JaySee

A brief share about me….. It was July 2003. I turned in late for work again and the guy I was working for was in his office. He asked me why I was late. I mumbled something at him and I was my usual indifferent self as I always was when I had been drinking. Right, he said, I’ve had enough. He sat me down and said what I needed to hear. He said that he couldn’t have me turning up for the job drunk. The work I was doing for him was great, but my unpredictable attitude and attendance were unacceptable. Breathing alcohol over everybody was unacceptable too. He said that some days I came in and I was fine (the days I was not on a binge) and other days I looked like death, I was unresponsive and just not nice to be around. I sat there and listened. What else could I do? It was true. I had no response. He said if things don’t change, I was out and he would bring in someone else.

This was the turning point for me. I had been let go on other contracts before for the same reasons, but this was different. My usual attitude would have been to tell him to stick his job where “the sun don’t shine”, but I knew he was right. I had been trying to control my drinking now for years and it was getting bad. I was getting worse and worse and deep down I knew it. I had just had yet another stormy brief relationship (the 2nd that year) with a really nice young lady, which, yet again, had ended with her running for the hills when she realised exactly how I was behaving and more to the point, how unpredictable I became when drinking. By this stage I was incapable of having a relationship and holding down a job. What was next?

So what did I do? Well I did what many of us do. I was going to cure my drinking problem myself. My huge ego and arrogance was still firing on 12 cylinders. I went to the doctors, got a referral to a drink advisory service and a box full of pills. The first thing the alcohol advisor asked was what I wanted to do. I told him I didn't want to drink anymore. He said if you want to stop drinking and stay stopped, go to AA. AA, I scoffed, I’m not THAT bad. Little did I know. Anyway, I had stopped drinking and after a few unproductive sessions with him (I knew better than him of course – I was going to cure myself remember) I didn’t drink for six months. But I didn’t have a full knowledge of my condition, I didn’t know anything and I thought I knew everything. The day came when I thought I was cured. My head went off on one. I’m OK now I thought. I haven’t had a drink for six months. The old behaviour had gone.! I had some money in my pocket !, my health and outlook were so much better.! People commented on how well I looked.! I know, I thought, I’ll just drink at the weekends. Yeah right. After the first weekend of drinking, by the following Thursday I was back to the old routine. Massive binges, followed by bemused abstinence. But now it was worse, I had found valium to stop the shakes and withdrawals, I started to drink and take valium. This nearly killed me. I woke up on the floor in a pool of blood. I fell down the stairs. I fell off bar stools. I fell over in the road. I passed out in bars. But, I said to myself, I haven’t got a drink problem, I stopped drinking for six months!!!! I can’t be an alcoholic, no alcoholic can stop drinking for six months !

A moment of clarity came to me in the May of 2004 and I found this site. I wanted to stop drinking. I had to stop drinking. The people here told me to give AA a chance. I didn’t want to. I was special, clever, I had been to University, I didn’t want to go and sit with a bunch of freaks and no-hopers. My arrogance and pride were still running at full throttle but I couldn’t see it.

I gave it a shot.

It’s working today. I have a new power in my life. I wish I could show that power to the still suffering alcoholic. I wish I could bottle it and give it to newcomers at their first meeting, but I can’t. It is something that came to me when I gave up trying. It is something very much of my own understanding and an infinite source of strength. When I stopped trying to be the solution to my drinking problem and became teachable, I looked for this new power in my life and I found it very easily. The obsession to drink has gone. I no longer pace the room with that maddening noise in my head, that all destructive argument in my head about whether I should drink or not. It has gone. Today as I sit here I have a certain peace in my life. It is not perfect. I have good and bad days. I know myself today. I watch very carefully for how I feel and I work through those feelings in the way I have been shown. I have a support system for when times get a little rough. I work at making the essential psychic changes that need to be made for that very powerful obsession with the booze to be kept away.

I’m not cured, there is no cure, but as long as I keep doing what is suggested by other people who are not drinking, one day at a time, I won’t drink. I’ve been given a new beginning. I’m now looking forward to life and what the day might bring rather than dreading every day and living in a permanent state of anxiety and fear. My life is so much better without that drug called alcohol.

Much love
JC