DW wrote in response to my DWI post:
I drink and occasionally take other drugs. The drinking has led to several poor judgment calls in my life. However, I have a good life. Most would say I’m very successful and have my act together. The thing is, I don’t want to wake up one day and realize that I ruined my life. I don’t think this will happen to me. I am now 29 years old, I’d like to think that I can keep it under control, but I have a sneaky suspicion that such confidence could be dangerous. So, I’d like a little advice from someone who’s opinion I respect. What do you recommend? Any books to read? Groups to join? Therapy? I am changing jobs at the moment and because of the mechanics of the situation I will not have health coverage for 6 months. So, expensive therapy is out of the question until I have better insurance.
DW, I think the most important indicator of when a person has a chemical problem is that sometimes they do things against their values when under the influence and they can’t predict when those times will be. Yet they continue to drink or use, to risk it. It’s less about frequency and quantity and more about what happens.
You might be getting close, since you acknowledge “poor judgment calls” due to drinking which I assume means you don’t feel good about what happened. Telling yourself that you can keep it under control is the kind of thinking — rationalization — that someone with a problem typically engages in. It generally doesn’t occur to people who don’t have a problem to convince themselves that they can control it. So it’s not so much that confidence is dangerous — I’m 100% confident that when my wife and I crack open a bottle of wine that we’re not going to get drunk and that nothing bad is going to happen — but that when confidence is deployed as a defense, a rationalization.
What you have going for you is some self-awareness. Nobody who’s deep into abuse would even bother to ask the questions you’re asking. But self-awareness deteriorates as a chemical problem deepens — the embarrassment, shame, and guilt that comes with doing things against your values triggers your defenses so you don’t feel the pain.
Without knowing the severity of your poor judgment calls, and more importantly, without knowing what the people around you have observed about your behavior, I can’t tell you whether you need to get some therapy, join a group, or get into treatment.
Kent Nerburn’s book Letters to My Son (listed in the Real Joe bookstore) has a chapter on alcohol and drugs that’s definitely worth reading. It’s intriguing in part because he abused chemicals quite a bit in his youth but evidently never became chemically dependent. So he doesn’t come at it with the overzealousness that some authors do who are recovering. Yet he’s not reluctant to point out the spiritual and emotional toll that use and abuse can extract, even at a modest level.
Thanks for writing, and giving me permission to post your note here. Keep me posted on what the hell happens. 😉