website that's been on-going for over a year, and after an hour or two of co-worker doing all sorts of stuff to try and fix it, I finally remember this and mention it to co-worker, who then has the AHA! face and says Oh yeah, I remember that from last year!
Control. That's the point of all this.
I recognize my need to "be helpful" is just another way I can exert control over parts of my life. This lack of printing directly affected a project I was working on, but rather than let my co-worker do her thing, even if it was the WRONG thing, I stopped my work and got involved in it. Just trying to be "helpful".
I am too often trying to be "helpful" and not often enough just keeping my head down and letting people learn on their own how to fix things. I'm not letting them grow or acquire trouble-shooting skills of their own. And it's driving me right up the wall because I know the answers and the teacher isn't CALLING ON ME!
It's amazing how quickly I turn into a 6 year old version of Hermione Grainger. I want to be in control of the situation and be recognized for being a smart, clever girl and get a cookie and a pat on the back.
Where I need to exercise control is in my own head. I need to control the urge to be "helpful" and just let things go. I need to be patient and learn to go with the flow and do the things in my own circle instead of getting up into everyone else's.
Today's lesson in being patient and letting go came from a co-worker who was having problems printing off copies of items from our web page. I needed these to be included with a bid I am preparing to send out, but there are still two more days to do the printing so it's not a huge hurry. Our boss, on the other hand, wanted these done NOW so they would be done.
A little background first; I have been playing with computers since 1976. I taught myself how to program in BASIC, have since forgotten most of it, and have actually been paid to do technical support for at least 5 years of my life (internet tech support over the phone and through email.) I'm not afraid of new technology and I'm not afraid to try things to see if I can figure out how it works or how to make it work if it's not working.
So, when co-worker couldn't get the pages to print properly, she immediately called our PC support group. She had been printing screenshots and emails from other programs, so she wasn't having a problem with her connection to the printer. She had been printing other items from other web sites all day. She never shuts down her computer, ever, so I suggested maybe she do that first to see if that helps. (RAM might have needed a short break.) It didn't, so she called the PC Helpdesk and essentially took herself out of the work queue so she could fix the problem with her computer.
Any attempts I made to help were rebuffed or redirected by our Supervisor. She wanted me to "butt out", even though it was directly affecting my project and threatening my sanity listening to the technophobe blaming the new dual monitor system, her computer and everything else under the sun but the actual culprit.
Long story short, there's a problem with our website that's been on-going for over a year, and after an hour or two of co-worker doing all sorts of stuff to try and fix it, I finally remember this and mention it to co-worker, who then has the AHA! face and says Oh yeah, I remember that from last year!
Control. That's the point of all this.
I recognize my need to "be helpful" is just another way I can exert control over parts of my life. This lack of printing directly affected a project I was working on, but rather than let my co-worker do her thing, even if it was the WRONG thing, I stopped my work and got involved in it. Just trying to be "helpful".
I am too often trying to be "helpful" and not often enough just keeping my head down and letting people learn on their own how to fix things. I'm not letting them grow or acquire trouble-shooting skills of their own. And it's driving me right up the wall because I know the answers and the teacher isn't CALLING ON ME!
It's amazing how quickly I turn into a 6 year old version of Hermione Grainger. I want to be in control of the situation and be recognized for being a smart, clever girl and get a cookie and a pat on the back.
Where I need to exercise control is in my own head. I need to control the urge to be "helpful" and just let things go. I need to be patient and learn to go with the flow and do the things in my own circle instead of getting up into everyone else's.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Unmanageable
Step 1 - We admitted that we were powerless over Alcohol, and that our lives had become unmanageable.
Unmanageable. Unable to Manage. We could not manage our lives.
I've never had trouble with the first part of Step 1. I am powerless over Alcohol. If I'm drinking, Alcohol is controlling me. The only power I have over Alcohol is managing to get the glass to my mouth and pouring it in. So that's the easy half of the step.
Admitting that my life had become unmanageable was harder. I always compared my life to others, so if I had a good paying job, a car, a home, food on the table and clothes on my back, my life was good. So what if my relationships with friends and family suffered? So what that my spiritual life was almost non-existent and that I had no real relationship with a higher power? So what if my physical condition was not the best? Who cares that I was physically and emotionally exhausted? I was working, I had a place to sleep and food to eat, and I had all my basic human needs met. I could function day to day at work with no problems.
