90 percent of alcoholics are likely to experience at least one relapse over the 4-year period following treatment!
I have been sober since 2003! I will never drink again because I am Superhuman and so are you!
Are you going to be part of the 10% that never touch alcohol again? The alternative is to drink again and be a statistic that lines the pockets of liquor store owners, alcohol manufacturers, doctors, lawyers, the government, and everyone else that stands to profit from your inability to be superhuman. Everyone profits from your drinking and then you die! don't give anyone the satisfaction.
The Crutch versus The Cure
Have you ever seen a vampire movie or
read a book about vampires. Well if not let me tell you how you need to
approach a vampire if you encounter one. You need to chop off its head and
drive a wooden stake through its heart to ensure that it’s dead. If the morons
are lucky, we will have a zombie infestation on this planet and then once you
or one of you loved ones are bitten, you must kill the zombie despite the fact
that it appears to be your loved one. Just like the vampire, once bitten and
infected the body is simply a vessel. The “thing” that now exists inside the
vessel is no longer your dear sweet relative. It is the undead; it is a vampire
or a zombie or whatever else your imagination can come up with. The vampire
appears to be human but is more cunning and evil in its intent. Its sole
purpose now is too feed. Feed on the blood of the living so that it can exist
in its current form.
Have you ever driven past a liquor store
at 7:30 in the morning on a Tuesday in the dead of winter and seen beings
huddled around the corner of the store inboard daylight trying to stay warm.
They pace back and forth and barely converse with each other. They shake like
leaves on trees in the fall whether it is 90 degrees or 30 degrees. Some are fortunate
enough to be waiting in the warmth of their $80,000 car on their cell phone in
a $2k suit. Others huddle under layers of clothes they found in a donation bin
on the corner. These beings are also mere shadows of the people they once were
and they will stop at nothing to feed. They need alcohol or they will cease to
exist in their current form. They need to be treated with extreme prejudice and
stopped. They don’t need to be killed because there is still hope. The problem
is that most people don’t have the ability anymore to do what is right. Their brain has been chemically altered by alcohol and their body is dependent on it. Stop them
before they end up in prison, kill themselves slowly, or kill someone else
while driving drunk.
Despite your best intentions, there is
only a few choices you have when dealing with someone that is an alcoholic.
They do not in fact have a disease but they do have a habit that has taken over
their body and their mind. Understanding that they are not the same person they
were before they became addicted to alcohol is very important. They don’t even
realize that they are not the same person. They never will unless you as a
friend or family member have enough balls to do the right thing.
Symptoms
of Alcohol Dependence
·
Neglect
of other Activities: Important
social, occupational, or recreational activities are given up or reduced
because of alcohol use;
·
Excessive
Use: Alcohol is consumed in larger amounts over a longer period
than intended;
·
Impaired
control: Ongoing, unsuccessful efforts to cut down or control
alcohol consumption;
·
Persistence
of Use: Alcohol consumption is continued despite knowledge of
having a persistent or recurrent physical or psychological problem that is
likely caused or exacerbated by alcohol;
·
Large Amounts of Time Spent in Alcohol
Related Activities: A great deal of time is spent in activities necessary to
obtain, use or recover
from the effects of alcohol;
·
Withdrawal: Withdrawal
symptoms, such as nausea, sweating, shakiness, and anxiety when alcohol use is
stopped after a period of heavy drinking;
·
Tolerance: The
need for increasing amounts of alcohol in order to feel its effects.
Your choices when dealing with an
alcoholic are simple. You cannot reason with an alcoholic, you cannot bargain
with an alcoholic, you cannot trust anything the alcoholic says.
There
are only three things you can do:
1.
Set the person up to have a nice sobering run in with the police
by calling the police the minute you know this person is driving in his or her
car drunk. This sometimes may be a sobering enough experience for someone to
put them in a position to have to be medically detoxed and start thinking somewhat
clearly.
2.
Pool your resources and have the alcoholic not the person put
into a rehab clinic that they cannot leave under their own free will or
threaten to have them arrested again.
3.
Sit back do nothing and hope for the best and watch this person
die.
