The Crazy Mind of the Alcohlic

It has been a good year. All the bills get paid on time. The 180Xchange Recovery Ministry is going to start in a couple of weeks. I'm getting so much enjoyment of out of being the band for the 180. Kiley and I are really working hard at being husband and wife. Oh, and work is going really well.

This past Friday I got a promotion. I got the promotion after making a presentation to the VP of Strategic Relations of our company. I went from worker bee to supervising some incredibly talented people.

After getting the word that they liked my idea I got on the elevator to go down to the floor that I work currently work on. I was so excited. The promotion was awesome, but having the important people at my company saying that they loved my idea was something really special. Alone in that elevator I got a visit from an old "friend": craving.

That ride from the 6th floor to the 5th floor seemed to take hours; maybe days. It has been so long since I have had a craving to drink that badly. It took my breath away.

You hear people say things about alcoholics. Things like, "Why can't they just stop?" or, "Why can't they just have a couple of drinks?" or even, "He just got our of treatment, why is he drinking again?"

He I was so excited about something that was good in my life. Something that I have worked so hard for. Something that would never have been possible if I wasn't sober and yet here I was wanting a drink so badly that I was shaking.

Make no mistake, being an alcoholic makes you insane. Reason has no room in the mind of a drunk; sober or not.

I was at an A.A meeting last week when I heard someone else's insanity. An older guy, a lawyer in fact, said that he first started thinking about getting sober that the only thing that he could think of was that if he stopped drinking that he would never get laid again. That is insanity.

I don't know exactly how the drug affects the brain, but it changes it. It changes it forever. I still have to think before I do things. I still have to disregard my first choice. I still have to stand in an elevator and remind myself that:

1. I am powerless of alcohol and that, were I to drink again, my life would be unmanageable.
2. That a power great than me could restore me to sanity.
3. That if I turn my will and my life over to the God of my understand that he would help me.

...and He did.