You see, I didn't see how my deep unhappiness was a sign that my life was unmanageable. I didn't understand that the more I took on to fill the time and emptiness, the more overwhelmed I was feeling, the more I was making my life unmanageable. The more I tried to help others and neglected helping myself, the less I was able to manage my own damn life. And that's where the slide into drinking started for me this time. I was so busy doing the things I thought I should, doing what everyone else wanted me to do or needed me to do, giving of my energy over and over without stopping to pause or even thinking of the fact that I needed to pause. I was allowing people and things to suck the life out of me, and then I started to try to fill that hole up with junk food and alcohol.
I'm certain there is someone out there who's reading this and saying to themselves, "what a damn whiner!" Yes, I know I am an extremely fortunate drunk. I am grateful every day for the good things I have in my life, and I write it out every day that I'm grateful for what I have, and for what hasn't happened to me. I'm grateful for the alcoholics who went low bottom before me, who got there, who reached out to other alcoholics and helped them before they got to quite that low, and those folks who went and helped people before THEY got as low, and so on and so forth until someone reached out to me before I ever really got into too much trouble, before I got a DUI or lost a job, before I ever got arrested for acts I did while drunk...someone who recognized that it wouldn't take much more before I was heading on the slide to the bottom and cared enough to point out how my life was unmanageable.
I joke that I can only be organized in one aspect of my life at a time, and right now that aspect is my work life. It's not true, though. I'm a damn brilliant person. If I spent the energy I could really organize most of my home, my work life and my social life and have a lot more harmony in my life. It's just that right now, my life is unmanageable. But it won't always be that way.
Unmanageable. Unable to Manage. We could not manage our lives.
I've never had trouble with the first part of Step 1. I am powerless over Alcohol. If I'm drinking, Alcohol is controlling me. The only power I have over Alcohol is managing to get the glass to my mouth and pouring it in. So that's the easy half of the step.
Admitting that my life had become unmanageable was harder. I always compared my life to others, so if I had a good paying job, a car, a home, food on the table and clothes on my back, my life was good. So what if my relationships with friends and family suffered? So what that my spiritual life was almost non-existent and that I had no real relationship with a higher power? So what if my physical condition was not the best? Who cares that I was physically and emotionally exhausted? I was working, I had a place to sleep and food to eat, and I had all my basic human needs met. I could function day to day at work with no problems.
You see, I didn't see how my deep unhappiness was a sign that my life was unmanageable. I didn't understand that the more I took on to fill the time and emptiness, the more overwhelmed I was feeling, the more I was making my life unmanageable. The more I tried to help others and neglected helping myself, the less I was able to manage my own damn life. And that's where the slide into drinking started for me this time. I was so busy doing the things I thought I should, doing what everyone else wanted me to do or needed me to do, giving of my energy over and over without stopping to pause or even thinking of the fact that I needed to pause. I was allowing people and things to suck the life out of me, and then I started to try to fill that hole up with junk food and alcohol.
I'm certain there is someone out there who's reading this and saying to themselves, "what a damn whiner!" Yes, I know I am an extremely fortunate drunk. I am grateful every day for the good things I have in my life, and I write it out every day that I'm grateful for what I have, and for what hasn't happened to me. I'm grateful for the alcoholics who went low bottom before me, who got there, who reached out to other alcoholics and helped them before they got to quite that low, and those folks who went and helped people before THEY got as low, and so on and so forth until someone reached out to me before I ever really got into too much trouble, before I got a DUI or lost a job, before I ever got arrested for acts I did while drunk...someone who recognized that it wouldn't take much more before I was heading on the slide to the bottom and cared enough to point out how my life was unmanageable.
I joke that I can only be organized in one aspect of my life at a time, and right now that aspect is my work life. It's not true, though. I'm a damn brilliant person. If I spent the energy I could really organize most of my home, my work life and my social life and have a lot more harmony in my life. It's just that right now, my life is unmanageable. But it won't always be that way.
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Am I really an alcoholic?
I sit in meetings, as I have sat before, and listen to the speaker. I listen to their drunkalog, their story of how they first came to drinking, how long they drank, and how it affected their lives. I used to sit there and think, "Man, I do not belong here. I never drove drunk, I never crashed a car, got into trouble with the law, lost my house, lost a spouse, lost a job, or had many of the bad results from being an alcoholic. I never lost my license or freedom. None of these things happened to me." Sometimes I'd thank God that this had never happened, but mostly I'd sit there and think to myself, "Am I really an alcoholic?"
