...ceased to be a luxury...

At my former home group, we have a tradition that the chairperson picks a passage from the first 164 pages of the Big Book as a topic, and then writes down a quote from what was read on a blackboard at the front of the room.

Last week, the guy who chaired wrote:

"Alcohol ceased to be a luxury..."

That's from Bill's story, where he talks about how he had to have booze; two or three bottles of gin.

During the meeting, I reflected on this, and I think it's a pretty good gage for whether or not I'm a normal drinker.

There was a point where I could go without smoking pot, and I was okay.  But after a while, if I didn't have any weed, I'd start calling until I had some.  Of course, I was okay without coke, speed, or alcohol.

Then came the day I quit smoking pot.  And, I decided I wasn't going to get drunk; just social drinking.  And, damned if I wasn't looking forward to that one or two 'social' drinks after work.  I'd start thinking about it around lunchtime.  By the time I got off work, it was straight to the bar for that one or two beers.  For a guy who'd legitimately never had any compulsion to drink, it sure got to be a pretty high priority pretty fast.  Like within a few days kind of fast.

Once I didn't have pot, speed, and coke, my poor little drug addict brain was crying out for any kind of release it could get.  And alcohol had gone from something that I really didn't care if I got or not, to something that I would look forward to all day.

It was moving from 'luxury' to 'necessity' pretty quick.

Inside of a month, it became really clear to me that I was just going to go down the same damn path with booze that I'd already gone down with pot.  The fact that I didn't really have that same old 'take it or leave it' attitude showed me that there was a problem. 

Another thing occurred to me at last Thursday's meeting.  A friend of mine had told me a way that guys would distill alcohol out of a common compound.  My first thought was that this was a really clever thing.  My second thought was that it might be clever, but it was really screwed up; this was something normal people don't do. 

When I heard the meeting's topic, it all made sense.  This was a normal reaction to getting alcohol, for a person who needed alcohol.  It would only be 'weird' for a normal person to do this.  For a drunk, it's just another day at the salt mines.  For us, it's not a luxury; it's something we just have to have - and that's all there is to it.

-M