The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
"Alcohol ruins one physically, morally, intellectually, and economically.Alcohol makes a man forget himself; and while its effects last, be becomesutterly incapable of doing anything useful.Those who take to drinking, ruin themselves and ruin their people.They lose all sense of decency & propriety. "
Gandhi
I think any addiction..be it alcohol, sex, gambling, drugs, pornography, even food can be the ruin of man b/c when man becomes so addicted to any of the above , he becomes its slave, he will sell his soul, wallow in the mud, forsake his blessings , lose it all to have his fix......unless he arrests it and works daily, lifelong recovery, he is the living dead..............please take what works and leave the rest....
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Live and let live and do it with peace and goodwill to all!!!!
Thanks, Bettina. Although I agree with Ghandi's experience, I do think it is more the love of alcohol that destroys than it is alcohol. Just like money. It isn't wealth that destroys human beings, it is the love of wealth that destroys us. HP, deliver me from the love of anything that gets in the way of YOU.
I don't know that, it was my experience that the alcoholic in my life hated his addiction and had a lot of self loathing. I don't think that alcoholics choose the disease. Thats what makes the world interesting, different opinions.
As someone who has wrestled with my addiction to nicotene and the habit of my pacifier, cigarettes, a lot of my failure to let go of it was due to my not wanting to let go of it because it was my go to best friend. I have to say I truly loved cigarettes more than I loved being without those cigarettes. I didn't choose that particular addiction, but I did choose to hang onto it long beyond what was sane. I'd have to say it was my love of the drugs in cigarettes and the familiar habit of smoking that kept me doing what was damaging to me and to people around me. I can identify with other people and their addictions when they say "their drug of choice was only hurting them and not other people" because I used to say the same thing about cigarettes. My smoking did hurt other people and it did hurt me. I self-centeredly clung to something that was death dealing to me. That wasn't due to the cigarettes or to the nicotene or other drugs. It was due to me not wanting to make any changes because I loved the pacifying effect of the cigarettes and the sedating properties of the chemicals in cigarettes. I hate that I hurt myself and others in those ways, but I did - not because I had an addiction but because I didn't want to do anything about it. For me, my clinging(love) to a damaging substance and the habits that accompanied that was my self-centeredness at the time. That's what I know about me and that's why I know about my own love of something that was killing me and hurting those who loved me. The cigarettes weren't the issue for me. My love of them was the bigger problem.
I guess we all have different ways of looking at things. I too loved cigarettes even though they were killing me. I have COPE and I still smoked not caring if I got worse or not. It wasn't until my son's problem and my promised to quit if he did was a motivator and I quit almost 3 years ago. I always said I hated cigarettes and I was going to die but my love for them out weighted the harm.
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Lord, put your arm around my shoulder and your hand over my mouth
Speak only when you feel that your words are better than your silence.
According to the scientist I listened to during a conference, there are people who are hardwired due to brain dysfunctions for various chemical imbalances like nicotine and alcohol, opium, etc. I can drink all day and I might get addicted to it, but I can still stop on my own because I am not chemically dependent due to brain chemistry on alcohol. I can smoke and still stop on my own. But, if there are brain dysfunctions that "require" the antidote of alcohol or nicotine (or so the receptors in the brain think) to regulate the dysfunction or imbalance, then the chemical imbalance requires treatment and a person cannot stop without help. Best help per scientist I listened to currently is talk therapy. In our case, it would be AA, Al-Anon. But, even though we are chemically dependent on a particular substance like alcohol or nicotine(I am chemically dependent, not addicted), we still must be willing to get the help we need to say no to the drug. Addicted persons can just say - no more and quit with relative ease - on their own.
Whether or not it is mostly genetic wasn't discussed by the scientist. This was more about findings by scientists researching brain chemistry and dysfunction. Based on what I learned from him, there is still very little that modern science can do to help people with these chemical imbalances but the research findings are exciting to them. Until then, talk therapy has proven itself to be the most helpful and successful treatment. Most drugs used haven't shown significant success in the treatment of these brain dysfunctions. Of course, like my particular chemical imbalance(nicotine), it doesn't matter what kind of treatment I'm offered. If I didn't want to stop smoking because I loved it too much, nothing would have helped me.
