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Addiction to Alcohol/Dealing with shame and regret

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Expert: Joseph Lee O. - 7/3/2009


Question
Dear Joseph;

Greetings dear spirtual friend. I have read various exerts from you, one in particular that you wrote, helping a middle age women with her boyfriend on 6/23/09. I am experiencing many of the same problems with my boyfriend of 9 years. He is an intelligent middle aged man with a Masters in Education, he has worked as a teacher and counselor for at-risk youth and also teaches anger management. I often wondered how a man with so much built up anger, which was brought about from his mother abandoning him and being raised by his grandparents who verbally and physically abused him could reach other troubled kids, but I guess he understood them and they loved him for it. My boyfriend always loved to drink but things became worse after he had bariatric surgery in 2005; he lost over 200 pounds. Things became so bad that I ended up going to live in a shelter for a year. My oldest sister assisted in paying for my stay at the shelter. My boyfriend eventually talked me in to returning to him. I feel like a complete fool for going back. My sister hates me for my decision, I have abandoned myself from my friends and outside influences. My boyfriend drinks constantly now and is verbally abusive and makes threats of doing bodily harm to me. I take medication just to cope often. I wish I had a friend to talk with who could understand my situation. I feel really lonely and confused. Please help me.

Answer
Greetings to you, Maria.

You have written:

>> I wish I had a friend to talk with who could understand my situation.
>> I feel really lonely and confused. Please help me.

You are welcomed to talk with me as much as you like, and I will certainly try to help.

I just recently wrote this to someone else:

We human beings all need each other in order for our natural instincts and desires to be satisfied, and we can only harm each other while still living either in or for one's own self ...

... and here is what I mean for that to be saying to you here:

You need the companionship you seek, and it would be virtually impossible for you or for me or for anyone else to not seek the companionship we need in order to feel okay inside and about ourselves.  Giving and receiving are natural parts of our makeup just as surely as we need air, water and food to live at all.

Your dilemma, then, is about how to find the actual fellowship and companionship we human beings all so desperately need ... and as you now know quite well, you are not going to find it there with that man unless a significant transformation takes place within him.

Does that make sense?

Share this letter with your sister or with anyone else you believe might be willing to help you escape just one more time, then be sure to get some specific help in learning how to avoid ever again jumping back into trading your best assets for trinkets in a relationship where you must give your all in order to be “loved” by someone who can really only use you for his own selfish ends.

Please know you are always welcomed to write ...

Joseph Lee O.

Addiction to Alcohol

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Joseph Lee O.

Expertise

Greetings to you! Amidst the insufficiency of all the philosophical, religious and “self-help” approaches to relief from chronic alcoholism, I have personally experienced the content of “Alcoholics Anonymous”, the book. Thus, I can now explain at least the essence of the physical, mental and emotional aspects of an alcoholic's inherent condition and plight, and I can show why a spiritual solution is required and how it works and how to attain one.

Experience

The oldest of four boys, I grew up in a religious, Midwestern-USA family. Unable to decline a friendly offer in a social setting, I had "no effective mental defense against the first drink" ("Alcoholics Anonymous", the book, page 43), and took my very first drink ever at age 24 ... and within minutes I had become obsessed with getting more of the effect that glass of homemade wine had given me. Alcohol had just done something *for* me that nothing else had ever done; it had seemingly "fixed" something inside me I had not even known was broken. Over the next seven years of my life, I "drank up" just about everything and everyone ever meaning much to me at all, and I eventually abandoned my young family so I could drink and smoke pot at will. For, you see, alcohol was giving me a good-to-go feeling about life and a sense of control I had never before had, and at least in the early days of my drinking it could kill just about any pain that came along. At age 31, however, circumstances and consequences had piled up all around me in ways that were making it obvious I could not continue on much longer. Life had become too tough, my pains had grown too great and the dangers of continuing to drink had become too undeniable for me to be able to continue believing I might ultimately survive an inescapable drop to the bottom of the pit. I still wanted to be able to drink safely as in days past, but something had seemingly "taken over" my drinking and was dragging me completely out-of-control after just one drink. So, and even while completely overwhelmed by the thought of facing life alcohol-free, I decided to stop drinking altogether ... and I quickly discovered I could not. No matter what I said, thought or did even just "one day at a time", I always ended up drinking once again. Where I wanted to drink safely, I could not, and neither could I remain abstinent for very long at all ... and such is the physical "allergy" (where one drink takes another) coupled with alcoholism’s mental-emotional obsession for the effect of alcohol ... ... but then I met a small group of people who personally understood my deadly dilemma - my complete personal powerlessness - and those same folks were quite able to propose a permanent solution. I accepted, of course, and today it is as if I "could not drink even if [I] would" ("Alcoholics Anonymous", the book, page 57), and for that I now remain unendingly grateful.

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