Best Things I’ve Learned So Far
1.) “Alcoholism is a disease, not a moral weakness.” Once you start thinking of it as a disease that needs to be treated, asking for help and coping with the feelings of depression and hopelessness subside a lot. Just like someone with diabtes needs medicine for their disease, so do we. That medicine for us is AA meetings.
2.) Going back to hang with the friends that you used to get messed up with all the time is a terrible idea. Even if they’re good people, old habits die hard. I haven’t found sober friends yet but I wish for them to come into my life all the time now. I think it will be easier if I can make some. It’s still hard for me to be the only sober person in the room at a party or bar.
3.) I am not drinking just for TODAY, who knows about tomorrow. I’ll worry about tomorrow when it gets here. It’s overwhelming for me to think of staying sober for a month, even two weeks. Taking it day by day makes me feel way less overwhelmed.
4.) I am an alcoholic because of my relationship with alcohol. It’s different than how non-alcoholics feel towards alcohol. To me alcohol is my manipulative abusive best friend that I actually hate but don’t know how to live without. It taunts me.
5.) Once you cross into the rhealm of alcoholism, you’re there for the rest of your life. It s**** but it’s true. I have a disease and it’s not going anywhere. I have to learn to treat it and cope with it and go on living my life despite it.
6.) It helps to almost think of myself as having two personalities. There’s the alcoholic in me and then there’s just plain old me, the person I wish I was all the time. The alcoholic puts all kinds of thoughts in my head. You want alcohol, you need it. Recovery is stupid, just be young and drink and party like everyone else. Well maybe I’ll just drink until I graduate then stop. Anything the alcoholic tells you is b*******. Don’t listen to this part of you. Train yourself to recognize these thoughts and tell them to back off. Eventually I hope that the alcoholic’s voice will only be a whisper so soft I can’t even hear it anymore.
7.) Carrying around a water bottle (of water) or filling a solo cup with water and drinking that keeps people from offering you drinks. They assume you’re drinking alcohol anyway. It takes the pressure off and you can still let lose because people think you’re drunk too so they’ll be totally social. It’s kind of like a safety blanket even just to have something in my hand.
8.) While your parents most likely will want to help you, that doesn’t mean you should spill everything about your past to them. They are already overwhelmed enough in trying to save you and probably feel like it’s their own fault even though it isn’t, which brings me to number 9.
9.) You are responsible for your actions, no one else. No one else got you to this point. You accepted the drinks, you played the drinking games, you got behind the wheel, you lied to mom about where you were and used the money she left you for pizza on booze. You didn’t HAVE to do any of those things but you did, so take responsibility.
Experimenting with Drugs
•”I am not going to take drugs. I think because I saw the news and I could see people getting crazy about taking drugs.”
•”I wanted to be part of the group but I still said no to drugs. If they try to give drugs to me that means they are not a good friend because drugs are not a good thing.”
•”You can get drugs easily. Just tell someone who takes drugs and they will get it for you.”
•”I am just doing it now because I want to be bad. I have already promised my parents and friends that [next month] I will stop smoking and everything.”
•”I am in control.”