Due to my current industry of employment, I have front- row seating to watching many people drink. It's odd.. How bizarre to be an alcoholic in recovery and be surrounded by booze. I have learned many valuable things through this experience. First and foremost- I AM an alcoholic. Truly, deeply, always have been, always will be. Every once in a while I am flat out floored by peoples restraint. I bring a glass of wine or martini to a customer, and it's still there being slowly enjoyed 15 minutes later. WHAT?!? You're not ready for another??? We have a whole bar here- there's plenty more. Or the people that have 1 or 2 and stop drinking. Or the people who leave an unfinished drink on the table?!? I often wonder at these things that are completely foreign ideas to me and think 'what's the point?', or 'how can you just sit there enjoying just 1 glass of wine??'. It highlights by own very twisted, disordered, and diseased relation to alcohol. Sometimes it's like an episode of 'Animal Planet' where I'm watching these strange creatures with a normal relationship to alcohol, and I'm studying them from afar thinking 'ahhh- how strange and unusual they are!... Interesting'. It reminds me that I was never, never a 'normal' drinker. The obsession would overtake me and I had full tunnel vision. I had to have drinks lined up... Where's the next one, and the one after that?? Panic would set in if I was halfway through a drink and didn't have the next one in front of me. I will always be this way... I must not ever forget that. I don't even want to be a normal drinker- what would be the point of that?? So, I'll just watch people who are in confusion and bewilderment - never forgetting that I will never be one of them. Today, I am grateful to be sober:)
-- Edited by Col on Wednesday 12th of June 2013 02:37:10 PM
I don't get it either. I literally cannot conceive of nursing a martini or a glass of wine through a meal and being okay with that. I guess, for me, if I wasn't getting drunk I always felt like there was no point to drinking alcohol. If a little bit is a good, a lot must be better, right? My wife does it all the time and it astounds me. She'll sit down with a glass of wine and over the course of an hour slowly sip the whole thing. Or, if a new bottle of wine "tastes funny," she'll pour it down the sink. In my former life I couldn't fathom doing that and, no matter how it tasted, would down anything she didn't want. I once asked her, point blank, what keeps her from getting drunk. I said: "If you feel good having one drink, why do you stop? Why don't you keep going?" She looked at me like I was growing an umbrella out of my nose and said: "Because if I have more than one, I wake up feeling like crap." It's taken getting sober for me to understand how much of a mental illness and obsession alcoholism really is. Anyway, thanks for posting this, Col. When I last worked at a restaurant, I could never understand unfinished glasses of alcohol on the tables. It would DUMBFOUND me. I should have known that wasn't normal :)
-Adam
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When every situation which life can offer is turned to the profit of spiritual growth, no situation can really be a bad one.-Paul Brunton
Umbrella out of your nose...lololol... and how and the heck do we end up with these normies anyway? My husband can have his one can of PBR in his cup holder on the mower for the entire 4 hr job and then dump part of it cuz it got warm. I don't get it, I'm glad he doesn't get me and I'm glad there is AA for me and alanon for him... that's all I know.
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Thanks for everything. Peace and Love on your journey.
They should make a scary movie called "Attack of the Normies!" about a mysterious small Midwestern town where the entire population shares one strange characteristic... the capability of nursing single drinks through meals, leaving half-full glasses of beer behind, and actually being satisfied with one glass of champagne - all while carrying on civil conversation. They may as well be Martians :P Yeah. I don't get it. I'm Adam, and I'm an alcoholic. Nice to meet you.
Adam
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When every situation which life can offer is turned to the profit of spiritual growth, no situation can really be a bad one.-Paul Brunton
LMAO, Adam!!! It IS pretty scary at times. If only these people could hear my inner dialogue throughout these verbal exchanges of 'would you care for another drink?' or 'have a great night! Thanks for coming in!!!' - big smile, as I clear the remainder of their drinks while watching them walk out the door and go on with their lives, all the while thinking 'WHAT is WRONG with these people?? Then reminding myself that I was sitting in an AA meeting 3 hours ago... So perhaps I'm the one with the issues hahaha:)
oh I get it. It's like putting a large glass of orange or tomato juice in front of me. I might not finish it. The key is that "They" are not obsessed over it. Along these lines of thinking. I had to get over thinking that everyone should think, like, come to the same conclusions that, I do. Because, after all, with my all or nothing attitude, I always know the best way, the right answer... and how would anyone with any intelligence think otherwise?
wanna get a real kick form the normies? next time when yer somewhere and offered a drink, tell em," you dont have enough." ive had some pretty weird looks when ive said that.
Great post Col! I love it! I'm in your bucket. I don't get it either. When we would go out with other's and there were some drinks left on the table I obessed about how I could finish all the leftovers without getting caught... Everyone else going about there merry way and I'm stuck in my own head. I totally agree with the "what's the point in having one or a few". If I'm not getting buzzed.... forget it..... not worth it..... stuff taste like sh*t anyways. It's only after a handful that it taste great.
I like what you wrote Dean- I can have a glass of milk with dinner and 90% of the time I don't finish it, usually goes in the fridge for morning coffee. Go figure.............
Good share Col...brings up memories for me; good and sad and enlightening. I was born this way...I drank because I could and I drank often because it was always available and I rarely let a drinking go unfinished...not mine all of mine were finished...I mean the ones left unfinished by others. I felt some guilt and shame about that when I got into recovery and then that diminished when I came to fully accept the disease I was born into. I had lots of justifications to "clear the counter" after the guests left for where ever and honestly I "didn't know that I didn't know anything about alcoholism". The disease almost killed me and didn't. In order for me to understand more than what the program was giving me I went to college to study alcohol and drug addiction. It was in my early classes that I found out I was compulsively addicted to a poison and that was why being drunk was also called "intoxification" or under the influence of a poison. I learned what it did and how it affected my mind, body, spirit and emotions and how mixed with my compulsive personality and my physical tolerance the chances of living beyond my addiction was insured only by a power greater than myself as exposed to me in the program of recovery. One gratitude I have is that I am not a normie elsewise I probably would never have arrived at the sobriety and serenity and sanity I have today. HP works in cunning, powerful and baffling ways. There wasn't a drink or brand of drink I would not consume given the opportunity. Soooo glad I am not longer green. Great share ((((hugs))))
I didn't get it but now I do. The earthlings out there have a different attitude. My sister will take a glass of wine and half way thfough will pour it down the sink.
My gf will open a half pint bottle of cider and take three or four days to finish it.
Both will very rarely get off their faces....usually on three drinks.
One of my brothers has every february dry. Rest of the year he's a bottle of wine a night. The other brother was told to quit alcohol for his health two years ago. He went from four pints a night to zero overnight.
Now me? I dare not open a box of chocolates or a can of peanuts or a tub of ice cream because I allus end up scarfing the lot.
I have a one mug cafetiere a one mug teapot and usually put out a four pint jug of water every morning because there's an unlimited supply in the tap and sure I could drink a bathfull.
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It's not having what you want, it's wanting what you got. BB
My wife bought some sort of liqueur because she liked the bottle. She occasionally likes a nightcap, but this particular drink didn't taste good to her, so she POURED THE ENTIRE THING DOWN THE DRAIN AND USED THE BOTTLE AS A VASE!!!!
That's crazy, lol.
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The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. ---William James
Everyone else going about there merry way and I'm stuck in my own head. 
I totally agree with the "what's the point in having one or a few". If I'm not getting buzzed.... forget it..... not worth it..... stuff taste like sh*t anyways. It's only after a handful that it taste great. 
