- - -

Sometimes I really want to drink, and I think i'll be fine if I do. Then, visions come of what might happen, where I might end up if I take that first drink. The visions are limited both in number and nature, but they are not good.

I hate that alcoholism is considered by so many to be a disease, at least at AA meetings. If i chose to begin drinking and progressed to such a sorry state, how is it a disease? It isn't like cancer, which simply happens regardless of one's choice to have it or not. I hate that a drinking problem is classified as alcoholism, too. But what is it all, anyway? If the mind, or a part of it, is obsessed, is the bearer of such an obsession sick?

It's painful for me, and i find it ridiculous that it's painful and that hurts even more. I've put myself through a lot because of my drinking. The career i loved is gone, the Craft i love still i can no longer practice, because of my drinking.

I made a promise that if God helped me through this DWI ordeal i would not, will not ever drink again...or something like that. The promise actually went like this: God, if you help me make it through this, i promise i will never drink beer or liquor again.

'Get through this' is a somewhat arbitrary and very vague concept. What i was hoping for was a dismissal of my case, so i could teach and keep my good standing in the brotherhood. What i received instead was sobriety and the blinding clarity of where my life was and what it could be (the latter also being very open-ended), along with the realization that i could not continue drinking like i did and expect to have anything even remotely close to a positive outcome either in court or thereafter. That could be considered a sort of diving assistance, could it not? Liberation? Even though i was convicted and have lost damn near everything?

And so i'm dry as a desert mirage, have been for almost one and a half years. Because of the promise - i will never drink beer or liquor again...it isn't only that i'm under a sacred obligation which has kept me sober. As part of my probation agreement i am mandated to attend at least two AA meetings a week. That is a condition i am bound by law to fulfill, and will fulfill because i have no desire to spend any amount of time in prison. On top of that, though, i could not live comfortably with myself were i to be dishonest, to step into those halls and proclaim, 'My name is Noah and I've been sober for so long,' if in truth i were not.

But, back to the pain - what is the 'it' i am referring to when i write that it's painful for me, that i find even feeling such pain is ridiculous and only compounds the hurt? What hurts is that i feel as though I've willfully cast aside an old friend that i sometimes miss dreadfully, a friend with whom i would be perfectly within my right to rekindle a relationship if i so chose. And why not? After all, the promise was that i would never drink beer or liquor again, not that i would never drink wine (which was not my drink of choice and never caused me trouble). This is the pain, the willful abstinence from something that has caused me so much loss and disillusion even as my heart sometimes clamors for it...not my mind, but my heart. The feeling is akin to that which arises at the thought of a woman whose mere presence is intoxicating, a woman one cannot live without, yet to remain by her side is tantamount to eternal misery and certain doom - if i stay with her, i'll end up killing myself.

It makes no sense.

- - - - - - -

BB p.151