Beyond the Struggle

Drinking alcohol repeatedly over time is for a large portion of the population a bad idea. It’s a floating scale but way more people that consider they have a problem have it. I read somewhere that everyone eventually will drink unhealthy, the question is just how long it takes to gradually raise the bar to an unhealthy level. For some people it might take 150 years so they won’t notice before dying of something else but when we start to fiddle with our natural endorphins and dopamine levels we will degrade if ever so slowly. I would say it’s a collective , cognitive dissonance that alcohol is such a big part of our culture. Even though most people know it’s bad for them, no one really wants to know EXACTLY how bad it is. We avoid articles describing the long term effects of alcohol. We don’t want to talk about it. We come up with strange reasons why statistics does not apply to us specifically. We even blatantly conclude that we really don’t want to know the truth. But the dissonance ...

  I consider myself a fairly rational person. It runs in my family to to let intellect go before emotions. I’ve been accused for not being in contact with my emotions but I’ve worked pretty hard through the years to find a balance. Emotions are there for a reason and should not be neglected. I went to a psychologist the other day and he said something that stayed with me: emotions are there to motivate an action. Happiness is there for you to relax, sorrow to motivate a needed let go and goodbye and anxiety is there to make you take control over whatever gives you anxiety. None of the emotions are “bad”, but to not take the actions they’re pointing at, is. We’re all here because alcohol has given us anxiety somehow. To get rid of the anxiety we take control. By taking on a challenge and holding ourselves accountable to a group we increase our chances of success. Some people are here to never drink again, some to change their relationship with alcohol but we’re all here to take cont...

 You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Common Swedish expression even though I’ve seen it in English  meaning that you try to combine two things that are mutually exclusive. When we express why we shouldn’t drink it’s pretty obvious. We know that drinking never will make problems go away and that you never regret not drinking the day after. On the sober side we know that alcohol takes more that it gives and will lead us down a path of anxiety and remorse. But that is not the discussion I’m having in my mind. It’s not whether “should I destroy my life by drinking or should I not”. Of course I don’t want to destroy my life for alcohol! Why would I? The discussion is much more subtle: my addiction brain starts telling me that I can have both my sober life and drink every once in a while. Like having my cake while eating it too. And if I try to counter those arguments with a too big hammer like “Nooo, you will DIE!” the addiction brain just says: “Don’t be ridiculous. No one is...

 To handle loss is an integral part of life but still it’s something that never gets easier. Loss when someone dies, loss when a relationship comes to an end or loss of a role or identity when kids grow older. When someone gets taken away it seems like it’s that person that I’m missing. But then I start to feel that it’s not only just the person, but two more things: how that person makes me and a third person between me and the other which is the relationship itself unique for every combination of people. To handle the loss of the third person, the mix of me and the missing person, I find the hardest. I deal with that with memories, thinking back to moments or episodes but over time these fade away. I think that the process of grief is to incorporate that third person into yourself so that when you’re done grieving you do not know who you would be without losing that person. One day you wake up and can’t see the alternative when you hadn’t lost the loved one. When I stopped drinki...

 I could’ve had a number of reasons why I stopped drinking: work related, anxiety or my kids. These are all important but they are not the main reason but pointers to the real reasons: restoring my trust, belief and love to myself. Once I got that sorted the other things will come by themselves because I am restoring the fundament on which I’m standing. Work related problems gets fairly easy to solve: either I get my shit together and work with purpose with what I have or I get the energy to switch position or occupation to something I like. Trust, belief and love to myself makes it so much easier to see and to do something about it. I almost do not need to explain how much easier anxiety is to handle when I get my trust, belief and love to myself restored. At first it might go up since I need to see everything for what it is and deal with it, but then it will certainly go down since I won’t add any more unnecessary anxiety, just process what I’ve got. My kids may be my whys but fo...

  We can be aware of what alcohol does and we can be unaware. If we’re unaware we will drink without thinking about it, just like we did when we were young and hadn’t faced the negative sides of alcohol. When we start see what alcohol does to us we might become aware and once we get aware the addiction brain needs to come up with tricks to make us drink even though we’re aware that alcohol actually will not add anything. The addiction brain is always in the future or in the past but never in the present. It thinks about glorified, cherry-picked memories of us drinking alcohol in the sun or with a special friend. It thinks about how fun it will be to drink tomorrow, or next week. It plans ahead so that we buy alcohol to have at home so we’re sure it will not run out. It promises that a party next week will be awesome since we’re going to drink with our friends. Addiction brain will think about the party days ahead to get us unaware on the night of the party so that we will drink. An...

We all have our inner dialogues with our addiction brain. Part of being AF longer is that I get better and better at detecting when it’s the addiction brain trying to convince me. How do I know my addiction brain is talking? The sentences come out of negative feelings with the core message: “I’m not enough” Why can’t I? - I’m not enough!  I need a drink for me to be fulfilled! - I’m not enough. They will think I’m boring if I don’t drink. - I’m not enough. When my sober brain is talking the sentences come out of positive feelings with the opposite message “I’m enough!” Why should I? - I’m enough. I’m good, alcohol will not make me better. - I’m enough. It doesn’t really matter if a couple of drunk heads think I’m boring, does it? - I’m enough. But when I’ve mastered this, my addiction brain will try a new trick: instead of sounding like it speaks from negative feelings that “I’m not enough” it starts to use a more positive sounding disguise:  Why shouldn’t I? I’ve proven mysel...

 My little brother stayed with me in June and we had a wonderful time. We finished the game “The Last of Is part II” and loved it. We didn’t know that soon after his life would end but we both had an acute feeling that we needed to finish the game before he went back to our parents. We played several nights in a row despite his head and eyes hurting. The starting screen of the game depicts a boat in fog, lost and lonely until you finish the game when it changes to a picture of the same boat on a sunny shore, like it has found its way home. Now things turned out the way they did and my little brother’s PlayStation has ended up here at my place, in his grey, rugged cotton bag.  I’ve had a hard time to pull myself together and pick it up since it will be hard to go through his save games to see which games he was playing and how far he had come. Still, I know I have to, since I would like to complete the games he did not have time to finish. Yesterday I picked it up anyway and re...

  I see you.  Three words of endless beauty if said by someone who means it. When sincerely spoken it is one of the most beautiful things one can say to another being. I see you. I love you. To be seen for who you are. To be acknowledged for what you feel. To be carried when you being vulnerable. To be hold when feeling lonely. And be unconditionally loved when seen for who you are. I see me. This love can be turned towards myself as well. I see myself for who I am. I acknowledge my feelings and take them seriously. I carry myself or dare to ask for help if I’m feeling vulnerable. I hold my heart with careful hands and reach out when feeling lonely. I see me. When intoxicated by alcohol I couldn’t see myself but a faint projection. A dancing shadow always fading when I needed myself the most. An uninspired version of myself with less energy and low self esteem. Even if I could see me I didn’t like what I saw, so instead I chose not to. And I couldn’t truly love myself. I see m...