Under the Influence ... the book

I have learned a lot from this book.
Front cover:



Back Cover:

Buy it online at amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Under-Influence-Guide-Realities-Alcoholism/dp/0553274872

Notes & References:

Forty-two personal stories of recovery from alcoholism can be found in the AA Big Book available online at www.aa.org/bigbookonline/.

The website of Alcoholics Anonymous is www.aa.org

The link to the Big Book of AA is www.aa.org/bigbookonline/

The link to finding AA meetings is www.aa.org/lang/en/meeting_finder.cfm

The above websites are available in English, Español, and Français.

The biochemical insanity of addiction ...

I came to realize over the course of my addiction to alcohol that my brain was subconsciously working against me. I learned in the aftermath of my repeated episodes of drunkenness that I was emotionally compelled to repeat behaviors that would justify my drinking.

If getting angry with someone I cared about and then storming out to find solace at the closest bar brought the warm fuzzy fog of intoxication ... that is exactly what I would look back and find out that I had done.

But even more insidious was the celebration of successes ... so that my productive life became centered on achieving enough to keep drinking alcohol. I isolated from any situation where someone might have the opportunity to intervene ... and in our society where alcohol consumption is glorified, I was hardly noticed ... as I separated myself into my addictive syndrome.

I was like the story I related in an earlier post ... I was the frog in the pan of hot water on the stove, slowly turning up the heat ... so I didn't notice I was being boiled.

Until I understood how I was powerless over the effect of alcohol on my biochemical system — my body and brain — and become committed to not taking the first drink today ... and learning how to do that from the experiences of others ... I would repeat the downward spiral of my addiction cycle until I was in a body bag, in handcuffs, or in a straight-jacket.

I was powerless over the effects of alcohol because my brain had succumbed to the false idea that alcohol is good for me because it made me feel good, and in the moment of inebriation removed all doubt about my ability to whatever it was I wanted to do ... whether I ended up being able to do it or not. It was only after I "reprogrammed" my brain in recovery to let its normal drive for survival — pursuing healthy satisfaction of needs — that I was able to get back to living a normal life. I believe it is that "higher power" of life's struggle for real survival that takes over and gives addicts their lives back.

Notes & References:

Forty-two personal stories of recovery from alcoholism can be found in the AA Big Book available online at www.aa.org/bigbookonline/.

The website of Alcoholics Anonymous is www.aa.org

The link to the Big Book of AA is www.aa.org/bigbookonline/

The link to finding AA meetings is www.aa.org/lang/en/meeting_finder.cfm

The above websites are available in English, Español, and Français.

The revolving door of rehab ...

Let's get something straight ... 30-60-90 days of rehab was NOT a solution for my addiction. I tried it all.

In my early adulthood — to 50 — "sobering up" in a "professional program" sooner or later turned into, "that wasn't so bad" ... or ... "looks like I have learned how to drink responsibly" ... or "I've changed, I'm older, more responsible with more to lose." I won't get drunk, and if I do, I now know what to do.

Finally when I became sick and tired of being sick and tired I was willing to take the cotton out of my ears and put it in my mouth ... and heard from a wonderful, beautiful middle-aged woman, "Gus, if you kill yourself in the first 5 years of recovery, you'll be killing a stranger."

I had to give myself time to recover ... one day at a time for the rest of my life. Each day I learned how to do what I needed to do to not take the first drink that day, and was hearing from others around the tables of AA what others were doing in their lives ... some at the same stage, others at other stages of recovery ... so I could also learn what lay ahead ... and have mentoring contacts — sponsors in AA — to help guide me with their example and experience.

From these mentors — one who is now one of my closest friends — I learned that the only thing I am an expert on is my own recovery, and all I can do is share my experience, strength, and hope in my recovery ... as honestly as I can ... with others who are open to listening.

Notes & References:

Forty-two personal stories of recovery from alcoholism can be found in the AA Big Book available online at www.aa.org/bigbookonline/.

The website of Alcoholics Anonymous is www.aa.org

The link to the Big Book of AA is www.aa.org/bigbookonline/

The link to finding AA meetings is www.aa.org/lang/en/meeting_finder.cfm

The above websites are available in English, Español, and Français.

