Addiction!

This article makes so much sense. 

Not sure I posted the first article a few weeks back that questions the way we handle drug addiction and also the "War on drugs". Making those behaviours punishable by law, when the only thing the person is doing is drugging themselves is useless in terms of prevention.

This makes me rethink my complete alcohol denial and maybe at least try to drink once responsibly before deciding for good that I should continue never drinking.

12 step programs

I've never been a big fan because of the religious component, but read this tonight which makes me wonder why 12 step programs are one of the few things out there for addiction.  I'm rather grateful that I was able to quit drinking on my own with some will power and stay quit all these years. Now going on 32 years...

Great article on the perils of Alcohol

Considering that I tend to pick up men with drinking issues, this article is very apropos.  It's well written and discusses how to protect from the  dangers of alcohol and alcoholism.  I'd send this to my drunken Mohawk ex but he probably wouldn't read it because he doesn't have a problem.  Just because it's legal doesn't make it any less dangerous.   Apparently it's people with bi-polar disorder that are more likely to abuse alcohol in hopes to help them with their mood  dysrhythmia. It doesn't help and with time it turns them in creeps. 

I'm sure my manic-depressive biological dad was just self-medicating with the volumes of alcohol he took daily. My mom used to say it was either one or two 40 ounces of hard liquor a day for him.  Under that type of intoxication he found it a good idea to try strangling me in my sleep at 2 1/2. Yeah sound judgment there. 

He would probably argue that it never happened, that he has no recollection. He certainly couldn't think of any reason why his daughter wouldn't want to have anything to do with him when he started calling me in my late teens. He had the nerve to say my mom had turned me against him. GEE. YOU DON"T THINK TRYING TO KILL YOUR DAUGHTER WOULD TURN HER AGAINST YOU?  Of course not. It's like my Mohawk ex - the one in denial.  I'm the bitch who won't talk with him ,and he doesn't get why. Because he never remembers how much of a douche he is when he drinks. 

I stopped drinking myself 31 years ago because I cannot control my inhibitions when I drink. I came to that mature realization at 19 years of age. I knew then that if I wanted to have a chance at a normal life I COULD NOT DRINK.  I'm not sure how normal my life has been till now, but far more so then if I had been drinking all this time. 

I really hope that the men that were in my life with drinking problems will find the will power to stop drinking. It's all I can hope for. It sucks that alcohol despite taking it out of my life, still haunts me in ways it should not. And before anyone thinks that being a dry alcoholic is easy, I still wonder if just trying one drink might not be fun one day. It's been so long.... alcohol still talks to me. So long as its out of sight, it's out of mind thankfully.

Does religion belong at AA meetings?

As a dry Alcoholic, I'm very much for groups like AA. I strongly feel that while I was able to stop drinking with the support of my friends and family, not everyone has the will or strength to do the same. I've heard nothing but good things about AA and it has saved many people's lives. 

That being said, I was always turned off AA because of the Christian component. I know nowadays most AA groups are flexible enough to understand "God" has many faces, it could be Yahweh, it could be Allah it could be under other names. But for some this isn't good enough. They want to go through AA without religion being pushed on them. 

In Toronto two groups were catering to those who want AA without the religious component. "Beyond Belief" and "We Agnostics".  One of the groups changed some of the steps of the 12 steps to remove the "God" component.  That seemed to anger the AA movement and the 2 groups that have removed God from their steps have found themselves removed from the GTA AA listings. 

I think the people who removed the 2 non-religious groups from the listings are missing the point. If some people need a non God based AA to recover, why not have it available? Not everyone has the same needs when in recovery. Personally having God pushed on me would make me run for a drink!!! I'm one of those people who strongly feel I follow my own will, not God's will.  God would not have been helpful at all in stopping me from drinking. 

One woman in the article I read suggests that since it's "us" who's doing the drinking, "us" isn't enough to stop. I beg to differ.  I was raised Catholic. I was also raised to have common sense. My grandma was fond of the phrase, "God helps those who help themselves".  I helped myself to stop drinking. God wasn't there. It wasn't my faith in God that helped me stop, it was my faith in myself.  I decided at the age of 19, that I wanted a life, not one that involved me passed out in some gutter somewhere.

Of course there are some who can say that after close to 30 years of sobriety, what do I know? Well I know that I still hear alcohol calling my name. Especially beer. I used to love beer, and some days it talks to me.  I also miss Southern Comfort, it sings my name on some days as well.  I know the song very  well and I can usually ignore it.

