Big Book Quote

[Rockinbigdaddy]

"Despite all we can say, many who are real alcoholics are not going
to believe they are in that class. By every form of self-deception
and experimentation, they will try to prove themselves exceptions to
the rule, therefore nonalcoholic. If anyone who is showing inability
to control his drinking can do the right-about-face and drink like a
gentleman, our hats are off to him. Heaven knows, we have tried hard
enough and long enough to drink like other people!"

~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, More About Alcoholism, pg. 31~

[MajestyJo]

Smiling, that was me. That was me, didn't like beer, never drank beer, didn't like the smell or the taste, even add Coca-Cola to it to make it taste better to the horrof of many a 'real' alcoholic. Yet as the saying goes, "If you have to control it, it is already out of control. There is no such thing as a little bit alcoholic, no matter what substance you used or what drink you chose as your poison. My ex-husband resented the fact that I could match him drink for drink, while he drank a beer and I drank rye and coke. He was the falling down drunk, I could walk a straight line and drive him home. He had the problem not me.

In today, I know he was a drunk, I was the alcoholic. I had the thinking problem. He had the drinking problem. He stopped for 9 months, I couldn't. Why should I, he was the one who need to quit, not me. He was the one who was violent and abusive. It didn't matter that later, the abused later became the abuser.

The disease is cunning, baffling, and powerful. I thought, "If you can't beat them, joined them. I went home from the big city to take care of my dad and became my dad's drinking partner. I became his liability and was asked to leave with my son at 11 p.m. after coming home from the Legion at 11 p.m. at night. I had left my son with my dad, the alcoholic while my second husband and I went drinking, and yet I didn't have a problem. Denial almost killed me. In today, my son is still out there choosing to walk his ow journey. I am so glad that I lived to make it through the doors of recovery.

Thanks for the memory.