The Doors of Perception

Ruined:  The state of being a ruin, destroyed or decayed.

I enjoyed the topic of today's meeting: "What brought you through The Doors and into The Rooms?"

Did you know that The Doors got their name from Aldous Huxley's "The Doors of Perception" detailing his experiences when he was experimenting with mescaline?  True story, unless I'm making it up.

Anyway, the secretary called on a few of the old-timers to share and they used words like "ruined" and "broken."  I still take some mild offense at being coined "insane" and "sick" even though I'm both and in spades.  

I like to hear the evolution of alcoholics who are drinking when the alcohol and drugs are still working.  Let's face it: if you're an alcoholic then alcohol fills that gaping, hungry hole right in the center of your being.  Until it doesn't and eventually it won't.  At the beginning the alcohol provides relief for a significant amount of time.  I was sober and full of fear and remorse; I drank and the alcohol hit me like a sledgehammer, melting away my worries; and then I drank too much and suffered the consequences.  When I was young my constitution allowed me to bull through the pain in a somewhat functional way.

But the sweet spot of relief between the fear and the consequences, the spot when the alcohol was working like a well-oiled machine, got shorter and shorter, the constitution began to weaken under the relentless attack of the alcohol, until it spot vanished like a soap bubble, with a tiny pop.  We call this "the jumping off point."  The alcohol has quit working.  We can't imagine life with or without alcohol.

This is a bad point.