No Disk
My DVD player quit– less than 6 months old and doesn’t work. It’s a reputable brand and played great for a while. Then a few problems came up, but it didn’t seem remarkable. Now that I look back on it, I can see the progression…
Shutting off occasionally, a loud crackle shot through the RV speakers. Silence. I’d turn it off and back on. That worked a while. When that quit working, I found I could nurse it along by unplugging it and letting it sit for a while. Reboot. That no longer works.
Now it just refuses to play at all. NO DISK.
Sounds like an addict, doesn’t it? Maybe only to another addict, but it sounds familiar to me.
My alcohol addiction started harmlessly enough. No one suspected except me. I used to laugh at people who said they didn’t drink for the effect. They either were liars or they were normies, I would guess. I never drank socially and enjoyed it. I could drink socially, alright and be dissatisfied; or I could drink quickly and heavily and enjoy it. One or the other.
I drank because I didn’t feel alright. I had no idea how ‘not OK’ I really felt. No wonder. I consumed over a bottle of wine a day. I was putting a lot of time and money into numbing myself.
At first I only had occasional symptoms and like my DVD player, I would hiccup and stall out. The next day I would be working fine again. No one noticed, certainly not me.
I started taking weekends to really enjoy drinking. I stopped answering the phone when I was in the bottle. Thank goodness for caller ID. I could get back to them. Later. Mondays were reboot time.
Then I started retreating, regularly. Escape was essential. I just wanted to run away. I wanted a new life elsewhere: in another town, another state, another lifetime. Unplug myself. I couldn’t numb enough to feel better. Eventually the numbing became as helpful as the unplugging of my DVD player
Non-addicts ask why we do this to ourselves. What causes such craziness?
It’s my observation from being in recovery for a few years that most people, from the unemployed to CEO’s, drink or use drugs because they don’t feel right.
In my case, I drank excessively because with the aid of Merlot, I fell into that place where the pain faded, the issues shriveled and I felt OK. Feeling OK was what I wanted. I said I drank because I liked the taste. I did like it. (I also like water, but I don’t drink a case of it in a weekend.) In all honesty, I drank because I liked what alcohol did for me. It held reality at bay for a while. It made me feel OK.
The problem with feeling OK only while being in an altered state is that it’s dysfunctional. It’s broken. NO DISK.
PS: What do you think causes such craziness?
Jen– Thank you for telling a bit of your story here. People generally don’t want to think they are crazy, yet how can we deny it when we want to throw our lives away??
Check out steponacrack for the rest of Jen’s story.
Ron- I really had no idea, even, what all I was escaping or why I always wanted to zone out until I quit doing it and started the work of the Steps. Then I could see how much I had swept away from my consciousness; how much I ignored. Yet it was completely controlling me. Thank you for saying that you also were escaping from who you were. It’s humility in print. Thank you!
I can agree with so much here:
ron and al especially. I needed to escape ME too. I honestly did not think I would live to 25. The sun rose on my 25th bday and the LSD was just peaking and it hit me: I was not dead. Wow. What to do now? I was shocked.
and
insanity. really? yep. I could not will myself to die. Crazy? yes.
I really really love the way you write! I love the DVD player analogy!
VERY clever! Just like you…
XO Jen
Love the analogy, Heidi! Like you, I drank to escape the reality–of me.
Sherrie– What can I say? Thank you.
I still prefer to think of myself as a player, not a fruit fly. Nonetheless… Can we go back to what Al said? Ha.
Al–No kidding, we were insane. You are one of the few that hang out here that belong in AA, not Alanon, so I love it when you add your two cents. (Doesn’t that go up with inflation?) So thanks for the summary. You’re right. Step 2. YES!
