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Old 07-29-2018, 06:14 PM
  # 27 (permalink)  
KarltheheretiK
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Originally Posted by MissPerfumado View Post
I didn't really reach "rock bottom" either but I identified with the elevator analogy. The elevator only goes down with addiction and you can step off before you reach rock bottom, or go all the way down with it. It's a ride that gets uglier and uglier. I got off before it reached bottom, but still had a way to walk back up.

The way I approached recovery was that I was way too smart to let alcohol destroy my life. I remember thinking that alcoholism would be an ignominious, pitiful way to lose everything and kill myself. What kind of stupid would that be? So if I was so smart (and I prided myself on my intelligence), how could I not see I was an alcoholic and how could I not do something about it?

I still had my successful position at work, I still exercised a reasonable amount, I still had friends, I travelled to cool places and I had a life that looked great from the outside. But I had the ache under my ribs, gruesome digestive problems that only I knew about, a tendency to gag when I brushed my teeth in the mornings and a whole host of symptoms of a struggling liver.

So I finally quit, by seeing a doctor and approaching it in an all-out, take-no-prisoners, I'm-outsmarting-this-thing way.

A clever ego can be a great enemy to the real self. I like to think I brought my ego to submission in this fight.
Good stuff, for sure. However, intelligence can often be subject to deep emotional issues underlying the plain declarative of "I'm too smart for this." I'm pretty smart myself... Honor student in highschool, BA in Psych/English Writing... but my depressive state interferes with my knowledge of what the alcohol is doing to me. After all, if you suffer from the depression of perpetual lonliness like I do... and I mean the lonliness of never finding a special someone along with the regular lonliness of not having many friends... why would you want to do anything to extend your lifespan? Logically speaking, I don't think suicide is the way to go, but please don't ask me to do everything in my power to extend the lifespan of my misery.

So yes, I can use my intelligence to do things like recognize triggers, patterns, and such for my alcohol use, but how do you use your intelligence to find meaning in life?
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