michaelj

My road to alcoholism was a long and tortuous one. I was born in London in 1949, my parents had emigrated there from Ireland. My first memory of alcohol is from a very young age. The whole family were in Ireland on our summer holiday and I remember the effect that the smell of the local bar had on me. The smell seemed to suggest everything about being a grown-up and social being. I wanted to be part of that bar society.
My father enjoyed a drink, he would drink in the local pub every day after work but he never ever drank indoors. He drank a lot but in my mind he was never an alcoholic. When he retired he would only drink on social occasions or rarely on a Sunday lunch time at the pub.
I first drank when I was fifteen and from the first drink I wanted more. From the very start I found it very difficult to stop drinking once I had started. I married and had children fairly young and this put a severe financial constraint on my drinking. I always put my family first. As the children grew up and financial matters improved I began to drink more. Wine with meals, beers always in the fridge.
We became friends with a couple who enjoyed much the same life-style as us but with a great deal more alcohol. I quickly upped my intake and began to drink more wine and more spirits, especially gin. Through my drinking and inappropriate behaviour our friendship fizzled out. I made a complete fool of myself at a couple of parties and began to experience black outs. My marriage went through an incredibly rocky period lasting several years. In truth the marriage survived only because of our children and the huge social stigma that attaches to it in our extended families.
About fifteen years ago I knew that I had a problem and I went to AA. I had been going for a couple of months, never sharing...never admitting I was an alcoholic but listening to the stories of others. I convinced myself that I was not like those people. Their stories were too horrific, prison, crime, prostitution, hospitals and clinics, psychiatrists and social workers. I was not one of these people therefore I was not an alcoholic so I needn't attend AA any more.
I went back to drinking and gradually over the next 12 to fourteen years my drinking grew and grew.
My whole day to day existence was built around alcohol. I planned every day so that I could fit alcohol into it and so that I could hide the majority of my drinking from my wife. If I had four pints of beer in a pub I would tell her that I had only had two. If I got a gin and tonic it was always a double. If I went to pour a drink at home I would always chug some extra in secret.
The black-outs continued and physically I was going downhill. I was putting on weight relentlessly, drink makes me hungry, I began to loathe myself and every day I promised to reduce my drinking. Every day I failed. I struggled to stay off drink past twelve midday and once I had that first drink inside me I simply could not stop.
I began to hide drink around the house, I would hide vodka in a wardrobe and pour it into a half full can of coke and pretend I was drinking just the soft drink. If my wife was away from home or even out for the evening I would drink myself into oblivion.
One year ago I was searching out my stash of hidden drink when I suddenly saw what I was doing in a completely clear and honest way. Some people call this a moment of clarity. It was absolutely obvious and essential to me to stop drinking there and then. This moment of clarity is all the more remarkable given that I was absolutely drunk at the time.
I knew there and then that I had just taken my last alcoholic drink and I went and told my wife everything. She thought it was the booze talking, it had often talked before but she supported me and continues to do so. Married life is very slowly coming back to normal.
I went to AA meetings for about two months and they gave me the start I needed. I am ploughing my own furrow now mostly because I prefer to believe that I am the only person who can crack this problem. No amount of outside help or spirituality can substitute for willpower and rationality.
I use this site a fair amount, I use rational recovery's technique to overcome the addictive voice that crops up every so often ( thankfully rare now), and I use my own version of CBT to rationalise my way through any bad patches.
I can honestly say that I have not felt so positive and contented in years. I don't mourn the loss of alcohol because although I thought alcohol would open the door to society for me all it really did was to lock me in it's prison.
Michael