EndGameNYC

This comment has been nagging at me since I read it.

Many of your previous comments, including some that were written after your relapses and the disabling accident that came afterwards, and when you've offered your experience to other people, make it clear that you already knew this.

My concern is that -- and one of the reasons why I asked what you learned from your lapse in the first place -- is that, if you already knew that alcohol is not a "magic elixir" before you had your three drinks, then what is it that you're not looking at, that you're avoiding? What is it that brings you back to drinking, whether it's a couple of sips, a few drinks, or any other amounts of alcohol?

When I was drinking, particularly near the end, and continuing in very early sobriety, I had an appallingly boundless capacity for self-deception which often lead to acts of bad faith.

"My (X)GF won't mind if I continue to drink, as long as it doesn't get out of hand." "No one really cares if I come in late for work, or don't come in at all. I've already told them that I'm going through a rough time (another lie)." "I really don't need to get my work done by Monday." "It's both important and necessary for me to lie to other people so that they won't catch on to me."

'Denial' is often a misattribution. In a technical sense, it is a psychological defense that is considered to be either largely or wholly unconscious. When I know what drinking can do to me, and I drink anyway, this is not truly denial, but bad faith. To be clear, I knew that my lies were lies in the service of protecting myself against unwanted realities. I knew that I was lying to myself, and went ahead and did what I wanted to do and not what some conveniently dispossessed part of me "told me" to do. There was no invisible hand or disembodied voice at work.

Being honest, for me, is not an activity, a strategy or a thought. It is not, strictly speaking, "telling the truth;" it is a way of being. It's the way in which I choose to engage the real world as it presents itself, and not a means of hiding from that which I either fear or loathe. We are all naturally predisposed to deception, if only because to do so has survival value, as is demonstrated in our and in other species when their members camouflage themselves in order to avoid harm or death. Or, briefly, to get what we want.

Sobriety, as well, is not for me an activity, a thought or a strategy (though there is, clearly, strategic and tactical planning involved, particularly early on). It's a way of being in the world that affords me multiple and continuous opportunities to choose honesty or deception. People often ask about improving self-esteem and accountability, and about reducing anxiety and worry. Engaging ourselves, our lives and the world as they present themselves is one of the ways out of the considerable damage that we've done, but a road that is also less traveled. When we ask why it is that we cannot achieve sobriety, we benefit from examining the ways in which we deceive ourselves around what living an authentic life truly is. When we don't like the truth, we either retreat or we continue to struggle, retreating representing a life of despair, and no decision at all.

There is a saying a martial arts that a black belt is a white belt that never gave up, the black belt being the most difficult level to achieve, which includes years of rigorous training, pain, and pushing ourselves beyond our self-ordained limitations. Human beings simply are incapable of doing the amazing things that you can find in videos on martial arts. One of my sensei's senseis is now in his seventies. He can still do push-ups on his index fingers alone, and he remains a very dangerous person if circumstances require it.

There is also a saying that has been long and widely misattributed to Charles Darwin that says that it's not the strongest or the smartest who survive, but those who are able to adapt to change. There are fewer changes and requisite adaptations in life that reach the magnitude of living sober after years of active alcoholism.

If I continue to do throughout my life the same things that have made me unhappy, that have lead to isolation in the extreme, that have allowed me the dubious safety of failure, then something else needs to be done. When I climb into the web, it does me no good to blame the spider.