I have been talking a lot lately with others about crossing over into the world of alcoholism. For me doing so involved adding alcohol to my body. I am certain I am a natural born alcoholic. My body was never able to process booze like a normal person. Other people may not be born that way but do nonetheless reach a point where they drink their way into this state.
Just my layman’s perception of this of course.
Our literature explains that once we have reached this place we can never drink safely again. We have crossed a line where we can never safely use alcohol in any form. The only solution to our drink problem then becomes to practice total abstinence.
Today I read this interesting line that I thought related to all of this. It basically said that someone reached a stage of their drinking where their problems were no longer their problems, their drinking was the problem.
It occurred to me this is a part of crossing that line into alcoholism.
Trying to come out of the other side of this, in other words quitting drinking and chasing sobriety instead of a drink, leaves us screwed up. Most people can’t reason their way out of this confusion:
Instead of realizing that stopping drinking will help us to begin to work on our problems, we instead think that drinking is our real problem and that if we stop we can handle all the rest. Handling all the rest, in some regard, means at some level we (not God) should be able to handle not drinking. It can be a fatal mistake to think this way.
I needed to stop drinking so I could stop creating more of the problems that drinking was causing. With that out of the way, at least on a day to day basis, I could then begin to “clear away the wreckage of the past.” This meant I could start to figure out what my real problems were and learn how to handle them in a way that did not destroy me.
Alcohol was but a symptom.
The solution to the problems that were behind my drinking, not the many stupid problems that drinking too much for too long were causing, was to trust God, clean house, and help others.