OKaysez

 Made a Decision

(19)

    Cunning, Baffling, Powerful - and - Patient.

         Newcomers to AA often say how baffled they became when they found themselves unable to stop drinking. This is especially true of those who managed on their own to stay sober for a week, month, or even years, and then picked up again.

                       "Why? Why? Why?`` ... They cry.

But the answer isn't complicated. We drank because we are alcoholics.

Every pleasure centre in our brains lights up like the dashboard of a giant Boeing aircraft when our brains get a hit of alcohol. 

Non-alcoholics don't get that kind of a hit from our drug of choice. They might get a nice buzz, but we get skyrockets in flight!

We also drank because early in our drinking days we discovered we could self-medicate with booze to block the emotions of fear, anxiety, frustration, isolation, dependence, and over-sensitivity.

And we drank to allow free rein for our impulsiveness, defiance and grandiosity.

Drinking worked for us on many levels, so naturally, we drank. 

And alcohol worked for most of us on all these levels for years and years. 

And then, it didn't. 

That's because ours is a progressive terminal illness that over time goes relentlessly from bad to worse. For anyone interested in the science behind this, there is a ton of it available in books and online.

 But it mainly boils down to our alcoholic brains being wired differently, the mental illness part of our physical, mental and spiritual illness described in the Big Book.

Early in my own recovery I read that there are three stages of alcoholic  progression. The first takes roughly 20 years, unless we boost the booze with other mind-altering chemicals. (Then it can take far less.) During those 20 years we look pretty much like most heavy drinkers, but toward the end of that time it all starts getting - and looking - a lot worse. 

The second stage is shorter, usually no more than five or six years. That's when our livers start giving up the fight and can't easily process our intake any more. In this stage we no longer get hangovers, we suffer bouts of alcoholic poisoning. 

But I still called mine hangovers when the poisoning hit, because I didn't have another word for what was going on with my body ... other than terror.

The final stage of our disease is when our liver, or brain, or both (along with other important inner bits) can't take the abuse we've been giving it and finally pack it in. 

When it's the brain that gives up we can experience delirium tremens, imaginary situations as if they are real. These can often be horrific visions, but one of my best friends and one-time drinking buddy became terrified when she saw tiny muppet-like demons. 

(She would!) 

What follows the DTs can be total loss of our mental facilities and permanent residency in a little rubber room (wearing adult nappies), all down to a neurological condition commonly known as "wet brain."

Other joys in the final phase include (but are not limited to), agitation, anxiety, screaming headaches, shaking, nausea, vomiting, disorientation, seizures, insomnia, high blood pressure, tactile, auditory, and visual hallucinations (more delirium tremens), fever, excessive sweating,

and finally, isolation and loneliness lived in a skeletal body beneath a swollen gut followed by the relief of a very, very ugly death. 

I've witnessed final stage alcoholism during 12-step calls made to both gated communities and in the ghetto. Alcohol is an equal opportunity destroyer. 

The DRUG ethanol, found in all our alcoholic "beverages" - from beer to those pretty fruity rum drinks - is a killer. It's found in wine, from rot-gut cheap to the most expensive Domaine de la Romanee-Conti. It's really a good idea for anyone in recovery to never forget that.

Hollywood has given us many scenes of addicts climbing the walls and pulling their hair out during withdrawal. Alcoholics, thrown into the "drug tanks" (jail cells) used during AA's formative years, often died there. 

Our disease wants to kill us in the ways described, but it isn't fussy. When we're drunk we feel invincible, so our disease can take us out in a variety of ways . Here are just a few: It will use automobile accidents, car crashes, falls from balconies, domestic violence, drowning, suicide, and even staggering falls causing our spleens to bleed out.

 (One of my friends who drank again after ten years of recovery died that way.)

          But now - the good news:

 While the elevator of our disease descends faster and faster toward the end, we don't have to reach the stage where the bottom drops out to hurtle us downward to our death. We can get off at any floor - and then go upward again via the staircase. Twelve steps up will get us to safety.

If we drank and drugged for years it will take time to build back a better life for ourselves, but we will find companionship, encouragement, love, and a blueprint for living a sober life at our very first AA meeting. It's all there for us if we want it. It's our way out. It's two fingers up at our disease.

Daily working the steps of recovery, prayers and meditation, talking with our sponsors, studying our literature, all take us to a better quality of life and we need to embrace everything AA has to offer.

 But our meetings are our ongoing first-aid - our medicine. 

If you doubt it, start watching the faces of your friends in recovery when they arrive at a meeting wearing stressed or angry faces. Watch as their expressions change over the length of the meeting, first smiles, then even laughter. By meetings-end everyone leaves relaxed and filled with renewed hope. Medicated! 

I recently heard someone say in a meeting, "Sometimes my Higher Power needs to have skin on it." Mine does, too. While I have many lovely moments of silent communion with the God of my understanding, I only actually hear God's direct messages to me when they are spoken by other AA members in meetings.  

Ours is a chronic, terminal illness. Many cancers are, too. Likewise kidney disease, diabetes, and so many others. But we don't have to have painful chemotherapy, or dialysis, or daily jabs of insulin. All we have to do is get our ass to a meeting for our medicine to kick in and get us through another sober day. 

It doesn't matter if you don't feel like it, if you don't want to go, if you don't like some other members of your group, if you're depressed, if meetings have become boring, if you can't be bothered ... stop giving yourself excuses and just go!

When recovering alcoholics drift away from meetings they risk drinking again. That's a fact. 

And for us, to drink means to court a fate worse than death - or death itself.