Dancing Off The Edge
The Sister-in-law is in the final stages of her alcoholic dependency. Link to recent Dean’s post here.
I just discovered this comment on the disease that’s worth remembering:
Alcoholics and addicts not yet in recovery behave as if they were fighting to preserve life itself. They act as if they are citizens in a malevolent society where operatives are using every technique including authoritarian force, manipulation and seduction to attack their existence. They valiantly resist all efforts to effect change. They may not like to lie, but they will if necessary. They use specialized psychological defenses including denial, minimization, rationalization, blaming, intimidation and proclaiming the right to make their own decisions in life. Like victims of oppression, they go underground in their attempts to protect their freedom. Their defenses become habitual and function smoothly even when cognitive faculties begin to fail. – Dr. Jeffrey Smith, Commentary Alcoholism and Free Will . Hattip: The Downward Spiral
The Sister-in-law is slipping into paranoia now, believing that the reason she can’t hold a job is because the Wife is calling her employers and telling them lies. At her penultimate job she was found passed out in the parking lot, and her last one she was let go after being sent off to rehab for a month (after being found unconscious in her apartment and throwing several gran mal seizures in an apparent attempt at detoxing herself.
For those who don’t understand this disease, it must be hard to fathom. I’ve been lucky in that I have seen life through the bottle and without it. Sometimes that’s just what it is: luck. I’ve been lucky to survive the insanity, and to find the… whatever you want to call it: higher power, god, Superego, Magic – that keeps me sane.
But the demon is in the recesses. I hear him breathing. Watching the destruction of my sister-in-law doesn’t fill me with feelings of superiority…
It scares the living hell out of me because I see myself dancing off the edge – while believing, truly deeply feeling that I could walk on the clouds.
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