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Do You Drink To Escape Troubles or Worries?

by | Johns Hopkins 20 Questions | 1 comment

(0.31) Death by alcohol
(0.59) Inevitable problems
(1.16) Hiding away
(2.30) The Immortal Alcoholic

Do You Drink To Escape Troubles or Worries is the fifteenth question of 20 in the Johns Hopkins series of videos to see if you are an alcoholic…

Drink-To-Escape-

Drink Up Your Problems in a Big Pine Box

The only way that drink is going to solve YOUR problems is if you drink yourself to death. Your problems will then be someone else’s… usually the “someone else” who cared about you the most!

Self-medication by alcohol was one of the easiest solutions to all my troubles and worries. Mine was a mixture of cowardice and fear, with a dash of self-destruction.

Sobriety returns, every morning… and things are the same… perhaps even a bit worse. Is it time to face reality? Not on your nelly! It’s time for my head to be under the sand again.

I know my problems are getting worse, but as soon as any such thought begins to take shape, my friend alcohol steps in and tells me everything’s gonna be alright, just take a wee sip of this and you’ll be grand!

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein

Keep Running Forever

I always knew my problems would stay with me as long as I drank. They’d change their face a little, but they wouldn’t leave and they would get worse.

There’s a truth in a person hitting rock bottom before they’ll seriously seek out solutions. Non-soluble sober solutions!

I’d tell myself I could deal with things, just not today. I used alcohol as a tool for ultimate procrastination.

I don’t need to do it today, I’ll do it tomorrow.

Tomorrow never comes.

There’s only now.

So there I’d go, one drink would start the ball rolling… a taste of things to come. I could be in the pub, I might be at home, I might be at a mate’s house… it didn’t matter. All heavy drinkers have the same thing in mind…ESCAPE – get me the hell out of here for a while. We’re all running from different monsters but we’re using the same potion to get us there.

How close is potion to poison, by the way?

What-Courage-Looks-Like

The Truth About Problems

The truth of problems and troubles is that without them you don’t learn. You might not remember learning to stand… but you did, we all did.

In your infant mind you didn’t give up after your first attempt saying “BooHooHoo!, life sucks… I’m shit at this… I’ll never be able to stand up on my own, WahWahWah!”. You fell on your arse over and over, and still you’d get up and give it another go until eventually something clicked and there you were… standing on your own two feet.

The same goes with learning to speak. Have you ever tried to learn a second language? I’m doing it now, and let me tell you … it’s really hard! A child learns to speak by speaking. It makes mistake after mistake after mistake, but it persists. It pronounces words like it has a mouth full of marbles, it gets the word order all jumbled up, but it persists.

What Real Courage Looks Like…!

I’ve visited many blogs and websites over the last few months, trying to find answers my questions, or help and tools that I can use to stay sober.

The real heroes and heroines, mostly heroines, are those who have enough love in their hearts to give a lifetime of help to an alcoholic.

If you want to see how to deal with troubles and worries, or look at your problems with a bit of perspective, take a look at the Immortal Alcoholic.

This is a blog about a woman who has dealt with her husband’s alcoholism for over 40 years. In one post, she talks about when Riley was an intelligent and cultured young man with a “huge smile that makes you want to smile right back”.

Then she tells how she visits him in hospital, telling him that “he better do what the doctors requested if he wanted to reach his goal of living until he was 104 and be killed by a jealous husband”. His body lies in the bed waiting to die. He is so slight he almost looks childlike. His hair is matted and grey, he cannot properly open his eyes, his skin is orange, and he smells …
“There is an odor about him that is so distasteful that it makes me back up when I get near him. This is what death by alcohol looks like.”

This is what troubles and worries look like. This is what courage looks like!

Look at the road that stretches out before you!

This was the fifteenth post in the series of articles on the Johns Hopkins 20 questions which was designed for you to self-test and discover if you might have an alcohol problem. If you answer yes to this question and yes to some of the others in the test, you need to take a look at your drinking habits. You can find the master article here: Are You An Alcoholic Questions?

There’s never a right time to quit except now. Go for it! Let me know if I can help!

Until next time…
Onwards and Upwards…
Kev

Download the Transcript of Drink To Escape

Do You Drink To Escape Troubles or Worries Transcript

Watch Other Videos in the Series:

Do You Crave a Drink at a Definite Time Daily?
Does Drinking Cause You To Have Trouble Sleeping?
Has Your Efficiency Decreased Since Drinking?

1 Comment

  1. cmh

    where do I start

    Reply

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