Post
by Mark. » 19 Aug 2011 23:35
Yes, I agree, Boris: the balance will be different for each individual, in terms of how they can influence their whole life. However, within that whole life there are component areas: things we can change, as well as the things we can't. (I know you aren't arguing any differently to that, by the way. I'm just thinking aloud...)
I can't, for instance, improve through any effort of will-power alone the employment situation here in this neck of the woods, thereby creating more jobs I can apply for. It's a shame, but it's just one of those things - so I'm better off accepting that the situation is beyond my control, and pursuing whatever alternatives exist. Better to do this than to become embittered about it all, I think. (I'm using a personal example here, and in no way comparing it to the previously-mentioned extreme scenarios, such as a person being held under torture.)
However, as far as alcohol goes, I certainly do have a choice. It was a very hard choice to make at first (not just regarding the process of stopping, but also in learning, or acknowledging, why I had to stop).
I did it because I had to - and also because I could. Stopping drinking didn't solve every problem in my life: I can't change everything that affects me, I agree. However, it was an area of my life that was rotten, loathsome and deleterious but that could be changed. It was also an area that had trapped me in both physically and psychologically addictions: addictive thoughts that conned me for a long time into thinking that things could never change. I could change my drinking behaviour, though - but I count myself lucky that I finally saw that this was possible. Sometimes, I look back and find it incomprehensible that I was at least (and at last) able to peer through that thick, heavy haze of dependency and see that there was a life beyond it: a life that I could grab if I was quick and strong enough. Strong enough to seek help, at any rate. I couldn't have done it alone.
This is a bit of a ramble, sorry! Next point...
I went back to your first post, Jo, and it struck me that I could describe my own upbringing in exactly the same terms. Although, I'd probably be a bit more upbeat about my childhood and describe it more readily - and possibly more naively, gullibly - in more glowing terms.
But to do that only makes me even more baffled as to how and why I ever ended up with a drink problem - a collosal thirst for getting absolutely sh*tfaced as often as possible. If my childhood was so happy, what changed? On whom can I pin the blame for that?
Hm... well, Dad used to allow me a half-pint of beer now and again from an early-ish age. Maybe it was his fault? But, the truth is that he's not a big drinker: not a bad example in that sense. Besides, if he hadn't given me those beers, I might just as easily be berating him for not encouraging a sensible, moderated approach to drinking by making it seem like a taboo that I wanted to break?
So perhaps it was to do with growing up in a small village where everyone knew everybody else's business and the pub was the social focal point, and there was a heavy drinking culture? Well, that doesn't sound too likely either. I do, it's true, have a self-destructive reflex, but if everyone knows everybody else's business, getting plastered in the village pub isn't a great idea, because word soon spreads. And it did. And I'm a shy kind of guy: being the butt of gossip's the kind of thing I hate most. But that didn't stop me.
Hm, so then you (oops, I mean: I) get down to the nitty-gritty of the one or two "traumatic" situations on which one might hang one's blame. These, possibly, weren't my fault, and have affected me in lots of ways ever since.
But, ultimately, (and this is a waffle based entirely on my own experience - I totally accept that others suffer far worse trauma than I have, trauma that needs to be handled in an ongoing way, with professional guidance), there isn't anything I can do to change the past, so there doesn't seem a great deal of point in obsessing about it to the point where it endangers both the present and the future. In one sense, it's almost immaterial who "caused" my drink problem: my genes, myself or others. I've had to deal with a drink problem, that's for sure; but dealing with it is of more practical consequence than working out who caused it in the first place. Or at least, of more use than obsessing bitterly over who or what caused it. And if it was caused by someone else, feeling embittered about it will only mean they've messed me up twice: firstly in "causing" me to drink too much, and secondly in poisoning my thoughts, my present chances of happiness.
It's ok (and good) to examine the past, and I have learned to analyse and process it through various means other than drinking to excess. Studying the past can help us refrain from making the same mistakes; it can help us understand the present and assist us in "moving on" from certain issues. But it's only beneficial so long as we don't allow it to impede us any longer: in blackening our thoughts and - in so doing - adversely colouring the present. I could take any of the "major" issues I've had in my life and try to figure out the percentage balance: was it 10% my fault, 90% someone else's? And was it that which kickstarted my boozing? But - unless I want to do something with that statistic (say, sue the person who was 90% to blame) - it doesn't really help me in any way, does it? Doesn't change anything for the better, necessarily?
I could change my drinking, and I did. I can't change aspects of the past. But - crucially, I think - the past can still change me, and not in a helpful way, if I don't handle it correctly. And one way to ensure I handle the past correctly, is by being observant of the relationship I have with myself in the present: we used to hate each other, me and I, but now we get along pretty fine, most of the time. And there's a reason for this: we take a little bit more care of each other nowadays, and try and check on how one another feels a little more often; we talk to one another, rather than thinking, night after night: "F* this, I'm away down the offie so I can get too trollied to talk to you."
Lawks a-mercy, I really have waffled, haven't I? Plus, I've just admitted to talking to myself on a regular basis!
Anyway, I don't know that I have a conclusion, and even if I did it would probably mean something only to me.
But I'll post anyway, 'cos it's good to talk - even if only to one's self, hee hee. I shall continue to think about all this, and see if I can't think of anything more sensible (and shorter) to say on the subject!
Apologies for waffling!
Mark
"Addiction doesn’t go away when we stop drinking." ~ Tai
i guess though, that creating identities is what we're doing as drinkers, and by sobering up we're giving ourselves the opportunity to create a different one, one that we actually want to be, and with whom we can have a good relationship. hard work though.
) 
!
