The alcoholic has asked for help, has successfully completed a short treatment stay, learned about the disease of alcoholism, identified old behaviors, developed a program for living, and is now alone, left to his own devices.
It is quite unfortunate that very few alcoholics who enter treatment are fortunate enough to attend a long-term care facility. The longer the treatment, the greater the chances that the alcoholic / addict will begin a long-lasting recovery program.
An analogy that can be used to demonstrate this situation is that the alcoholic, with hardly enough knowledge to be dangerous, is alone, adrift in the sea of life. At this point, the question is what the alcoholic has to hold on to in order to stay afloat. Did rehab give you swimming lessons? Did rehab give you a stick or twig to hold onto? If the alcoholic was listening, they may have given him a raft or boat to sit on. The ultimate goal, of course, is for everyone to have a luxury yacht, capable of navigating the oceans of life in comfort and with the knowledge that the ship can weather even the strongest emotional storms, without the need for resorting to. alcohol consumption. and drugs to drown out his feelings. Recovered or cured alcoholics will tell you that it took many scary moments and a long time until their ship was able to find the safe haven to dock in a welcoming harbor.
It must also be remembered that alcoholism is a deadly disease and many are lost at sea without ever knowing that there was hope of recovery. Many are able to see a ray of faith and hope from the lighthouse, but the noise of the storm (the mental compulsion of illness clouding thought) prevents them from hearing the bell of the safety buoy and the height of the sky. The waves, (the physical obsession of the disease that produces a craving that cannot be denied), prevents them from seeing the line of life that has been placed before them. Hopefully they have not died in vain and that their story can help those who seek help.
Weathering the emotional storms of life is what normal, sane people do, and the goal of every addicted person is to learn to grow emotionally to the point where life can be lived on life’s terms, just like normal people do. Life is a two-person boat that sails with a soul mate. The disease of alcoholism wants the alcoholic to be alone, to alienate those who love him and to commit suicide. Many alcoholics identify with the feeling of loneliness, having been in a crowded bar, a crowded reception, and feeling totally alone and unwanted. The alcoholic seldom feels the love of others and cannot show true love towards others. I will love you only if you bring me another drink or if you stop complaining about my drinking. Loneliness does not know love.
If left alone, the alcoholic will die.
However, before an alcoholic can find a soul mate, the alcoholic must learn to love himself. In the halls of AA the creed is that the recovered will love the alcoholic, until they learn to love themselves. Self-esteem has been ruined by drinking and drugs, and recovery begins with the return of self-esteem. The paradox is that the ego must be crushed before the self can be identified. It takes a lot of introspection and a great deal of validation on the part of another individual before an alcoholic can determine whether or not he is going in the direction of sanity. The alcoholic’s moral compass has been lost, abused, and misused, and to restore the compass to function, additional professional guidance or therapy is often required. To continue the analogy, the drunkard has been adrift in the sea of life, going in small circles, with a faulty compass, no safe harbor in sight, and the likely destination is prisons, institutions, or death.
The teacher, preacher, priest, therapist, godfather, healer, or anyone else must be attached to the hip if the alcoholic is to survive early recovery. There is a daily need to validate the abstinence and emotional growth program of alcoholics. The alcoholic must maintain a constant vigil to ensure that old habits and behaviors are not revised.
In AA, the term “stinky thinking” is used to refer to those selfish, self-centered, selfish, and arrogant thoughts that once supported the alcoholic’s justifications for drinking alcohol.
Remember, drinking alcohol is not how often a person drank or how much they drank; it is the act of a person drinking enough to change their emotional behaviors. If a drink made him want to dance on the table and remove all his clothes, he was drinking alcohol. If it took two drinks to turn Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde, and he only drank during a full moon, he was drinking alcohol. The notion that an alcoholic refers only to the person who lives under the bridge and drinks cheap wine from a bottle covered with a paper bag is a totally wrong perception. From Yale to jail, from the attic to the latrine, alcoholics will appear everywhere as part of the estimated 10 percent of the world’s population that is predisposed to alcoholism and addiction.
As uncomfortable as it may be, the alcoholic must learn to express his feelings in a healthy way. Sharing these feelings with another human being validates the alcoholic’s right to have feelings and that it is healthy for them to express themselves. Feelings that are repressed, repressed, and unexpressed will cause the alcoholic to relapse.
If the individual thinks every day, he must go to a meeting every day. At some point, the recovery program is no longer about drinking and getting high, it becomes a program for living. Drinking and using drugs are nothing more than symptoms of the disease. The cause or the result of the disease is an emotional breakdown that can be cured.
People who recover from addictive emotional behaviors are considered miracles and miracles must be witnessed to be validated. It takes two to tango. When the addict / alcoholic regains his sanity and has learned to love himself, his soul mate will appear. It may be a former spouse or relationship that will flourish again in the realm of a sane world, or it may be necessary to move on and find a healthy new person who knows the love and happiness of sharing a miracle.
A healthy relationship requires two healthy people.