Friday, April 4, 2008

Why Alcoholics Drink after they are sober

Oh Lord, what a sad week it has been in terms of recovery.

I have a 'friend' that I met online at The Hive (the blogging forum for the Modesto Bee). G presented himself as a sober friend of Bill W.'s and continuously sober for one year. He even came to my home group a few times and seemed to be a nice enough fellow. Well, he got into a scrape or two with some other people who blog on the Hive (it can be a tough place to write - let me tell you. Some of those people are brutal, illogical in their thinking and cranky) and claims that someone even called his boss to 'complain' about him. Maybe they did, maybe they did not - who knows? He now blogs under a different name and man, he is just OUT there...I do not see him at meetings anymore and some of his writings are so rambling, angry, outright mean and beligerant that it is obvious to anyone who have been in AA longer than, oh, ten minutes that this guy is drinking again.

Which is just so very very sad.

It is understandable though...I mean, if you stop and think about it for a minute that is what we DO....we DRINK. We drink when we are happy, when we are sad, when we are lonely and when we are surrounded by people. We DRINK....and we drink even though we have example after example after example of how unsuccessful we are at drinking. We cannot be social drinkers, ever...and if someone tries to tell you they were an alcoholic but now they are not and they can drink normally well....let me put it this way: the chances they ever drank like I drank are slim to none.

I know there are two things I must do in order to have even a semi-successful life:
a) I must abstain from alcohol
b) I must develop a solid and personal relationship with a Higher Power.

For a Catholic, the 'b' part can be pretty easy - we EAT God at least once a week. You cannot get any more personal than that - if you are a Catholic you believe that The Eucharist, the Consecrated Host, is the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ - no ifs ands or buts about it...and how can one eat God and not feel close to Him?

Still, that is not the only thing that will help me...it is up to me to develop that special and personal relationship in a way that is particular to me. I can share it with other Christians and certainly I may even do some things in common with other Catholics, but it has to be mine. My relationship. I have to want to love Him and I have to want to bring Him glory and I have to WANT to spend eternity in Heaven with Him.

And if I want that then the obsession to drink alcohol as a way to cope with my being a major world class misfit goes away....poof....like a cloud of sparkly angel dust.

Anyway, I feel so sorry for G. He will deny it, of course...people who have slipped usually do. But there is an old saying around the tables of AA: You can't con a con....

And I ain't conned.

Venerable Matt Talbot, intercede for G and bring him back to sanity. In Jesus' Name, I pray.

amen.

1 comment:

Esther said...

Amen! Praying with you for G.

Sometimes I feel my relationship with Jesus must be "this way" or "that way" because others do it like that, but I am finally learning, slowly, that His only requirement is to be just who I am with Him. (While seeking to live as He taught, of course. :) He made me, after all, so why wouldn't He want me to approach Him as the "me" He made!?