Interesting meeting today. It was about alcoholism, the disease. Heard a lot of good stuff from the group. But It also took me back to those days in Wash. DC, where I got sober.
Fortunately I knew a number of physicians, who worked with alcoholics and were well versed in the disease itself. I remember, for instance, a woman I knew, who was a social drinker. No problems, until she was in her mid forties and then suddenly couldn’t control her intake of alcohol and ended up in a mental institution within a year. She came to the program and got sober, but couldn’t understand what happened to her.
Her physician said that the alcoholic brain has a clock. He said, when she reached a certain age, the alarm went off and there she was a full blown alcoholic. Another doctor told me almost the same thing. That the alcoholic goes through something non alcoholics don’t. That’s a super physical effect at the time they turn alcoholic. That’s the one that gets them started seeking to repeat that effect. Up to that point they are “normal” drinkers. After they are compulsive drinkers for the rest of their lives.
I remember that I drank rarely during my teen years. Never really had any effect on me. Then one night, when I was nineteen, I suddenly had this amazing physical effect and started drinking and couldn’t stop until I was totally drunk. After that it became compulsive until I was forty-two and hit my bottom. I’ve talked to a number of other alcoholics, who said the same thing. They were “social drinkers” until one day they had that super physical effect and ever after they couldn’t stop drinking no matter how hard they tried. Meanwhile, the same thing in my case, alcohol was taking me down and ruining me physically, mentally, emotionally, and, as I learned in here, spiritually.
As so many said today that this is a genetic disease. It ran in my family I know. Yet the amazing thing is that I am so grateful I became an alcoholic. That’s because it was alcoholism which introduced me to this program. And it was this program which not only got me sober, but turned my life around. It changed me from that insane drinking and self willed alcoholic into a more sane person, who became willing to surrender his life and his ego in order to stop drinking and begin living a spiritual way of life. It was in here that for the first time in my life I found peace and serenity, a new happiness and a new freedom. I had a spiritual awakening and was restored to sanity as far as alcohol is concerned.
One old timer I knew once said that this program never added years to his life, but it did add life to his years. Amen to that. There’s no cure for this disease, but I don’t care. Where else would I find what I have found in here? I’m so grateful for this program, the people in it, and my Higher Power for my sobriety.