Addiction

I am starting to realize that I am an addict.  What started as a coping mechanism that replaced cutting myself up as a way of pushing off severe anxiety, crippling depression, and suicidal thoughts has become its own monster in my life.  My drug of choice is alcohol.  It is readily available and it hits quick and hard.  But it leaves me worse off, emotionally and physically, and it changes how I treat the people who are important to me.

My alcoholism is like a parasite that can override my brain and put thoughts in my head that I would reject as illogical and morally reprehensible in other areas of my life.  It does so to protect itself, to ensure that it thrives.  I deceive myself into thinking I will just have a few beers, no big deal.  A couple of high gravity forties later, I am shit faced drunk and lying to my wife about how much I have drank, or that I drank at all, trying to manipulate her so that I can protect my drinking.  It is sick.  It is cruel.  And it is not the type of thing I would have imagined myself doing ten years ago.  I have repeatedly hurt and deceived the one person who means the most to me, just so that I can continue down a path that leads only to my own self destruction.

I do not want that.  It might be hard to believe.  "Why haven't you quit yet if you don't want to be a drunk?"  you might ask.  And it's a fair question.  But facing an addiction is really fucking hard.  It means taking an honest look at yourself and all of the awful things you have done.  It is depressing.  And when I get depressed, I feel a strong compulsion to drink.  So, it is a vicious cycle.  And my addiction whispers a litany of excuses for why taking a drink is understandable, no big deal.  And once I drink the first bottle, the war is over, because my resistance will become less and less strong the more I get drunk.

And I have subconsciously justified this way of living because I was physically and verbally abused by my father, because my job is stressful, and because I can be a pretty good guy most of the time.  But if I really take a close look at myself, those are not the reasons that I drink.  They may help explain why I started drinking.  But I have been working hard the past few years on understanding the mental health problems that my childhood abuse causes me in my adult life.  I have coping mechanisms and ways of processing those emotions now.  Now, when I drink, it does not need to be because I feel sad or am struggling to process my emotional baggage. I drink because I am an alcoholic.  I drink to get drunk for the sake of getting drunk, not to run away from things.  I hurt the people I love just for the sake of drinking.

And I cannot stop without help.  So I am going to go to an AA meeting today.  And I am going to try to look at myself honestly, and stop running away.  Because when I honestly face myself, my actions, and my potential actions, it is a lot harder to justify drinking. If I say "I am an alcoholic, and I can never drink again," and I say that out loud to myself, and know it as the truth, how can I then take a drink?

So, I will try to move forward, one day at a time.  And I will try to starve this parasite until it shrinks so small that I can finally feel like I am myself again.