Tony's story
So! You've been surfing the net and landed on an AA website, and trawled through some alkies' stories.
What are you hoping to find? I don't know - but when I landed on this web site around midnight in mid 2001, I was desperately looking for a way out of a dirty great black hole; a way out of the guilt, the chaos, the fear, the insanity, the crushing loneliness, the confusion, and the isolation that my life had become. I was drunk and I was scared. And I was angry - mostly with myself, but blaming the world. I had only been back on the grog for three months, after being sober just short of 18 years. I first got to AA and sober in 1983. I stopped going to AA regularly about 1988, and stopped altogether in 1990. I started slipping into a deep depression around 1998. I picked up the drink again in February 2001, and couldn't put it down until Easter 2002. It's now July 2002, and I'm sleeping peacefully again as I rebuild my life, and reconnect with the world around me. And it's OK.G'day! I'm Tony. I'm an alcoholic! I'm so bloody relieved I know that today, and accept that today. It took me the first 32 years of my life to learn that, and the next 17 ½ years to accept it. Now that I know it, the first 49½ years of my life make sense to me; and now that I accept it, I know how to make the remaining years of my life joyful and peaceful; free of guilt and fear and despair.
For years, I beat myself up, believing that my self-destructive behaviours were the result of my moral failure and a lack of my personal willpower. They are not.
Alcoholism is a disease. A simple little dysfunction of the chemical balance in my body means that my adrenal glands, my liver and my pituitary gland do not allow my body to completely switch off my danger alert signals. So my body is constantly telling my brain that some sort of danger is lurking around the corner, and I used alcohol to cope with that constant fear of impending doom, of not belonging and not feeling comfortable anywhere. In the beginning, alcohol helped me switch off that sense of uneasiness and isolation. By the end, it just kept winding up the coil of my fear, anxiousness and bewilderment.
Alcoholism is a disease. And it can be treated - simply. It is really simple to become an active alcoholic and really simple to become a recovering alcoholic. But the journey between those two points is like trying to tame a stampeding kangaroo on roller-blades at a mad-hatter's tea party - sometimes it's funny, mostly it's sad, often it's tragic, and always it's bewildering. It's the hardest thing I've ever had to do!
I picked up my first drink when I was 14, and had my last drink at 49 ½. Between those years my life was a litany of peaks and troughs, with very few peaceful calm moments. The more orderly and "normal" my life became, the more fearful I became that I didn't deserve it and that I would be exposed as a fraud. The more this anxiousness grew, the more I would try to close it down, until I squashed myself into a ball of apathy and deadness. I have heard apathy described as frozen anger. That's true for me. The only way I knew how to shake myself out of this dead apathy was to create some drama or chaos of self-destruction, that would send me crashing over the cliff and down into a pit of despair and depression. At least down there in the pit I was feeling something! I was constantly driven by a fear of failure and a fear of success. I lived in this relentless cycle of climbing up what I experienced as the cliff face of life, then getting increasingly overwhelmed by the view, and throwing myself off the cliff again, because I did not know how to live and sustain a healthy happy life. I did not know why I was constantly anxious and fearful and uneasy. Even when life was going well and every shred of evidence around me was telling me that I should be OK, all I would hear in my head were the old tapes of my worthlessness and all I felt was the fear of impending doom and disaster.
I have learned that it isn't one damn thing after another that sends me into loops of alcoholic insanity, but the same damn thing over and over again. And that same damn thing over and over again is that I feel I am not good enough, I don't belong and I am worthless. So I kept trying to present to the world an image that I'm OK and I'm in control, as I tried to live up to what I thought everyone else expected of me, hoping that somewhere along the way I would get to understand what the hell was going on. I could never accept myself, because I always felt uneasy and isolated, and had to cover up what I was feeling. I have lived most of my life on adrenalin and tension. And where did that get me?
A 26 year marriage in tatters, my wife in a psychiatric clinic, my sons keeping their distance, a successful business on the brink of bankruptcy, and me feeling sick and sorry for myself, surfing the net in the early hours of the morning looking for friendship and help in crap chatrooms, bulletin boards, porn sites, and other wasted spaces. Crap in, crap out, is true not just for computers, but for me as well.
Fortunately for me, my desperate net surfing finally landed me on this AA site and I reached out for help.
I'm convinced that life is basically a simple thing, and I have to go to great lengths to stuff it up. And to my credit, I have been prepared to go to those lengths and I did successfully stuff up my life. But now I'm prepared to go to the same lengths to create peace and simplicity and to find me.
And that's what I found through AA - I belonged; my life made sense; I can see a way forward with hope. I found myself, by opening up to, and becoming mates with, a bunch of people from all walks of life, who have been where I've been and come out the other side. They don't judge me, they don't think I'm a nutter; they don't think I'm worthless and destructive. And if I'm prepared to openly ask for help and guidance, they help me help myself.
I'm an alcoholic. Alcoholism is a disease. And it can be treated - simply. It starts with my desire to stop drinking, today - not for the rest of my life. Just for today and see what happens.
If I want to drink, that's my business - and without any help from anyone, I can simply step back into the war dance with the cliff that was the first 49½ years of my life, by picking up a drink. The unpredictability, fear and guilt are waiting for me if I choose it.
If I don't want to drink, that's my business as well - but I need help from a bunch of mates in AA who make it their business to help me get myself sober and create a wonderful life for myself. A life that is not based on fear and anger and hopelessness and powerlessness, but a life based on finding and fulfilling my potential, with a sense of communion and community with other people, one day at a time. It works. At least it has for me - twice. But I didn't get it from the Internet. I had to get off the net, ring AA, and get back in contact with people, face to face. That's my choice.
Penny | Tony | Dermot | Rob F | Pat | Shekhar | Russ | Traveller | Frank | Andrew | Barry | Ian | Jan | Chris | Lynda | Gordon | Jane | Kathy | Jo | Cherie | 20 Questions |
Jack | Bernard | Jane | Tina | Paul | Agnes | Lauren | Kerry | Charlie | Karratha girl | Pauline | Delores | Kiwi Jane | Richard | Julia | Rob A | Anne | Just another alkie