Treatment of alcoholism/ Las Ovejas de Mica

It is not how it begins, it is how it ends that matter.

Perhaps on may occasions the failure of an alcoholic reucperation occurs due to the haste and anxiousness that we have to always hurry things along.

Recuperation is for life. If we try to give up drinking and change our bad behaviour from years and years of drinking or long term abuse, we certainly wont achieve this in a few months.

We must start with the basics when we ask for help and go into treatment because our mind is very confused, saturated and desorientated due to prolonged alcohol intake.

Our learning and our trajectory has always been in a rush, a hurry. Wanting to finish many things at once or making unreachable goals due to the fantasy and destortion of reality that we have been summerged in for many years.

The taking off like a stallion and reaching the finish like a donkey or the Jack of all trades, master of none… must end.

It doesn’t matter what we do, who we are, how we achieve it or how long it takes, as long as what we do is done from the path of sobriety and we measure each step finally doing things the right way without alcohol.

Step by step. Tranquility, patience, security and determination, will make what has to end, end well.
This is the true goal and objective of an ill alcoholic when they want to recover.

MICA

We must always remember; but never recreate, never take pleasure in remembering.

Remembering how we were and realizing how we have changed since giving up drinking. Remembering, making us value our evolution and helping us to stay motivated to continue to stay strong in our recuperation.

On the other hand recreate (enjoy remembering) has a whole different affect altogether: it weakens us and could incite us to relapse, fall of the wagon.

To recreate is to delight and feel good sensations remembering the good and positive points when we were actively drinking (few and far between and completely overestimated) and forgetting all about the bad times, moments, scenes we caused while hurting others in the proscess.

When we recreate, we visualise the memory of a situation and in the case of alcohol it could be that we remember it with reward associations.

So we end up remembering but we are at risk of reliving this memory with yearning, because we may continue to think of drinking as something gratifying.

This is why we must always remember but completely avoid recreating ourselves in this memory, especially if it is about drinking. We should always be aware that it is nothing more than a trick of the mind because in reality we know deep down that it is exactly this that was destroying our life.

MICA

No pit stops

The personal improvement and growth that we go through when we give up alcohol and break the habit, has no place for negotiation, pauses, breaks or pit stops.

It must be constant, determined and persistent because this is the only way that we will remain firm and anticipate possible warning signs or alarms that our own mind is scheming so that we will drink again.

It has been true, tried and tested that a high rhythm of discipline is required and needed to learn to live without drinking, in this alcoholic society, so pro alcohol, where drinking is the norm and the order of the day, but if one really wants to give up drinking, they can and more, it is more than possible.

For that reason… no ‘pit stops’, breaks or possible negotiations should be considered during the process because the word negotiation in alcoholism means nothing more than ‘excuse’.

MICA

Leave the hell of alcohol behind? Why not?
Nothing is impossible!!!

Many people each day take this decision, accept that they have a problem, look for help, start treatment and… THEY recuperate.

It is true that the tendency of thought in respect to alcoholic recuperation is very pessimistic and defeatist: The NO’s outweigh the YES’s. The failures and disasters always make more noise and are noticed considerably more than the success stories.

In the title I stressed the concept ‘hell’ because that is exactly what this illness is: Hell on earth! Not only for those who suffer from it but also for all who care for them as well.

I never tend to give advice as I don’t feel precisely adequate to do so, but today I am going to take the risk: If you are messed up because of your drinking, if this is producing frequent or continuous consequences, if drinking no longer makes you feel good and is destroying you, … don’t listen to anyone that doesn’t know what they are talking about or don’t be fooled by the popular social or stereotype opinions chained to the pre-historic mentality. Take your mental ‘belongings’ look for a professional, tell them without lying about your problem, let them help you… and begin to leave the depth of the bottle behind.

Possible? Of course it is! Who says otherwise?

Difficult? Complex and in need of much effort, but difficult… difficult I think would be to walk on water, for example!

Come on, don’t lose hope, try it, grab this chance, get to work and achieve it!!!

