What makes me an alcoholic
Sometimes it is difficult to look at the past and be comfortable with the life that I was living. The lying, the cheating, the stealing, all the “ings”. It was so easy to blame alcohol, to say because I was drunk I acted this way. But when I am able to look deeper, that’s not the truth. The truth is, I acted those ways because I had the burning desire to feel something different then the way I was feeling. Even in my worst state of drunkenness, I knew the difference between right and wrong, I just chose wrong. Deep down I knew that if I was drinking at the time I could always result to the “it was the alcohol that made me do it”. In reality, I made me do it.
Every choice I made was my decision, and life is like that, a series of decisions that end up putting you right where you are at this moment. At some point after I started drinking at 18 years old my body started to act differently. I can’t pin point the exact moment, but I know it was early on in my “drinking career” that I realized I drank differently then those around me. Not just a party drinker, I needed it all the time. It made the big hurt go away. All the negatives in my life were instantly deleted the moment I put that drink to my lips. Every wrong in my life, every person I disliked, all the pain of growing up, all of it, GONE.
What makes me an alcoholic isn’t the fact that I drank to get away. Lots of people drink to get away. Lots of people like the effects produced by alcohol. What makes me an alcoholic is the moment I take that first sip, I do not know when its going to end. In fact, there is no end, I will drink till it is not physically possible for me to drink anymore. And if I am not drinking, I am obsessed with the thought and plan of when I am going to drink again. All of my days were organized around alcohol. When and how I will get to my next drink was the only thought on my mind all day.
Like I said, its easy to blame alcohol, but alcohol was nothing but a solution to all my problems. It was not till I was beaten down for 13 years of drinking that I was finally able to say the only prayer that I ever meant in my 31 years on this planet, “God Help Me”.