Over any appreciable length of time, it just gets worse, it never better.

My drinking worked for me for many years, most of the alcoholics I hang out with tell me roughly the same story. Their drinking worked for them as well.

It always changed the way I felt, and it changed it fast.

But if we go to that well a little too often, what was once a habit has now become a vice. Towards the end of my drinking career, I needed to drink to feel anything other than misery. It wasn’t working so good anymore. In fact, I thought of it as medicine. It didn’t make me feel free and happy anymore, it just keep me from feeling all the pain in my life.

Then I discovered something that caught me by surprise. When I stopped drinking the reality of this world became unbearable. I couldn’t stop drinking and keep all that misery I was trying to avoid from crashing down on me. I couldn’t drink, and I couldn’t stop.

That is the jumping off point.

But there is a solution. I stumbled into my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting a little over six years ago, and I stopped drinking. But more than that, I no longer feel that crushing burden of anger, bitterness, resentment and loneliness that consumed me. I am free.

You will do what you will do, but I just wanted to let you know that you are not alone in how you feel, and there is a way out.

Richard