Expert: Rebos - 5/29/2007

Question
Hi Rebos, I am 22 years old and had a very bad experience yesterday. I know that I always drink a lot but it has never worried me before, until now. I was involved in an event on sunday morning. I was finished by 11 am so I decided to go for a drink. I turned up to abar at about 11.15. The next thing I know, it was monday morning and I was at home 100 miles away, I don't drive so I have no idea how I got home. I also woke up feeling fit and healthy which is unusual for me after a day of drinking. I've been trying to rack my brains ever since about what happened since that time but there is nothing at all. After speaking to one friend, It turns out I went out for a meal, visited more bars and then dissapeared. they said I seemed fairly sober when I left. What happened to me? Have I been drugged? If you could help me on this matter, I would be very grateful. It scares me to think about what might happen in the future.

Answer
Good afternoon Anon:

Good afternoon Anon and thank you for wanting more information relative to alcoholic recovery. Also, thank you for your generous ratings. I normally take only 1 question a day and I read your comment to my answer… fortunately I got an opening slot and here I am again.

You have to ask your self, “What are you willing to do to save your life”? If you are going to sit around and worry about what the world is going to think about you being an alcoholic then I feel sorry for you. First off; if you go to Alcoholics Anonymous… that’s exactly what it is an anonymous program and no one will ever know that you were there. Is it better for you to kill someone while driving drunk or in a blackout? I have never heard of a person who lost their job for being sober. You will start to give your employer 100% of your time while on the job. Your wife won’t have to be worried as to how you are going to come home… drunk or sober. Unfortunately you have to surrender to win when it comes to booze. It may be a bit difficult for you because of your age and all of your friends partying, but I have personally known hundreds of young people who have been successful at staying sober and liking it. The payoff is worth it. What ever you do… don’t be one of those guys that say, “When I get that bad then I’ll do something about my drinking” Why wait until you are "that bad" to stop drinking? That’s the addiction talking and not a sane person.

Alcoholics Anonymous can and will help you if you are serious about wanting to stay sober for the long haul…one day at a time. I hope that you realize alcoholism is a terminal disease that would eventually put you in an early grave, in jail, or a mental institution. It tears the family apart, will destroy the lives of any future children (that you may have) and make you unemployable. I guarantee that if you keep on drinking all the terrible things that you hear about situations that drunks get into will have you name tagged to them. I’m not trying to scare you, because drunks can’t be scared into stopping drinking, the addiction is too powerful an enemy for an alcoholic to beat when left to their own devices.

It is believed by many in the field of alcoholism that it is a three-fold illness…mental, physical and spiritual.

The “mental” part of the illness refers to an alcoholic’s mental obsession to drink. If you will, the thought that precedes the first drink... a pre-occupation with thinking about drinking which is so powerful that an alcoholic must drink. In so many words, thinking about the drink in between the drinks. An alcoholic never seems to worry about the drink in front of them, but they continually think of the next one. The “physical” aspect of the disease is that once the first drink is downed a physical compulsion 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 (not spiritual in a religious way) is in the loss of an alcoholic’s values, and a willingness to settle for less and less as the drinking continues. It becomes difficult for an alcoholic to determine the difference between right and wrong or good and bad. An alcoholic eventually develops a change in priorities where drinking becomes more important than health, family, job and friends. A determining factor of alcoholism is that it makes no difference… how much a person drinks, where they drink it, what they drink or who even who they drink it with, the key is; what does it do to them when they drink? If drinking causes problems (as it has in your life already) then it is a problem! But, I don’t have to tell you what you have already experience in having a blackout.  

Stopping drinking is not a matter of willpower. Alcoholism is a disease. Drinking alcoholically is but “a symptom of a deeper underlying problem” that you must be faced up to in order for you to recover. Without learning what that problem really 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 you will drink again. There is an old saying; “that once you turn a cucumber into a pickle you can never change it back to a cucumber again”. For you, an alcoholic there is no such thing as cutting down… or even switching to “near beer” with 0.05% alcohol. For you an alcoholic nothing will work that is short of total and complete abstinence from any thing that contains alcohol or other mind-altering substances (drugs). Unfortunately, you will have to hit your bottom before you make a commitment to do anything about stopping drinking by being sick and tired of being sick and tired. A bottom can be likened to going down on an elevator. You can get of at any floor you want to. There is no need for you to go all the way to the bottom floor. I am sorry to say that hitting a bottom for some may mean going as low as a person can go...plus six feet! You are dealing with an enemy that is so powerful (addiction) and uncaring for your welfare, that to delay getting help could be disastrous. You may think anything you want to delay doing anything about your drinking, but some day you will see (if you fortunate to get the gift of desperation) that it was really your “self will run riot” or “not wanting to lose control of your life” and “fear of the unknown”. Generally that is part of the problem and not the thinking of a rational individual, but a decision made by the addiction. They say that alcoholism is a disease of denial that makes you believe that you have no problem… or all kinds of excuses to do nothing about your committing suicide by the drink when in fact you really do have a problem!

You may already know some of your friends that may already attend AA meetings… if you do give one of them a call or call your local counsel on alcoholism to find where there are AA meetings. You may be surprised as to who you may see at some of the meetings. Alcoholics who are in recovery are normal people who found that they can no longer drink in safety and that they are powerless over that first drink. At meetings you will find sports fans of all types, judges congressmen and women, policemen, janitors, doctors, lawyers, and carpenters etc... You name it and you will find them there. Rarely have I seen a person fail to stop drinking who thoroughly followed the AA program. Those who do fail are people who are incapable of being honest about their drinking problem.

I would be interested in the route that you decide to take with your recovery. If you have any further questions feel free to send me another follow-up. Thank you, Rebos