A big part of the pleasure of writing is the feeling of communion. Communion is an important drug, social need, spiritual experience, component of a sane life. I get some of my biggest kicks from writing when I succeed in having an audience feeling as if we are sharing the human condition. That we are not alone. Someone gets us, understands us, is going through the same thing.
Alcoholism is rather impossible to explain to non-alcoholics. The videos below are the best I’ve ever seen in giving a sense of why people drink, and how that slowly turns into alcoholism, and how difficult that is to get out of.
A lot of people who stop drinking are helped by lying to themselves. And if you are going to lie to yourself it’s much easier if you do it by lying, VERY LOUDLY to others. People say that you can be just as happy and sociable without it. That you don’t need it. All you have to do is to learn new habits. Alcohol is just a “crutch”, that serves no real purpose.
That’s fucking bullshit. Alcohol is great! For some of us, especially those with high social anxiety, it is transformative and a godsend. It quite obviously has an effect. We’ve had experiences with it we’d not have had without it. Fantastic stuff.
If alcohol wasn’t great, there would be no alcoholics!
I’m a bit lucky, I suppose, in that after long abstinence I don’t get cravings much. I have my triggers – old haunts that I frequently drank at, including the beach, can bring on a strong desire. But I don’t have to take things one day at a time as a constant battle against a looming bottle.
Regardless of how much you drink, I think you’ll find these videos either informative or reassuring in how you not alone.
Some of you might also consider the videos as cautionary. I doubt any alcoholic thought it could ever happen to him.
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I take low dose naltrexone before sleep, for immune regulation reasons. It’s also recommended to combat addiction.
The Ted talk below talks about a woman who used naltrexone in a different way to successfully treat her addiction.
Naltrexone is easy enough to get.
When I was in my early twenties I used to drink a lot of soda. I know an alcohol addiction is far stronger than that of course, but I understand to a degree. It feels like you get a break. Like it’s now time to relax and you are excused for not studying or working. I have heard from a family member who is a dentist that when she tells people that they will get cavities, lots of them, their eyes just glaze over. They don’t want to know, so it just disappears instantly from their minds. I guess most people are just wired this way. I belong to the minority that is able to listen to advice even when it is uncomfortable, so I stopped and started drinking lots of tea instead. Not as satisfying, but I realized that what I wanted most of all was something to do.
The one argument that stuck with me was long-term damage to skin and teeth. If you want to tell a woman to stop smoking or consuming a lot of sugar, the permanent skin damage seems to be the most efficient, and it works on me as well. You only get one life. And movies where an older man looked back at life with regret, and realized he could never change what had been done in his only life, have made an impression on me.
If there is such a thing as an “addictive personality” I think I have it, as I like to pick something to do over and over again as a break from ordinary life, but I fight it by finding other and better things to do instead. The replacements are never as satisfying – people who say they are, aren’t truthful – but that’s the price you have to pay. And it works. I get by.
Another advice is to be outdoors a lot. That is the best environment for fighting addictive cravings.
You want to dig in and zone out, and the world feels grey if you don’t get to do so, but you learn eventually that it feels less grey in time. You get by, and that’s enough.