or “Am I an addict?”

Note: this post, and any other post in the “30 day nephalist” category, has been moved from from an earlier blog that documented an important experiment – not drinking for 30 days.

Alcoholism is a disease, but it’s the only one you can get yelled at for having. Goddamn it Otto, you are an alcoholic! Goddamn it Otto, you have Lupus! One of those two doesn’t sound right.

more Hedburg quotes

Dead before 40, funny forever.

Mitch Hedburg, who died early because of his drug use, illustrates an idea central to the 12-step philosophy: Addiction is a “continuing and progressive illness…a disease from which there is no known cure.”

Am I an addict?

I spent five years introducing myself several times a week like so, “Hello, my name is TinyNow and I am an addict.”

Was I being truthful? I was certainly being honest. I abstained from all drugs because I thought, “One is too many, and a thousand is never enough.”  From the NA literature that is read at the beginning of every meeting:

Very simply, an addict is a man or woman whose life is controlled by drugs. We are people in the grip of a continuing and progressive illness whose ends are always the same: jails, institutions, and death.

Grim, isn’t it? But, like I wrote in an earlier post, I have begun to think that I am not powerless, that I am not an addict in the absolute sense.

This topic is particularly difficult to write about because:

1. I want to be truthful as well as honest. Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.
2. I don’t want to be a hypocrite. What, you were an addict then and now suddenly you are not?
3. The truth is hidden in my genes. I believe the growing body of evidence that addiction is an inherited trait, and I am not sure that I’ve inherited it.
4. I don’t want to help you rationalize. If any of you are asking yourselves whether you are addicts, or groping around for excuses to keep using, I don’t want to be the one to supply them.

So…I’m not going answer the question. I might be an addict. I might not.

I can say this.

• I have been more productive these past ten days.
• The cravings I have do seem to come unbidden (as if I was in the grip of some kind of…shall we say…illness.)
• When I am drinking, I drink enough to increase my tolerance.
• I fucked up my life in the past by using too many drugs*.

*When I say drugs, I refer to alcohol as well.

Maybe I’ll commit to defining myself tomorrow. In the meantime…

Day 8

I indulged in a bad habit. Television. What the hell, it was a Saturday. My girlfriend told me that her and her housemate had both decided to abstain from booze for one month! Am I going viral?

Day 9

I rode my bike up a very steep hill and helped build a little porch off my girlfriend’s back door. We ate dinner with friends and I only eyeballed the wine glasses a few times. My girlfriend is on day 7, but her housemate is starting tomorrow

Day 10

That’s today!

So far, so good.

30 day nephalist, overcoming addictions