Alcoholism
I’m a friend of Bill W. If you know what that means, you’ll realize that I am repeating myself when I state that I can’t drink anymore. Well, I can – but I also can put a loaded gun to my head and pull the trigger and get the same results, only much quicker and with less mess.
We’ve just discovered that one of our family has 1-2 years to live. A housewife with 2 kids, expensive house, trips to the Caribbean, nice cars… My wife and I were jealous being that we can’t even remember our last vacation, our house is small (but it’s an oasis as anyone who has ever visited knows) and our cars old.
For those of you who have never dealt with this disease, it’s the only one that convinces you that you aren’t sick. It then poisons your liver, your heart, your mind and then spreads out and infects your family with a condition called “co-dependence”. Think of co-dependence as a condition like that used by cancer to encourage the growth of blood vessels to sustain itself.
Co-dependence and alcoholism create a vicious cycle of gradual decline -> crisis-> lies you want to believe -> return to normality -> gradual decline. The cycle occurs on a large scale and involves everyone. The cycle is insidious. It is invisible to those in it yet rolls forward, incorporating nearly every attempt to stop it into the cycle.
I was lucky. I broke the cycle without losing anything more than my self-respect. My wife and I tried to break the cycle of our loved one, and boy did we pay the price with the others. Tears on my son’s birthday, being kicked out of homes. Long silences. Tense meetings. Sharp words. We tried everything to help the loved one and the family – but both were in serious denial.
On Sunday there was yet another crisis and the blood-alcohol level was so high that denial evaporated. The level was enough to kill a college student, and here the tiny housewife was walking around with it. To achieve that level meant that it had been going on for years – decades perhaps. The wife ransacked the woman’s house and found alcohol hidden everywhere. In closets, drawers, even sports bottles in the garage.
There can be no more lies. The Truth is finally out – but it’s too late for her – and for our family.
I have been sober now for over 3.75 years. After so many years of internal angst and agony, I feel content – but I don’t overestimate myself. Yesterday I spoke to an “angel” who was there for me three years ago, and he told me about helping the family of a man who fell off the wagon after 12 years of sobriety. My demon is always with me; I see him in the corner of my mind. But he’s my demon – part of me – and I only get nervous when he starts to disappear. Friends of Bill W will know what I mean by that.
So here we are, our small family about to get smaller. But the lies are gone, the air is finally clear, and in a sense, the nightmare is over. The Truth is wonderful. It is liberating, and it is much easier than a life of lies. So why do we do everything to avoid it?
The Razor » Abuse of the System:
[...] I recently wrote about a loved one’s battle with alcoholism here. The tone of that story is quite negative: I wasn’t convinced that she would take the first step – the highest of them all, if you ask any Twelve Stepper. [...]
9 January 2006, 7:32 am