Chris– You are at the crossroads of recovery right now. I am not surprised that you are in a great amount of PAIN. I love you and I care even when you don’t… Please call whenever you want to. I am so glad that you see evidence of His providing love through those that care deeply about you. My great hope is that you turn to the program of Alanon even more intensely and in the process discover the wonderful Chris that God created. Perspective does become distorted, especially when we focus on those around us and lose focus on who we can become with His help. I know you’re at the cusp of Step 4. It’s scary. Take the leap. You’re at that famed jumping off point. Jump into the program…please. The choice is yours and I’m praying for you.
my sponsor Nan sent this article to me, thought it is on topic!
Learning From the Spurned and Tipsy Fruit Fly
By BENEDICT CAREY
They were young males on the make, and they struck out not once, not twice, but a dozen times with a group of attractive females hovering nearby. So they did what so many men do after being repeatedly rejected: they got drunk, using alcohol as a balm for unfulfilled desire.
And not one flew off in search of a rotting banana.
Fruit flies apparently self-medicate just like many humans do, drowning their sorrows or frustrations for some of the same reasons, scientists reported Thursday. Male flies subjected to what amounted to a long tease — in a glass tube, not a dance club — preferred food spiked with alcohol far more than male flies that were able to mate.
The study, posted online in the journal Science, suggests that some elements of the brain’s reward system have changed very little during evolution, and these include some of the mechanisms that support addiction. Levels of a brain chemical that is active in regulating appetite predicted the flies’ thirst for alcohol. A similar chemical is linked to drinking in humans.
“Reading this study is like looking back in time, to see the very origins of the reward circuit that drives fundamental behaviors like sex, eating and sleeping,” said Dr. Markus Heilig, the clinical director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Dr. Heilig, who was not involved in the research, said the findings also supported new approaches to treating alcohol dependence. Researchers are investigating several compounds aimed at blunting alcohol urges.
Scientists have long known that other species have their methods of stress reduction. In lab studies, mice, rats and monkeys drink more after periods of isolation, studies suggest; the same is true of mice that are bullied or are victims of aggression.
To test the relationship between stress and alcohol in fruit flies, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, allowed one group of male flies to mate freely with available virgin females. Another group of male flies had the opposite experience: the females they mingled with had already mated, and were thus indifferent to any approach.
After four days, the flies in both groups fed in glass tubes outfitted with four straws, two providing a regular diet of yeast and sugar and two containing yeast, sugar and 15 percent alcohol.
Fruit flies as a rule will, like many humans, develop a taste for alcohol and, in time, a preference for the 15 percent solution. But the rejected flies drank a lot more on average, supping from the spiked mixture about 70 percent of the time, compared with about 50 percent for their sexually sated peers.
The researchers conducted several additional experiments to rule out other explanations. The flies were apparently using the alcohol as a way to compensate for their frustrated desire.
“It’s the first time we have shown this link between a social experience that involves reward and a drug-related behavior” in these flies, said Ulrike Heberlein, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco, and a co-author of the paper.
The other authors, all neuroscientists, were Galit Shohat-Ophir, Karla R. Kaun and Reza Azanchi; all four authors now also do research for the Howard Hughes Institute’sJanelia Farm Research Campus, in Ashburn, Va.
The researchers found that levels of a chemical active in the brain called neuropeptide F, or NPF, correlated strongly with the flies’ appetite for alcohol: when levels of NPF were low, alcohol consumption was high, and vice versa.
The NPF molecule in flies is thought to be analogous to the action of chemical called neuropeptide Y in humans, or NPY.
Previous studies have found that NPY is involved in a wide range of behaviors, like eating, sleeping and response to stress. But the new study, and others, suggest that scientists could reduce drinking by developing drugs that enhance the activity of NPY, said George Koob, a professor of neurobiology and addiction at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif.
“The study implies that it is this system that goes haywire in addiction,” Dr. Koob said, “and that it’s very sensitive to stress. For instance, after you lose a loved one, or a relationship has crashed, you get dysphoric, your NPY goes down, and this provides a strong urge to drink a lot — whether you’re a mammal or a fruit fly.”
What an excellent analogy! So very well written to boot!
