Alcoholics Anonymous
I am an alcoholic. I need your help.
Don't lecture, blame or scold me. You wouldn't be angry with me for having cancer or diabetes. Alcoholism is a disease, too.
Don't pour out my liquor; it's just a waste because I can always find ways of getting more.
Don't
let me provoke your anger. If you attack me verbally or physically, you
will only confirm my bad opinion abut myself. I hate myself enough
already.
Don't let your love and anxiety for me lead you into
doing what I ought to do for myself. If you assume my responsibilities,
you make my failure to assume them permanent. My sense of guilt will be
increased, and you will feel resentful.
Don't accept my promises.
I'll promise anything to get off the hook. But the nature of my illness
prevents me from keeping my promises, even though I mean them at the
time.
Don't make empty threats. Once you have made a decision, stick to it.
Don't
believe everything I tell you; it may be a lie. Denial of reality is a
symptom of my illness. Moreover, I'm likely to lose respect for those I
can fool too easily.
Don't let me take advantage of you or exploit you in any way. Love cannot exist for long without the dimension of justice.
Don't
cover up for me or try in any way to spare me the consequences of my
drinking. Don't lie for me, pay my bills, or meet my obligations. It may
avert or reduce the very crisis that would prompt me to seek help. I
can continue to deny that I have a drinking problem as long as you
provide an automatic escape for the consequences of my drinking.
Above
all, do learn all you can about alcoholism and your role in relation to
me. Go to open AA meetings when you can. Attend Al-Anon meetings
regularly, read the literature and keep in touch with Al-Anon members.
They're the people who can help you see the whole situation clearly.
I love you.
Your Alcoholic
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A LETTER TO MY FAMILY
I want to introduce myself to you; I’m your qualifier and the reason you’re
here. You believe just because you gave me life and raised me that you know
me…but you really don’t. I’d like to use this time to introduce the real me to
you so maybe you can gain a better understanding of why I am the way I am, why
I do the things I do and why I’ve done some of the things I’ve done. I don’t
know if I was born an alcoholic/addict but I do know the first time I got high
an addict was born.
First of all, you have to accept the fact that I think differently than you do.
Some of this will make sense to you and some of this will sound like excuses
that you’ve heard before, but just know that the ones that sound like excuses
are based on my fact, my perspective, and the knowledge and experience of the
people who are trying to help me get clean. These are people I have placed my
trust and faith in because all they want from me is to succeed in my endeavor
to stay clean for another day.
You have your own goals for me like going to college, getting a job, getting
married and finally having kids so you can have grandkids and can show all of
your friends their pictures. See these are your goals for me and not
necessarily my goals for myself.
Let me try to explain how I see things. See, you think I have a alcohol/drug
problem but I don’t; I have a living problem. You think I use alcohol/drugs but
the reality is that alcohol/drugs use me. Alcohol/Drugs are for those of us
that can’t handle reality, and reality is for people like you that can’t handle
their alcohol/drugs. To me, reality is a nice place to visit but I really don’t
like living there. I live in constant fear of letting you down; of not living
up to your expectations. I put off doing things out of fear and you call me a
procrastinator, but procrastination is just a 5 syllable word for fear.
Alcohol/Drugs make me feel alive and normal, but they also make me paranoid,
incoherent and both destructive and pathetically and relentlessly
self-destructive. Then I would do unconscionable things in order to feel normal
and alive again. Alcohol/Drugs gave me wings and then slowly took away my sky.
I looked to drugs for courage and they made me a coward. You say that I had
always been a sensitive, perceptive, joyful and exceptionally bright child, but
on alcohol/drugs I became unrecognizable. You should try looking in the mirror
and not knowing the reflection looking back at you. I long for the day I am
able to look in the mirror and be OK with the person I see looking back.
Like all kids, when I was really young I used to think there was a monster in
my closet and under my bed and you would come into my room and reassure me that
there wasn’t one by opening the closet and looking under the bed. Now that I am
older you can’t convince me of that anymore and it’s not your job to. But since
I found alcohol/drugs I’ve come to the realization that there is a monster; but
it’s not in my closet or under the bed but inside of me, and that if I can’t
learn to ignore it, it will destroy me.
When I first started getting drunk/high it was pleasurable for awhile; I had finally
experienced nirvana, and then the euphoria wore off and I began to see the ugly
side of my using and I experienced hell. I found the higher the drugs got me
the lower they brought me. After awhile I faced 2 choices, either I could
suffer the pain of withdrawal or take more alcohol/drugs. I did the withdrawal
thing more times than you’ll ever know and it’s not pleasurable at all; in fact
it’s just the opposite. If you remember there were times where I said I
couldn’t go to school or work because I had the flu, but more times than not it
was because I was going through withdrawal.
