Old 07-10-2011, 01:25 AM
  # 42 (permalink)  
DoubtfulDebs
Member
 
DoubtfulDebs's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2011
Posts: 113
Originally Posted by onlythetruth View Post
I definitely had some dysfunctional thoughts and behaviors before I began drinking, but I was absolutely not an alcoholic. Alcoholism is an addiction to alcohol, and by definition one cannot be addicted to something one has never ingested.
this describes me, also i drank 'normally' (i mean occasionally, without planning my next drink, and without having to plan or worry about limits, and able to leave wine in the bottle/glass) for about 6 years, then some bad stuff happened and i started drinking more to numb myself and restore a degree of self-assertion, then i crossed the line where it became the only way i could really feel lifted from that state.

i attribute this to chemical changes in my brain caused by consistant heavy drinking and i believe that you could take the most saintly, humble and well-balanced person, feed them as much grog as i have knocked back, and they too would become exactly as addicted as me - their personality wouldn't somehow save them from an inevitable biochemical fact.

i was a normal human with personality quirks and hangups before i ever took a drink and i'm sure i'll remain one sober, even if i live to be 100.

for example i'll still tend to be a perfectionist with a lot of all or nothing thinking, but since that's how i draw the salary i'm getting i don't see it as something that needs to be eradicated, it's more like having a really fast racehorse, you don't point him towards a cliff edge and assume he'll suddenly develop brakes. but you don't break his legs either, or blame his pedigree on why he went over the cliff into the sea...

it would be a myth i think to say 'normal' ie in-control drinkers are perfect and totally devoid of black and white thinking, anger, perfectionism, or any of the other personality traits that a lot of recovery programs concern themselves with, and also a mistake to think that these are always flaws - righteous anger for example ended slavery and perfectionism is an important trait of most artists and a great many computer and software specialists, surgeons and engineers.

jmo.
DoubtfulDebs is offline