In her book, The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath, Leslie Jamison writes: “From the night of my first buzz, I didn’t understand why everyone in the world wasn’t getting drunk every night… Scientists describe addiction as a dysregulation of the neurotransmitter functions of the mesolimbic dopamine system, which basically means your reward pathways get F’d up. “It’s a “pathological usurpation of survival impulses… When my drinking passed a certain threshold… it plunged me into darkness that seemed like honesty. It was as if the bright surfaces of the world were all false and the desperate drunk space underground was where truth lived.”

It’s just over four decades since my last drink and I can still remember my first drink which became a heck of a drunk. It was like I couldn’t get enough of everything on the table. An hour and a half earlier I had been the designated barman and all I drank was Apple Cider. When I was told it contained alcohol, I read the percentage of alcohol – slight – I decided, “I might as well be killed for a sheep as a lamb” and began to drink. I tasted every bottle of alcohol on the table, got sick, blamed others for the mess in the bathroom which I proudly acknowledge I cleaned up. The following day I purchased a motorcycle, learned how to ride it, and took myself to the nearest pub to celebrate.

I didn’t drink every night, but when I did drink, I drank alcoholically. I also assumed that everyone in the establishment was enjoying alcohol in the same manner. It would be nearly twenty years before I appreciated the learning by scientists of the destructive consequences of alcohol on my brain and in my body.

From the night of that first drink/drunk, I believed I could handle it. Alcoholics go to meetings and I was helping them find new meeting rooms in the city of Dublin at the time. I went to some open meetings, listened to the stories and knew I was not like them. [Although the first meeting I attended was enough for me to leave and get a drink. They were talking about “Honesty” and I thought they were talking about me.] Alcoholics don’t have jobs. I was a full-time student with reasonably decent grades. Alcoholics, no matter what they did or didn’t do, I was not one of them. After all, I was teaching the students about the danger of drugs and alcohol. I knew what I was talking about.

The problem was I had no idea my brain had been hijacked, rewired, and in relationship to alcohol and other drugs, I was blinded to the negative impact on my thinking, behavior and values. All of this happened without my permission, and clearly, with my permission. I had been told that I was an alcoholic and I blew it off.

“It’s a pathological usurpation of survival impulses.” I would not have gotten into a car with a driver who was blindfolded or blind. And yet, I believed myself to be a safe driver even though, the next morning, I had no recall as to how I got home. I look back now and have a great appreciation for my angel guardian.

I wish I could have gotten into Recovery as suddenly as I got into Addiction. That I was not an alcoholic was so entrenched in my mind, I could not see myself as being “one of them.” Five weeks in a four-week program followed by a year of Aftercare and individual therapy barely made a dent in my denial system.

Today, I thank my Higher Power/God for those men who cared enough about me that they took me under their wing and guided me. Recovery, for me, was a slow process into accepting myself as an alcoholic. Looking back, it seems so strange to admit to inappropriate behavior while under the influence of alcohol and drugs while denying being addicted. But such is the nature of the hijacked rewired brain. Early recovery was a time of confronting memories; listening to others tell me what it was like to be with me when I was under the influence; working and reworking the steps and learning the meaning of “Living the program.” In other words, getting my brain unwired from the alcoholic thinking and rewired to healthy and appropriate thinking based on the spiritual principles of the 12 Step program.

Little did I know I would one day be amazed that the AA “promises” would become for me a reality and I would realize that God did and is doing for me what I could not and cannot do for myself.

Happy, Sober and safe New Year to all.
Séamus D.
New Orleans, La.