Redmayne

Before I could even get into recovery, I wanted a solution, and not just a solution but a viable one that would tell me why when I drank alcohol it's effect on me was so vastly different than those around me. Answers, of which there were and still are, aplenty. Served me nothing, very much like the sympathy and goodwill, notably for obvious lacking in understanding...

The first part of the solution came when I read Chapter 3,'More About Alcohol' in the book,'Alcoholics Anonymous' (4th Ed.) which on the first line mentions the term 'real alcoholic'. Hitherto unnoticed or misunderstood by me and I suspect many others.

This was further explained from an independent source when I learned that for someone like me, who identified with being a 'real alcoholic' who apparently makes up about 8% of those generally referred to as alcoholics. That when I drink alcohol, whereas in a normal social drinker, it passes through the digestive system at a rate of about 1% per hour. In the case of people like me, the enzymes forming part of the digestive system, break down the carbohydrates (alcohol) at a much slower rate. Meaning the alcohol (drug) stays in my system much longer allowing it to send messages to the brain saying,'Give me some more!'. Starting the whole destructive cycle associated with alcoholism over again, with the need at some point, perhaps even the next day to once again feel the need of ease and comfort obtained by me from tasking even one drink of alcohol. Of course one drink was never enough and two,to many...

Allied with this part of the solution was the need to alter my state of mind as the controlling actor in all this lay more in mind than in my body. I'd always been more a spiritual than religious person, something that's quite common in many. However, armed with the knowledge about me and my alcoholism, I took it on myself with firm conviction to try to make spiritual progress. Particularly in the area of belief in the God of my understanding. It came as quite a relief when I read that in 'Bill's Story' in the previously referred to 'Big Book.'

I can't claim any great immediate progress until, quite 'out of the blue' on one totally unexpected night, when if I'm honest, I was more in fear of dying. I was not only relieved of but found I'd completely lost my taste for nor could I stomache alcohol! Gone, finished, finito !!!

My health and sobriety slowly improved and I stuck close to my solution and the things I had learned in it, not least ass it had worked for me an provided the one thing I so desperately wanted before I started to find it, my sobriety.

Others are free to choose what suits them best, with which I take no issue and whom I wish well, but this was about me and what I wanted. No more and no less.

So my advice to those either in or seeking to get into recovery is, if you're really serious, seek a solution not answers and having found it, maybe enough to get you started, do it thoroughly. Because if you do that, from my own and others experience, the rest will all fall into place.