MICA

Future alcoholics

How is an alcoholic ‘fabricated’? When they continually deny that they have a problem with alcohol, minimizing the consequences of their behaviour, taking away the importance of their drinking, trivializing and bragging that it will never happen to them and especially by comparing themselves with everyone else.

“Why ask for help, if you aren’t or don’t consider yourself so ill like the rest of us?” – I generally ask with sarcasm to those people who are surrounded by other alcoholics in rehabilitation, those who doubt that they are as ill, not as bad as the rest of us.

You don’t have to be an ill alcoholic or have a dependency, an abusive or compulsive form of drinking, drink each day, have the shakes or convulsions when you need your fix or to be constantly glued to the bottle to have serious and grave consequences for your drinking. It is enough that each time you drink, you lose control for example. It may be that you are not chronically ill and with treatment you can look for a remedy or can avoid getting any worse, but if suffering the first physical, psychological or social consequences, you don’t take heed and treat it with the seriousness that it deserves it is probably only a question of time before you become ill with alcoholism.

Comparing yourself with others is not a good way to measure the graveness of your drinking. Each ill alcoholic is distinct, drinks distinctly, gives different excuses and justifies their drinking in different ways.

Although we know the same old phrase that not all drinkers will end up alcoholics, we should never forget that all alcoholics once were only drinkers of alcohol.

This illness, alcoholism, does not warn us when we are going to become ill. But yes it does give us a heads up by giving us warning signs, through the way we behave, the reason why and the way that we drink.

For that reason, when something is not quite right about the form of drinking… it could mean that we are ‘preparing’ a future chronic ill and irreversible alcoholic.

MICA

Solitude in company

We ill active alcoholics are always alone but at the same time surrounded by a multitude of people
We are always alone although it seems like we have lots of friends and acquaintances, we like to talk, greet and mix with many people because our life is always in the heart and soul of everything, always drinking with loads of different people and through this we end up getting to know many people and places in many different environments.

But all this is just a fallacy and lies. These people are not our friends because our real friends and the people who care about us sadly for how harsh this sounds, no longer want to be by our side because they feel sad, ashamed or fearful for us.

A true friend would not put up with us. Would not stand seeing us so drunk under the influence of alcohol, talking incoherently (complete drivel) or accept our out of order behaviour.

The external appearance of an alcoholic fools many. In reality nothing is ever as it seems.

When the effects of the alcohol wear off it is indescribable the sensation of solitude and emptiness that torments, tortures us.

Constantly being drunk, intoxicated we seem like we are amusing extroverts, very social and friendly, but the reality is quite a different story altogether, these ‘qualities’ are only because we are drinking, tipsy or drunk. Normally we are the complete opposite when the effects wear off: Unsociable, unfriendly, gruff and unsupportable. What happens is the alcohol hides all this crap. We are only interested in being social with the bottle.

I know that there are many people who are ill and don’t have this pattern of drinking that I have described: another type of drinker who rather than socialising they drink secretly in their homes, I don’t mention them because the form that they drink speaks for itself, alone and hidden.

Let’s not fool ourselves anymore with false justification and convincing ourselves with this false impression at the end of the day we all know deep down: Alcohol is the road to absolute solitude and loneliness.

MICA

The best drug invented?

Perseverance.

Perseverance: Firmness or determination in manner or behaviour.

What word so simple to pronounce and so complicated to execute.

I confess that I am lost for synonymous and I have found it difficult to include others in the same context without confusing them, like persistence, determination, tenacity, insistence, etc. but finally I am convinced that it is possible to reduce and summarize all in the same word.

Why do I give so much importance to perseverance, to the point of comparing it to a drug, when talking about alcoholism? Because no matter how different we ill alcoholics are, with different types of drinking and distinct profiles, finally… we all follow the same pattern of behaviour in common.

To be ill with alcoholism no matter what phase we are in, we always head towards fantasy, false expectations, unreachable goals, abandonment and letting things and yourself go (rendition), projects, promises and illusions based on the effects of alcohol, that incite us to dream outside of reality. The consequence is always the same: All that we plan or want to do… finishes quickly and never stops being something temporary. That is how we function, jumping from one idea to the next, emotion after emotion, converting us into very unstable people that follow the law of ‘minimum effort’ (immature, impatient, looking for quick results, the quickest way possible, always taking shortcuts to do the least work or effort possible…)

Then one day, no matter what the motive (conditioned or obligated, desire to improve, fear or illusion) we decide to finish with this life sentence that has us slaved to this illness and we decide to get better, heal and recuperate.

