>Hi Neil,
>
>You are the first to identify the real problem, or at least the first to say so. True confessions time, then. I have been drunk all week. This is exactly what I was afraid would happen. I thought the motivation of working and making money again would be enough, but evidently not. The first two weeks went well. This week, off the wagon in a big way. I honestly have no explanation other than that it's a disease.

I've told you privately what I think about all this, so just want to make a general observation publicly about the idea of addiction as a "disease" .

I completely agree that there are metabolic components that cause some substances to become rapidly addicting to some people and to encourage using until the user or the substance is exhausted.

I can drink a couple of drinks and not do it again for a year. An alcoholic cannot. That part is the disease or lack of it. There are things I know I cannot do - even a little - unless I want to do them waaay more than is good for me - or anyone.

The sober person making choices is not at that moment experiencing symptoms of the disease - though they may be experiencing other parts of personality or experience that makes seeking some kind of escape - or self-destruction - attractive. That's a very different issue.

The time for me to decide how I feel about filling my head with cocaine is *not* when the lines are laid out on the mirror and emphatically not after the first line. There are a whole lot of choices that lead up to that point and a whole lot of reasons why I might make those choices well or not but that isn't part of the "powerless over my addiction". The powerless kicks in when the razor blade starts going tap tap tap. I have power over the choices up til then - the question is whose side am I on?

Choosing badly before the booze or the coke or the whatever has a chance to play on one's "disease" is done for other reasons, having to do with one's relationship with oneself and just whose side one is on in some internal, Manichean struggle.

I say this not to minimize the difficulty, but to separate being an alcoholic from seeking some kind of preemptive self-destructive. Alcoholism/drug addiction/dangerous compulsive behavior is a lot more dangerous if one is looking for a way to screw up or to sabotage one's success or happiness. The "disease" is just the modality and everybody has some disease or another that would do the trick (or in my case a lot of them)

My first wife told me "If you loved yourself half as much as I love you, you wouldn't do that."

Mike, if you were pulling for you as hard as your friends here are, it would make it all a lot easier. You can't do anything about the fact that even a little booze is a danger to you, but I think you should be working on see just what other people see in you that makes them like you more than you do.

I do feel you have more power over this than you are willing to accept - yet. But tomorrow you get a fresh start.