The
light at the end of the tunnel is a wonderful thing. You will get your friend back, you will get your family member back but you must take the right action
to do so. Anything other than the options
that I have laid out for you will result in death or imprisonment and the
person will never be able to remain sober. They may stay sober for a week, a
month or even a year but if you do not take aggressive action upfront, you will
get the same results 99% of alcoholics face. They relapse and fail and many
times they die.
Unlike
the vampire or the zombie, your friend or loved one can recover fully from the
habit that they chose to take on which in turn became a physical and mental
addiction. They do not have a disease unless they developed one as a result of
the damage they had done to their liver, heart, pancreas, etc. They can fully
recover and be a better version of the person you knew. If you believe this to
be true that read on. If you don’t than you will surely be offended buy most of
the rest of this blog.
Choice: The American Medical Association labeled Alcoholism as a
Disease in the 1940s in order to pave the way for the philosophy of AA and 12
Step. Effectively they were simply helping to line the pockets of Doctors and
Pharmaceutical companies. It is not a disease. It is choice. There are liquor
stores on every corner in every city. You chose to go in there once a week or
once or twice a day. No one forces you. You don't wake up an alcoholic. There
is no conclusive evidence that there is an "alcoholic" gene. Once you
are medically detoxed you can live a healthy and happy normal life as long as
you have the the self-Discipline not to drink. If you disagree with this than
you will not be able to stomach the rest of this blog.
When I was admitted to the hospital for the last time I had acute
pancreatitis. It was so bad, I was there for almost a week. Lying next to
me either strategically or by chance was a young boy whose liver had failed
him. He had never touched a drop of alcohol in his life. He moaned in agony and
threw up all night long every night. I had the chance to talk to him when he
was highly medicated. It was the most uncomfortable series of questions and
answers I had ever had. I was a coward and a failure. This boy would have given
anything to have had a chance to survive while I was throwing it all away. My
granmother had given me a statue of St. Anthony because she believed that it
would help me. I gave the statue to the young boy because he appreciated it
more than I ever could. I hope it served him well while he was alive. He died a
few short weeks after I left the hospital as I asked his parents to keep in
touch.
I understood how absolutely ridiculous it is for anyone to say
that they have a disease when they actively participated in giving it to themselves.
The only thing that was diseased was my mind and I needed to make a conscious
decision to be stronger and smarter or die. Depressed? Sure I was depressed but
the dual diagnosis thing is not real either. Stand and take stock of your life
and make a damn choice. The boy I met in the hospital died days after I left. He had no choice and the last thing he was worried about was depression and anxiety medications.
If you feel your alcoholism is a disease and that you will constantly
be in recovery, than I actually feel sorry for you. If you want to be
coddled, call your mommy.You have built a world of excuses for yourself and a
reason to fail and have a relapse. Calling something a disease gives you excuses. The truth is that after your body recovers medically and you get your head screwed back on straight, there is no evidence of disease. No one would be able to tell you that you had a problem with alcohol unless you told them. Alcoholism is a habit that takes over your body and mind and therefore become a huge health risk because with drawl can kill you. Your body becomes dependent on it and your mind will cooperate with your body in order to make sure you keep feeding your habit at all costs. However, it is only a habit. Cancer is a disease.
choice
noun \ˈchȯis\
: the act of choosing : the
act of picking or deciding between two or more possibilities
: the opportunity or power
to choose between two or more possibilities : the opportunity or power to make
a decision
: a range of things that can
be chosen
Rewind 9 years and I am waking up in medical facility unable to
walk or eat at 120 pounds. I was dragged there against my will by a very dear
friend when everyone else in my life had left me for dead. Now this is not
because they did not make an effort to help me climb out of the alcohol and
drug induced persona. They simply didn't know what to do. I was drinking
a gallon of 100 proof vodka a day periodically throughout the day in order to
function. I had more than a dozen episodes of acute pancreatitis and was a less
than functioning alcoholic and drug user. I was eventually diagnosed with
Chronic Pancreatitis a few years later and asked to be put on pain meds
to control the pain.The pain of these acute episodes has often been compared to
childbirth for women. I passed out a few times if I was unable to get morphine
fast enough at the hospital.