The holiday season ... for this alcoholic

Once when I had been sober for a couple of years I was offered a drink at a Christmas party.

It immediately flashed in my brain that I had this alcoholism thing licked, and I could handle a drink.

So I took the drink and cautiously sipped on it for an hour or so ... and nothing happened ... then.

I didn't take another drink that evening, and because of that was able to convince myself that I had "learned" how to drink.

Within a few months I was back to periodic bouts of alcoholic insanity.

There is only one "cure" for me ... doing whatever it takes to not take that first drink ... today. The rest is smoke and mirrors ... for this alcoholic.

Notes & References:

Forty-two personal stories of recovery from alcoholism can be found in the AA Big Book available online at www.aa.org/bigbookonline/.

The website of Alcoholics Anonymous is www.aa.org

The link to the Big Book of AA is www.aa.org/bigbookonline/

The link to finding AA meetings is www.aa.org/lang/en/meeting_finder.cfm

The above websites are available in English, Español, and Français.

A frog in hot water

Before I walked into that fateful AA meeting at the Fremont Fellowship Hall in Seattle, Washington, in early April, 1994, I didn't know it, but I was a frog in a pan of hot water with the heat being turned up so slowly that I didn't notice I was cooking.

I had learned how to control my drinking all right. That was my life, controlling my drinking. If you don't think that is a chemically induced insanity, think again!

My whole life revolved around being able to work to earn the money to pay for drinking and then drinking.

I had learned over the years "how to drink". I'd go to the bar each night and keep repeating a set routine of one drink — usually an Absolut Screw or a Teachers and water — an hour, followed by a bottle of Perrier mineral water, getting a buzz on and maintaining it throughout the evening until around midnight when I would take a cab to wherever I was crashing at the time.

The next morning I would get up, rinse off the booze from the night before — inside and out — and go to work as an independent systems contractor that more than paid for the all too frequent daily cycle called cooking my brain.

I had been doing this for a couple of years after I "fell off the wagon" having gone for a little over three years without a drink. It started slowly but by the fall of 1993 it was becoming an almost nightly ritual. By now I had shed any relationship that might have possibly intervened ... or so I thought ... and abandoned myself to the slow slide into oblivion of the end stages of alcoholism in advancing age. This was the early nineties and I had turned 50 in the late eighties.

I even had a strategy worked out to explain to anyone who asked why I was spending so much time in bars. It was the music. Pioneer Square in Seattle had a shared cover charge for several of its live music nightclubs on Friday and Saturday nights. I got involved in promoting this venue as a sideline ... just enough to show someone who might possibly worry about me what I was planning to do, so they wouldn't think my time spent was strange, but not enough to do anything that would interfere with my drinking. Chemically induced insanity ruled!

I had decided that if there was nothing I could do about my drinking — by now I had failed in staying sober so many times, and totally destroyed any relationship that would have made a difference — then I was going to make the best of being an alcoholic.

Little did I know what was in store for me.

Notes & References:

Forty-two personal stories of recovery from alcoholism can be found in the AA Big Book available online at www.aa.org/bigbookonline/.

The website of Alcoholics Anonymous is www.aa.org

The link to the Big Book of AA is www.aa.org/bigbookonline/

The link to finding AA meetings is www.aa.org/lang/en/meeting_finder.cfm

The above websites are available in English, Español, and Français.

That first day ...

It was a day in early April, 1994, now over 14-and-a-half years ago. I walked into the Fremont Fellowship AA Meeting Hall in Seattle, Washington, to go to a meeting and to try to work the program of Alcoholics Anonymous the right way this time. I knew what AA was ... lord knows, I had given lip service to the 12 Steps in too many iterations to keep count over the previous thirty-some years.

I had attended my first AA meeting in the Alameda County Jail back in the early 60's when I lived in Oakland, California, and when they were still arresting people for public drunkenness and throwing them in jail. The first time I did 10 days. "Hell, that was easy" ... jail time, not the fact that I had once again brought my life to a halt. It caused my wife at the time real concern, but I could shuffle it into the past with hardly a blip on my mental radar ... other than noting it was a blip in a string of blips, some not so minor. This time though it was a little remorse until I got through the hangover, and then it was back on the streets and home.

