Well, as I knew it eventually would, my addictive voice, the voice in my head that tells me the answer for my problems is to use, came back. It wanted a drink.
Work stresses, physical pain and that weird state of suspended animation I fall into where I feel I can’t really connect with anything, least of all myself, were the culprits. The voice said, “You know how to make this all go away. You know what will calm you and soothe your spirit and help you breathe again. Just a few sips and all the world will be right. A few sips could barely be called a slip.”
Oh, it was whispering its sweet nothings in my ear, attempting to seduce, promising relief from pain and care. The usual hook.
I didn’t give in. As a matter of fact I was never even very close to giving in to it because I’ve gotten real about the disease I have. A lot of people don’t like that term, but if diabetes is a disease, even though it’s just as much a “choice” when the diabetic lifts the cupcake to their mouth as when the alcoholic lifts the drink, then alcoholism/addiction is a disease just as well. But you don’t here people arguing about whether or not diabetes is a disease or a choice. It’s a disease brought about by a predisposition of the body AND choice. Everyone accepts that. No problem. In the case of Type I diabetes, there’s no choice involved at all and I think alcoholism/addiction is much the same. For some there is no choice at all, and for some their choices will eventually lead to the manifestation of the disease process. And for some, diabetes nor alcoholism/addiction will EVER happen even though they continually make the same poor choices as the diabetic and the alcoholic. Their bodies are not predisposed.
I don’t know. It seems fairly simple and straightforward to me now that I’ve re-educated myself. We like to make things complicated.
When I see my disease for what it is: chronic, progressive, and fatal if left untreated, without all the bullshit about a morally defective character, then I can begin to make informed, good choices. Then I can hear the addictive voice for what it is: a dying part of the disease that is being treated. The treatment? Don’t drink or use no matter what. Simple.
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