It makes me chuckle when people refer to marijuana as a gateway drug. The conversation is especially amusing when had over cocktails. Easy accessibility, societal acceptance and manageable effects of weed are often cited as the reasons people choose it for experimentation. Once that door is open, further experimentation often follows, goes the argument. But this argument ignores the obvious. No drug opens the gateway quite like the most available and most abused drug in the history of the world: alcohol.
Tag: mental health
“I wanna go back to Tommy’s and get belligerent drunk,” said the guy at the trough-style urinal next to me at the Indy 500 on Sunday. “I don’t even want to go back into the race and watch the rest. I just want to go back to the house and get belligerent. Do you know what I mean?” He was talking to his friend on the other side. He wasn’t talking to me. But I knew. I did know what he meant. When I was in my fearless and invincible 20s, I felt exactly like that, too. All this public social drinking, even at the Indianapolis 500 where mild intoxication was the respectable minimum standard, was not enough. What the stranger to my right longed for was neither mild nor respectable. He wanted to go to some safe place and drink without rules or boundaries. Becoming belligerent wasn’t an insult. It was the euphoric goal.
I am a Christian who celebrates the faith diversity offered by Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and others. I am a heterosexual white male who supports equality for the LGBTQ community, women and people of all races and ethnicities. I am a fiscal conservative and social moderate who believes in listening and compromise on almost every issue (I’m done listening when it comes to assault rifles and background checks – I live in Colorado, and we have lived through too much).
It takes me about ten minutes to lock down our house each night. That’s a long time to secure a small, one story bungalow. It’s kind of a problem. I get irrationally upset if my wife needs to get something out of the car in the detached garage or water the plants after I’ve set the alarm. I’m getting better, though. It used to take fifteen minutes.
I fell asleep at 7:30pm last Friday night. I was feeling exhausted after dinner, and I laid down before cleaning the kitchen. Within a minute, I was out and didn’t wake until 8am Saturday. I have a teenage son for whom my twelve plus hours of sleep is an every weekend tradition, but for me, sleeping like that was very rare. It was also glorious and necessary.
Do you know what else my half-day hibernation was? It was a part of my recovery from alcoholism. It was really important and totally uncontrollable.
The stigma associated with alcoholism is the barrier that prevents people from admitting their truth and curing their disease. And the stigma is a product of the words we choose to describe this affliction that kills three million people a year.
You have a drinking problem. You need to get help.
A deeply imbedded splinter is a problem. A flat tire is a problem. The brain disease suffered by over fifteen million Americans is way more than a problem.
It’s the kind of relationship where we tolerate each other for the sake of our mutual friend. We’ve all been there. I wouldn’t hang out with this guy if he wasn’t so close with a good friend of mine. But since he is, we end up in the same place doing the same thing once every couple of months. We have little in common. He is a little younger than me and a lot more confident. He talks about his stuff and never asks me about mine. He isn’t arrogant or aloof, he just doesn’t know any better.
A couple of days ago, our mutual friend brought us together again. As people were gathering and plans were being made, I found myself alone with my friend’s friend. As I was struggling to think of a conversation starter, he told me he heard that I write about addiction and recovery, and that he thinks it is really cool. I was speechless. In the probably 100 or so conversations we have had over the years, this was the first time he’s ever talked about me.
For all of its devastating repercussions, alcohol really is soothing and medicinal in many ways. We alcoholics use booze to alleviate stress, to dampen anxiety and to silence our chaotic, swirling minds. But alcohol can do more than that. It can make congestion tolerable sooth a cough and wash away the pain of fever and body ache. Even while alcohol is slowly destroying our lives, it can feel like a miracle in a bottle.