So although the habitual resistance to give up our drinking tries to stop us, we finally take the step of doing what they tell us or suggest to us so that we can leave this hell on earth of alcohol behind. At the beginning accepting professional help and also from people who have been through the same experience as yourself and finally everything starts to go well. But if we forget about the concept of the ‘process’ which is hard and long and needs a hell of a lot of effort, sooner or later the necessity to drink will win against the illusion of recuperating.

For that reason the importance of perseverance is vital. It is the antidote for when these ‘tired of everything’ comes along or more a form of anticipating when this is going to happen. So each day we must take this pill of perseverance (the good and the bad days, the normal, the sad and melancholy, the euphoric and victory) always remembering that it is difficult enough that the shadow of the bottle is always waiting in the shadows of our mind to catch us off-guard.

MICA

❤

Lies; no matter how ‘white’ they are, they are still lies.

We are so used to mint the concept of ‘white’ lies, where we soften and lessen the significance of them, that at time times it seems that we should say we are sorry that they have actually lied to us.

The ‘white lie’ is a weapon very common in how an ill alcoholic acts and behaves: They lie to…

They lie in the amounts: We (alcoholics) lie for the guilt, for fear of the reprisal, to not cause worry… always only admitting the half of what we have drank when we are asked.

We lie about the time we dedicate to our drinking: if we have been drinking for hours, we always say that it has only been for a little while and that someone else always is to blame for our arriving late.

We lie about who and where we were: because this would be telling the truth about what we were really doing.

We lie to lie, to the point where the truth gets lost in the story.

This is how it begins, lie after lie growing and growing alongside our career of consumption, to not upset or to be found out… until one day after so much lying we forget what is actually real and what is not.

The ‘white lies’ those that we use as excuses at times, that don’t seem too bad or hurtful because they are justifiable, in alcoholism these are highways with ‘very little white’ about them. These are actually the true highways to hell.

MICA

Nothing is wrong… until something happens.

A grand example of what is the extreme maximum of ‘bad’ drinking.

The ‘hi hi, ha ha defence, taking the drama out of it, making it seem like something normal, frivolity, using funny made up stories distorting the reality of it, exaggeration of the benefits and gratifying effects of the substances, social comparison (everyone drinks, the whole world over…), making it fashionable, appealing and the clinging on to that it has always been traditional, social, cultural since for ever… and that is how we go, coninuing in a ‘crescendo’ increasing and designing a society who is losing the plot with each day that goes by making it more and more crazy.

Interests? I suppose!

This is starting to get out of hand. It is indifferent to me (frankly I don’t give a damn) that they label all the people, those who try to stop, inform or make others aware of this problem, exaggerated and melodramatic because at the end of the day I think that we are falling short and underestimating the depth and growth of this problem.

One thing is talking about it another very different, is accepting what is really happening out there on the street.

Finally at the end of the day… Like always! We only become more aware or we believe that this is really going on, happening when it comes knocking on our own door, when it gets too close for comfort affecting someone close to us.

Because of this it is very difficult to create a base for the future generations; not by prohibiting, but at least by letting them know and understand the true consequences... the dangers of abuse, prolonged drinking or the loss of control.

Until then life goes on: Nothing is wrong… until something happens!!!

MICA

I have never known anyone who has rehabilitated with only good intentions.

The good intentions, the attitude and predisposition, are indispensable to recuperate but not sufficient.

We should not ‘trust’ too much in the word rehabilitation as it may cause confusion. We associate rehabilitation with a period of time that progressively cures some illness (normal we use it with more frequency when talking about broken bones or traumas) but in the case of alcoholism with it being an incurable and irreversible illness we should refer to it in a more ample context that can be summarized as a learning phase of understanding and enjoyment to know how to enjoy and live life again without the necessity of alcohol.

