Murray4x5

Great attitude!

Some of those distractions can be darn near life threatening. In the argumentative phase of my recovery (the first 3 or 4 months) when I was actively sharing and defending my theories and choices, I was accused several times of not being a "real alcoholic".

Because I hadn't lost my family, my job, my house, and come near to death from over drinking, that meant I wasn't a "real alcoholic". What an insane thing to say to somebody who was able to step off the one-way downward slope of alcoholism!!! How many people would hear that and think to themselves, "Maybe I don't really have a problem...maybe I can just slow down a bit..." and end up hitting the bottle even harder? Some would never recover.

My reaction at the time was to throw it back at them, telling them that by following their logic the only "true alcoholics" would be those who died from drinking. Alcohol was controlling my life; I was drinking to blackout 4 to 5 days a week, drinking at lunch on work days was making sense (I drive for a living) and drinking in the morning was soon to follow. That was alcoholic enough for me.

I applaud anybody who stands up for themselves, who is willing to think for themselves, who is willing to put in the individual effort and hard work needed to discover a road to recovery tailor made for themselves.

Some of us just aren't herd animals. Some of us just don't need face to face meetings and SR is enough for us. For whatever reason, that gets under the skin of a few members of one of the large organized recovery programs. It saddens me though, that they're still out there, still throwing hurdles in the path of the unaware, and that a part of them will celebrate and not be saddened if I ever pick up the bottle again.