hardwired addiction?
my wife made a comment last night that made me think...thought i would share it here, don't know if it's really helpful, but its at least interesting, i think.
we were cleaning up after dinner & she mentioned that she was proud of me for not backing down on my decision to abstain from drinking indefinitely....that kind of puffed me up & i started crowing about how much better i've felt "since i stopped overindulging". she just kind of chuckled at me in that knows-me-better-than-i-know-myself way & said, "too funny. you haven't stopped overindulging...you're just overindulging in sobriety, now. it's always all or nothing with you!". i never really thought about it that way.
...and the more i cogitate on that idea, the more profound it seems. maybe i'm not an alcoholic because i crossed some invisible threshold in the sand of moderation; drank one beer too many, so to speak. maybe i'm an alcoholic because at some primitive, pre-cognitive level, i'm am just an ADDICT. addict to {fill in the blank}....doesn't matter. my hard-wired proclivity to be consumed by something just needs an acceptable focus, and *bam*...the flame catches the fuse...
so, that has me wondering: assuming that concept is true to any degree (which is a big assumption!) and that it applies to anyone other than me (another big one), could it be that sometimes, recovery fails because the addict tries to directly overcome the addiction itself? which, again assuming, would be basically impossible if the nature of addiction is pre-thought. sort of like asking a rock to better itself by trying really hard not to be a rock. and that if that's true (assumptions abound!), that recovery more often succeeds, not because addiction has been conquered or even managed, but because the addictive nature itself has been refocused on something less mortally threatening (maybe sobriety, generally speaking, or possibly God or higher power more specifically)?
i'm certainly not trying to trivialize anyone's experience, just seems like an interesting distinction to consider.