All ill alcoholics normally have very good intentions but the necessity to drink is much more powerful than any will-power.

This is where so many relapses or abandonments of programs and treatments in this phase of rehabilitation: The ill alcoholic maintains a period of abstinence because they force the situation, where their body ends up detoxed but their mind continues to be soaked in alcohol. This stops them from acquiring a true commitment with themselves, when they are actually only following the treatment on many occasions to demonstrate and please others, to calm stormy waters with the people who care about them or ‘just having a rest’ until all the upset blows over.

If during this first phase of learning and understanding of the illness we don’t understand that this is for the rest of our life, that we have been beaten by the alcohol, that it will always be more powerful than us, no matter how much time we have stopped drinking; we will finally end up drowning inside a bottle again.

For this reason even though there are good intentions to recuperate… there is a whole lot of work, illusion, struggle, commitment and especially perseverance needed.

MICA

Game over

The phase of ‘GAME OVER’ no more credits; is the phase where there are no chances left.

Where everything is finished: the trust, the credibility, the excuses and lies, the tricks and schemes, the false explications, the fantasy, the promises, the breached oaths, the opportunities… EVERYTHING!!!

It is the moment of truth.
It’s your choice: you recuperate or you drink and self-destruct!!!

We ill alcoholics offer a lot of resistance in considering that we are really ill and we avoid at all costs getting help and treatment, looking for obstacles or alternatives that let us continue to drink. Even though to do so we end up alone, with no friends, with nothing.

This illness can stay hidden or disguised during a very long period of time while the consequences are still not so dramatically exaggerated or simply we are still able to camouflage ourselves as being just another social drinker.

But what happens is that man is a social being and being social is incompatible with frequent prolonged drinking, abuse or loss of control with alcohol.

This signifies that each time it gets more and more difficult to fool everyone else, no matter how manipulative and good liars that we are. The time will come when our power of cheating and seduction (our skill of being charming snakes) will no longer be enough to convince anyone any more, not even to ask for help when we are interested.

This is when, making reference to those old arcade videogames, when on the screen of our life appears those famous words ‘GAME OVER’ we all know that our credit has run out.

With alcoholism… more or less the same!

MICA

Better? At least not any worse!

We treat this illness so lightly at times that many act like they have given up drinking ‘but with conditions’.

If it wasn’t enough to give up drinking to save or recuperate your LIFE, that our minds have shrunk through the constant intoxication, we dare to have internal negotiations: I will give up drinking to… recuperate my partner, demonstrate that I can do it when I like, find a better job, calm all the people who have reproached me, to look for a better life, solution the problems that I have…

Rubbish! It doesn’t work that way!
This is how it goes: If you have become ill with alcoholism, you are screwed. You have no right to demand or negotiate near future changes, you must just simply take the responsibility of recuperating your life, that is if you don’t want to die or arrive at an situation that is so extreme there is no going back!

Obviously to recuperate… you must give up drinking. Excuse my sarcasm, but I have never known anyone who has recuperated from alcoholism without giving up drinking.

Once you start the whole process, that implicates an alcoholic recuperation (detox, rehabilitation, break the habit, conduct, social company and toxic environments) little by little, but with a firm footing, you must learn to live without drinking, only then will you be able to create real goals and reachable objectives.

For now, give up drinking because if you don’t… it is a chronicle of a death foretold.

As I mentioned in the title, this rhetorical question that we all ask, am I and things going to get better? Well personally I don’t have the answer for anyone not even for myself, but one thing I know for sure: Things won’t get any worse; is that not enough!

MICA

Keep your troubles to yourself

It is well known that we pay more attention to appearances than reality, although we tend to deny it.

Alcoholism is the ‘perfect illness’ to demonstrate this:

When someone is always cheery in a good mood, seems to be sure of themselves, appears to have a happy go lucky character and as being so outgoing gives us the impression that they are happy that they have it ‘all together’, that they can affront and give solutions to any type of problem or adversity that falls into their path and moreover that they have the capacity of being indifferent and can easily take the drama out of any obstacle, comments or crisis and at the same time gaining the approval of others;

But if all this is when they are under the influence of alcohol… NONE of it is real!!!

