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Gail discusses the lies that alcoholics tell themselves.
Gail:
The lies that an alcoholic would tell themselves is, I am not an alcoholic. That, I am not alcoholic, I work, I take care of my kids. I go home. I cook dinner.
And by doing that, I talk a lot about to thine own self be true. And you know within yourself if you need that drink, or you are looking at your watch to see if it’s 5 o’clock or if the kids are bathed and they are in bed and now they are asleep so you can have your glass of wine, which turns into a bottle, which turns into two bottles.
I was telling a friend, another alcoholic is story today about a time that I was helping another alcoholic and she was in a really bad way. She was suicidal.
And I picked her up and I brought her to the ER and we didn’t leave. She stayed and the doctors were evaluating her and I left to go home and I got in my car and driving at the main drive and I live in a small town and there was nobody around – no cars, nobody to be seen.
And I looked over and I realized that her drink that she had brought was sitting right there, which was what I drink, which was a vodka and seven, I think.
And for a second the thought that came through my mind instantly was, nobody would know – nobody would know. And then right after that thought went, where the heck did that thought come from? Why would I think that?
And then the next thing in my head was, to thine own self be true, because if I took a sip of that I would know and then I would have to tell somebody and get it off my chest or tell one person or many people that I took that sip.
And I know that if I didn’t tell anybody then it would eat me up and I would drink again. So the lies that we tell are that we’re not an alcoholic. And the lines that we tell are, well I haven’t lost my home. I haven’t lost my husband. I haven’t lost my child. I haven’t lost my job.
You don’t have to lose all of that. You know for me, I lost my dignity. I lost my integrity. I lost love, friendships, patience, tolerance – I lost all of that and that’s because I lost who I was.
And that’s for that connection, that clog chimney comes in to play, because as an alcoholic when we are drinking we make decisions with our brain on survival mode and those aren’t normal decisions that normal people would make.
Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. I know what my thinking will get me. My thinking will get me drunk.
So I just have to trust in my God and ask him for help in the morning, which I do every morning. And I thank Him at night and when I sit down to a meal whether it be breakfast, lunch or dinner, I say it out loud and I don’t care where I am at or who I am with, I say, “Thank you God for this food. Thank you for my sobriety. Amen.”
That’s what I do to stay sober. I keep a conscious contact with my God and thank him through the course of the day. I am one of those people that it seems like every time I look at a digital clock it says 2:22 or 3:33.
And I always thought, it’s God, maybe I ought to make a wish. And I use that now as part of my recovery tool is when I’d see a clock with that time I always just say, thank you God, thank you God. And that’s my way of communicating whether it be just for a quick snid bit.
So if you know somebody or you think you know somebody that’s affected by alcohol and I believe that almost everybody is affected in some way – an aunt, an uncle, a cousin, a friend, a spouse, a parent, there is help out there.
There are ways to get sober and as long as you are willing and you are ready and you are done, meaning if you are not done, done, you have to be, I mean you have to know, we all have a different journey. We all get sober a different way. We all go through life differently.
I know my journey wasn’t a piece of cake but I have heard a lot of alcoholic’s stories and I have heard that, you know some of the really horrific things people have had to go through.
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Interview Scheduled By In The Rooms®: A Global Recovery Community.
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