DING DING DING! What do we have for him, Johnny?
Posted on 08/28/2009 1:31:53 PM PDT by RKV
In August 1979, I took my last drink. It was about four o'clock on a Saturday afternoon, the hot sun streaming through the windows of my little carriage house on Dickens. I put a glass of scotch and soda down on the living room table, went to bed, and pulled the blankets over my head. I couldn't take it any more.
On Monday I went to visit wise old Dr. Jakob Schlichter. I had been seeing him for a year, telling him I thought I might be drinking too much. He agreed, and advised me to go to "A.A.A," which is what he called it. Sounded like a place where they taught you to drink and drive. I said I didn't need to go to any meetings. I would stop drinking on my own. He told me to go ahead and try, and check back with him every month.
The problem with using will power, for me, was that it lasted only until my will persuaded me I could take another drink. ...
A.A. believes there is an enormous difference between bring dry and being sober. It is not enough to simply abstain. You need to heal and repair the damage to yourself and others. We talk about "white-knuckle sobriety," which might mean, "I'm sober as long as I hold onto the arms of this chair." People who are dry but not sober are on a "dry drunk."
...
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.suntimes.com ...
In Ebert's case I'll make an exception, mainly because the man has no class, even after being off booze for years. I reread his article on "Public prayer fanatics borrow page from enemy's script" from the March 2003 Sun-Times where he criticizes Bush and Ashcroft and as much as calls them equivalent to the Taliban. Not. Even. Close. Roger.
I'll tell you what Roger Ebert is, at least as far as remote diagnosis can tell - he's the dry drunk. Oh, he's not on the bottle anymore, he just ain't sober yet. And after all these years.
Key symptoms - grandiosity, judgmentalism, intolerance , impulsivity, and indecisiveness which leads to mood swings, self absorption, detachment and escapism.
After all the cr@p that GWB had to put up with from lefties calling him a dry drunk, I think it is fair to return the favor. Glad you're off the bottle, Roger, now see if you can disagree with your political opponents without name-calling, OK? You can talk about being a dry drunk, but can you recognize the symptoms in your own rhetoric? You may or may not agree what's best on any given issue, Rog old boy, but your fellow Americans of the conservative persuasion, are NOT the Talib. Remember that. If we were, you'd already have been publicly humiliated by being dragged around a mosque, with a flogging thrown in for good measure.
In what way?
Actually...if a person follows the AA program, right from the book.. after living the program for a while.. they have a tendency to turn conservative.
Those who use it to just stop drinking, and leave the rest of the program alone... tend to go liberal.
Where did you ever get that from? I know plenty of people in CT who have been sober for years and are liberals.
Are you a member of AA?
Is this the Roger from “American Dad”? Now THAT Roger, I could understand and even have some sympathy for. That creature is flawed and knows it, while this guy from the Sun-Times, well, he has yet to declare his humanity.
The AA model wasn’t for me. I went with a self challenge model for me and I did it on my own.
I knew I was never going to escape from contact with alcohol so I forced myself to be around it without drinking. I even carried an unopened beer around with me for several months. Its been nearly a decade since I last drank.
AA Ping
Nope, but I got that list from their site. They use the term. I am NOT an MD, either, I’m just a conservative/libertarian who know a few alcoholics, and has seen them dry, sober AND dry drunk (if I understand the definition correctly, and I think I do).
Sober since 8/4/87.
Or as I am often fond of saying, sober since the Reagan Era.
All I can add to Roger's story is that he claims that he still does not believe in God, but rather just the higher power found in other people. Fine. That's a good start. But after 30 years, I would expect that he would have developed a deeper understanding of God. That's what the 11th step is all about. It sounds as though his spirituality ended at step 2.
God bless him for quitting. I'm sure his life is much improved. But as I tell newcomers, when you work it the way it's written, it gets even better than you could have imagined.
What..wake up every morning and know that you are never going to feel any better?
I will learn to live without scotch, but never without the vino.
You'd actually be better off not trying to analyze/define something you know nothing about. Just know drunks, dry or sober or active, does not qualify you to judge.
While I may not agree with Ebert's politics I would not use his politics to judge his sobriety.
Having been sober for over twenty years I have learned that sobriety is not something that's judged - just lived.
I’ll judge who I please thank you, whether you approve or not.
DING DING DING! What do we have for him, Johnny?
I never liked the term "dry drunk". I seems to imply that the AA way is the only way. If you are able to use another method or even just decide that you've been drinking too much and need to stop that you are no better off than before, and may in some ways be worse off.
Sobriety date, October 26, 1975
**AA Ping**
????? Really ... sign me up!
Well, then you are completely missing the point of AA and the words you quoted. You tried to use AA's words to justify your own judgementalism. Kind of ironic.
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