Originally Posted by
picturebigger 
it's incredible how "normal" you feel (as your life is falling apart) when you're in fact drinking your body to death. i've heard doctors say organ failures are silent but deadly syndromes. you feel nothing until it's too late. and i heard in AA of many who died, who had no symptoms until they were hospitalized when it was irreversibly too late. i guess that's where i'm at now. i feel fine physically, but my blood results have all sorts of alarm bells ringing. at 33yrs old. i guess i'm at the point i have no other... [take a swig of beer]... option but to quit. what a disgrace. addiction is powerful. worries me to death. literally, i guess...
the PAWS, i like how Scott worded it. it's not a diagnosable condition. I've "diagnosed" myself with PAWS and everything else under the sun. I was diagnosed as a "chronic" alcoholic. No doctor gave me much of a chance of staying sober at all. i had been in and out for 20+ years.
When i say this next part, i don't mean to minimize any one elses' experiences. However, in my last attempt of sobriety, i refused to read any of the PAWS stories, the pontification, the mind fu#$ing threads....it can lead one right out the door. it's like the blind leading the blind.
I did however read the stories of hope and strength. i just left the rest. the smartest thing i ever did was to stop over thinking sobriety, and approach with" Forrest Gump, fartin' in the bath tub stupidity."
The rest of it was imo just more sick thinking.
give it a try. think left, go right. think up, go down. you have to be teachable for this to work.... to learn to live in the hope part, not in the fear of the sickness.
i hope this helps.