The Separation From Alcohol

First of all I'd just like to point out that this is a guest post from a dear friend of mine. He has submitted this for me to post anonymously. For him to have written this in the first place I hold the up most respect for him never mind allowing me to post it online so thank you for sharing. I care for you so much. You know who you are.

Three Simultaneous Executions.

N.B. -This piece is not intended to outline the peaks and troughs of the “Process of Separation” from alcohol – this is neither the time nor place for that discussion. This is intended to act as a brief encounter to the horrors of the unfolding nature of drinking and therefore a portrait of a life left behind for the greater good. Written in humility at the beginning of a journey. A tool to read, so you don’t have to go in there yourself. Equally, a tool not universally applicable, merely occasional. If it serves as a help to one person, then its job is done. If it develops understanding in a few, then it has surpassed.

The striking reality of a life voided of the poisonous comfort and thorn blanket of alcohol take a short while to take hold after a final commitment to the divorce. It can take a number of failed battles to reasonably separate yourself from the invisible genetic-psyco-social cretinously dependent existence of the practicing alcoholic. An intermittent sufferer, a victim of possession. A disease no blood test will indicate; only the damage sustained and strained systems now evident. No scan will reveal; only the infarction, inflammation and insufferable degradation resultant. No questioning can uncover; only the insight into the shocking internal conflict and chronic manhandling of the ego. The only relevant question during these times, which no level of communicable understanding can portray the desperation of, is whether you will survive. Second, if indeed you do survive, whether the physical internal scars, the emotional developmental stunting, the financial iceberg of debt or the social bridge burning have made one final catastrophic damnation to halt any conceivable progress to a “life”.

During a walk into hell your tri-phasic torturing can begin. You are at first loyal. Loyal like a child is loyal. Believing what you are told and loyal to it. Believing in the “normality” associated with the ingestion of the then enjoyable fluid. The loyalty to the cause for this use: celebration, society, success, failure. The loyalty to the eternal enjoyment of this cornerstone of culture. Loyalty to the time set aside to it. Loyalty to the euphoria and release it will provide. This loyalty is a lie. It is dishonest. This loyalty is the consuming nature of the beast. And phase one of your torture is a lie which you are happy to believe, then needed to believe and then finally desperate to believe.

Secondly you are questioning. Like an adolescent is questioning. The questioning may lead you to question that initial loyalty and it is only here that realise you can escape before it is too late. However, the demonic nature of this disease is that in order to fulfil the curiosity of this questioning you must miss this sacred opportunity to leave and inevitably follow your questioning whilst simultaneously being stabbed in the back by the answers you receive – and so the eternal vortex of dissent continue. Am I one of those people? Surely not, because I am not homeless. I have a job, I am succeeding – an almost sarcastic congratulatory pat on the back by the devil himself as with his other hand he slowly introduces the dagger to your being. You question whether you can walk the line between total possession by drink and normality – for you now are aware that you may have more of that disrespectful homeless image in you than you previously thought possible. That devil congratulates your intellect for questioning, encourages you to keep questioning as no matter how much you question, you will also be haemorrhaging the chance of normality, and delving further down that staircase to hell.

And lastly you are accepting. You are accepting as the mature adult is. Only here, you are no longer an adult human, something more like a hungry animalistic skeleton. You no longer question what category you fit into. You shake and you creak. You accept the necessity of that liquid. You no longer have the anxiety filled questioning of the adolescent. You now have the necrotic physical need to give every cell in your body a fuel which is as important, often more important, than oxygen, glucose and whatever else. You are not the person you were. You are not a person. You are a morbid macabre process. You are accepting that you were a fool to think you could walk the line between those two paths. You are now accepting that that pat on the back was purely a deceit in order to have you as the manipulated slave that you have become. You accept that those hours of questioning were purely to make sure that you were looking the other way when the dagger was going in further and further. In your life with humans you are now tragic. You are laughing at the funniest joke in the world – but you can’t remember the punch line.

The three executions are the internal workings of the self during this time. It is important to note that at any point during this (although the illness will not tell you) that there are many points in which you can stop, turn around and learn another way. When you divorce from that way of living, the garden you walk in is genuine. An authentic reality which you are eternally grateful for. For every evil you will have from drink there are one hundred joys. And, although that boxer will still be in the ring with you every day, the joy of winning that match is more joyous and more moving than any second of your previous lingering.

There is work to do. And may it be done.