For an alcoholic or drug addict, alcohol and drugs are absolutely no-go areas if we want to stay healthy. If someone had an allergy to – say – peanuts or shellfish, or even to penicillin – they would not take those substances because they know it would make them very ill or even cause such a reaction as to send them into shock and possibly end their life. The addict’s reaction to his or her drug of original choice is the same. If we drink or use, we set up a reaction in our bodies and cannot take these substances like other ‘normal’ drinkers or users. Addiction is progressive.
Progressive
We have the evidence of our drinking or using days to prove that this is the case – we do not need to listen to those who tell us that ‘just one drink’ can do no harm. It can and will. We have seen through experience that the illness is progressive. Even if we went through a period of controlled drinking or abstinence along the way, the fact that we eventually returned to uncontrollable drinking or using is evidence that we cannot drink or use any mind altering substances at all. In this sense, our addiction is incurable – we will not ever be like ‘normal’ drinkers; there is no medication we can take which will mean that we can drink in a social way. Our body chemistry cannot be altered. A pickled onion cannot be turned back into the onion it was when dug up in the garden.
Fatal Illness
We also know for a certain fact that alcoholism and addiction kills. If we have mixed with fellow addicts, we have seen some of them who have not made it. We probably know someone who has died directly of this disease – from liver and other organ failure. We probably also know others who have died whose death may not have been officially linked to their addiction. But we know it was – heart failure, a stroke, an accident, suicide. All causes of death that alcoholism and addiction had indirect links to.
When we were drinking, we could not see this – but we were certainly on a bus that was going to take us there unless we got off.
Can Get Off the Bus
In order to recognise that we can get off, we have to understand that we are on the wrong bus. That we are drinking alcoholically. Then we embark on a simple treatment programme. Living our lives without drinking or using and following the advice and instructions learned by thousands and millions of people who have been there before us. The twelve step programme devised by Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith who set up Alcoholics Anonymous is the most effective treatment known to help addicts to live happy and free lives, removed from the bonds of their addiction.
The Haynes Clinic is an alcohol, gambling and drug rehab clinic which offers detox and counselling for people with addictions. It follows the Twelve Step Programme of recovery.
Call 01462 851414 for free and confidential advice.