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