I honestly don't know how old I was when I first drank alcohol. I remember being about 5 years old, I had a sister and a little brother, and my Dad would put beer in our sippy cups while he was watching us at night (while our Mother was working) so we would quiet down and go to sleep so he could drink and watch TV in peace. He drank Black Label, I remember those little brown bottles with the black and gold labels on them, looking like little beer barrels. He would drink and smoke his cigarettes and watch TV and get us kids a little tipsy so we'd go to sleep soon.
I remember being 7 or 8 years old, and him passing out one night - stone cold out. Could not be roused. My mother was at work, and my baby brother was crying very loudly because his diaper needed changing. I remember I called my grandparents in Woronoco (about 20 minutes away) to please come over because I think there's something wrong with Daddy he won't wake up. I stood out on the side of the road, watching for them, and when they got there and finally shook him awake, he was mad as hell at me for calling them. I think that was the last time he used a paddle on me, he hit me so hard the skin on my butt split a bit and I bled. It wasn't enough to sober him up, though.
When I was 12, my Dad found A.A. I don't know what drove him to get sober. All I knew was that my Dad wanted to be my Dad, and he was trying his best to be the good man I believed he was. He got sober, he got a year in, and then my mother threw him out. He stayed sober, he worked very hard at maintaining a relationship with his children, and he moved on with his life.
I didn't drink, I wasn't really interested in drinking all through high school. When I was 17, I had the opportunity to go to Germany for a month as an exchange student. This was exciting, it was my senior year of high school, and I was very excited about going. What I wasn't prepared for was the easy access to alcohol. When we got to Germany, we ALL drank. We went to bars and ordered drinks because we COULD. We toured two breweries. We drank with our host families. We went out drinking when we visited Berlin. We drank all the way down the Rhine on our way to the airport.
The one thing that I remember very clearly was my first black-out drunk. It was on this trip. One of the German exchange students was a movie star, and she was in her first movie and it premiered while we were there. We were all, of course, invited to the party, and they served something called Erdbeerbowle. For those who don't speak German, it's a punch bowl filled with champagne and fresh strawberries. I drank one glass, to be polite, and then proceeded to eat two large cups filled with the strawberries from the punch.
If you are unfamiliar with what simple sugar and alcohol does in the bloodstream, let me explain - Imagine your stomach is the door to a fabulous party in your bloodstream. Along comes simple sugar, knocking at the door.
"Hi, I'm simple sugar! Can I come in?"
"Sure!", says your stomach, and it lets Simple Sugar into the bloodstream.
Alcohol, who's hanging out with Simple Sugar, waves from behind Simple Sugar and says, "Hey, I'm here with him. Can I come in, too?"
"Sure! Any friend of Simple Sugar is a friend of mine!" And in waltzes Alcohol, who proceeds to wreck the joint, go through your wallet, throw up in your aquarium, and leave the place a shambles.
I don't remember much of this party. I know I got married to one of my male friends, by another male friend who had one of those fake Clergy certificates. I sang some really raunchy songs in English, which I am embarrassed to admit. Most of the grown ups didn't understand them, except for my teachers. (that went over well, I'm sure.)
When I got back to the US, I graduated, spent the summer getting ready for college, and drank. I got into terrific fights with my mother and eventually moved in with my father before I turned 18. I still needed to get rides from my mother to get to college, since she was also going there. I joined the drama club, and then my drinking really went out of control. I did what I thought every college kid was entitled to do; I went to bars and lots of parties, got out of my mind drunk, and did things I would later regret. I engaged in very risky sexual behavior. I got stoned a couple of times, but pot wasn't my drug of choice. My father wasn't happy with me, but my step-mother was very happy, because now she had a drinking and drugging buddy! I remember my second black-out drunk was New Year's Eve, 1983. My best friend and I had been out partying all night. I passed out in the car at one point. I passed out at a friend's apartment after that. We made it back to my dad's place, and we crashed.
