Alcoholism is not the fault of the sufferer.
It is not a lack of will power. It is not being weak. We are not pathetic. Nor are we pointless wasters.
Alcoholism is a chronic, progressive, potentially fatal disease.
Sufferers suffer from it. Their families suffer from it. A condition I have called para-alcoholism.
Many, if not most, of the sufferers are chronically anxious individuals who, try as hard as they might, find living in the real world harder than most. They are anxious all the time. They fear failure. They lack self-esteem. Their primary disease is chronic severe anxiety. Alcoholism is their secondary disease. An unwanted complication from how they deal with their anxiety. The Uninvited Guest.
They turn to alcohol as a means of curbing those daily stresses. They use alcohol as an anxiolytic. Some use food. Some turn to benzodiazepines. Others use harder drugs. We use alcohol.
For a while, alcohol works. It does the trick. The anxiety passes, and they cope. Just.
Gradually, the ‘treatment’ takes an even greater hold on the patient. It takes more and more to keep the anxieties at bay. Eventually, the side effects of not taking the treatment are worse than the anxiety. So you have to take more and more. Just to stop feeling awful all the time.
Inevitably, at some stage, you just feel awful all the time.
Alcoholism starts as a lovely gentle warm soothing of your chronic anxieties. Then it starts to take you over. But you still feel better about yourself. Then you fall into a spiral. A seemingly bottomless funnel. All your control has gone. The treatment has become worse than the disease. Much much worse.
And, in what feels like the blink of an eye, you are doomed.
Because, unfortunately, there is a bottom. And you are well and truly spewed out at the bottom.
No money. No home. No family. No job. No friends. No prospects. No future. No life.
My name is Phillip Thomas.
Welcome to my life. And you would have been welcome to it. Very welcome indeed. After all, I had little use for it. Nor did all those that I had left damaged in my wake.
And then, thanks to the genius of a Frenchman, Baclofen came along.
And now my life is mine again.
