Posted on 10/29/2023 11:10:36 AM PDT by RandFan
Yep, an addict must WANT to be free of the addiction and make a conscious and deliberate decision to stop the behavior that causes the addiction. Going to rehab and hoping your cravings will just go away doesn’t do any good.
You are confusing Peter Hitchens with his brother Christopher Hitchens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hitchens
Except the persons’ families who painfully watch them go downhill.
That’s habit. Different, though related, animal.
Habit won’t cause you to go through detox. If you don’t take your stuff for a couple of days and wind up in detox, that’s an addiction.
KCNK13 is a channel in the brain that is expressed differently in alcoholics.
There are others. Once there are therapies that address these things, I think addiction can be "cured" but it's very complicated.
“It works when you work it, right?”
Where I sobered up, they didn’t use that phrase in the closing prayer, but most places I encountered they did.
Congratulations to you on the 34 as well. It’s just another day on the calendar now, but I never forget. I have found that most people have very pointed opinions on alcoholism, and I’m certainly not going to be able to persuade anybody about whether it’s an illness, moral weakness, sin, or whatever. I’m just glad to have escaped it.
When my ex-husband and I were still married, I went to some AA meetings with him and attended Al-Anon meetings for many years. FWIW my ex has been sober over 32 years and while divorced, we remain good friends.
I remember being at an AA convention where the speaker talked about the difference between saying “I’m a Recovered alcoholic” versus saying “I’m a Recovering alcoholic”.
He said:
“If I get shot in the leg, I can recover from that gunshot wound and say I’m a recovered gunshot victim. But that is not to say I’ve become bullet proof.”
“With alcoholism, it is a daily, one day at a time and for some, a one minute at a time commitment to staying sober, but once getting sober, the next drunk is only one drink away. Being sober today is no guarantee and does not make me bullet proof from that next drink.”
Congratulations to you both.
My dad was a lifelong high-functioning alcoholic. He was smart, hardworking, and dedicated. But he didn’t kick alcohol until about 15 years before his death, and it was a wonderful thing to see.
He quit alcohol via his interaction with Alcoholics Anonymous, and for the rest of his life, he attended a meeting nearly every night and ran one as well.
He mentored a lot of people in AA, got jobs for people he met in AA, and when he couldn’t find someone to hire them, occasionally hired them to help him in his renovations for our family home.
My dad was an amazing person to me. But I found I interesting that he was able to kick alcohol, but could never kick cigarettes.
Those last 15 years of his life were great. I really got to know and appreciate him, his twisted sense of humor, which we rarely (if ever) saw became apparent, and his marriage turned into a new love affair between him an my mom.
Just great. I carry, always, in my pocket, his fifteen year coin, the last coin he got from AA. When I put it in my pocket every day, I feel it and think “One Day At A Time”.
I don’t think that is bad advice to follow.
Thanks FRiend.
Your dad followed the AA tradition of ‘’pass it along’’.
One alcoholic helping another. God Bless him.
It works when you work it.
I finally quit smoking in 2007, after being addicted for 40 plus years. I tried to quit many times and finally quit cold turkey.
It sounds simple, but what I did was put a blank 30 day calendar up on my refrigerator and crossed off each day without smoking - trying to get to 30 days. Once I got to about 20 I was home free - ever had another cigarette.
I am very proud of myself. and yes, it took a lot of will power to quit. I still have occasional nightmares of smoking a cigarette and ruining everything, but misfit I just don’t identify as a smoker any more. .
I also drink too much and have tried to quit that too many times. I think the reason it’s harder than cigarettes is because I feel like I should be able to have a beer or two watching the game with friends, or a glass of wine with my wife at dinner. So it’s not as cut and dry - I don’t want to quit completely, I just want to quit drinking excessively. But one drink turns into two, then three….
So, I do have some experience with addiction, and for me it’s all about will power and lack thereof.
Wow, that’s a great story. Pain, privation and suffering really clears the deck. Gets a person back to their needs as opposed to their wants.
I kinda went thru that with my back injuries about 20+ years ago. Weekly level 9 and level 10 pain for years. Vomiting and passing out from pain every week. I’d never had alcohol or drug issues but it weaned me off of everything attached to the physical world beyond subsistence. Every day is a new day. Rejoice!
It's easy to understand why many people think an alcoholic has no willpower; that's a logical conclusion, but an incorrect one. To the contrary, alcoholics have intensely powerful wills. The problem is the will of an alcoholic is inclined to (i.e. hell bent on) getting drunk. This is why prisoners will smuggle fruit cocktail out of the dining hall to ferment in their cell commode. This is why alcoholics will risk careers, lives, marriages for the opportunity to get loaded.
My experience, and my observation has been that once one finds one's self in that maelstrom, the only chance one has is to learn to subordinate one's personal will to God's will.
Yeah. I sobered up at 31 and now I’m 65. Heart trouble. Lost my voice permanently. Speak in a whisper...All kinds of physical ailments which may or may not have been associated with hard drinking. But I like the AA phrase ‘maladjusted to life.” At least I take it as it comes. The thought of alcohol repulses me.
This Perry guy had everything, and it still wasn’t good enough.
Been many years since I regularly heard those amazing words you used. And the old timers of our era were the best. My grand sponsor was with Bob in Akron. I got a master’s and spent twenty years as a counselor, but my sponsor or those AA vets could knock the socks off anything I ever heard in a treatment center.
“Does he think they willingly put drinking above their children and spouse?“
“Willingly”? What does THAT mean? They’re remote controlled by gremlins? The do it consciously and willfully until they either quit or die.
Explain me this, then. I cannot physically become an addict. I can’t drink too much. The revulsion that my body has to drugs and alcohol prevent it.
Just as opposite, both my sister and brother love alcohol and have to do the AA protocols in order not to be under alcohol’s control.
My other sister is under marijuana’s control.
I have tried both of these, alcohol and marijuana and hate them, not because of being on my high horse, but because of how awful they make me feel.
It’s terrible for the families because they want or think they can fix it. The addict has to get to the point where their only options are recovery, death or prison.
People who believe there’s no such thing as addiction to alcohol must ignore all the work done with mice and other animals.
If mice can get addicted to alcohol there’s no reason humans cannot.
(Unless you don’t believe we’re related.)
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