Alcoholism Support Group
Alcoholism is the continued consumption of alcoholic beverages, even when it is negatively affecting your health, work, relationships and life. If you think alcohol is causing you to lose control, it's time to seek help. Our group is a safe place to vent, check in, get back up if you fall, and reach sobriety.
While Alcoholics keep strictly away from drink, they react to life much like other people. But the first drink sets the terrible cycle in motion. Alcoholics usually have no idea why they take the first drink. Some drinkers have excuses with which they are satisfied, but in their hearts they really do not know why they do it. The truth is that at some point in their drinking they have passed into a state where the most powerful desire to stop drinking is of no avail.Am i satisfied I have passed my tolerance point for alcohol?
24 hrs. a Day 8/11
Hazelden
24 hrs. a Day 8/11
Hazelden
"These observations would be academic and pointless if our friend never took the first drink, thereby setting the terrible cycle in motion. Therefore, the main problem of the alcoholic centers in his mind, rather than in his body.
If you ask him why he started on that last bender, the chances are he will offer you any one of a hundred alibis. Sometimes these excuses have a certain plausibility, but none of them really makes sense in the light of the havoc an alcoholic's drinking bout creates.
They sound like the philosophy of the man who, having a headache, beats himself on the head with a hammer so that he can't feel the ache. If you draw this fallacious reasoning to the attention of an alcoholic, he will laugh it off, or become irritated and refuse to talk.
Once in a while he may tell the truth. And the truth, strange to say, is usually that he has no more idea why he took that first drink than you have. Some drinkers have excuses with which they are satisfied part of the time. But in their hearts they really do not know why they do it.
Once this malady has a real hold, they are a baffled lot. There is the obsession that somehow, someday, they will beat the game. But they often suspect they are down for the count. How true this is, few realize. In a vague way their families and friends sense that these drinkers are abnormal, but everybody hopefully awaits the day when the sufferer will rouse himself from his lethargy and assert his power of will. The tragic truth is that if the man be a real alcoholic, the happy day may not arrive."
I would drink "because of" anything - a busy day, a death, a celebration, boredom, worry, wanting to feel better than good. Always chasing an illusion, searching desperately for that point of ultimate peace and serenity and joy. It never came and all I got were increased problems and unhappy consequences.
At certain times, I was powerless against picking up that next drink because of the strange mental blank spots described in the Big Book, my mind was deluded. I had no mental defense.
I never had a tolerance point for alcohol - I am an alcoholic.
I had little tolerance for life sober either. Irritable, restless and discontent, it progressed along with the disease.
I am recovered now but I am not cured. If I turn away from what keeps me safe and happy in this undeserved state of grace, I will drink again. I have no doubt.