Oh my my.... What to say....... where to begin????

It has already been said very well here that no one can call any of us an alcoholic or addict, that it is up to each of us to make that determination. Where is the line between "use" and "abuse"? (I personally think this entire country is way heavily over medicated but that is another subject).

As for the arthritis comment...... I am 53 and have diagnosed arthritis in several places, especially my feet. I take a good many powdered BC's and I have no idea if they help or not but if someone took them away from me, I think I would surely die. (I use to feel that way about Bud Lite). I had a grandmother that dealt with rumatoid arthritis from age 50 - 84 and all she ever took was Bufferin (10 a day). I guess what I am trying to say is that we each have to find our on way through the days of our life.

Seems like I have heard that if you are concerned about your behavior, then you may have a problem. I have no idea if that has any truth to it or not but it makes some sense to me. The Big Book has some helpful suggestions to help us out of this jam (which every early member to AA I have ever known has always gone through this question phase). You say your have 2 or 3 drinks a night. Can you fix one drink, have half of it and then walk away from alcohol without thinking about it for 3 days? (I don't think the BB spells it out exactly like that but it is along those lines.... Heck, it was 1935 so maybe I fine tuned it some). You could carry the same analogy with the other items.

You mentioned that you can not sleep well without the sleeping pills. So, I thought I would mention my personal experience on this. Today I LOVE to sleep! I sleep GREAT! I love to go to sleep early and I love to sleep until I have to get up. I enjoy bed but it was not always like that.

The first year without drinking, I could not sleep at all. I was fortunate to be at my moms farm. I would walk through large hayfields very late at night. I marveled at how beautiful the land is at 1, 2, 3 in the morning. I had never seen that sober in my life but I could not sleep. Not more than an hour or two.

But then as the months and finally years passed and the chemicals began to fade from my body, I began to sleep. After about 10,000 AA meetings, I got to sleeping pretty good. Once I had worked some of the steps, I got to sleeping much better. Today I am very guarded about any chemical in my system and I argue with doctors that even try to put me on things. I don't want a chemical in me (except the BC's).

This FYI also....... We overlook the power and damage drugs and alcohol does to us. We think a few days of "clean" will take care of 30 years of using..... Mine was alcohol but it took 2 years for alcohol to get out of me and you want belive this but I could tell a HUGE difference in 5 years! My brain seemed so alive the summer I became 5 years sober......

So yes...... it takes us a long time to get back to sleeping "NATURALLY" but the point is....... We can!

Take care and God Bless, best of luck with whatever and please remember one thing.... No matter what happens...... NEVER QUIT... NEVER GIVE UP.... Crawl into AA if you have to but their is a SOLUTION if you need one...
Tony