Alcoholism is a disease of shame. When I first admitted to myself that I was drinking too much and I needed to do something about it, I was ashamed of my behavior and lack of control. When I woke in a panic because I could not remember huge chunks of the night before, I was filled with shame. When I argued with my wife, drove when I should not have or was loud and obnoxious – shame, shame and shame. At the end of my drinking life, every beer…every single sip…was like another brick in my wall of embarrassed self-loathing.
Tag: shame of sobriety
The morning after my last night of drinking began like so many such mornings before it. The agonizing stress and pain of failure consumed me. It had happened again! I had allowed a minor stress – an unexpected and innocent change of plans from my teenage daughter – to throw me across the line from planned and limited Sunday night beer drinking to out-of-control, straight-from-the-bottle, warm gin guzzling in search of relief – relief from the stress, relief from the constraints of controlled drinking and relief from the shame of my failure.
In the pre-dawn hours of Monday, I stared sullenly into the bathroom mirror at the despicable, disgraceful drunk I had become. My eyes were puffy and my face was bloated and the sadness in my