Sobrietry
Getting sober doesn’t just happen, we have to make it happen, and nobody can do that except ourselves. We can’t simply wish things were different, we have to act. It takes effort and persistence to stop drinking and just like […]
Lying Minds
Alcoholics are not damaged, faulty or broken, and we aren’t bad or weak people, we are deceived: deceived by our own minds. Most people that drink heavily in their youth will mature out of it and those that drink to […]
Alcohol is C2H6O… it isn’t magical!
Alcohol (ethanol) is a simple little chemical. It has two carbon atoms, six hydrogen atoms, and an oxygen atom. It doesn’t travel at speeds exceeding the speed of light and it doesn’t have the gravitational pull of a black hole… […]
Understanding and learning from relapse
Relapse is a crushing and confusing experience. Stopping drinking is hard and I never understood quite how hard it was until I tried. It’s hard because sometimes the test can be ferocious, and sometimes it can be devious… my addiction kept finding new ways to challenge me. Until I realised just how hard it was, and how devious it could be, I didn’t bring enough to the attempt… that’s my experience. But relapse isn’t failure, it is education.
Is alcoholism a ‘disease’?
People coming to terms with a serious drinking problem struggle a lot with this idea. Many therapies for overcoming alcoholism describe it as a “disease”, but this is not always a helpful description. The principal problem with this is that […]
Alcoholic!
A diabetic is someone who suffers from diabetes. If someone refers to a sufferer as a diabetic then it is said with implied compassion. This is not the case for an alcoholic. An alcoholic is someone who is afflicted by […]