Addiction: What it means to me

For years I drank a lot, and tried to quit drinking often.  I drank behind the backs of the ones I loved. Who’s fault is this? Mine of course. I do not believe that addiction is a disease.

Now I know there are lots of people out there, millions in fact, who prescribe to the whole disease theory.  For some, this actually works and helps them to quit the cycle of addiction.  But for many, it’s an excuse to continue the drinking or drugs that consume their lives.

They may go to bed each night and say, “That’s it, I’m through drinking. Tomorrow I will not drink.” But the next day they start getting those cravings and think to themselves “I can’t do this; this DISEASE just has a hold on me. Of course I can’t quit, my mother was an alcoholic, my father is an alcoholic, my uncle is an alcoholic. Nope, I HAVE to drink, the DISEASE makes me drink."

I know that some people do become physically addicted to alcohol and true, it’s not pretty.  I recall my own grandfather, a frail old man at the age of seventy-two, probably didn’t weigh more than a hundred and ten pounds. He had been drinking every single day for at least fifty years.  One day, he fell from a step stool whilst changing a light bulb and broke his collar bone. When they had this tiny little man on the emergency table at the hospital, they had to tie him down because he was flailing about so hard from the DT’s (that’s Delirium Tremens, a shaking frenzy caused by alcohol withdrawal).

This was not from a disease like many cancers that just appear out of nowhere; this was because he CHOSE to drink day after day, and after that much time his body became dependent.  A huge difference, in my opinion.

I can say this because, though I was fortunate to not drink for fifty years and become physically dependent, I did choose to drink-a lot. I would start drinking in the morning and wouldn’t stop until seven that night. I did this for days in a row and then not drink for a day or two, but then give in again to the cravings that were in my head.

Notice I said “I wouldn’t stop”. Oh, sure I felt like I couldn’t stop-but in the end, I had a choice. There was no gun to my head, no mysterious hand forcing my fingers to wrap around the glass and bringing it up to my lips. That was all me baby!

Don’t get me wrong, I am not proud of the choices I made for those years. I hurt the ones I loved and I hurt myself. I lied and hid it from them all as though hiding it would make it not so bad and not so real. But it was bad, and oh so very real.

I chose to do what I did and there is nobody and nothing to blame but my own desire to get that tingly high. That’s it, plain and simple.  Even if I made the excuse in my mind that I was sad or perhaps unhappy with life at that moment, that does not make my desire for alcohol a disease-because there is no such disease.

I read a great book that really made me see that it was in fact simply that selfish desire that drove me to drink; the book Rational Recovery is very much against the AA (alcoholics anonymous) way of thinking that it’s all in the hands of some higher power rather than taking control of your own actions.  The author is very much an advocate of taking responsibility for yourself; just quit, period, end of story. And that’s what I did. And if you are reading this thinking you may have a problem with alcohol and want to quit, you can.  I strongly urge anyone who wants to quit drinking to read that book. It helped me immensely and I know it can help others too!

Take control of your life and take responsibility for your actions; that is my message to you.