To a fellow alcoholic

I know the hell of the voices in your head. I know the blankness and relief that come from taking the action to get a drink. I know that feeling of fuck-it and the scrambling of thought to rationalize what I could no longer control. I know the sweet release of giving in to the incredible tension of Not tonight vs. Yes just one more night. 

I know the fear as it built each day: I won't today, I don't want to today, I have to, I have to right now, I cannot take another minute of this battle in my mind and body. I know the terror of realizing that I had no control, that the alcohol owned me, and I was a slave to it. The last month of my drinking I was simply resigned: Oh it's 4:00 pm, time to start that bullshit again. OK, tonight I won't get drunk. 

And every single night, without break or fail, I did. 

We are all capable, strong women here at the Booze Free Brigade. We manage families, jobs, homes, and our drinking. We keep doing it until it starts to break down. We keep doing it until alcohol sops everything we own, waiting only for a single spark to burn everything we try so desperately hold together in white hot flame. When I look back on when I quit, I imagine the Furies readying their scissors to cut the single thread of sanity that held my life aloft over their boiling pot of oil. They were waiting for THAT drink, the one that made me snap, the one I wouldn't come back from. 

I, who still looked good on the outside, who lived on "it's not that bad", awoke on a Wednesday like any other, pulled my shit together again. Got the kids to school, and was driving into the office full of the usual remorse, the usual shaking, the usual scrambling to fill in the blank spots in my mind from the night before. As I drove, I realized I was broken. I was in chaos and despair and stopping drinking was the only answer I had left. I couldn't put a happy face or denial face on what I was feeling and doing. I had tried everything else, and there was no other option.

I doubt you believe that alcoholism is a disease. I didn't, not really. But it is. Alcohol has changed the hard-wiring of our brains. We can no longer feel pleasure the way non-drinkers do. Once we pass over the line to compulsion, there is no turning back. There is only through: quit or die a slow, grim death one way or another. 

It is that serious and it is that deadly. I offer my support and encouragement, but I also have to offer the truth. It isn't fair, it isn't kind, and it isn't just. But every woman on this board who has quit will tell you it is better on the other side. Every single one. And we are here to help you when you are ready.






You can find all the smart, funny, sober women doing recovery any way that works at http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/Booze_free_brigade/