Saturday, 8 AM

At 8AM today, Saturday, I was at a meeting listening to the chairman read out of The Doctor's Opinion from our basic text.  The section he read suggests that people drink because they like the effect it produces on them.  It makes them feel good and people like to feel good, so they drink alcohol.  OK, fair enough. The text continues on with a description of the alcoholic, the abnormal drinker, and the description becomes a little less flattering.  We are characterized as people who begin to realize that the drinking is harmful but can't manage to stop.  Then, we lose all sane perspective about what we're doing.  We take the knowledge that we're harming ourselves and stuff it way, way down inside, where the sun don't shine.  At that point we're officially insane, a fact pointed out in Step Two.


The text continues: our problems pile up and become "astonishingly difficult to solve."  Still, we keep drinking.


The chairman described the mental and physical release he got when he drank and used.  I knew exactly what he was talking about.  The drugs and alcohol made me feel that way, too: that burst of release and adrenalin.  Alcohol doesn't make non-alcoholics feel that way.  It may make them feel better for a while but it doesn't make them whole.  I was in pieces, as a person, and the alcohol put me together.  It wasn't better: it was nirvana.


I share, once again, the truth that I liked to drink and drug.  I liked how I felt.  I liked everything about it.  Trying new substances, out late at night, excited, on the edge, wallowing in the instant camaraderie so common among drunks drinking together.  Have you walked down the beer aisle at your local grocery store lately?  Holy shit, it's as beautiful to me as the most gloriously decorated holiday scene.


When I think about alcohol today my first reaction is positive.  I remember drinking in a favorable light.  Now, I don't dwell on this.  My training in The Program takes over and I think through the drink to the inevitable misery.  But that's why I was in a meeting at 8AM on a Saturday.  Because after 24 years my reaction to alcohol is still wistful and quaint.  I need to keep working on the spiritual solution to my disease that will help me resist something that I have no ability to resist on my own.