Sobriety Detective

Sobriety involves a lot of detective work: searching for clues, making deductions, drawing correlation, quantitative analysis and analytical reasoning. For the mind of the alcoholic, we were in denial and our relationship with drinking was obscured by the compulsive nature of the disease. In so many ways we had to make concessions to continue to feed the disease including minimizing bad things that happened on account of drinking, compartmentalization, blaming bad things on everything/everybody/life so we could be the victim and feel justified to drink (all subconscious), tunnel vision (preoccupying ourselves on one area without all to protect ourselves from having to quit). It appeared that we were the victim and alcohol was our friend, our savior, our relief when, in fact, alcohol had paved these mental pathways to cause us to feel victimized when we were not. So when getting sober you have to go through the crime scene and look at some of these things in a new way.

Ex. A: “Oh, wow, I was giving my partner anxiety just by leaving the house to go to the store (thinking I was going to come home drunk) THAT’S why they were always stressed at me when I’d leave. I always thought they were mothering me or trying to control me when I was the one whose disease had created an unhealthy dependency scenario.”

Ex. B: “Oh, wow, my disease was fabricating reasons to drink by causing unnecessary drama and stirring the pot. Most of my life situations were no more unbearable than the average person’s day to day. In fact, comparatively, I have it better than most people in the world.”

Then further conclusions are drawn. The intent was not there, for instance. I never meant to harm anyone. The knowledge that your innate self is not bad or wrong and that most (but not by any means all) of the bad things you had done were in the course of your drinking life. Could they be related? And I know this sounds like an easy conclusion, but when you have been working for the defense for years acquiring evidence upon evidence to support that alcohol is not responsible, that other people were, that alcohol is the hero, etc., etc. this can be quite a radical notion. It takes a great timely divide to even begin to look objectively as this evidence, but then you start to really deliberate and put the pieces together. However, the disease is always there like the smoothest and best looking attorney of all time (Kahlua Kardashian) and appealing to your every sense. It is only by facts, after the fact, that we are able to see a clear picture and see that alcohol is responsible for our reckless behaviors.