Corking the Bottle

I wrote yesterday I was taking a break from blogging and maybe would quit due to a lack of readership. That resulted in an avalanche of one text message pleading with me to continue. So I will. This letter was in the advice column in the paper, and I thought it was worth sharing. Alcohol affects many more than just the alcoholic. See for yourself. Wife’s alcoholism impacts family Dear Annie:  My wife is an alcoholic. I wrote the letter below to myself really. I was wondering if you would publish it, in hopes that it might help someone who is afflicted with alcoholism: I lost my wife and my best friend to alcoholism in March of 2012. That was seven long years ago. She continues to breathe, to function, to exist, but she is not the same person. Not even close. My wife used to light up a room with her laugh and her smile. Alcoholism has extinguished both. My world has not been the same since. As a husband, this disease makes me feel like an utter failure, haunted by ...

When it comes to drinking, some people never quit until abstinence comes to them in the grave. Yet God sends us all a healthy way out. He gives us a chance. Nevertheless, "... many are called but, few are chosen." (Matthew 22:14) Why are few chosen? What does that mean? M. Scott Peck in The Road Less Traveled offers this explanation: "As is common with grace, most reject this gift and do not heed the message. They do this in a variety of ways, all of which represent an attempt to avoid the responsibility for their illness." God gave me chance after chance to give up drinking, but I always came up with an excuse to relapse. The A.A. Big Book, in a personal testimony on page 293, observes, "I didn't want to drink that day but I took no action to insure against it. You see, I believe that we get more than one 'moment of grace' from God -- but it is up to us to seize the moment by taking action." Dr. Peck wrote that some, including most...

(Reprinted from my blog post July 31, 2018) The debate rages: Is alcoholism a matter of choice or is it a disease? Well, maybe not "rages." But the question does go "blip" in some circles. My cousin, in a phone text, referenced a blog post I wrote on May 20 about the disease question and she pointed me in the direction of a YouTube address by Dr. Kevin McCauley ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2emgrRoT2c ). It's well worth the investment of an hour, 12 minutes, and 13 seconds for an easy-to-follow analysis of addiction and our brains. The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that controls conscious thought, behavior, decision making, and the like. Experiments with mice prove that's not where addiction attacks. The midbrain is the survival brain. It handles eating, killing (self protection), and sex. This is the part of the brain where alcohol and other drugs work, which means we are tricked into believing we need more and more for survival. Not...

Sorry this is so long. I edited it for brevity. What is left, I think, is worth reading and considering. For quite a while, I felt a stigma attached to my alcoholism, and so tried to hide my disease. Later, I came to realize I needed to be open about it if I was going to help others recover. That's why I started this blog and announced my addiction to my Facebook friends. Stick with today's post and see if you see reasons why a stigma comes at the bottom of a bottle. The Deadly Stigma of Addiction By  Dr. Richard Juman   12/05/12 Is it possible to separate the disease of addiction from the stigma?  The new definition of addiction The idea that those with addictive disorders are weak, (immoral), deserving of their fate and less worthy of care is so inextricably tied to our zeitgeist (a  thought  or feeling characteristic of a particular period of time)  that it’s impossible to separate addiction from shame and guilt.... Stigma impacts ...

Tell me if the lyrics of this popular song sound like alcoholism. That may not be what was intended. But it sounds like it could be to me. "Disease" -- Matchbox Twenty ...I got a disease deep inside of me, Makes me feel uneasy, baby I can't live without you, Tell me what am I supposed to do about it. Keep your distance from it, Don't pay no attention to me. I got a disease. I think that I'm sick. But leave me be while my world is coming down on me. You taste like honey, honey, tell me can I be your honey? Be, be strong, keep telling myself that it won't take long till I'm free of my disease, yeah free of my disease. Set me free of my disease.

[First published July 31, 2018] The debate rages: Is alcoholism a matter of choice or is it a disease? Well, maybe not "rages." But the question does go "blip" in some circles. My cousin, in a phone text, referenced a blog post I wrote on May 20 about the disease question and she pointed me in the direction of a YouTube address by Dr. Kevin McCauley ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2emgrRoT2c ). It's well worth the investment of an hour, 12 minutes, and 13 seconds for an easy-to-follow analysis of addiction and our brains. The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that controls conscious thought, behavior, decision making, and the like. Experiments with mice prove that's not where addiction attacks. The midbrain is the survival brain. It handles eating, killing (self protection), and sex. This is the part of the brain where alcohol and other drugs work, which means we are tricked into believing we need more and more for survival. Nothing else th...

[First published on May 20] I have been told and read since I was knee-high to a bourbon barrel that alcoholism is a disease. That's still my opinion and I'm sticking to it. But a book I am currently reading,  Scripts People Live   by by Claude Steiner, contains a different view (page 233). I will save you the wordy reasoning, but he writes that "real" diseases require micro-organism changes to some organ. No such bodily alterations cause mental illnesses and no drugs cure them, leaving afflictions like addictions as un-diseases. He goes on to claim, "At present no drug has proven effective to cure depression, madness, or drug abuse ... since these tragic scripts are not the result of chemical or micro-organismic changes in the body but the result of the scripted interactions between people.... Thus, alcoholism is not an illness." Not so fast, Claude. The Big Book disagrees. So do  Staying Sober  authors Terrence T. Gorski and Merlene Miller (page...

The debate rages: Is alcoholism a matter of choice or is it a disease? Well, maybe not "rages." But the question does go "blip" in some circles. My cousin, in a phone text, referenced a blog post I wrote on May 20 about the disease question and she pointed me in the direction of a YouTube address by Dr. Kevin McCauley ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2emgrRoT2c ). It's well worth the investment of an hour, 12 minutes, and 13 seconds for an easy-to-follow analysis of addiction and our brains. The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that controls conscious thought, behavior, decision making, and the like. Experiments with mice prove that's not where addiction attacks. The midbrain is the survival brain. It handles eating, killing (self protection), and sex. This is the part of the brain where alcohol and other drugs work, which means we are tricked into believing we need more and more for survival. Nothing else then matters. We drink to live and l...

I have been told and read since I was knee-high to a bourbon barrel that alcoholism is a disease. That's still my opinion and I'm sticking to it. But a book I am currently reading, Scripts People Live by Claude Steiner, contains a different view (page 233). I will save you the wordy reasoning, but he writes that "real" diseases require micro-organism changes to some organ. No such bodily alterations cause mental illnesses and no drugs cure them, leaving afflictions like addictions as un-diseases. He goes on to claim, "At present no drug has proven effective to cure depression, madness, or drug abuse ... since these tragic scripts are not the result of chemical or micro-organismic changes in the body but the result of the scripted interactions between people.... Thus, alcoholism is not an illness." Not so fast, Claude. The Big Book disagrees. So do Staying Sober authors Terrence T. Gorski and Merlene Miller (page 39-40): "Addiction is a physical ...