I woke up in the morning with the room spinning. My Dad came in and asked me how I was, in an unnecessarily loud voice. I gurgled. He asked me if the room was spinning. I gurgled again. He asked me if I felt like I was going to die. I nodded carefully. He shouted "You stupid little shit, that's what you get for drinking so much! Don't do that again!" and slammed the door to my room. When I woke up several hours later, I had NO hangover. I was fine. My Dad was mad as hell!
I toned it down for a while, and then I had the chance to go back to Germany as an exchange student for a month, this time to Frankfort. I actually spent a good deal of this trip sober, enjoying seeing the sights, and was invited to a lot of parties where I drank soda and behaved myself. Up until the hotel in Kempten. You see, I could speak German better than anyone else in the entire group, except for my teacher. I wasn't making a lot of friends on this trip, in fact I didn't know anyone except for one boy from my class, and we weren't friends. So when the trip to see the passion play in Oberammergau came up, I was very lonely. I got a quart of Bacardi 151, a liter of Diet Coke, and a six pack of beer, and came to the hotel party. I got very, very drunk. I was drunk before dinner. I remember dinner was Sauerbraten. I got to revisit it several hours later. I drank until the folks holding the party had to take me back to my room, and then they had to send my roommate up to have me NOT leaning out the window to talk to them. She left, and I settled down for the night. I blacked out, because there is not much I remember about the party. There was a little part of my brain that was telling me I was poisoned and I needed to get this stuff OUT of my system by any means possible. At some point, that part of my brain forced me into the bathroom, where I filled the sink with dinner and most of the contents of my stomach. (No, it never occurred to me to puke in the toilet. It still rarely does.) I tried to clean up the bathroom as much as possible. (Still had some functioning brain cells.) I passed out, and apparently what didn't make it out the first time turned into vapor during the night and I stank up the room something awful!
The next day we drove down to see the Passion Play. I had a bottle of seltzer water. Every time I took a sip, I got drunk. (It was just water, I checked.) I drank orange juice. It didn't help. I couldn't feel my face at all. I spent the most of the day not being able to feel my face (I scratched myself pretty good because I had an itchy nose and couldn't feel it when I scratched it.) I got some food and hot cocoa into me at lunch time, and felt a little better by dinner time. No one gave me back the other half of the six pack. I was good with that.
When I got back home, I ended up moving in with a couple of friends from college. This turned out to be a colossal mistake. I was going to school full time and working two jobs. I never had time to buy food, so I would give my roommates money and say, "please buy food for the house." Never saw much food, but saw a TON of booze. Did a lot of drinking, partying, and ended up doing coke the only time I ever did it. Then I got sick of this crap with them having people over all the time and not being able to study, so I moved back in with my mom for the last semester of my associates degree. I didn't do much drinking, I studied, got a good GPA, and graduated.
I got sober for the first time in 1986. I was in Ohio, where I had gone to Kent State to get married. (Don't ask.) Things Went South. I started getting meetings, got a sponsor, was working through the steps when I did one of the things you aren't supposed to do in your first year - I made the decision to move back home to Massachusetts. My parents were putting a lot of pressure on me to come back home, they made lots of promises they had no intention of keeping once I got home. My sister had gotten married and already had a baby, and I was a lost soul. So I came home, and managed to stay sober for another month until I gave in to the voices of my friends who said, "You are not an alcoholic! I drink WAY more than you do!"
Yeah. This is the refrain that I kept hearing for the next 25 years. "You're not an alcoholic because..."
"You're just a binge drinker."
"You don't drink EVERY day."
"You haven't had any DUI's or trouble with the law."
"You're functional."
Folks, I am an alcoholic. I can not, under my own power, stop drinking once I start. Oh, I can go months and years without a drunk or a blackout, but I can not consume alcohol without having it affect me and who I am. I will lie about how much I've had to drink. I will sneak drinks. I will justify why I should be allowed to drink. I will play games with my drinking (I can have two beers or glasses of wine, and no more. No hard liquor and I can NOT drink Sake!) and try to control it or make bargains with it. Sooner or later, the binge comes. Sooner or later, that binge is going to be the one I die from. Or the one where I do decide I need to drive somewhere, and kill someone or hurt someone or just get my very first DUI. Sooner or later it will affect my behavior enough that I will either lose my job or walk away from it because I can't stand it anymore. Just because it hasn't happened YET, doesn't mean it won't EVER happen.
