Marcel Legros - Play the Game of Life

The Obsession to Drink

First, ask yourself how often in a day you think about alcohol or drinking. Three times? Ten times? More?

Now ask yourself how often in a day you think about black licorice.

Non-alcoholics don’t think about alcohol very often; they don’t think about it at all unless they’re at a social gathering or having the occasional drink to relax after work. If you think about alcohol frequently or your daily plans revolve around where and when you’ll have your next drink, you might have a problem.

Alcoholic Behavior Checklist

Here is a short checklist than can help you spot the warning signs of alcoholic behavior.

* Have you ever missed two consecutive days of work because you were hung over?
* Do you ever drink at work or leave early to drink?
* Have you ever canceled your plans because it would interfere with your drinking?
* Have you ever changed social engagements because you knew that you couldn’t drink there?
* Do you ever ask yourself if you might be an alcoholic?
* Do you feel embarrassed, depressed, lonely, or anxious over your actions after a night of drinking?
* Are all of your close friends heavy drinkers?
* Does your drinking cause arguments and disputes at home with your partner or kids?
* Do you consume more than one or two drinks a day?
* Do you think about drinking often?
* Were your parents heavy drinkers?
* Have you ever been fined or arrested for drinking in public or drinking and driving?
* Do you find it difficult to talk with people unless you’ve been drinking?
* Do you try to have one or two drinks and find it very difficult to stop once you’ve started?
* Do you lie about how much you drink or how much money you spend on drinking to your partner, friends, or family?

If you’ve can answer yes to any one of these questions, I suggest you do some soul-searching and talk to a friend, family member, doctor, or counselor about it. If you can answer yes to many of them, you are at high risk, or are already an alcoholic. You can find help anywhere in the world through Alcoholics Anonymous.

I wish you well - there is a better life waiting, if you sincerely want it to happen.

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Most alcoholics seek recovery only when their addiction has taken them to a place where there is no other choice, except to face extreme suffering or death. In recovery circles, that point of realizing just how bad things have become is referred to as ‘hitting bottom.’

All alcoholics use alcohol to cover up deep emotional pain. We use it to hide from daily stress and to forget about our lies, failures, or pain. Hitting bottom occurs when the pain caused by drinking is much more powerful than the pain we’re trying to cover up by our drinking. For most hopeless drinkers, hitting rock bottom is essential for recovery. Extreme suffering is a powerful healer, transforming misery into wisdom, happiness, and health. Most alcoholics and addicts enter a recovery program with a willingness to ‘do whatever it takes’ to get well again. Those feelings are sincere, but unfortunately, short-lived. Once the pain and suffering fades from memory, your willingness to stay sober quickly fades. If you’re an addict or alcoholic, you need constant reminders of how bad things were before recovery, and how good it is now you’re sober. If you keep the memory of your own suffering fresh in your mind, your chances for permanent sobriety are very good!

You can’t save up sobriety any more than you can save up sleep. One bad day and all you’ve worked for is erased immediately. It would be nice if we could bank our sobriety and our sleep, but we can’t, so we have to do certain things to stay sober.

* Stay healthy. This seems overly simplistic, but important. Sleep when you’re tired, eat when you’re hungry, talk with supportive friends when you’re lonely. In our previous life as alcoholics, we likely ignored all these basic human needs. It takes practice to regain basic healthy habits. A lot of relapses occur when we are in a weakened state of mind. Take care of yourself and you won’t find yourself in this position.
* Stop lying. It’s easy to stop telling big lies but not easy to spot all the little ones we tell every day. Lying or omitting the truth is relapse behaviour. If you’re doing something you don’t want someone else to find out about, you’re acting in a dishonest way. You must be thorough in spotting your dishonesty if you want to stay sober.
* Stay connected to your support system. Go to AA meetings regularly and stay in touch with others in recovery. Every time a recovering alcoholic relapses, the first sign of trouble is a reluctance to go to a meeting. If you don’t feel like going to a meeting, that’s exactly when you need to go.
* Service work. There is nothing more rewarding and powerful than to helping another person with the same problems. Over time, you become someone all the newcomers look up to for advice and support. If you feel strong enough in your own recovery, become a sponsor and extend the help that was previously given to you. Every effort you put into your program, you receive back ten-fold.
* Develop a strong spiritual base. You don’t have to be Christian to follow the program of AA. That idea kept me from getting help for many years, but I’ve found it to be completely false. I’ve met people who adopted a plant or nature as their higher power. It’s not difficult to believe in a power greater than yourself. Nature, time, gravity, love, and faith all hold incredible power much greater than myself. It makes no difference what you believe in as long as you stand for something. Everyone is motivated by their ideal. Align your thoughts and actions with your ideal - that’s having a spiritual foundation.

Your old thought patterns led you into addiction and despair, so you must work every day to change your thinking first. Living sober is a great way of life - enjoy your adventure!

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I’ve learned a thing or two over the years when it comes to bad habits and addiction. Here’s the most important lesson I’ve learned; to change a bad habit over the long term, you must replace unhealthy patterns with healthy ones over the short term. There are two reasons for this:

1. If you don’t stay busy and active while withdrawing from an addiction, the inactivity will kill you. You’ll obsess about what you’re missing. The feeling of lack will lead you to overeating, moping, watching tv, and feeling miserable. Willpower isn’t a long-term solution. At some point you’ll cave in and all your efforts will have been for nothing.
2. Abstinence isn’t good enough. Adopting healthy replacements will speed your recovery process and give you the energy to keep you going in the right direction. If you feed you mind and body good things, the whole process becomes a lot easier.

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This week, I’m enjoying the great outdoors with my family. I’ll have lots of quality posts ready for when I return but in the meantime, here’s Day 3 of my random holiday thoughts - random passages taken from a few of my favorite books. I’ve included an Amazon link to it if you wish to purchase it and read more. Today’s book is from the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book. If you want to know what AA is all about, here are the twelve steps and the program in a nutshell. See you when I return!

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This is part two, of a two part series. In yesterday’s post, I outlined some of the ideas from Allen Carr’s book, ‘Easy Way to Stop Smoking’.
There are no benefits to smoking - not even one. When you see this and you understand how the addiction works, you will be able to quit automatically. Willpower […]

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I smoked for about 17 years - at least a pack a day. I was able to quit for a year, a week, two days, two hours, and everything in between. I always got hooked again. I knew I wanted to quit but nothing seemed to work. It was extremely frustrating and painful. I felt […]

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The most difficult thing I’ve ever done was to admit I had a drinking problem and walk into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. It’s also been tough to decide to break my anonymity to tell you what it was like. I’m doing that now because I want to share my experience, strength, and hope. I […]

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