Expert: Rebos - 7/2/2006

Question
Hi there Rebos
My cousin is attending her first AA meeting tomorrow, I have two questions: what can we do to support her through the process? And secondly: when does a drinking problem become a chemical dependancy. Or perhaps a better questionis how long does it take for that level of damage to occur.

Best regards
Robyn

Answer
Good Morning Robyn:

Thank you for your question. It’s a real good one!

However, there is very little information that you have given me to be very specific in my response to you. For example; is you cousin young or old, married or single, lives alone or with others in her immediate family, have children, how often you see her, or have a mother and or father in the equation. Questions of this nature will have an effect on the way that I would answer that part of your question dealing with supporting her during her recovery.

Concerning the dependency part of your question; Being an alcoholic is somewhat like being pregnant, you are either pregnant or you’re not pregnant…there is no in between! It is important that the alcoholic will have hit their bottom, and a bottom is the point at which the alcoholic “is sick and tired of being sick and tired”. There are high bottom drunks and there are low bottom drunks…but a bottom is a bottom… to the extent of living on the street (and I am sure that you have seen those poor souls), a bottom is as low as a person can get, PLUS 6 FEET, to having a good job with a family, (who still loves them), respect in their community, (like doctors or priests), having good health, etc. That’s why I say that a bottom is a bottom is a bottom. It boils down to what is your cousin willing to do to change her life?

There is no cure for addiction. Your cousin (if she is serious about her recovery) will be going to AA meetings for the rest of her life. However, it’s done just one day at a time. There is no graduation for AA. The desire for her to drink alcohol or any other mind altering substances will leave her after a while BUT, she will always have a THINKING problem! The thought that precedes the first drink is a critical part of her recovery, and even that will subside after a while. The important thing for her is to “always remember when”! Alcoholics don’t get cured but they do recover one day at a time.Once a cucumber is turned into a pickle it can never be changed back to being a cucumber again.

It may be worthwhile for me to pass on some information (that you may not know) about  the disease of alcoholism…Alcoholics Anonymous believes that the disease of alcoholism is a three-fold illness … Mental, Physical, and Spiritual.

The “mental” part of the illness is not about the crazy things that drunks do when they drink but, it has to do with the mental obsession that precedes the drink before your cousin even picks up her first drink of the day... a pre-occupation with thinking about drinking which is so powerful that your cousin must drink. In so many words, thinking about the drink in between the drinks. The alcoholic never seems to worry about the drink in front of them, but they always think of the next one. The “physical” aspect of the disease is, not that a person has destroyed his health, (liver, pancreas, brain damage etc.) but, what it is, is a physical compulsion that sets in after the first drink is downed. The physical compulsion to continue drinking takes over in the form of a deep incessant craving that an alcoholic must continue to drink until some outside incident stops them or they pass out. The “spiritual” part of the illness (has nothing to do with religion) it has to do with the loss of an alcoholic’s values, and a willingness to settle for less and less as their drinking continues. It becomes difficult for an alcoholic to determine the difference between right and wrong or good and bad. The alcoholic develops a change in priorities where drinking becomes more important than health, family, job and friends.

Stopping drinking is not a matter of willpower. Alcoholism is a disease. Drinking alcoholically is but a symptom of a deeper underlying problem that your cousin will have to face up to in order to stop drinking and stay stopped. Without learning what that problem is, trying to stay away from a drink is known as "white knuckle sobriety", or being on a “dry drunk”. It isn’t very long before your cousin would continue to drink again and again no matter how many times she may promise to stop drinking. For any alcoholic there is no such thing as cutting down, drinking only on weekends, changing what they drink, or even switching to “near beer” with .05% alcohol. For an alcoholic nothing will work short of total and complete abstinence from any thing that contains alcohol or other mind-altering substances (drugs). Of course the exception is a medical doctor’s prescription as long as the doctor understands that he or she is dealing with an addicted person.

I could provide you with a great deal more information if you choose. Alcoholism is a deadly terminal disease that effects (they say) most of the population of our country (USA). In AA they say that AA means “attitude adjustment”…your cousin has got to want to change to get well. I wish you the very best in your quest for information. Thank you Rebos