MelindaFlowers

Before I was sober I used to see this and roll my eyes. I wondered, why wouldn't alcohol be the problem? Of course alcohol is the main problem. Now that I've had some serious sober time it makes perfect sense to me.

It could have been any substance. I planned my life around my use of the substance. I used this substance to escape, to check out of life. I used this substance I made myself sick with the substance, trying to make myself feel better. I knew with certainty that it was killing me and ruining my peace of mind but there I'd be the same night, drunk out of my mind.

Why would any person self destruct like this? Why wouldn't they say, after waking up sick for the thousandth time, no more?

Now when I look at alcoholics and addicts I know that there is something very wrong with them beyond the alcohol. Fixable? Yes. But there is something very dark going on in their mind if they can't even be awake and present for normal things in life.

I was an alcoholic for about ten years. First three were easy, next three or four were hard, and the last three or four were a very dark place. It became nearly impossible to live yet I still drank. Every night. It's those four years that taught me the most about alcoholism, not the first six. For the first six I loved to drink. For the last few I hated drinking. Why did I keep drinking?

This has me thinking that it was something bigger than the alcohol. Something was just very wrong with me. Very wrong.

So what's it like now that I removed the substance? Stopped feeding the addiction? Well I'm not nearly as crazy as I thought I'd be. Did sobriety open up a new world of problems? No, but it did help me to see myself through no filter and some big changes were needed.

I had to be present for life. I had to be awake for it. I could no longer hide behind a substance. I only drank at night but just knowing that I could drink and escape that night provided a sense of escape during the day. "Only X hours until I can go to fantasyland."