Clipmark

The Give and the Take

I drank booze for a very long time, and I drank quite a lot of it. Interesting, but I never truly thought about why until I quit 16 years ago. There must have been reasons. But what were they?

This is no idle inquiry, since, after a decade and a half of very sober investigation of the neurochemical, sociological and spiritual reasons for both my addiction and recovery, the only way I can get my head around all that is to consider what booze gave me, what it took away and how the balance of power changed.

In my early days of drinking, alcohol gave me something that nothing else in my life — not relationships, not career — could. “It made the whole world come into focus,” a fellow addict once told me of her first drink. Others have cited “peace” and even “peace of mind” from the bottle. Some even describe their first drink as a mystical and spiritual experience. Myself, I always felt that alcohol was the one thing that made me feel safe.