When I was in college, I saw a shirt for a fraternity or sorority that said "From the outside looking in, you can't understand it. From the inside looking our, you can't explain it." This is a pretty effective way to both pique curiosity and project exclusivity. It's also a fairly apt description for many things in this life that hold mystery to those who aren't members of a particular group, and non-addicts looking at addiction from the other side of the proverbial glass are no exception.
For most normal folks, the concept of never being satisfied is something to which you aspire. This way of being can propel you much further than the alternative in most all of your endeavors. Never being satisfied is the double-edged sword held to the throat of the addict. We can't be satisfied - one is too many and a thousand is never enough, remember? For us, that unsolvable problem has potentially deadly consequences. We chase the unmet satisfaction even as the chase is killing us.
By definition, alcoholism is an addiction to alcohol. An addiction is characterized by a lack of control - the compulsion is so strong that when active, it is outside of a person's capability to resist. In active addiction, you have no control of and no power over this compulsion to act directly against your own physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health. You cannot stop it and you cannot hope to contain it. If you have any true grip on your action related to an unhealthy substance or activity, you may be in the early stages of addiction and have the opportunity to deal with it before the issue takes over.
There are plenty of behaviors in or characteristics of addiction that don't make sense.
- Why can't you just stop? If I could stop I would, buddy.
- Are things really so bad in your life that you have to drink yourself straight into oblivion? I'm an alcoholic- they don't have to be. Good, bad or indifferent I feel the urge to drink until I don't know my own name.
- Aren't you afraid of the consequences? Nope. Not as afraid as I am of being sober, anyway.
- Don't you love yourself enough to want better for yourself? Nope. The capacity for loving oneself is reserved for someone who isn't such a screwup/loser/idiot/disappointment.
- That seems like a good enough reason to have a drink, so why not? Fact is, I don't need a reason; I'm an alcoholic.
You see, I don't have control after the first whatever- drink, drug or other vice. Without consistent effort I have no defense against the first whatever, either. In and of my own capabilities, I may be able to make it stop for a bit, but I can't keep it that way. I know this because I tried more than once without success. If I could do it on my own, I would've done it on my own a long time ago and saved myself the embarrassment.
If I am able to continue to do the right thing and ask for help when I need it, I've been granted a measure of power back. I have to bear in mind that the price of that power and freedom is eternal vigilance, to coin a paraphrase.
If that doesn't make sense, maybe it doesn't have to. It just has to work for me, for today.
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