Unless you've been there, it's impossible to fully understand the nature of alcoholism or drug-addiction. You can watch all the hand-wringing daytime talk shows; read all the latest recovery and self-help best-sellers; rent Clean & Sober a million times- all that's gonna do is fill your head with nonsensical jargon and embellished, if not wholly fabricated, stories about getting wasted and generally fucking up.
Truth is, there are damn few rules that apply across the board to every addict. Some folks get through life just fine for years and years before things catch up to them , others can't keep their life together no matter how clean or how sober they get. Some people die the very first time they drive drunk or shoot smack. Twelve-Step programs save some addicts, others (I am in this group) cannot attend a 'meeting' without immediately falling off whatever wagon they are trying to ride.
When it's time to quit , you quit any way you can. If that sounds simplistic, that's because it is simple. Not easy -not at all- but simple, yes.
Of course, like most things, it's easy to make it as complicated as you'd like it to be: there are plenty of "professionals" who will gladly let you pay them just to listen to you talk about your childhood; help you dredge up memories both real and imagined; create tactical assault plans on your bad behavior and often just flat-out give you bad advice. To be fair, what's good advice to one person may be a recipe for disaster for another. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, you'll probably die, but you might not.
Sometimes, it only takes a few simple words to quit- hopefully forever. For me , those words were: " You had a major seizure during your surgery and we thought we'd lost you." (Spoken by my surgeon)
If you've ever had a similar experience, you know exactly how such a thing changes you.
If you haven't, I lack the words to accurately describe it.
Consider yourself lucky if you don't understand what I mean.
When I hear about some buttwiper who made millions of dollars by making Oprah Winfrey cry; by claiming to have been some sort of uber-addict who pulled himself up by his sordid, fictional bootstraps - it really pisses me off.
I wonder how real war veterans feel when they encounter some asshole who wasn't there trying to pass himself off as a 'Nam or Gulf vet- I wonder if it's the same anger I feel at Puddinghead's Million Little Pieces?
I've never been to war, so I can never claim to know what that's like.
If you've never been an addict you can try to feel my pain ,but don't you dare usurp it.
Don't treat me differently. If you want to have a beer or a pill or whatever- go ahead. Your enjoyment of a substance isn't going to send me flying headlong into the first bar I find. In fact, I think a little bit of booze is actually good for most people- just not me. If you get too messed-up, I'll be glad to drive you home. I won't lecture you about it unless you puke in my car or something. Lecturing hung-over people is a loser's game anyway. To the subject it just sounds like "blah, blah (oh, my god, my head is exploding...) blah, blah etc". Many such words have been wasted on myself. I won't inflict them on you.
Here's another thing that pisses me off: I've heard from a large number of Twelve-Steppers that I can't consider myself a recovering alcoholic because I still smoke pot. They usually have a cigarette in the hand that they aren't pointing at me with while they explain this. If I point out how stupid they sound , they just shake their heads and mumble something about denial. "It's your life", they say, shrugging.
Damn Skippy it's my life.
I have recently( December) had all my innards thoroughly inspected- my doc was amazed when I told him I'd been smoking dope daily for twenty-five years- my lungs look like a non-smoker's to him and my blood pressure is perfect. (It was high when I was drinking)
Oddly, I find myself smoking less and less as time passes. I imagine I'll wake up one day and realize , "gosh, I've not smoked a bong for five years."
Cocaine was like that for me. In the eighties I was doing a half-ounce or more a week of coke -this went on for years. Eventually it ended. I don't even remember quitting, but about a year ago a friend offered me some and I realized that it had been years since I'd even seen blow. I did a couple lines in the bathroom of a bar. Nothing happened. Cocaine is an evil drug, but it's boring as shit after a while-unless you die from it. I've lost more than a few friends to it, so don't think I take the subject lightly, but please! it's not glamorous or sexy- it's not even very interesting.
Coffee is better. I don't need to run a coffeeshop to support my coffee habit either.
One final point: 12-Steppers are prone to admitting that their lives had become unmanageable while they were using. It's quite the opposite for me. My drinking life was incredibly easy to manage: I'd find a shit job that I could do wasted, go to work, come home and get drunk. Sometimes I'd go out and get drunker. Since that's pretty much all I did , I didn't have much difficulty managing to do it.
Life's a lot more complicated and challenging now. It's a lot more interesting in every way- the good can be really good, the bad sometimes is waaaay bad, but most of it's in-between the extremes.
I imagine it's like that for you too, even if you've never smoked or drank.
Don't treat me differently. Let me live differently instead.
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