The Alcoholic’s Medicine Cabinet

Q: What does an alcoholic take for a cold?

A: The same thing he takes when feeling good.

From weddings and funerals to sickness and health, everything was an excuse to drink when I was a practicing alcoholic. Being sick though was special, because it meant I was justified in staying home and “nursing” myself. Always looking for a good excuse to stay in bed, back in the day I could milk a simple cold for a month of lost productivity and an unlimited supply of excuses. The alcoholic’s medicine cabinet is usually stuffed since self medication is the sweet science for the alky, and everything is washed down with the ever present elixir alcohol. Tip: If you put honey in it or mix it with lemon juice, it’s considered medicine not drinking… yeah, right.

In recovery, I’ve had to scale the contents of my medicine way back. Gone are the alcohol heavy cold and cough medicines and even the over the counter sleep aids. These days finding a non-alcoholic cold remedy is not that hard to do, and that’s a good thing because sometimes the desire for the righteous slumber of the desperately ill tempts the rationalization of a shot of Nyquil. It is amazing how tenacious alcoholic thinking can be. Even 15 years into recovery it seems that when I take medicine say for a night-time cold, on the next night, even if I am feeling better, I have a strong urge to take the medicine again anyway. You know, to make me sleep better and ward off any lingering sickness. I can resist the urge, but I am amazed (and maybe slightly embarassed) at just how strong this feeling is.

So these days I try to avoid taking medicine unless it’s really necessary. I may take this rule a little too far sometimes, but the empowerment of abstinence is itself an extremely healthy influence. Now does this mean that an alcoholic that has taken a medicine with alcohol has relapsed? Absolutely not and particularly so when under a doctor’s care, though it does definitely warrant some unflinching introspection. Once again, it’s not the alcohol content so much as the justification process that may have one teetering on the slippery slope.

I know it may sound obvious, but it is amazing how alcoholic thinking can make even this, one of the TDA cardinal rules difficult to keep straight (especially when one is sick): If the bottle says it contains alcohol- then I don’t drink it… because I’m an alcoholic and very bad things happen when I do.