I guess the best way to describe withdrawal is insuperable depression and acute
anxiety — a drawn-out agony. Some of the times I choose withdrawal because I
didn’t want to use anymore, that I hated who I had become, but for the most
part it was because I didn’t have a choice in the matter…I had run out of alcohol/drugs.
You would think that after experiencing the emotional and physical pain of
withdrawal that I would never let myself go through that again…right? See
that’s how you see it, but to me it just became a part of my using and a
consequence I was willing to pay. You may call that insanity…I call that life.
I’ve been to enough meetings to know the readings by heart and one of the
phrases that jumps out at me every time I hear it, is: “when we use alcohol/drugs
we are slowly committing suicide”. I never thought of it that way but now I
totally understand what it means…but still I use. I’m sure you remember the
show Mash; it was pretty popular when you were growing up. The theme song is
actually titled “suicide is painless” and in its context, I’m sure it’s true.
But the slow suicide of my using is not painless in the least; I feel the pain
and can see the flame of my life getting fainter every time I use.
All those times you yelled at me for my using you gave me exactly what I needed
to feed my addiction. You thought you were doing it out of love but you were
actually justifying to me what my mind had convinced me I was a long time ago.
I look at myself as a failure; as a complete waste of space. There is a line
from a song called Southern Cross and this line defines my past and it goes: “I
never failed to fail because it’s the easiest thing to do”. When you yell and
scream you just confirm to me that I am a failure and after awhile it becomes
common place; not to mention expected. It is one thing if I think of myself as
a loser or failure but to know that’s how you see me as well makes it easier
for my mind to convince me to use. My basic problem is that I flee from those
who want me and I pursue my rejecters.
There are a few things you can do if you really want to help me.
I know
by telling you these things I’m actually cutting off my main money source…you.
I will never stop using as long as you keep giving me money or supporting me. I
can only stop using when I hit my bottom and only I can put down the shovel and
quit digging. When you bail me out, buy me a car, pay for my rent or give me
money you aren’t helping me at all; you are only handing me the shovel again
and telling me to keep digging. You keep letting me come back home to live
because you think you’re helping me out but if your honest, you’ll realize that
you are doing it for purely selfish reasons. When you know I’m in the room next
door you sleep better. The last thing I’ll confess to you is the real reason I
steal from you. I steal from you because I’m counting on you not calling the
cops on me. I count on you not wanting me to go to jail; to have a criminal
record. I steal from you because you keep letting me move back home.
You make the mistake of thinking that recovery is simply a matter of not
drinking or using drugs. And you consider a relapse a sign of complete failure
and long periods of abstinence a complete success. But these perceptions are
too simplistic. My life is anything but simple and I’m not just talking about
my using alcohol/drugs. The way my mind works, nothing is as easy as just doing
it because my mind tries to convince me not to do it. It doesn’t matter how
simple of a task it is…even unloading the dishwasher is a mind struggle for me.
My mind also loves to make every little thing that goes wrong a major crisis.
Let me try to explain this in as simple terms as I possibly can. Let’s say we
both go outside in the morning and our cars don’t start. You go in and call a
mechanic and I go in and call suicide prevention. I’m what they call a W.C.S.
person; which stands for worst case scenario. They say a mind is a terrible
thing to waste; well my mind is a terrible thing to listen to. Most people are
about as happy as they make up their minds to be…mine won’t let me be happy. My
mind keeps reminding me that there is only 18 inches between a halo and a
noose.
Relapse isn’t a requirement but it does happen to quite a few alcohol/addicts.
The hard truth is that if there were 50 addicts in their 1st meeting together,
more of us will be dead in 5 years then will have 5 years clean. The last time
I relapsed it was because the bottom fell out faster than I could lower my
standards. It’s really difficult to solve a problem with the same mind that
created it and God knows I’ve created a lot of problems for myself…and for you.
I hope someday you will realize that I am not a bad person trying to get good;
I’m a sick person trying to get well. I suffer from the disease of addiction.
If you believe this you won’t be so critical of me. For a critic is just a
person who goes onto the battlefield after the battle has been fought and
shoots the survivors. Believe me when I say this; I don’t want to be an alcohol/addict
as much as you wish you weren’t a parent of one.
I love you.
Sincerely,
Your loved one battling addiction.