When I reached my first sober anniversary and first sober birthday I was reflective. I was delighted to achieve this, but I also felt that I was now comfortable even in my skin enough, to share my sobriety with others who aren’t in the sober community. The reactions have been various, but after the initial reaction, I often hear, “I mean it’s not like you were an alcoholic, were you?” followed by a wide-eyed expression and bated breath. This has made me wonder what the word alcoholic conjures up in people’s minds and why are they so scared of it. I don’t use the word because I prefer to say that I was addicted to an addictive substance. But I have attended AA meetings where I have said that I was an alcoholic, and the sky didn’t fall in around me. And the people who attended the meeting were just normal human beings like you or me. That is because that is what we all are, normal people with a problem with alcohol.
This has made me realise how important the work that we are all doing in the new recovery spaces (and the old) is. It is vital. It’s so easy for big alcohol to blame us drinkers, we are the drinkers who have failed. We are the drinkers that didn’t ‘drink responsibly’. It’s so much easier than addressing the culture around us that encourages us to drink alcohol from our teenage years onwards. Only to act horrified and as if there is something is wrong with us when we become addicted to the addictive substance. What I find particularly scary is that when people ask me that question, they are using the old standard that we all used to think of when imagining an alcoholic. You know, waking up and drinking alcohol from a brown paper bag rolling around the street drunk, losing everything, etc. We know that this is a sad reality still for many. However, it is not true for everyone with alcohol issues, and by perpetuating this myth we are stopping people from asking for, or even realising that they need help.
BY BETH MT.
I mean it's not like you were an alcoholic, were you?
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