I Drank Until I Had To Stop. I Stopped Until I Had To Drink.

This is something I always felt but could never describe in words.  It was only when I landed up in AA meetings that I heard this and it made complete sense as to why I could not stop drinking for very long.

When I started out drinking it was fun and I didn’t have to drink, I wanted to drink. It made me feel part of the crowd, it took away the fear of not fitting in, it made me feel like I was not so different anymore. Ever since I could remember, I had this strange feeling like I never fit in, no matter where I went. If I was playing with kids on the playground in elementary school, I thought they were all watching me and thinking “what is he doing?”. If I was playing soccer in middle school, I thought everyone was looking at me and judging me. Even as a young adult I never really felt like I connected with my friends. I was scared of trying new things because I wanted to be instantly a star at whatever it was and didn’t want anyone laughing at me when I fell short of my own expectations. I was scared of new people because I didn’t think they would like or accept me.

All of those thoughts were running around in my head constantly.  It was like a never-ending chatter that I couldn’t get rid of and it persisted right up until I had my first real drunk. Once I discovered that drinking would stop that chatter and relieve some of that general fear that I was feeling, that is what I used so I could feel what I thought was “normal”.

The time came though when my drinking no longer took the chatter or the fear away.  Looking back, it never really did take the chatter or fear away, it only quieted it for a while.  It always came back once the alcohol wore off. But at some point, even the alcohol wasn’t working and I tried to increase the amounts to counteract the fact that it wasn’t working. Drinking started out as something that I did and turned into something that was part of who I was. I had to drink to function in life. This is when some real consequences started to happen. 

At some point I had to start changing when I drank, how much I drank, or even stop drinking to keep the consequences to a minimum, and that was next to impossible.  I would try to stop for a day, stop for a week, stop for a month to get something important done for school or work.  Or stop for my parents, my girlfriend, a counselor, the police or judge if they were on my back about my drinking.  I could stop for a while, sometimes, but I’d always go right back to drinking since that was the only relief to life that I knew. Life without drinking was just too hard to handle without the drink, so I always picked it back up.

When drinking got to be too hard to deal with I stopped. That meant I stopped using the only solution to life I knew and then I was left with no solution to a life that was coming at me faster than I could dodge. Alcohol was how I solved the problems I thought I was having in life. When life got too hard to deal with sober, I drank. I did this over and over again and never understood why I could never stop drinking altogether. I had no tools to cope with life on life’s terms.

The reason I stayed in that cycle is because I didn’t have a choice. I stopped using the only solution to the pain of life that I knew and didn’t replace it with a solution that really worked. I had lost the power of choice to drink or not to drink because I had no solution with power.  Hopefully the Gift of Desperation has pushed you to find a different solution than the solutions you’ve tried before.

There’s lots of AA meetings available to attend in-person or virtually. If you’re struggling with drinking, seek out the help you need, you can’t do it on your own.  I know I couldn’t do it on my own, and still can’t.

Find a sponsor that will take you through the steps as outlined in the book. You’ll see more of the truth about who you are and eventually it’ll change your life. 

Change Your Truth, Change Your Life.

Haler Smith