Originally Posted by coyote21

I'm on the fence.

Sometimes I think my resentments and residual anger that still linger from this experience with my axw keep me from "being willing" to see alcoholism as a disease. If I did, it would follow, that I'd have to have some compassion for her as her being a "victim" of her disease.

When in my mind, she can't be a "victim of alcoholism", since she has made conscious decisions to ignore the DOZENS of life preservers that have been thrown her way over the years.

I struggle with the compassion thing, it wrestles with the anger and resentment. Which BTW is 90% "handled". It no longer dominates my thoughts, nor does it cause me any great angst.....but it's like a little ember in the back of my mind that refuses to burn out.

Then there's me, I drank rivers of alcohol, and smoked bales of weed. I was mainly a weekend warrior, but I drank EVERY DAY from the time I was 18.

When CPS was due to come a knocking, I asked HP (I still didn't believe, but was already beat down by axw's 'ism) to "please remove my desire to drink beer".

And I quit, just like that. Oh, I had about 3 days of minor discomfort, about like the time I quit diet cola "cold turkey".

So what gives? Am I blessed? Well, yes to that, but am I "special" some how?

Do I have more "courage" or "will power" than the average bear?

Did I drink all those years and just not have the "gene"? Plenty of others in my FOO had it on all sides.

I consider myself a "recovered alcoholic", I don't worry about never being able to drink again. I'm ok with that. Is it just because I drank enough in 40 years to last me several life times? IDK.

Any which way, in my mind it boils down to if "I could quit it" when the stakes were high enough, why couldn't she/everybody else?

Thanks and God bless us all,
Coyote