Twenty five years ago I set sail on a remarkable journey, one that is not yet completed, nor will it ever be until my cold and lifeless body slides down the slab into the fire crusted furnace of the crematorium. Fanning the flames of life with ethanol had became an obsession, an addiction, quieting the monster, Fear. With it, I was able to leap tall buildings with a single bound, was stronger than a locomotive, was a great dancer, lover, talker and doer of all things great, grand and wonderful.
Without it, I was lower than snail poop on the bottom of the deepest ocean. Dumb, stupid, ugly, fat, lame, loser and grossly inadequate in every way! My self portrait was not good.................but add alcohol and wha-lah......Everybody's buddy and the doer of all good things......Add some more alcohol and wha=lah.....Instant Ass Hole!
I did not know it, but I was a classic practicing alcoholic, suffering from the Baby King Syndrome, alternately better than you or worse than the worst! Angry and not knowing it. Fooling only myself. Self medicating all my quirks, self loathing and moral inadequacies with the strongest of all depressants: alcohol.
Twenty four years of drinking commenced before I reached my sixteenth birthday and continued to get progressively worse with the passage of time. Six cans of sixteen ounce Rainer Beer started the free-fall. Instantly it changed my whole perspective on life. I became whatever I wanted or you wanted me to be. I loved it. It worked. It tasted like the vomit it became after one too many, but I became accustomed to the taste, the high, the puking and the hangover. The eternal regrets, the disappointments, degradations, the cops, jail and finally the hospital led me on the journey of discovery.
I learned I had a disease.....a dis-ease. Uncomfortable in my own skin......A mental obsession and a physical allergy to King Alcohol. I learned that alcoholism is indeed a disease, recognized by the American Medical Association as such in the early 1950's. As such, it has a cause ( an etiology), a diagnosis (a determining nature) a prognosis(medical forecast) and probable cures. The ability to absolutely abstain is the absolute cure.
I learned that about 10% of the population digests alcohol differently from the rest. It's complicated but the jist of it is that we alcoholics don't completely rid our bodies of the chemical residue of alcohol. Some is left in our brains and when more alcohol is digested it tells us "MORE", "MORE"!! The only other place this chemical is found is in the brains of heroin addicts!!! No wonder I rarely only had one or two drinks!! No wonder the obsession and compulsion and addiction! I could not leave it alone once I started!! It was a booklet entitled "The Disease Concept" that opened my eyes to the possibility for recovery from the fatal disease of alcoholism. I had a disease!
An early medical expert on alcoholism proposed from his long and varied experience working with drunks that a psychic change was mandatory for a successful prognosis. How was this possible? Other M.D.s, counselors and shrinks had no success in "fixing" me. A conundrum for sure. My first wife helped me solve the riddle. She joined AA and shortly thereafter laid AA's "Big Book" on my bedside table. I read it. It worked. It still works as long as I do what I need to do to stay off the sauce, stay happy-joyous and free. I realize I know only a little and I keep an open mind. I know what has worked for me. I went from a daily tavern drunk to being a healthy, happy, productive and mostly sane member of the world.
Thank You AA for saving my life and millions of others.
Twenty five years being sober once seemed impossible and not even desirable. Now I am eternally grateful for the new life I have been given only by surrendering to the concepts of greater good that were presented to me. Thank God!
