More about alcoholism

Most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics. No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows. Therefore, it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could drink like other people. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death. -Alcoholics Anonymous ("The Big Book")

I recently visited Oregon, and I attended a great A.A. meeting in Eugene. One of the passages that was read at the beginning of the meeting was the passage above, and it really is a good passage. I had tried to control my drinking many times and many different ways before I eventually joined A.A. I would limit my intake, which would work for a while, but it would always end up escalating. I would change my brand. Maybe only certain brands make me puke, I thought. I never stopped puking though. I would quit drinking altogether, engaging in so-called white-knuckle sobriety. Eventually, the little voice in my head would convince me it was okay to drink again. I tried only drinking on a full stomach. Nope, didn't work. Even when I wasn't puking, the alcohol was distorting my personality and poisoning my emotions. The last night I ever drank, I felt a spike of rage within me. That scared me. I had turned inward. I had become completely self-centered, and I was actually enraged at someone for disturbing my self-absorbtion. I returned to the program after that, and have been sober ever since. As my drinking days recede into the past, and I keep in contact with other alcoholics, I can see more and more clearly how delusional my behavior was. It's always easy for me to admit that someone else is an alcoholic. If I heard someone in the program say, "I'm going to go back out, I think I can drink successfully this time," or "I don't think I need this spirituality stuff anymore," or "I think I don't need to go to meetings anymore," I would have no difficulty identifying their behavior as self-deluding. Yet, when I come up with similar thoughts, it is very hard for me to see the truth. Like the passage above says, I had a very hard time admitting deep down that I am an alcoholic, and that alcohol is more powerful than I am. I have been trained to be self-reliant, and the idea that I am weak in some way, that I can't solve a problem by myself, encounters fierce resistance in my mental landscape. When I first entered the program, I was fed up with alcohol. I was sick and tired of beign at its beck and call, not being able to quit. I didn't have any of the terrible consequence that a lot of alcoholics amass. I never lost my job. I never got a DUI. I never killed anyone. But even people who have amassed these consequences have trouble admitting their alcoholicism. It's the nature of the disease that we are uniformly blind to its presence. In any event, that first time through, I didn't realy admit, deep down, that I was an alcoholic. But after my three week relapse, I was forced to admit it, and it was painful. I couldn't believe that it had layed dormant inside me all those months, just waiting for a weak moment.
The fact that there was this indestructible force inside me which cared nothing about me and which was bent on inducing me to behave in a self-annihilating way, this was incredibly painful for me to realize. But, I have accepted it, and having accepted it, I can deal with it free of delusion. How wonderfully Buddhist!