Your history with alcohol abuse is what brought you to treatment. Due to your demonstrated inability to manage and control your drinking, your life start to be negatively impacted. As a result, your family and friends implored that you seek treatment. Something within you knew that the way you were drinking and consuming alcohol wasn’t normal. Once you started drinking, you couldn’t stop drinking. The more you drank the more trouble you found yourself getting into, the more time you found yourself losing, the more you found yourself wondering why can’t I drink like a normal person? You realized that you needed help so you willingly obliged to go to treatment, give up alcohol for a while, and confront some deeper issues. After you do that, you figured, you should be able to drink normally again.
Perhaps in your drinking career your tried time and time again to cut back on your drinking or quit entirely. Each time you “relapsed” and started drinking again it ended up being as bad or worse than the time before. You were certain each time that this time would be different and that you really would be able to control your drinking after a quick reprieve. Since you hadn’t tried treatment yet, you figured that there must be answers hidden within treatment center walls that will help you find the manageability you need.
Yet, the people in the treatment center have a different idea. They’re using words like abstinence, sobriety, recovery, and relapse prevention. Therapists, group coordinators, counselors, nurses, are all telling you that you can’t drink normally because you’re an alcoholic. Alcoholic’s can’t drink normally because their alcohol abuse has changed the way their brain relates to alcohol. Interestingly, you can stay sober and abstain from drinking ever again by applying tools and techniques to your daily life. Things like yoga, playing an instrument, meditating, working the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, and regularly seeing a therapist are all supposed to help you stay sober. You’re not interested in staying sober. You want to learn how to drink normally again.
A question that most people who are in denial of their alcoholism end up asking themselves in a moment of clarity is- did I ever drink normally? Some people did have periods of “normal” drinking before they started abusing alcohol. Many alcoholics got drunk the first time they had alcohol and never stopped from there. What you’ll realize is that it’s not about drinking normally or abnormally, how much you do or don’t drink, or even how often. Your alcoholism is defined by why you drink. When you drink to cope with difficult emotions, drink to feel better about yourself, drink to feel differently, you’re abusing alcohol. You’ll realize that coping with stress, all forms of it, through the use of alcohol is not normal. Eventually, you’ll realize, that the descriptions of the alcoholics you keep hearing about are more and more like you.
You have nothing to be ashamed of if you are realizing you have a problem with alcohol and might be an alcoholic. Design For Change wants to show you how you can change your life one step at a time, one day at a time, so you can find the freedom you’ve been searching for in sobriety. Call us today for information on our detox and residential treatment programs. (877) 267-3646
