OKaysez

 (From Chapter One of the Book SLOW-briety, by O.Kay J.)

Made A Decision

We repeat what we don’t repair.

 

Why Me?

Newcomers to A.A. 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 center in our brains lights up like the dashboard of a giant Boeing 747-400 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 out those pesky “feelings” leading to 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.

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 relentlessly over time goes from bad to worse. And our time runs out quicker than most.

Men hospitalized with alcoholism have an average life expectancy of 47 to 53 years, for women it's 50 to 58 years. In both cases this means alcoholics die 24 to 28 years earlier than non-alcoholics.

For anyone interested in the science behind this, there is a ton of it available in books and online. But our obsessive drinking mainly boils down to our alcoholic brains being wired differently. It’s that “mental illness” part of our physical, mental and spiritual illness as described in A.A. literature.

Early in my own recovery I read 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, when it can't process our intake any more. We no longer get hangovers, we suffer bouts of alcoholic poisoning, but I still called mine hangovers because I didn't have another word for what was going on with my body - other than terror.

The final stage 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 running around her house.

Following the DTs there can be a total loss of our mental facilities and permanent residency in a little rubber room (wearing adult diapers), all down to a neurological condition commonly known in A.A. as "wet brain." (Known in the medical profession as Wernicke-Korsakoff (WKS) syndrome.)

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 poisoned liver’s swollen gut, followed by the relief of suicide or a very, very ugly alcoholic death.

Alcohol is absolutely an equal opportunity destroyer. I've witnessed final stage alcoholism when responding to calls for help made from sufferers in both the ghetto and gated communities.

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 Leroy Musigny Grand Cru.

It's really a good idea for anyone in recovery to never forget that.

Hollywood has given us many scenes of drug addicts climbing the walls, screaming and pulling their hair out during withdrawal, but death from that kind of drug withdrawal isn't usual. Alcoholics, on the other hand, were often found dead during morning checks in those "drunk tanks" (jail cells) used to house drunks during A.A.'s formative years.

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.

It will use automobile accidents, falls from balconies, tumbles down stairs, domestic violence, drowning, suicide, or even just a staggering fall causing our spleens to bleed out. (One of my dearest A.A. friends drank again after ten sober years and 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 doing so at our very first A.A. meeting.

As my friend Lloyd E. said recently: 

I went to my first meeting as a hopeless drunk and I left there as a drunk with hope.

Recovery and hope are there for us if we want it. A.A. offers us our way out. It lets us give two fingers up to 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. It works best when we embrace everything A.A. has to offer.

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 their expressions

change over the length of the meeting, first smiles, then laughter.

By meetings-end everyone leaves relaxed and filled with renewed hope.

Medicated!

Ours is a chronic, terminal illness. Many cancers are, too. Likewise, kidney disease, diabetes, and so many others. 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 to 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!

Sometimes my Higher Power needs to have skin on it,” is something I recently heard in a meeting. 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 spoken by other A.A. members, usually during a meeting. 

When recovering alcoholics drift away from meetings they risk drinking again. That's a statistical fact. And for us, to drink means to court a fate worse than death - or death itself.

 

 

 

* If a British friend gestures two inward facing fingers at you, you’ve just been told to fuck off."

 

*****