With all of the recent publicity about Mel Gibson’s drunk driving arrest, I thought I’d make some things clear to some of you more normal imbibers of spirits. There seem to be some misconceptions out there about how a real alcoholic does or doesn’t react. While I’m at it, I’m gonna talk a little bit about A.A.. Since I enjoy a degree of anonimity here, I don’t think I’ll be breaking any A.A. Traditions. And I’m comfortable enough with the folks here who do know my real name to talk about this.
There seems to be a common perception that alcohol is some great truth serum, and that a person’s true colors come out when they’re drunk. That may be true, if they’re simply drunk and not in a blackout. In a blackout, anything goes. Inhibitions go out the window entirely. We may assume the identities of our parents, a friend, a guy on television. I’m told I spent an entire three-day bender as Dudley Moore once. Only my friends didn’t find me half as funny as Arthur.
So when anyone goes off on Mel Gibson being anti-semitic or some other presumption that he’s really that way, I just sort of shrug and assume that they’ve never had a real drunk in their life.
Now, does that excuse what happened? Nope. If someone is an alcoholic and knows that they’re alcoholic and they drink again, then they’re playing with a time bomb and they know it…or not. If they’re still playing the, “This time it’s going to be different.” game, then they still might think they’ve got a handle on it. Not much anyone can do for them until they realize, “Ya know, I don’t get in trouble every time I drink, but every time I’ve been in trouble, I’ve been drunk.” Making that connection can be harder than micro soldering with a wood burner for some folks.
One of the other misconceptions about drunks is that we can just quit and everything will be okay. Once the alcohol is gone, we’ll be just peachy. Ya know, if that were true, groups like Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) wouldn’t be necessary. For a lot of drunks, just not drinking will simply drive them crazy. I don’t mean physical withdrawal, that’s bad enough. Physical withdrawal from heroin will make you sick for a few days, physical withdrawal from alcohol can kill ya. But even after most drunks get all the alcohol out of our system, our heads are still playing with us: “Come on, one drink, what can it hurt?” “You’ve been doing so good for a month now, just have a beer.” And ya know, if you’re a normal drinker, you have no problem stopping after a beer or two. For a real alcoholic, one leads to two, leads to five, leads to oblivion. We’re kind of wired that way. One drink starts an actual physical craving for more, and more makes the physical craving worse, not better. And our heads just go along for the ride, “Well yeah, hell, we’ve already had one, might as well tie one on.” An obsession of the mind coupled with an allergy of the body. And that’s the disease concept of Alcoholism that everyone from the AMA to shrinks have used for decades. Insurance Companies HATE the disease concept because, well, if it’s a disease, they have to cover it.
Now some folks just plain don’t like A.A. and that’s fine. If everyone who needed A.A. was to show up at once, we’d need much bigger meeting halls. A.A. isn’t for people who need it, it’s for people who want it. And there are a lot of misconceptions about A.A. also, some of them for good reason and others not.
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