Acute
pancreatitis usually begins with gradual or sudden pain in the upper abdomen
that sometimes extends through the back. The pain may be mild at first and feel
worse after eating. But the pain is often severe and may become constant and
last for several days. A person with acute pancreatitis usually looks and feels
very ill and needs immediate medical attention. Other symptoms may include
·
a swollen and tender abdomen
·
nausea and vomiting
·
fever
·
a rapid pulse
Severe
acute pancreatitis may cause dehydration and low blood pressure. The heart,
lungs, or kidneys can fail. If bleeding occurs in the pancreas, shock and even
death may follow.
This
is where the war stories stop. I am simply trying to paint a picture.
When
I realized where I was and has been medically detoxed, I had to shake off the
brain fog from the seizures and start remembering who I was again and start
reconciling in my mind exactly what had happened and why. I would imagine that
every addict goes through this process but more that 95% of these same addicts
choose a different road than I chose. I remember standing in my room and going
through every forced and impulsive thought that came to me. I would say that I
went through all the stages of grieving because I had lost someone. I lost the
someone that I was for 15 years. However I did not know who to equate the image
I had in the mirror with the person that I was for the last 15 years because
those years were as blury as a distant memory of dream. Those years were almost
a feeling rather than a recollection of time.
I
stopped the grieving process at Anger. So if you are a happy go lucky flower smelling sunshine and
rainbows person than you may not appreciate this line of reasoning at all.
However the benefits of anger as it has been defined by me have yielded a
positive response. Many people will tell you that harboring anger will "eat you up inside" Well, that may be true if you don't know how to use it.
The roads that people can go down are infinite but my road
was paved with anger and hate. Anger for what I had allowed myself to become .
Hate for what whom I had become. Anger towards all of the influences that I
allowed into my life that ultimately destroyed me. Hate for not knowing that I
had never really taken the time to understand myself. I never gave myself credit for
the positive attributes of my life versus all of the negative.Rather than
facing the truth about what and who I was, I masked everything with drugs and
booze to compensate for my failures as a human being. Therefore I was able to
reduce myself to the same level of a lab rat in a test environment of my own
creation. My mind and my body were taken over by mostly alcohol and there was
nothing left of who I was. Who was I to begin with?
The answer is, " who cares" It is who I am now that matters. The gift of understanding how to use anger has allowed me to love myself and those I care about.The past had become as irrelevant
as my future was when I was drunk. In
that moment I decided that day was the
day I was reborn into the beauty of Anger, Discipline, Dedication and an appreciation for Pain as the mechanism for evolving into the man I am today. There truly is no gain to be hand without spiritual, mental, emotional, or physical pain. There is no easy way to reinvent yourself alone. Drinking is everywhere in business and in your social life. People will constantly ask you why you are not drinking. They will buy you drinks even after you say that you are"all set" I tell people I am training for a race. I run obstacle races. the funny part is that, I love telling people that I am training because after everyone else has about 6 drinks in them, I smile.
I smile because I know they are destroying themselves while I will be out the next morning running a 5k for kicks. I'll be up at 6 am ready to conquer the day. I'll be playing football on a Sunday morning while everyone else is sleeping. I am superhuman. The people that criticize you for not drinking most likely have a problem and feel guilty about their own drinking or obesity, or just about the fact that they are lazy and out of shape. I am better than that now and am very proud of that. Keep drinking fools! Everyone is getting rich off your habit!
I
walked out of that medical facility/rehab center 4 months later 20 pounds heavier and able to run 3
miles as if it were something I had done all my life. I never stopped exercising my body and mind. I closed my mind and
began to repair my body because without my body working properly and at high
degree of efficiency, I was not going to be able to use my mind. Exercise of the mind and body seemed to be the way to go. I had started lifting weights, running, and reading anything I could get my hands on about my condition and about things that interested me.
90 percent of alcoholics are likely to experience at least one relapse over the 4-year period following treatment!
You don't have a disease! You have a Habit! Overcome it and be better than you were before! Become Superhuman!
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