43395

In his book,'The Art of War', the Chinese intellectual, Sun Tzu says,"You must control events, otherwise they will control you."

Perhaps enhanced by what I understand to be another old Chinese saying, author onknown,'First the man takes a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes the man.'

Nearly three years into sobriety and reflecting on both these sayings, more so that of Sun Tzu I think how much better my life would have been if I had been aware that I was a ,'real alcoholic', as identified by Dr,Silkworth in ,'The Doctors Opinion', where he talks of a ,'physical allergy' and as referred to in the first line of Chapter 3 of, the ,'Big Book' Alcoholics Anonymous titled,'More about alcoholism'.

If there had been some indication to make me awarethat my digestivesystem took longer forthe enzymes to break the alcohol down in my system than the 1oz per hour ascribed to ,'normal social ' drinkers with the cumalative effect of sending messages to the brain saying,'Give me some more!'

Then again I came from a temperate family and even as a young soldier and later a police officer I was never good with drink, not even a modest amount and it wasn't 'til the -ISMS's, the disase is called alcohol-ISM, started to appear in my personal life, those little arrows that life fires at all of us, everyday called,'life' in my case the end of a marriage, that in truth would now at 64 looking back , never survived, we were to young that triggered the ,'oblivion' brought on by alcohol countering the high expectations of life I had, sound familiar? I think BillW. in ,'Bills Story' says much the same thing and I'm sure there are many who would say the same thing.

Having then spent 30yrs seeking to identify my illness and learning and enlarging my spirituality especially with belief, not not faith,'belief' in the god of my understanding during those ,'dark days' my alcohol-ISM was taken from me, although the -ISM's still remain, lessened somehow as I've learned to live and go on learning to live in sobriety or as I call it, taken from the title of a book I read by a now deceased and much respected Zen Master,'From novice to Master' or ,'How I learned to live with my stupidity'.

Then again , as it says in the third sentence of the penultimate para. of the first 164 pages of ,'the Big Book', 'Clear away the wreckage of the past', so it's ok to look back but not to stare! Sun Tzu's words have as much relevance in todays sobriety as when they were first uttered, used wisely on a daily basis they enhance it, provided of course I don't confuse them and try to control events using ,'self will'! Big difference and very dangerous for me and all of us!