“Step 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to
sanity.”
RESTORE us to sanity, because we were definitely insane!
SPTP2011 said it well, PAIN. Sheer unadulterated pain can cause us to make choices we might not otherwise make. Yes we always have a choice but perspective can become distorted. If it were not for the great amounts of love, care and concern that has been expressed to me, I would have taken my own life before now. God has put the faces of those who do care about me before my eyes and I could not bear the thought of their PAIN I would cause them. At times it is very difficult to look past self because for that very brief second you really don’t give a damn. It is in that very brief moment of choice that lives can be altered for the better or not. I thank God He has been able to reach through to me at that time.
judikruis- By far, the majority of my readers are Alanon or Naranon candidates. I love hearing your input because I know a lot of them can identify. Thanks again for contributing.
SP- Thanks for naming it: PAIN. Yes. I had a lot of that, emotionally.
B- With a family history like that, no wonder you could see you were addicted. Sounds like you didn’t wait long to come to that conclusion? I can’t say that I ever knew the feeling of ‘don’t miss it a bit’ however. It still has the occasional tug on me, which keeps me aware of my lack of power to cure myself. I love being sober as well. Thank you for stopping by and adding your comments to the discussion here. Please do come back!
Debby- I love that God shaped vacuum concept. I believe that, too. The post was oversimplified because that’s me. I do think there are more reasons for numbing besides not feeling OK. I also, on the other hand, know that we’d hardly be human if we didn’t have something to work through in this life. In all honesty I had no idea what my ‘issues’ were until I had finished the 9th step. Then I had a rough idea and a lot of work still ahead of me. That’s been the big, BIG surprise. I’ve often heard people say how together they thought they were before doing the steps. But, of course, it’s a program of honesty and some of us were great self-deceivers. Thank you again for contributing your thoughts. I respect your opinions.
Very good comparisons to the dvd life. My extra drinking was quite a bit of not liking myself, my life and also habit. When I realized my boyfriend was a closet vodka guzzler…it made me take a deep look at my own daily intake and stop. Also the time I was surrendering to Jesus and understanding more with Alanon.
Thank you for being so honest Heidi
I think there are four little letters that cause this craziness: PAIN
I had two alcoholic parents. My dad died from alcoholism when I was 20. Mom is elderly and is a complete lush (half way across the U.S., where she moved when I was a teenager). (Yes, she abandoned most of us. Took my youngest sibling with her; that one is a meth addict.) I quit drinking almost 10 months ago after deciding (after about 6 drinks) that I did not want to die young like my dad. I didn’t drink to escape anything. I have a great life, nothing to escape. I don’t have great childhood memories (they’re not horrid, either), but I have 3 wonderful, sober siblings (out of 6) and a great husband and a fabulous, kind, and successful adult child. I drank because I was (and am, for life) chemically addicted. I literally craved alcohol, and the more I drank, the more I craved it. I drank at nights and weekends. I, too, turned off the phone so I could drink and not be “caught.” I don’t think all alcoholics have bad lives– lives they want to numb with alcohol. I think some of us are just chemically addicted. Plus, it was certainly acceptable in my childhood to drink to excess. Once I was off booze for a few days, the chemical “tug” went away. I have no intention of ever drinking again. I don’t miss the fuzziness enough to die young. I really appreciate being sober. No hangovers, no regrets, no unnecessary arguments.
It sounds too familiar to me, Heidi. The use of alcohol or drugs to feel or not feel. I’ve heard both. Both are sad. I don’t think it’s limited to those two things either. I believe many of us “normies” use other things (work, shopping, gossiping, etc.) to make us feel something. Normal, better than, or just plain feel.
As to your question about cause….can there only be one answer to that? Perhaps in its simplest form it has something to do with Debbie’s post on TMG today. At least with Pascal who also said this: “There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.” That’s the best answer I have for why any of us do what we do.
Good question to ponder and your post a good mirror to use for personal reflection. Thank you