Daily Gratitude List 11.4.22

White Lights

I’m grateful for a visit from my daughter. I’m grateful every time I hear “love you, Dad.” I’m grateful for catching up with friends. I’m grateful for reminders of how things were and I’m grateful for how things are. I’m grateful to be sober today.

Happy Friday! And, being as how it is Friday morning, that means that Jane wrote something yesterday, it’s great and you should read it:

Growing Pains: Sober Girls Edition

When I sit down to write this in the morning, there is sometimes a bit of quiet time before one hears the erratic rhythm of my typing. This morning, I kind of feel “written out” and I think it’s because writing about how drinking took over my life and at such a young age, well, it really just leaves me feeling very, very sad and kind of emptied out.

I usually speak very matter of factly about the origin story of my alcoholism. If I qualify at a meeting, I typically just say that I started drinking at 15 or 16 and was a “white light drinker.” That’s my pet phrase, Dr. Ruth Fox, who wrote an amazing book in 1955 titled simply, “Alcoholism: Its Scope, Cause and Treatment” describes someone like me as a “Primary Addict:”

The primary addict, from his first introduction to beverage alcohol, uses it as an aid to adjust to his environment.

Alcoholism, p. 142

She goes on to describe me a little more thoroughly:

The primary addict is one in whom the predisposing traits are so developed and so sharply marked that his first recourse to this socially approved narcotic is only a matter of time..In the case of the primary addict, the decisive symptom, loss of control, appears early in his drinking history. Thereafter, his own sense of self-esteem, depreciated to begin with, will take a merciless pounding…If he thought he was unworthy before, now he is given proof.

Alcoholism, p. 143-44

Well, that pretty much sums up teenaged me. The Big Book talks about alcoholics reaching the point of no return, for me, that happened frighteningly early. I had no idea where I was headed or how long I would struggle. I had no idea there was even a line I crossed. The horrible thing is that I think, even if someone blessed with foreknowledge of all of the pain and struggle and heartbreak that was waiting in front of me had been siting in that awful black vinyl booth with me at Magoo’s that night back in 1981, I’m pretty sure I would have still ordered that third drink. I see now that I never had a choice. I did what I thought was necessary and once I crossed that invisible line, well, it became an imperative: A full year of sobriety was still 40 years away.

So, yeah, thinking and writing about that leaves me feeling pretty sad and empty. The sadness is for someone who took on the burden of a terrible secret way too early. Keeping that secret for so long cost him a lot and was a very, very lonely business. I know him pretty well, he never meant to hurt anyone, and that’s still the hardest thing he carries around. He just knew he didn’t fit in the world as is and he did the best he could.

Thanks for Letting Me Share