You Can Stop Drinking Now

Anyone who has an addiction to alcohol knows intimately what the word addiction means. It means an ongoing struggle with alcohol. Drinking is always in the back of your mind, and the amazing fact of addiction is you will pick up a drink when you don’t want one. It’s an ongoing war and the alcoholic  on his or her own probably won’t win, because alcohol is so powerful.

You wake up in the morning declaring to yourself you will not drink that day. You have never been so serious about anything in your life. Your resolve stays strong until later when you start feeling out of sorts and maybe you are shaking. Your thinking is clouded and you feel incapable of handling your everyday life.  Alcohol has moved from the back of your mind to the forefront.  You think about drinking constantly.

You may make it a few days sober. That gives you enough time to get a look at the damage that your drinking career has left behind. You have a lot of work to do to straighten it all out. It’s like starting a new life and it’s overwhelming, and on top of that you may be very depressed.  Where do you start?  It can start with something as simple as cleaning up your environment, but that’s only the beginning. There is the career or lack of one to deal with.  Your finances are a mess. Your relationships are rocky and your health isn’t great.  All this adds up to more than you can cope with, so you say to yourself  ”I can’t deal with this” and pick up a drink.  It is very common for an alcoholic to pick up a drink when they decide that they’ve had enough, they just can’t handle it, and then throw in the towel.

As hard as it is for an alcoholic in the early stages to believe, this is a cycle that can go on for years. Some times will be better than others, but you will reach that same point over and over. You pull yourself together, stop drinking for a time, and then start again, if your body is addicted to alcohol and your mind and emotions have developed a dependence on it.  In essence, you have actually developed a relationship with alcohol.  It takes the edge off.  It helps you cope with daily life and the challenges that come with it. It can be perceved as being a friend in many ways.  In the beginning it can be fun and make situations more pleasant. 

Once you become addicted to alcohol and suffer the consequences, you may desperately want to stop drinking, but there is the addicted part of you that really doesn’t want to stop at all.  That is why an addiction to alcohol is so serious, and just a part of what makes alcohol as powerful a force as it is.