It's not the quantity I drink. It's not the time span that falls between drinks. It's the fact that I am not normal, I have never been normal, and I do not know what a normal relationship with alcohol is, that makes me an alcoholic.
I honestly don't know how old I was when I first drank alcohol. I remember being about 5 years old, I had a sister and a little brother, and my Dad would put beer in our sippy cups while he was watching us at night (while our Mother was working) so we would quiet down and go to sleep so he could drink and watch TV in peace. He drank Black Label, I remember those little brown bottles with the black and gold labels on them, looking like little beer barrels. He would drink and smoke his cigarettes and watch TV and get us kids a little tipsy so we'd go to sleep soon.
I remember being 7 or 8 years old, and him passing out one night - stone cold out. Could not be roused. My mother was at work, and my baby brother was crying very loudly because his diaper needed changing. I remember I called my grandparents in Woronoco (about 20 minutes away) to please come over because I think there's something wrong with Daddy he won't wake up. I stood out on the side of the road, watching for them, and when they got there and finally shook him awake, he was mad as hell at me for calling them. I think that was the last time he used a paddle on me, he hit me so hard the skin on my butt split a bit and I bled. It wasn't enough to sober him up, though.
When I was 12, my Dad found A.A. I don't know what drove him to get sober. All I knew was that my Dad wanted to be my Dad, and he was trying his best to be the good man I believed he was. He got sober, he got a year in, and then my mother threw him out. He stayed sober, he worked very hard at maintaining a relationship with his children, and he moved on with his life.
I didn't drink, I wasn't really interested in drinking all through high school. When I was 17, I had the opportunity to go to Germany for a month as an exchange student. This was exciting, it was my senior year of high school, and I was very excited about going. What I wasn't prepared for was the easy access to alcohol. When we got to Germany, we ALL drank. We went to bars and ordered drinks because we COULD. We toured two breweries. We drank with our host families. We went out drinking when we visited Berlin. We drank all the way down the Rhine on our way to the airport.
The one thing that I remember very clearly was my first black-out drunk. It was on this trip. One of the German exchange students was a movie star, and she was in her first movie and it premiered while we were there. We were all, of course, invited to the party, and they served something called Erdbeerbowle. For those who don't speak German, it's a punch bowl filled with champagne and fresh strawberries. I drank one glass, to be polite, and then proceeded to eat two large cups filled with the strawberries from the punch.
If you are unfamiliar with what simple sugar and alcohol does in the bloodstream, let me explain - Imagine your stomach is the door to a fabulous party in your bloodstream. Along comes simple sugar, knocking at the door.
"Hi, I'm simple sugar! Can I come in?"
"Sure!", says your stomach, and it lets Simple Sugar into the bloodstream.
Alcohol, who's hanging out with Simple Sugar, waves from behind Simple Sugar and says, "Hey, I'm here with him. Can I come in, too?"
"Sure! Any friend of Simple Sugar is a friend of mine!" And in waltzes Alcohol, who proceeds to wreck the joint, go through your wallet, throw up in your aquarium, and leave the place a shambles.
I don't remember much of this party. I know I got married to one of my male friends, by another male friend who had one of those fake Clergy certificates. I sang some really raunchy songs in English, which I am embarrassed to admit. Most of the grown ups didn't understand them, except for my teachers. (that went over well, I'm sure.)
When I got back to the US, I graduated, spent the summer getting ready for college, and drank. I got into terrific fights with my mother and eventually moved in with my father before I turned 18. I still needed to get rides from my mother to get to college, since she was also going there. I joined the drama club, and then my drinking really went out of control. I did what I thought every college kid was entitled to do; I went to bars and lots of parties, got out of my mind drunk, and did things I would later regret. I engaged in very risky sexual behavior. I got stoned a couple of times, but pot wasn't my drug of choice. My father wasn't happy with me, but my step-mother was very happy, because now she had a drinking and drugging buddy! I remember my second black-out drunk was New Year's Eve, 1983. My best friend and I had been out partying all night. I passed out in the car at one point. I passed out at a friend's apartment after that. We made it back to my dad's place, and we crashed.
I woke up in the morning with the room spinning. My Dad came in and asked me how I was, in an unnecessarily loud voice. I gurgled. He asked me if the room was spinning. I gurgled again. He asked me if I felt like I was going to die. I nodded carefully. He shouted "You stupid little shit, that's what you get for drinking so much! Don't do that again!" and slammed the door to my room. When I woke up several hours later, I had NO hangover. I was fine. My Dad was mad as hell!