Good luck to "Beyond Belief" and "We Agnostics" and here's hoping these AA groups gets listed again under the AA umbrella, where they will do the most good!

Alcohol, social lubricant or poison?

I'm an alcoholic. That is I cannot drink alcohol responsibly. In as such I have not had a drink of alcohol since 1981. At 19 I realized that I could never just have one drink as a social lubricant. As my alcoholic biological dad said in his book about his alcoholism, a drop is too much, and an ocean isn't enough.  

Once I have that drop of alcohol, I drink until I pass out.  I decided at 19 that I did not want to spend my entire life drunk so I chose never to drink again. It was hard at first. Back in the 80's people didn't want to accept that you weren't going to share a drink with them. I stayed home a lot to avoid temptation until I was strong enough not to cave in. 

That being said, to this day I don't socialize much because I stay very shy and quiet. I don't have the advantage of having one drink to loosen me up. The likelihood of someone tricking me in drinking alcohol is very slim as I can smell it a mile away. I've been known to take a spoonful of fruit salad, that had alcohol and my immediate reaction is to spit it out. I can tell it's got alcohol. 

I can also tell if the person in front of me had something to drink. If they had 1 sip of beer in the past hour I can smell it.  I warned my daughters when they hit an age where teens do drink that they could forget about lying to me about it, since I would always smell it. 

Something my ex with the drinking problem thought I was joking about. I could tell when he drank, and mostly how much he drank. You can't hide your drinking from a dry alcoholic.  I left him because of his drinking. If I can control my drinking, I don't need to be abused, and berated by someone who does drink and be exposed to that much alcohol all the time.  I made it very clear that I would be friends with him if he was sober, but if he drank to stay well away. 

After his stellar performance in late February, which I blogged about here I'm still really angry. I think I'm more angry because he told hubby that he had no recollection of calling me drunk. Great, he tells me nasty stuff, treats me like dirt and then laughs it off "heh heh, I can't remember".  Then again when does he take responsibility for his actions?

Well unlike him, I'm a true Quebecois, who's moto is "Je me souviens". Here is the full phrase from which this sentence is derived:

Je me souviens/ Que né sous le lys/ Je croîs sous la rose.
I remember/ That born under the lily/ I grow under the rose.

So all this to say I remember how much of an ass he is when he drinks and at this point he doesn't deserve  the time of day from me.  Now I wish I would stop feeling like absolute crap over the stupid things he said to me. After all it was just a drunk asshole spewing garbage, why are my feelings so hurt?

It seems like the easier solution

I was left profoundly touched by Bill Zeller's last words.  I mean who's to say what enough hurt is?  Who's to say when you've had enough? When it's too much pain?

People always tell me I'm over sensitive to everything. I've realized it's part of my ADHD nature. I'm over sensitive. Not just to words, but to touch and other things. People also tell me to control my emotions. Like if I could control my emotions I'd be this emotional?  Its easy for someone who's not emotional to tell me to 'snap out of it'. It's always much easier for those looking from the outside to criticize us, but until they have walked a mile in our shoes, what do they know?

And no matter what hell someone else has lived, no one understands your own personal hell. Sure I wasn't molested repeatedly as a toddler nor did I live through war, but I lived through events throughout my life that left me profoundly affected. Sometimes it means I need to be alone for days just to find my way through my darkness. Just to realize that life isn't all bad, and that I have to strive to live for those fleeting moments of happiness, where the darkness seems to have cleared even for a few moments. 

I don't understand why everyone needs to decide how I should handle my dark moods, and my moments of depression. Basically all I ask is to be left alone and somehow that really bothers some people.  My ex never understood it and never left me alone when I specifically asked to be left alone. He feared that I'd hurt myself.  If I really wanted to hurt myself, no matter how much I was watched I would. 

I mean for instance I stopped drinking when I was 19. Back in 1982.  I haven't had a drink since. No matter how bad it got, no matter the darkness. But I'm not allowed the alone time in case I might hurt myself.  Right. 

One of the stupid things that was told to me recently was to snap out of it because it's affecting others. Great. Another reason to add as to why I should end it. At least if I wasn't around my dark moods wouldn't be affecting others. 

I wonder if that was a factor in Bill Zeller's choice of ending it all?