There is a point in every alcoholic’s life when it becomes time to face the obvious. And that obvious is that they have a problem with a substance. The major 12-step fellowship Alcoholic Anonymous encourages people to see the similarities between the disparate personalities that can be present at an AA meeting. The idea is to focus on how we are all alike. But in AA this line of logic is taken a step further.
In AA, each alcoholic is not only encouraged to see how they are like their fellow alcoholics, drug abusers and addicts, but they are actively dissuaded from thinking that they are different. It is said that a reason for many alcoholics’ failure to get and stay sober is that they think that the rules of the program don’t fully apply to them; that they are special. AAs have a term for this phenomenon which they call ‘terminal uniqueness’. The terminally unique are believed to have lower rates of success because they justify and rationalize their actions because they are “not like those other losers” or they might even believe that they are unlike any other human being on earth. They don’t conform to the program, and, believe it or not, accepting (conforming) to the program is pretty critical to achieving success within it.
Nevertheless, the fact of the matter is that AA is a bit conceited in a their terminology. It is a fact of biology that all humans are, in fact, unique. This is simple science. For instance, have you ever met two individual human beings that were identical in all ways? No, because no two humans are exactly the same.
The problem comes from the fact that people have different depths to which they sink in their addiction. For some, they might have a drinking problem that is getting excessively worse, to the point that their spouse recommends (strongly) that they attend a drug and alcohol rehab. But, this person, may only drink at night, may not be suffering at work, may not have any health problems, etc. On the other hand, you can have a destitute drug addict or alcoholic, living on the street or in a shelter, dependent on charity to eat (and, of course, get high) and suffering dramatically in countless ways.
Both of these individuals can get help. Both can become more productive, healthier and happier. But to assume that the treatment model should be the same for both strikes me as foolish.
There is an old saying: They don’t want spiritual fulfillment in Ethiopia, they want rice.
It is important that you recognize where you are and where you are headed. In AA, it is usually said, that the true alcoholic will always end up on the street, given enough time, opportunity and alcohol. It is a truism, that the disease is progressive and gets worse over time, never better. In fact, it is this metric which old-timers use to decide who is a “true” alcoholic – as if this is a desirable trait – and who could have sobered up on their own.
The “true” alcoholic is a hopeless case without a program, or so the reasoning of the 12-step programs go. On the other hand, a hard drinker or problem drinker may want to stop drinking and can use the principles of the program to do so, but they are not doomed to alcoholic death if they do not.
Now, the point I am sidewinding towards is that there are many steps towards realizing that you have a problem and a lot of the process will depend on where you were when you started, where you are now and where you feel you will end up. It can be a tragedy when a mentally ill person loses years of their life living on the streets using and abusing. But it is, perhaps, a greater tragedy to see a mentally healthy person lose their career and possessions and end up on the street as a result of their addiction.
The point is that not every alcoholic, even without treatment is going to end up on skid row, regardless of what the dogma says. But every alcoholic, even every serious drinker, will suffer consequences as a result of their drinking that are serious and unnecessary — that is to say that these consequences would not have occurred if they had not been drinking or using. I don’t want to have to say something as basic as this, but I will: Drugs and alcohol are bad for your health, wealth and happiness. In short, drugs (alcohol is a drug) are bad.
So, when does one decide to seek help for their problem with substances? The answer is simple actually. I would recommend that one seek help for their addiction the moment that they realize that they have a problem. But this does not happen, so I propose an alternative. Try getting help when the suffering of using exceeds the suffering of not using.
As a final word, there is no point in reaching your potential as an alcoholic or drug addict. You do not need to destroy your health, career, become a prostitute, become a criminal, become destitute, etc. before you decide to do something about the problem. In fact, the earlier you are able to intervene on your own behalf and attempt to achieve sobriety, the more likely you are to achieve success.
Nobody gets a prize for hitting the lowest bottom.
In fact, nobody ever gets a prize when it comes to alcohol and drug abuse. It is simple equation: abuse + time = consequences. Of course, given enough abuse and time the consequence is always the same, that is death. Which will occur whether you abuse drugs or not, but it is likely to happen at a much later date with the intervening time being more productive, rewarding and pleasurable for you.
This post, has been a bit of a rambler. The thing about addiction recovery is that the solution is not linear. There will be good days and bad and sometimes a bad week will follow a good week. But over time, things get better, there are more good days, and life improves.
In a way that is what I do with this blog. I do not write a step-by-step guide to getting sober. There already is one of these (hint: there are twelve steps). I just write about issues that people considering drug and alcohol rehab might be thinking about. I try to share my experience as a person who is very experienced in this world and try to put things in perspective, especially for the newcomer. As a result, many of my posts are disorganized. I am going to try to make my posts a little more focused in the future because I think that they will be of more benefit that way.
For now, in the beginning, it is important that you become willing to consider the idea that your life doesn’t have to be the way that it is now. There is a way out. But the choice is yours alone and, sometimes, you need to think about it for a while.
