So I just got home from a meeting for work, and there was a woman crying there because her son had tried to kill himself that morning. We all rallied around her, and after the meeting she talked with me for a while, and it turns out that I know him from AA. He'd been at our Bible study Thursday night, drunk, and we'd talked about him going home to sleep it off and then come Friday to the regular AA meeting. He never showed on Friday. I guess he's doing okay now ... in the hospital, and hopefully going to spend some time at a mental hospital after this.
This disease sucks royally. He's a nice guy who was just starting to make some heart progress. I hope this is his "bottom" moment and that he starts the upward climb from here.
Another woman joined the conversation, and it turns out her husband is also an alcoholic. She's angry with him, frustrated, and doesn't know why he won't stop. I guess he'd had several years of sobriety, and he went back out.
That's terrifying.
I was thinking the other day that this is so much like my allergy to seafood. I could go 20 years without eating seafood, but that would not mean that my allergy was gone. If I eat a lot of seafood, I'll die. If I eat a little seafood, I'll die. It doesn't matter how much .... it's the fact that it's seafood that is deadly to me. In the same way, it doesn't matter how long I'm sober or how small the quantity is ... I can't have alcohol ever in any quantity. And as long as I avoid it completely, I can live.