An ill alcoholic can’t be happy, they will never be able to feel good about themselves, they will always be emotionally unstable, all that exterior façade, front that they put on will finally fall down because it has all been built on a base of pessimism, defeat, frustration and self destruction.

While the alcohol still allows them, they can still cover up and camouflage their ‘disastrous interior’. All their fears, dread, anxieties, insecurities, and lack of self esteem which have all been drowned deep in the depth of a bottle one that no one else can see, but in time they will finally float to the surface and demonstrate that this has all been a charade, this external happiness that they so wanted to sell and finally this personality so fragile and ill will emerge which has been for so long hidden or shielded behind each glass of alcohol.

Always when we feel ‘envious’ of this so perfect, wonderful life that some people try to sell or transmit to us, we should always stop for a moment and check if there is a drink on hand, because it could well be that we are judging too hastily or anticipating too much; maybe where we see well being and security there is nothing more than conflict and suffering.

Keep your troubles to yourself in the case of alcoholics, we agonize insist on being something that we are not… in reality we are the complete opposite: we are ill people who have been beaten by a bottle.

MICA

Alcoholism: open all year round, 24 hours, 365 days a year. Always open!

The gravest error when thinking about this illness, that exists in this society in general, is to think that someone is an alcoholic only when they are drunk.

The intoxication in fact is permanent, not temporary. One thing is when we look at the most noticeable effects of drinking when we are under the influence of the abuse and another is the state of the ill person in general.

We alcoholics are ill 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

It could be that we don’t constantly stagger around drunk or simply move in a constant state of inebriation. It could be that we don’t actually need to drink each day or only drink in small doses to keep our illness ‘alive’ and by that we avoid the consequences of the abstaining or alleviate the anxiety that the drinking has produced. It could be that we still haven’t lost control or that our tolerance is not so elevated, that although we have had large amounts to we drink we seem like we haven’t even had a drink at all. But it won’t be long before it takes its hold, if we don’t do something rapidly about it.

The other effects (those that are not so visible), I dare to say are the worst. The downer, the depression, the sadness, the misery, the anguish, the remorse and the guilt, the shame, the instability, the constant obsession thinking about our next drink, an imperial need to drink again, an uncontrollable desire, thinking that only alcohol can alleviate this internal torture, etc. are one hundred time worse than the actual being drunk.

We must always take this into account when referring to an ill alcoholic.

The ignorance and misunderstanding of this illness invites a mistaken belief of thinking and associating the alcoholic only when they are drinking and their drunkenness. This only causes confusion because an ill alcoholic is constantly unstable (whether they are drinking or not) and they suffer in both states.

“He/she only gets angry or nervous when he/she is drunk, but when he/she is sober he/she is a wonderful, caring good person…”

- This is one of the statements that best explains the contents of this article, where it indicates the true symptoms of this illness: When actively drinking, they are unbearable, insufferable, embarrassing, offensive, impertinent and on most occasions insulting, behaving inadequately, euphoric, etc., etc. but then when the effects have worn off, then comes the ‘downer’ where they enter in a state of conflicting nervousness, anxiety, short temperedness, uneasy and anguished, fearful, docile and submissive, remorseful and with a false humility that makes us feel bewildered and we misread their attitude because it is a completely different story than it was a few hours our days ago. Evidently in this phase of this continuous cycle the ill alcoholic is charming, delightful and lovely and does everything possible to compensate for their previous bad behaviour, looking for forgiveness and approval.

To sum it up, we should never confuse a drunk or intoxicated person with an ill alcoholic, because the latter is emotionally unstable and has erratic conduct and behaviour whether they have been drinking or not at the time, moreover their mind in reality is never free from the visualisation and search for the next drink.

MICA

Onwards and upwards

What is my idea or theory about recuperation? Determination and perseverance!

Everything else… Cheap fairy stories, tall stories that are nothing more than weak excuses.

I often like to work by visualizing, using graphics or analogies of my own reflections and using them to explain how I saw my recuperation and how much effort it cost me to follow it through, this all being clear to me now for quite a few years: I imagined that it was like when an aeroplane takes off; Straight away, now!!! Because if not, the earth beneath my feet was going to destroy me.

