An Essay A Day For A Year
By Roe
Day 81, March 21, 2012
***
I was in a college seminar of 14 students and one professor years ago, and I made a request: Whoever has had at least one parent who was an alcoholic, raise your hand. Everyone in the class including the professor raised their hands. How tragic. When I asked who might have had two parents as alcoholics, 5 of 14 raised their hands including the professor. I raised my hand as a child of two alcoholics, my mother who got within hours of death with her drinking when I was in my teens, and my father, who once I was already an adult, managed to drink half a gallon a day of cheap sangria wine while declaring non alcoholism. I then asked anyone who thought themselves to be an alcoholic to raise their hand, and not one student or the professor raised their hands. Perhaps you the reader can find a scary pattern here. There is a 70% chance that you the reader and me the writer are alcoholics, either by factual diagnosis and practice or recovery, or by denial or deluding ourselves. I am aware that I am an alcoholic, though I am not in practice or recovery at all. I know that I like and depend on drinking way too much, whether it is my beer or three a day, or my weekly or monthly sexy relief parties. I know that it is sneaking up on me, and I know that I am running, and I know that you are too. How are you doing?
To not even pretend to be subtle or literarily appropriate, I want to ask, “what the fuck is going on?” Why is alcoholism a worldwide epidemic? Probably 2/3 of the world is involved in alcoholism directly or indirectly. In truth we are all pain-aholics. We all have, without exception, a method and manner of defending ourselves from our own pain. We have the “baddies”, people who get off on counter culture and rebellion and disapproval. We and they are managing pain. We have the mainstream culture, the “goodies”, those who are getting off on doing right and responsible and goodie Goddie. We and they are managing pain. We have work-aholics and sport-aholics and phone-aholics and eat-aholics and gamble-aholics and porn-aholics, and friend-aholics, and many more. I think you get the idea.
To truly understand which aholic you and I may be, there is an aholic discovery plan, and it works like this: You and I will (separately) and voluntarily move into a comfortable and private hotel room with enough basic food and water for a month. We will then spend a month in isolation, with nothing to do. We will have no contact with anyone, and no access to anything that we do to keep our selves and lives glued together. We choose not to sleep excessively or masturbate excessively, or do anything at all outside of just being with ourselves. There will be no TV or books or computers or video games or any of our habits of any kind. The truth is, within 24 hrs to several days, all of us will have what is described negatively as a nervous breakdown. We in fact will encounter ourselves, and maybe for the first time in our lives we will begin to sob and grieve, and panic with the pain that all of our aholic defensiveness has been keeping at bay.
To really understand which aholic we are and do, we then simply emerge from our time alone, and immediately begin to aholic ourselves into the behavior that stops the pain fastest and easiest and best. Do we long to hit our bottle or drugs? Do we immediately go to be around people to chitty chatty away our self? Do we return to work or sex or smoking or, or, or, or with zest? Whatever we do that glues us back together is our aholicism. Sadly enough, more than half the world’s population immediately returns to alcohol to soothe and salve the beast or access the humane self or brave self or sexy self, and a hundred other selves.
Alcohol is the little baby of the depressants, with heroine on the top of the chart as grand daddy. Alcohol takes away our inhibitions, and in fact helps us to slightly penetrate our unconscious needs and hopes and dreams, and unfulfilled needs, but in a defensive way so as to manage our pain. In time it takes more and more and more to soothe us or release us or give us relief, or allow us to run away or connect. Alcohol is a liquid truth serum that allows our alter egos and demons out, or in others a way to cope with alter egos and demons that are already out. Alcohol works as temporary medicine that works backwards, seemingly an exciter, but in the guise of a depressant.
Many say and believe that alcohol is addictive, and we speak as if alcohol itself is the culprit, or alcohol itself can be blamed. Alcohol like any drug is simply an innocent compound or liquid, and it is us who is addictive, and wants to be addictive, and needs to be addictive, and likes to be addictive. Alcohol hides us from our pain by putting us in touch with our pain, kind of like a shock treatment that we can’t get enough of. We want to fly towards the sun to get hot in perverted ecstasy so that we don’t ever fly into the sun and die melting and find our real pain. Alco-holics are just people in pain, no different than the smoke-aholic or the hate-aholic, or the criminal-aholic except that alcohol lures us further and further away from ourselves by duping us into believing that we are ourselves while intoxicated, or that we can hide from ourselves while intoxicated. Alcohol is not to blame, but instead deep childhood trauma and deprivation and unfulfilled needs in the drinker is the cause of the pain, and these “ailments” always point to a difficult and sad and harmful person who had a difficult and sad and harmful childhood.
They say that alco-holism is a disease, and hereditary, and this misleads us terribly. The dis-ease is child abuse and deprivation, and the symptom is needing to be altered with inebriation to cope with life when there is far too much pain for the person to handle. And how terrifying that half the world is in too much pain for them to handle, and that as alcoholics they end up causing unimaginable pain to their own children and families, who do the same and who do the same, generation by generation. The first step to any dis-ease is to realize that there is a dis-ease. An alco-holic is a victim of child abuse and child deprivation, and an innocent victim turning to an aholism, just like us, to survive and cope.
Now I know that I am really fucked up, and I know that my parents and early childhood caregivers really fucked me up. I know that I want to get better, and I know that I have to grieve and mourn and experience the pain that was caused me, and once I have faced my demons and suffered my losses, I can be less fucked up. In the meantime I have a problem with my one to three beers a day, and my weekly or monthly sexy drunk parties, and I get off on trying to escape my pain. Like you I am doing my best, and I am in a headlong run to not get caught by what happened to me as a child, and alcohol really helps. I know now that I cannot outrun myself by inebriating myself, and I know that hurting others only makes matters worse, and so I am working on my problem.
In the meantime I have my hand raised high in the air, and I am looking at myself in the mirror. I am an aholic of alcohol and many other defensive behaviors, and I need help. What is your aholicism and how are you doing? What happened to you, and who did it to you? What happened is not your fault or my fault, but if we don’t face our aholicisms right away, the damage we do to ourselves and others will be our fault. It is time we break the chain, and stop the buck right here. Be proud if you are raising your hand, for hope is now on its way.
See you tomorrow.
yourpersonalmuse@gmx.com
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