This is a really interesting topic, however it doesn't include the internal struggle that can be unbearable in sobriety. On the external, I never lamented the ease that alcohol could provide in crisis situations. I held both of my parents hands as they passed...both were day long vigils where I barely left their rooms and was the principal family/lay person to be consulted in the ethical dilemmas that palliative care presents. I was stone cold sober the entire time. Too, on multiple occasions I had to petition for 72 hour holds for my sister....always sober. This isn't to say I fell apart after each time, usually about a month after.
I am presently facing another imminent situation where all roads lead to a really miserable life. The option of drinking is really bleak but so too is living sober. That leaves the bleakest of options. The constant psychic misery is just too much. In rehab this last June, within a consult, they asked me what would lead to a happy life and my answer was automatic and honest....I gave up long, long ago on that....my only goal is to live in manageable misery. He thought that was really sad. It reminds me of a doc I saw many years ago....the narrator was interviewing a woman (who at the time was about my age now) if she was happy. She was a Russian woman who had been working a field the entire time...she stopped and looked directly at him and said, "What makes you Americans think you deserve to be happy"? Yup. Yesterday, I realized after I forced myself to go to a movie, that I had spent the first 5 hours of the day trying to figure out how to stop the pain. Yesterday started with an AA meeting where I was just crawling out of my skin with really good and well intentioned people discussing how a really misguided equivocation on "instincts" was the lightning rod for self evaluation within one of the steps. Ok, sorry for the rant and thread jack....thought about, but didn't want to start a thread for me alone