I toned it down for a while, and then I had the chance to go back to Germany as an exchange student for a month, this time to Frankfort. I actually spent a good deal of this trip sober, enjoying seeing the sights, and was invited to a lot of parties where I drank soda and behaved myself. Up until the hotel in Kempten. You see, I could speak German better than anyone else in the entire group, except for my teacher. I wasn't making a lot of friends on this trip, in fact I didn't know anyone except for one boy from my class, and we weren't friends. So when the trip to see the passion play in Oberammergau came up, I was very lonely. I got a quart of Bacardi 151, a liter of Diet Coke, and a six pack of beer, and came to the hotel party. I got very, very drunk. I was drunk before dinner. I remember dinner was Sauerbraten. I got to revisit it several hours later. I drank until the folks holding the party had to take me back to my room, and then they had to send my roommate up to have me NOT leaning out the window to talk to them. She left, and I settled down for the night. I blacked out, because there is not much I remember about the party. There was a little part of my brain that was telling me I was poisoned and I needed to get this stuff OUT of my system by any means possible. At some point, that part of my brain forced me into the bathroom, where I filled the sink with dinner and most of the contents of my stomach. (No, it never occurred to me to puke in the toilet. It still rarely does.) I tried to clean up the bathroom as much as possible. (Still had some functioning brain cells.) I passed out, and apparently what didn't make it out the first time turned into vapor during the night and I stank up the room something awful!
The next day we drove down to see the Passion Play. I had a bottle of seltzer water. Every time I took a sip, I got drunk. (It was just water, I checked.) I drank orange juice. It didn't help. I couldn't feel my face at all. I spent the most of the day not being able to feel my face (I scratched myself pretty good because I had an itchy nose and couldn't feel it when I scratched it.) I got some food and hot cocoa into me at lunch time, and felt a little better by dinner time. No one gave me back the other half of the six pack. I was good with that.
When I got back home, I ended up moving in with a couple of friends from college. This turned out to be a colossal mistake. I was going to school full time and working two jobs. I never had time to buy food, so I would give my roommates money and say, "please buy food for the house." Never saw much food, but saw a TON of booze. Did a lot of drinking, partying, and ended up doing coke the only time I ever did it. Then I got sick of this crap with them having people over all the time and not being able to study, so I moved back in with my mom for the last semester of my associates degree. I didn't do much drinking, I studied, got a good GPA, and graduated.
I got sober for the first time in 1986. I was in Ohio, where I had gone to Kent State to get married. (Don't ask.) Things Went South. I started getting meetings, got a sponsor, was working through the steps when I did one of the things you aren't supposed to do in your first year - I made the decision to move back home to Massachusetts. My parents were putting a lot of pressure on me to come back home, they made lots of promises they had no intention of keeping once I got home. My sister had gotten married and already had a baby, and I was a lost soul. So I came home, and managed to stay sober for another month until I gave in to the voices of my friends who said, "You are not an alcoholic! I drink WAY more than you do!"
Yeah. This is the refrain that I kept hearing for the next 25 years. "You're not an alcoholic because..."
"You're just a binge drinker."
"You don't drink EVERY day."
"You haven't had any DUI's or trouble with the law."
"You're functional."
Folks, I am an alcoholic. I can not, under my own power, stop drinking once I start. Oh, I can go months and years without a drunk or a blackout, but I can not consume alcohol without having it affect me and who I am. I will lie about how much I've had to drink. I will sneak drinks. I will justify why I should be allowed to drink. I will play games with my drinking (I can have two beers or glasses of wine, and no more. No hard liquor and I can NOT drink Sake!) and try to control it or make bargains with it. Sooner or later, the binge comes. Sooner or later, that binge is going to be the one I die from. Or the one where I do decide I need to drive somewhere, and kill someone or hurt someone or just get my very first DUI. Sooner or later it will affect my behavior enough that I will either lose my job or walk away from it because I can't stand it anymore. Just because it hasn't happened YET, doesn't mean it won't EVER happen.
It's not the quantity I drink. It's not the time span that falls between drinks. It's the fact that I am not normal, I have never been normal, and I do not know what a normal relationship with alcohol is, that makes me an alcoholic.
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