A rant, if I may

[liberaltrucker]

What I'm about to post may endanger my job, marriage, indeed life as I know it.
If the wrong people see.

I drink simply because alcohol is available and legal. Most everywhere.
I can tell you State-by-State and county-by-county where and when it's
legal to buy. For instance, CA, NV, parts of AZ, TX(depending on county)
legal purchase is 24/7.

However alcohol is NOT my libation of choice. Cannabis is. Back in the day,
one could buy, for what I spend on beer in a day, enough whacky bakky to
last a week. Then came the dreaded pee in a cup.

My gosh, I smoked enough pot to fuel a power plant. But, when I had to quit
to stay employed, not a problem. Giving up alcohol: potential biggie.

LOOKING BACK:
Knowing what I know now, as a child, I was probably ADHD before it was recognized.
I squirmed to pay attention to the teacher, pastor, etc. Always buzzing about
with an energy level above what one would expect from a kid. But, I got straight A's
in HS without even trying. Same in college. But, I still squirmed.

Whenever I had to sit still, my butt itched. Then, I discovered the Killer Weed.
That first toke, WOW! no butt itch. I could sit and listen to an infinite lecture.
I told my doc, and he said it was all in my imagination-and prescribed Valium.
5mg tid. Needless to say, calmed my ass right down, but 15 mg/day of Valium is
like drinking half a case!

So, I put the man-made drugs away and stuck to God's. Until 1996-the infamous
DOT regulation mandating drug testing. Had to give up the Evil Weed. What now?

Valium was out-they test for benzos. Obviously so was ganja. That left only one
alternative: Budweiser. Nowhere near a perfect solution, quite the contrary.

For lack of Ritalin as a child, I am where I am today.

NOT!!! I made my choices. I must live with them.

[wildeyed]

1. It is what it is.

Most of us felt uncomfortable in our own skins. Alcohol, drugs or other obsessive behaviors brought a feeling of ease, at least for a short while. Then not so much. Finally, none at all. Only thing left was feeding the addiction to avoid the withdrawal.

I started using young, and for kind of the same reason you did. I don't think I was hyperactive as a child, but I disliked school intensely, didn't fit in socially and had a miserable home life. At 12 years old I was having panic attacks and my hair was falling out from the stress. Once I started using, the panic attacks stopped and my hair grew back. I felt much, much better immediately. So the self-medicating worked, at least for the first little bit. But alas, not for long.

I made my choices too. I used to be much harder on myself. Why didn't I have the inner resources to cope better? Why did I make such self destructive decisions? I now have the perspective to realize that I was only a kid when I made those bad choices. As I got a bit older, graduating from high school by the skin of my teeth, I really did want to stop using or at least slow down, but by then I was so physically addicted, there was little hope of recovery on my own.

Now I see my early addiction as a gift. I got sober at 23. That would not have happened if I drifted into my addiction as an adult. I think recovery has made me a better person than I would have been and given me better tools for living than I would have found without it. But I guess that is just speculation. It is what it is. I am sober today and living a reasonable, productive life. For that I am grateful.

[SPKrazy]

2. No way of knowing if you are where you are

because of lack of Ritalin, you might be.

At any rate, while not ADHD, I've always had attention problems, wait... what? Oh yeah, and I've never felt comfortable in my own skin until I sobered up, and i still have problems with that and I've looked to non-drug things to fill the void, and instead I am my own worst enemy sometimes.

:hi:

Glad you dropped in

[Joe Chi Minh]

3. I think it's absolutely the right way to see it, liberaltrucker: a choice -

a life-style choice.

A person suffering from alcoholism can heed their FEAR of the ensuing degradation, humiliation, hurt to themself, hurt to those they love most, plain unhappiness, feelings of hopelessness and despair and impotence to stop it once and for all. Or they can make a cool-headed, measured decision and choose the other life-style permanently on offer, which may not be a cake-walk, but most people would find much more agreeable.

That is the normal life of light and shade, joys and sufferings, the latter sometimes intense, no doubt. They will need to be prepared to wear their extreme discomfort and overall sufferings like an overcoat, when they come to them, in the certain knowledge that if, as Damon Runyon once said, "All of life is 6/4 against", it is always changing. Their moods will change as surely as the weather does. A spirit of acceptance, of what spiritual writers call "holy resignation" needs to be cultivated for the bad times. They shouldn't allow themselves to feel too pressured. Just think it through. Did you ever read Aldous Huxley's book on comparative religion, called the Perennial Philosophy?

It's a choice that is rational in a very elementary way, which is why it's so painful, when the person backslides. Fear can prompt us to behave in different ways in any number of contexts, sometimes even against our will, against what we are really happy with. And there's the rub. It's not a catch-all source of reason. But if an addicted person considers the alternative choices open to them, in the light of simple reason, that should be viewed as major step in the right direction.

Personally, I was only able to stop smoking by pretending that I wasn't going to stop, just put it off till later. The tension between cigarettes was dissipated that way, and though I haven't had a cigarette in more than 35 years (can't even stand the smell of the smoke now) technically I haven't give it up. I just don't need to pretend I'll put it off till later, any more, as I've gone right off them. Having stopped a little earlier and started again several months later, it was if my body rebelled against it twice as violently as it ever had before. So, I stopped again permanently - because I knew I could do it. Stopping and starting and stopping again were deliberate choices.

When you pick up your next drink, you're making a whole life-stye choice, in a sense holding your future in your hand. Or, having picked it up, if you decide to put it down again for good, you've decided on a different life-style and a different future. More than a make-over, really or cosmetic surgery, or a witness protection scheme. And it doesn't cost anything. It's your birthright.

[Stuart G]

4. Yep, its a choice....

Today, I do not pick up booze, or the medicine that I was addicted to. I choose my path. No, it isn't easy to recognize that that there is a choice. I wish it were. Took me many years. Yes, Life style choice.........

...................................one day at a time..............Stuart

[Joe Chi Minh]

5. Great to read, Stuart. You chose life, warts and all, rather than the misery

of feeling that the ability to make your own informed choice to control such a major aspect of your life, seemed forever to elude you, to be out of reach to you. Instead of reacting even positively to fortuitous negative thoughts and emotions, and the memory of the recurrent pain drink led you to (as though they were framing the issues for you, like some Rove-like pathogen...), you will have made your own clear-headed arbitrary decision to pursue a positive, life-affirming path; "arbitrary", because it's what you want. It's not a reaction to fear, etc, but totally positive, with you in control, in the box seat, not a can of beer or even fear of the sight/thought of it.

By the way, I'm sorry for the kind of hard, one-track, Smart Alec kind of tone I seem to have adopteed. I think I must have seemed to trivialise the pain and suffering involved in addictions, which was very far from my intention.