It all comes down do making a real choice and will power. Some people simply choose to not go through the pain and discomfort of breaking their bad habit / addiction / whatever.
Partially true.
However, you would be surprised how many addicts/drunks are truly convinced
THEY are not addicted. Moreover, how many of their friends and acquaintances that tell them that
they are not alcoholic, even during the worst of their drinking.
Simply put, alcoholics are people who are firmly convinced they can only function within what they see as an alien and hostile society if they can transform themselves into normal people with their magic ethylic elixir.
Many of whom you would regard as “decent” and “productive” pillars of society would have suicided if it weren’t for the crutch booze provided them.
These people belong to what A.A refers to as the “If you can’t smell ‘em you can’t tell ‘em brigade” of which, apparently, I was a member.
For instance, earlier in my sobriety I was part of an exclusive, closed group of A.A. that included an Admiral, a High Court Justice, a couple of Psychiatrists, and many other respected professional members of Melbourne's Establishment, (of which, I most
definitely never was and never will be!) whose livelihood and reputations would have been ruined if the secret of their alcoholism was ever leaked.
It is only when the alcoholic begins to show signs that differentiate him from the rank and file tribal member that his social ostracisation starts. The drunk is like the talking pet Cockatoo that escapes and tries to rejoin his feral brothers - only to find they want to kill him because he is somehow different from their rigidly uniform flock.
Getting back to will power, if you could have seen the state I dragged myself to work each day toward the end of my drinking days, you’d have no doubt about an alkie’s will power!
(One of the things that really helped me very early into my sobriety was my sponsor saying, “Alcoholics have plenty of
WILL power but not much
WON’T power when it comes to booze”
Yet to this day most of my mates, former supervisors, and staff refuse to believe I was what they would call an alcoholic – the family and friend-less, pissy-pants derelict sleeping under a bridge. Even so, 21 years after my last drink, I can be talking to a man/woman like this in very intimate terms, and empathising with them, within minutes of meeting them.
In fact, I’d rather talk to a skid-row drunk than to most of society’s synthetic people.
There is no need for artifice, subtlety, and falsehood – so indispensable to “decent” folk - when the arse is out of your piss-soaked pants.