So I took this flight with a lot of fear and dread (something that is common among us who take this path). I knew that it was only a one way ticket with no return. I knew that I should anticipate and be aware of the fear, the anguish, the doubts and anxiety that I would suffer, for this reason I had to be prepared.

Once in the air, the plane kept going forward and flew because the motors never halted or were detained by anything. This is where the analogy begins; I felt like I was the plane. It was not important that the physical strength that makes something which weighs so much stay afloat in the air seem quite impossible without falling, but we all know that it exists and if for one minute this machinery were to stop… it wood plummet to the earth. That is how I felt, like someone who no matter what happened; I could ‘not’ detain any of my decisions.

To land? Where? How and when…? Well, this was something that I thought about when I had already travelled many kilometres and was stronger in my conviction.

Once I had passed the initial fear, this flight that had at the start terrorised me now started to become more normal, I learned how to fly and started to distance myself from that hell of a place I had come from.

Returning to earth and leaving the metaphor aside, it is completely clear to me that perseverance and determination is the base of all alcoholic recuperations. Evidently it is necessary to acquire a commitment and a very good understanding of the illness, but to be able to do that we must work, work and work.

I would like to wish you all, a good journey!

MICA

❤

You drink for your ‘nerves’?

There are many people that imagine that drinking calms anxiety and nerves rather than the stereotype of fun and diversion or related social events or occasions.

We call it ‘nerves’ all those insecurities, fears, worries, phobias and situations of anguish, post traumatic symptoms, emotional problems and all that is related in general that produces instability, where we are convinced that alcohol is the only thing that can alleviate, ease or calm this situation.

It is like drinking to medicate yourself. We make alcohol our own special magic medicine, knowing that when we are drunk and under the influence we don’t suffer this torture or invasion of obsessive thoughts.

Well, in the first place, before continuing I must make it clear as crystal that alcohol will not and never take away anxiety, on the contrary it will increase and provoke it even more.

When one drinks this way (this was the way I used it) one enters in such a state of confusion that they no longer know if they are drinking because they are nervous or they are nervous because they are drinking too much.

The shortest definition, most practical and simplest to define an ill drinker is that, they don’t drink for pleasure; they drink for the effect of the alcohol.

We all have problems, fears, uncomfortable situations or ones that surpass us at one point of our life, but this isn’t or never should be a motive to drink. Using alcohol to avoid, hide from yourself like the ‘ostrich hiding its head in the sand’ thinking that no one can see you.

Problems don’t disappear with alcohol. Alcohol does not take them away; it adds to them.

For this reason ‘drinking for your ‘nerves’ is nothing more than an excuse to justify your long term, abusive, unhealthy drinking.

If this is the case it is already too late; get help or treatment now.

I have learned how to walk, to talk….

“I really don’t know, there is just too many difficult or unrealistic, out of reach expectations that we like to propose when we are recuperating from alcohol, forgetting and leaving out the most important ones, the ones that would make the people who love and care for us happy.

Giving up drinking and recuperating should not be a competition or a demonstration of anything, it should simply be just like how the word itself says: A recuperation.

I now, at least don’t walk from side to side, staggering taking ten minutes to walk twenty metres because of being so drunk; like I used to do. Swaying about, hardly managing to keep myself on my feet.

I no longer slur my words, not making any sense, my brain completely out of coordination with my tongue. At least now people understand me and I now speak with a clear head and tongue, because when I was actively drinking I couldn’t articulate or pronounce more than two words at a time.

I no longer give sleepless nights to the people who love me, because now I am conscience of my actions and if something were to happen it would be because of an unfortunate incident not for something provoked by me. That is how I behaved when I was under the influence of drinking alcohol. At least the ‘side effects’ have disappeared the contaminating and transmitting anxiety for the many times they have laid awake knowing that alcohol yet again has won the battle.

At the end of the day, I could put an infinitive numerous amount of examples but I have stuck to the most habitual ones: I have learned to walk, to talk, to not give anguish and worry, to not……………………

For my Mama and all the Mamas and Mums of the world that have gone through or are going through this.

MICA