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Cunning alcoholism one step ahead

Alcoholism is a thinking disease.

It sneaks up and gets you where you’re weakest. It waits. It does push-ups while you’re sleeping. It’s smarter than you. Identifying alco-thought is like trying to put your finger on mercury.

I was talking to a gentleman recently who has had repeated problems with his drinking.

He was on his way to the grocery store after about a month of non-drinking when he decided to swing by his favorite gas station (where incidentally they sold liquor) to fill up. “I need to fill the tank,” he thought.

He didn’t know that it was alcoholism that suggested the need for gas because had he been better prepared, he would have noticed that he had half a tank of gas.

Having him where it wanted him, alcoholism now suggested that it might be a good opportunity to buy a small bottle that he could “drink later to take the edge off.”

Now, with alcoholism firmly at the wheel, his alco-intention was to buy a pint, but he decided at the last minute to buy a fifth because, he thought, “it’s so much more expensive to buy small quantities.”

Unfortunately, one drink made up of approximately a quarter of the bottle turned out to be insufficient to take the edge off, so that a second drink made up of another quarter of the bottle was required.

Upon awakening with a red face, a throbbing headache and a large wheelbarrow full of remorse, he thought “Why did I do that?”

It happened because like most struggling alcoholics, he underestimated the strength of his adversary.

It is said in the literature of Alcoholics Anonymous that alcoholism is “cunning, baffling and powerful.”

How true.

The power isn’t in the substance, rather in the ability of the alcoholic mind to justify and rationalize the “rightness” of a drink in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

The alcoholic, drinking or not, has a peculiar mental twist that without healing, will lead to the only drink that will ever damage them, the first one.

source: Northwest Herald

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