Insanity
 

Hey everyone, me again :)

I have been doing a lot of thinking about my own insanity around alcohol. The longer I am sober, the more insane I realize I was. Part of my ongoing recovery maintenance effort is to remember where I have come from, so I find it helpful to look back in order to move forward.

I know that we all have done many of these things and the denial of this disease caused us to view ourselves as normal and to also convince ourselves that no one was aware of our deceptions.

Well...so here goes a little soul purging:

I started out being a wine/beer drinker and switched to Vodka to disguise the smell.

I lied to my family and told them I was tired, had taken Benadryl, had taken Ibuprophen but had not been drinking.

I hid Vodka in closets, trash cans, and bushes. When I woke up in a panic, at night, I often couldn't remember where I had put it and had to go find it, right then, in order to reassure myself. If I couldn't find it, I would panic even more out of terror that one of my family would find it.

Because I would blackout regularly, I would often take "notes" so that I could recall events the next day.

I took "Chaser", an OTC pill that promised "no hangovers". I also took Alka Seltzer for the same reason.

I would plan my days around drinking: where I would get it, when I would drink it, how I would get rid of the empties.

I would plan when to call my sponsor. I would make the call b4 I drank. I would never have called her after..but even as I left a chirpy little happy message, I had already bought the bottle.

I'm sure more things will come to me, but thanks for letting me come clean here. It feels good to expose these secrets to the light.

Yeah I could go on and on with the insanity-alogue, but what's the point? We'd all nod in agreement, uh-huh, been there done that and got the t-shirt.

On my 6th day of sobriety I checked into a mental hospital for a little "retreat". There wasn't much doubt in my mind after that. :wild

The only thing I tried to hide was how much I was spending of my wife's money. She could have easily found out by looking at the bank and credit card statements though so I don't think she really wanted to know.

Just out of curiosity, if you were not trying to quit why would you have a sponsor to call?

When we are drinking we don't see the insanity and the unmanageability in our lives.

It's good for you, you are starting to see the truth. :)

I used to make notes too because I blacked out. I am a compulsive overeater who binged on food when I got drunk. I used to make notes on all the foods I wanted to eat in a binge. You see if I woke up the next day and found that I had not eaten something on the list, I would have to start the process all over again.

The real insanity was that I would start the whole process off regardless of whether or not I had binged on something or not.

In the end I had to turn off the phones because I would never recall any conversation I had if I had been drinking.

Thank God I am sober and abstinent today.

Well, I have been attending AA for about 5 years and altho I was still drinking, it was much less than b4...in my head, at the time, I was trying to quit unsuccessfully. In hindsight, I certainly was only applying "half-measures". I was unable to be honest with my sponsor and with my meeting mates about my efforts. I sort of have a "b4 AA" and an "after AA". During the first period, I was unable to be honest. During the second, I got a different sponsor, did the Steps and gave it all that I had.

Astro, just so I am clear. I posted not to solicit war stories of deception, but rather to do some housecleaning that I feel is necessary to my own recovery.

Was perfectly clear to me, I didn't think you were looking for war stories and I appreciated reading your thoughts. I found your post thought-provoking. Believe me, the longer I'm sober, I too realize how deep the insanity really was.

I think that I only recognized the level of my insanity, after I began to recover and looked back. It's almost unreal, except I know that it happened.

The longer I'm in recovery the less I recognise the behaviour of the person I was.

To me the true insidiousness of the addiction is how gradually I got taken over and how normal all the ducking and diving and secrecy and deceit felt to me - and how utterly monumentally overwhelming it seemed to me to stop.

D