A recent thread reminded me that it might be helpful to others if I posted on this topic. During my first several months in AA, I was a chronic relapser. I had always heard that when one relapses after a period of sobriety, you pick up at a point that is as if you had continued drinking the entire time. Alcoholism being a progressive disease, that means that every relapse should get progressively worse. That made no physiological sense to me (and still doesn't, really), but I learned from first-hand experience that it's definitely true (at least, for me).
To me, every time I relapsed after 30 or 60 days it seemed as though my tolerance should have weakened in the meantime so that it should take less alcohol for me to feel the effect. In fact, the opposite was true. Each time I relapsed I needed more and more. It was very weird and I still long for a scientific explanation, just out of curiosity.
Whereas I came into AA drinking 2 bottles of wine a night (certainly not OK, but not life-threatening in the short term), each relapse got worse until in my last relapse I was drinking straight vodka, and that continued in very large quantities for several days on end. I ended up in the ER with a BAC of 0.31. To give context, the range of 0.35-0.40 is when a lot of people stop breathing. In all of my days of drinking, I had never drank that much. When I went to the hospital I still had a double-sized bottle of vodka in the kitchen that I would have finished had not someone intervened.
Now I fully accept the progressive nature of relapses. Knowing that I almost died, and so by that logic any future relapse could result in me actually ending up dead, has helped keep me sober this time. Anyway, I hope my experience is helpful to someone who has stayed sober for a few weeks and is thinking of having "just one," because if they made it X number of days they must have it under control. It's probably not the case.
The nature of relapse as I was taught in college is that when you stop drinking or using or smoking or whatever the drug of choice is the subconscious keeps counting how much you haven't drank and the body has a volume mark that needs to be fulfilled. Go back to drinking and the body and subconscious start doing "catch up" hoping to re-reach that mark as soon as possible. I've not relapsed on drinking but I have on nicotine and the relapse sequence is remarkably identical as I learned it would be in college. Having that information handed to me by those who did the research didn't alter it from being true in fact. Given that information and also the warning I received from my alcoholism assessment...should I return to drinking; I will not likely survive it. It will be a war between my two Higher Powers...Alcohol and God. I'm in fact powerless.
Thanks for your post. You just brought back some frightening memories of my own drinking. The best I can describe it is a runaway train. There are no emergency brakes available to stop. I drank a full bottle of brandy once and I was still not drunk. Alcoholism as I know it today must baffle science. I don't bother with science any more. I just work the steps. It keeps me sane and sober and I don't ask why. If I romance the idea that I could somehow,someday I could drink alcohol again, then I have set myself up for a relapse without even knowing it. My object today is to work consistently and diligently on my recovery. I have to or else I will surely die.
-- Edited by gonee on Tuesday 30th of November 2010 05:25:37 AM
Thanks Everyone for sharing ... cuz' this is what its all about - One drunk talkin to another.
Took me 2 yrs in and out of AA along with suffering and struggling to finally experience what I pray is my last drunk.
AA will mess with your drinking, it sure did mine.
Altho, every time I drank it got worse, and yes more progressive. However my tolerance became so low .. I was stumbling and mumbling on a mere 2 mixed drinks.
Very thankful for the God in my life today and all the ppl in AA.
thank you for your wonderful post GG! and Jerry, your point was an excellent addition that i will share with others, for sure! i am so thankful for this website and all of you. happy to be here and and very happy to be able to enjoy the experience strength and hope of all the sharers, newbies, oldtimers, and those in between. jj
Mahalo Gonee and thanks all for the responses. I am grateful to science because they provided the exclamation point to the answer that I was and am alcoholic. Where and when I doubted the program and the programs message I thought I would get that doubt quieted once and for all from college. College got me beyond my oppositional defiant personality that provided convient excuses to listen and not accept. In college I found the definition to that part of my condition that fed my denial...chemically tolerant was the physical proof I used along with my family and drinking groups to consider myself not alcoholic.
That part you shared about drinking the whole bottle and not appearing drunk is a large part of my story and the reason I stay close to program and hang with relapsers. That was me and I found out that I could often not appear drunk and at the same time be close to death.
Science as I have come to understand it and use it to inform sponsees and those outside of the program who have a need to know and understand also is a grateful tool...otherwise the sponsee might be closer to their next drunk and the public person non-supportive of our recovery efforts and value.
The disease of alcoholism actually progresses in our bodies even when it is in remission (although no external symptom emergence, until (unless) we move into the relapse process). Kinda like the way fat cells strive to fill themselves back up even after the weight is lost. If we start eating even a tiny bit more, or off the food plan, we gain back what was lost and so much more. Same with nicotine, gambling, most forms of addiction. Eternal vigilance, willing to go to any lengths, day at a time. Thank God. (That seems to help LOL)
-- Edited by leeu on Tuesday 30th of November 2010 07:04:29 PM
In Recovery and Relapse it tells me"that the progression of recovery is a continuous uphill journeY,without effort ,we start our slide down the hill again,but the real kick is that the progression of the disease is ongoing ,even during abstinence!!Just when you may think you got it DOWN PAT....! LOOK OUT!!!!
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Selfishness-self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles.
Mike, someone in one of my meetings shared what I thought was a great analogy for that idea: Recovery is like walking up a down escalator. You have to keep moving forward just to stay in the same place, and if you just stand still you will be carried back down.
I must have relaped every day for at least the last few years. Every day I would wake up feeling like UGH and I would tell myself that I am not droinking today. And by the lunch hour I would be getting what I thought i wanted. And the phenom. Would take over and I would not stop .couldn't !. My problem is in my mind . There are blank spots and that strange mental twist that will always win out .no matter how great the need or wish . Just doing the next right thing got me drunk going to meetings .getting put on paper twice , anabuse ,drug tests .every non spirtual way .and a few spirtual .failed utterly in rapid succesion.I had to get to that place of helpless hopelessand let someone show me where my thinking was and some times still is screwed up. When I fully got to the place where I had but two choices .really it was no choice at all do this or die .I have not had to suffer another day since . Thanks to some people who showed me self sacrafice.unselfish and constructive actionthat allowed me to gain access to a power greater than me and greater than my disease.they took time out of there busy lives and walked me thruthese twelve steps .and I am truly a free man . In so many ways . Fears gone resentments mastered honesty check unselfishness thanks to my god. Ten eleven and twelve after a fearless morale inventory and taking it to my sponsor .who showed me where my dishonest mind was trying to kill me! Now I am willing to give all of it away to safe someone else .at least give what was and still is being giving to me daily.
