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Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life
I have decided to turn over a new leaf. Isn't January 1st the single least practical possible day to start afresh? Many people start the New Year surrounded by drunken idiots knee deep in fattening food, alcohol and drugs. If they're lucky.
I suggest we should start our New Year resolutions on a firmer footing, from the relative austerity and sobriety of February. A month into the New Year and I have almost got to the bottom of the fancy Christmas food and drink. A bottle of Tia Maria, four Bacardi Breezers, a little bit of cheese and six Brazil nuts to go. No more buying booze every night. I haven't bought any for a whole month. I am not giving up drinking, that would be perverse. I enjoy getting drunk and I am a good drunk, I never get violent or lose control of my basic bodily functions. To give it up for ever would be a self imposed torture. No, I'm just not buying any booze to drink tonight, just as I have not bought any throughout January. |
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No doubt you are well aware of the idea of denial. You can never tackle your drink problem until you admit to being an alcoholic, if you don't admit it you are in denial and you can never get better. But what if you really are not an alcoholic but are just somebody who drinks more often than they think is wise? How is falsely admitting to being an alcoholic a help to anybody?
I am not and never have been an alcoholic. I am not dependent on alcohol. I do not need to drink. I do not suffer any symptoms when I haven't had a drink. I do not have blackouts. I do not wake up in pools of urine or vomit, mine or anybody else's*. I simply drink more than is good for me and more often than I think I should. That is not the definition of addition or an uncontrollable disease. Drinking a bit more than you should is no more a disease than a tendency to hook at golf is a disease. That is not to deny that alcoholism exists or is a disease, of course there are real alcoholics out there but there are also hundreds of millions of people who drink alcohol without being alcoholics and I am one of them.
There's a nasty tendency to see a denial being an admission. “He wouldn't make point of saying he wasn't gay unless he was.” Err, no. That doesn't even begin to make any sense. The existence of the phenomenon of denial and the existence of something to deny make a nasty quicksand. He drinks, I've seen him, he's admitted it too. And he says he isn't an alcoholic. What more evidence do you need. Denial is not just a river in Africa you know. Really? You don't say? So what do you suggest a person who does drink but is not an alcoholic should do if denying it is proof that they are an alcoholic? Admit or deny? Or prevaricate, which will be interpreted as a form of denial. Guilty as accused as soon as accused. No comment. The guilty always say that.
Of course by struggling like this I sink further into the imaginary quicksand.
