My Alcoholism & Recovery

Discipline a word that I always hated. Really it just meant doing things that I did not want to do. When I look back at my life I avoided as much as I could anything I did not want to do. A bit childish I now think. Not being prepared to trade off those boring bits for returns else where. In fact my frustration would drive me mad if I had to take boredom for long, by choice.

However, life is life, and I always got the boring bits anyway - they mostly did not happen by choice, but when they were forced upon me.

I made a decision a few years back to become a bit boring, in my own eyes. The biggest change was a morning routine. I get up every morning. I set my alarm for somewhere around seven am, and I get up. I do not spend the day in bed, there is now no reason to hide away from the world.

This was not easy. All the discipline I had during my life was discipline that had been forced on me by authorities at some point - whether that authority was parent’s, teachers, employers, or others.

The biggest question I ask my self about any change like this is “is it good for me?” Well the answer to getting up in the morning is yes. I have more time, it feels like. I sleep better at night, and don’t now lie awake waiting for sleep to come and get me, I sleep well. However the biggest benefit is that I feel good about myself. Now that is something.

God, I just think that life would be so much simpler if had never been a drinker - if I had never been or still am an alcoholic. Yeah, perhaps one of those days of just feeling sorry for myself, but it is still not pleasant.

I often wonder if non-alcoholic just feel the same way I do. Not good enough, ready to be thrown out of everywhere - ready to be told I should leave - yeah leave where-ever it is. I just want a rest.

And there’s the rub, I got a rest from drinking or using. It switched my brain off or into some sort of auto-pilot, I left mentally - and god I miss it…

As you can tell today is not a good day, and yet nothing bad is happening. Go figure.

I wandered along in AA for a while thinking that AA had went somewhere that its founders did not intend it too. Many people talk about their childhood and “getting over it.” I had this picture in my mind of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous being guys that grew up in happy homes and just made mistakes later in life that led them into alcoholism. However I read a little and found out that is not the case.

Bill Wilson was abandoned by his father first. His father left on a business trip when Bill was ten years old, this ended up being permanent. Well, I think to myself, things could not have been happy at home if his father decided to leave and not come back.

Next Bill’s mother left. She went off to study, he was still only ten years old. He then lived with his grandparents.

I do not blame parents for alcoholism, I think that childhood has a strong effect on how we are for the rest of our lives. People that have learned to value and take care of themselves when they are young don’t seem to developed this problem. I am not saying they don’t have problems, they have different ones.

I have thought if I truely cared for my health I would never have poured that amount of alcohol and drugs into my body. There was no honnymoon period for me, it was bang right from the start as a teenage alcoholic. A shit way to start life.

I had so many problems finding anything to identify myself with in Bill W, that I thought we were quite different. But the more I have read and dug into his life I am happy to say I don’t find that the case now. And why should this be important anyway? I want to be part of this thing that has saved me from the misery of my former existence.

Addiction is a “compulsive need for and use of a habit-forming substance (as heroin, nicotine, or alcohol) characterized by tolerance and by well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawal; broadly : persistent compulsive use of a substance known by the user to be harmful.”

I’ve been there, and that’s why I write this. Maybe some of it will help. But first a few rules for me and you. In someways AA has it right by saying - “Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.” I am going to stick to that, mostly because I want some freedom to write some things that I would not otherwise write. So I ask you also in your comments to do the same; it is better in the long run.

Next, I only speak for myself - I will express views on all sorts of things - they will be my views, so feel free to disagree with them. However my views only represent me - never any other organization.

I have been sober now for five years in AA, it seems that it was the only way I could do it. I know others get it other ways and that to me is fine too. My intention here is to explore everything I want around these subjects and hopefully get some feedback on it all too.