The next time they gave me 90 days. I'd get out in 60 with time off for good behavior. It got me thinking a bit more about what was going on in my life. When the opportunity to attend an AA meeting in jail came up — they weren't mandatory — I used it to break the routine.

There I learned I was an alcoholic. Heck-o-dern, what a relief that was! I had begun to think that I might be going nuts. I was an alcoholic. Now all I had to do was learn how to control my drinking. No problem.

Those thirty-some years later I was going to another AA meeting, this time wanting to do whatever it took to stop the pain I was causing the people I cared about by slowly not just killing myself, but by destroying almost everything I touched.

Notes & References:

Forty-two personal stories of recovery from alcoholism can be found in the AA Big Book available online at www.aa.org/bigbookonline/.

The website of Alcoholics Anonymous is www.aa.org

The link to the Big Book of AA is www.aa.org/bigbookonline/

The link to finding AA meetings is www.aa.org/lang/en/meeting_finder.cfm

The above websites are available in English, Español, and Français.

One day at a time

Something you should know about an alcoholic in recovery, we have a weird sense of humor. Like in AA meetings you will hear this more than a few times, "The good news is there is a solution, meaning a way to recover from the disease of alcoholism. The bad news is this is it."

These "sayings" carry a deeper meaning for those of us who have been in recovery for awhile. This "good news-bad news" one provides hope with the necessary dose of realism. I can recover one day at a time if I am willing to do the work every day of the rest my life.

But for this alcoholic suffering from the horrible effects of another drunk, getting through the next day was all that was on my mind, forget about the rest of my life. The physical and emotional pain in the aftermath hangover from a blackout drunk was overwhelming, and when a cheerful sober person came up to me, full of energy and goodwill, and said, "You never have to drink again if you don't want to," I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, or dismiss the person as a nut case or some kind of fanatic. I used to think to myself as I listened to these characters, "If I could know I would never get blindly drunk again, I would be so happy."

Then someone told me, "If you don't drink, you won't get drunk." They followed that up with, "It ain't the caboose that runs you over, it's the engine on the train." That means that for me as an alcoholic it is the first drink that knocks me over.

There's a reason why this is true ... for me. And I will be explaining that reason in the days ahead, but for now ... today ... the message is "I will not take that first drink today, and knowing what I have learned about myself and my disease, I will do those things today that make it possible for this alcoholic to not take that first drink."

"Doing those things" aka "doing the work" or "working the steps" necessary to not take the first drink today is the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, of which I am member.

One other thing ... for today ... what I did that first day now over 14 years ago is vastly different than what I do today ... but some things are the same.

Notes & References:

There Is A Solution is the title of Chapter 2 in the Big Book of AA. You can access the Big Book on line at www.aa.org/bigbookonline/.

The website of Alcoholics Anonymous is www.aa.org

The link to the Big Book of AA is www.aa.org/bigbookonline/

The link to finding AA meetings is www.aa.org/lang/en/meeting_finder.cfm

The above websites are available in English, Español, and Français.

Hi!

There is so much of what I call misinformation out there about alcoholism ... that I have decided to share my story.

I'm Sonny, and I am an alcoholic.

I have been clean and sober for over fourteen years. I will explain to you what its was like when I was still drinking, what happened, and what it is like now, with as much honesty as I can muster without breaching my anonymity, or that of others involved in my life.

I can only tell you what worked for me. I cannot tell you what will work for you. However, I believe that anyone can find their own personal path to recovery in the efforts of recovering alcoholics everywhere as we share with ourselves — and others who are interested in learning more about the disease of alcoholism — our experience, strength, and hope.

Let me state simply at the outset, recovery is worth it. Life is worth living clean and sober. I can achieve my optimum possible from this day forward by staying in the solution ... just like caring for any other living thing. Taking care of ourselves brings out the best in us — need I say, "the best left in us"? — from here on out. And if you don't think there is a higher power at work — whatever you may call your higher power — just notice the difference between watering tomatoes and not watering them.

Notes & References:

The website of Alcoholics Anonymous is www.aa.org

The link to the Big Book of AA is www.aa.org/bigbookonline/

The link to finding AA meetings is www.aa.org/lang/en/meeting_finder.cfm

The above websites are available in English, Español, and Français.