Monday, July 9, 2012

Spoiler Alert: Self-Justification

Don’t get between me and the next drink. When I’m drinking, this is dangerous territory. And my disease was a great coach. It taught me how to use my charm as a weapon. To get what I wanted. When I wanted it. 
People, Places and Things (potential triggers in my recovery) were tools in my addiction. The forests were the trees in my disease, Louise.
Please, oh please Mr. Bartender, just one more for the road? Please? 
(Sotto): I like Jim’s “And my disease was a great coach.” I can almost hear ‘the coach’ saying things like, “Okay, Jim, shoot a few more baskets and I’ll take you and the rest of the team out for a pizza and some pitchers of beer.”
Easy, peas-y. Not too disease-y.
"Warning: Alcoholism Ahead"
There were no signs posted on the road my life was taking as I grew up. Even the supposed 'cultural revolution' of the sixties (and early '70's): the Beatles, Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, Women's Liberation and that whole ball of wax. No Warning Signs there. Or ignored, at best. 
Alcohol was not only socially acceptable (as was smoking cigarettes, really), it was expected. Alcoholism, like a thousand and one other subjects, was a taboo. 
The rooms of my childhood and adolescence were not big enough for all the elephants in those rooms. And the elephants in this room, the room that I am in right now, will not be recognized by me except in retrospect. 
 
Self-justification becomes a way of life.
 
from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 49)

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