Drinking
I don’t drink. I am coming up on three years alcohol free. I don’t know how many other times I have quit, starting when I was seventeen. I started drinking when I was fifteen, if you count Coors 3.2 beer as alcohol. It isn’t very strong, so I just drank more. I started and stopped several times after the first time.
My mother was an alcoholic, my father drank quite a bit. Their entire social circle revolved around drinking. One of my mother’s best friends choked to death on her own vomit on the kitchen floor. One of her kids found her. Alcohol was the culture I grew up with.
One of the issues I live with is ADD/ADHD. Growing up, I knew something was wrong – always in trouble, unable do do schoolwork I wasn’t interested in, lots of other stuff. I thought of it as the Fatal Flaw. I have managed to lurch along with the ADD, but it affected all my life. My college transcript is mostly A’s and F’s. It helped ruin my first marriage. The deal with it, I drank and did dope.
I used to buy pot by the quarter pound. I never bought booze in less than 1&1/2 liter bottles, beer by the case. A friend and I would go to the beer joint and drink seven pitchers in an evening. I smoked three packs of cigarettes every day, more when drinking.
All the drugs and alcohol were self medicating. I was heavily medicated for a long time. I started therapy more than 30 years ago. It seemed to help in a lot of areas, but the addictions remained. One day in a therapy session the therapist stopped and asked me if I had ever been evaluated for ADD. Well, no. That evening I did a checklist. I was 48 out of 50 questions.
That is when my life began to change. It all took a while, I didn’t stop drinking for about fifteen years, but I was doing better in lots of other areas. I can now do tasks I was previously incapable of even starting. It took a lot of cognitive therapy and the stimulant medication to get my prefrontal cortex working without stirring up a bunch of drama.
You are aware alcoholics go to lots of meetings. I go to two meetings every week. They are a tremendous help as other alcoholics share their experience, strength, and hope. We humans need to associate with others and the meetings are healthier than bars.
I am fairly sure I will never drink again. That’s good, because it would kill me. My stomach doesn’t like alcohol and kicks up a real fuss when I drink. I like not having my stomach hurt.
I don’t agree with all the concepts of the program, but I can live with it. Spending time with a bunch of sober alcoholics is a constant reinforcement for my sobriety. As we say at the end of meetings, “Keep coming back, it works if you work it.”