Hi, I’m An Alcoholic — Let’s Party! That’s the TMZ title that headlines an article about recent rehabbers like Lindsay Lohan hitting the night clubs and party scene as if getting back to business as normal. Even if my favorite pal hadn’t already fell of the wagon (check out who’s swigging from the bottle if you aren’t sure yet), it was most likely a given by the way she continued leading the life less sober.
The old school saying is change your people, places, and things if you want to maintain sobriety and old school is right on the money. The explanation for this tried and true saying is also the answer to why there is such controversy over the disease concept of alcoholism and debate for even a simple agreed upon definition. Many people want to pigeon hole alcoholism as an act or aberration that can be easily understand, categorized, and by some even easily cured, but this is not realistic. Sobriety is not the solution to alcoholism, just as insulin is not a cure for diabetes. Alcoholism is pervasive, both a way of life and a way of thinking, one cannot just quit drinking or expect recovery to happen overnight. Recovery must touch every part of our life or our brains and our disease will fall back into the old patterns.
As an alcoholic, every decision I made was based on the availability of my drug. To break this pattern I had to start life anew and begin to form new patterns of thought and positive ways of coping. This would not have happened if I had continued to live as I did before as an alcoholic, but had attempted just “not to drink”. As long as Lindsay continues to live the life less sober she will remain at the mercy of her disease; a disease that will lead to more misery, arrests, and a failed career… a life less happy.
