ALCOHOL IS JUST AS DEADLY

``So ... You Don't Drink At All? Not Even A Beer?

She asked this with complete sincerity, having read my previous
columns on addiction and recovery. She wasn't condescending like some
people can be when you tell them you don't drink. (For some reason,
their first assumption is that I'm a teetotaling religious fanatic.)

She was curious and strangely sympathetic at the same time. Her eyes
conveyed the sympathy, and behind them, I could tell she was thinking
about what it must be like to give up a cold beer on a hot day, or a
margarita with a group of friends, or a shot of whiskey at a party --
for the rest of her life.

For some people, giving up alcohol might seem unfathomable. To me,
it's simply a matter of maintaining my recovery. The 12-step
fellowship to which I belong is a group of recovering addicts, and our
literature tells us that one of the biggest lies we can tell ourselves
is that alcohol is not a drug.

Simply put, a drug, as we define it, is any mind-or mood-altering
chemical. Sounds like alcohol fits in that category to me.

Besides, all I have to do is look back over the years I spent in
active addiction to know how big of a factor alcohol played in it.
From my first drink, it took hold and rooted itself in my life.

It became a constant companion. It was a reward for a hard day's work
and a comfort after a bad day. Cold beer on the back deck in the
summer, burning whiskey straight from the bottle during the dark of
winter. I planned my social calendar around it. I drank with friends,
and I drank alone. It was always, always there.

When I moved on to harder things -- cocaine and heroin -- alcohol was
always a fail-safe. When I couldn't round up a bag of heroin, alcohol
was the only thing that would get me through dope-sick nights,
sweating and shivering at the same time, bones screaming in agony,
feeling like worms were crawling along my brain stem, itching way down
deep in my skull where some days I felt like the only way to scratch
them was with a bullet.

I'd start drinking at 7 in the morning when I couldn't score. I'd
drink until I passed out, not caring that I'd be hung over and going
through withdrawals when I awakened. All I could think about was
stopping the agony right then, right there. Everything hinged on
making it through the next moment -- on finding a way to feel
differently, to avoid facing the wreckage of my life. When my dealers
didn't return their pages, when the boys in the hood weren't standing
on their usual corners, when the supply lines ran dry and no one,
anywhere, had the drugs I craved -- alcohol was the only thing that
helped me escape reality.

So do I hate alcohol and look down on those who consume it? Not at
all. If you can handle it, more power to you. Do I wish that I could
throw back a cold one myself on occasion? Hell, yeah. My mouth goes
dry sometimes when I see a bartender pouring a cold beer into a
frosted mug, the condensation drifting off the glass like fog.

But when that happens, I do something I learned early on -- what they
call ``playing the tape through.'' I remember how many times in the
past I tried, and failed, to have just one beer or just one shot. I
remember how many times I tried to quit the hard stuff and stick
strictly to alcohol.

And I remember how it never, ever worked. How it was just enough to
get the disease of addiction on the prowl inside my head once again.
How, no matter what sort of pleasant feeling alcohol gave me, it just
wasn't good enough.

How inevitably -- sometimes within days, sometimes within months -- I
always ... always ... went back to tying a belt around my bicep and
aiming a needle for the bulging blue vein in the crook of my arm.

So no -- I don't drink. And I don't obsess over giving it up for the
rest of my life, because in recovery, we know that the only thing we
have is this moment, this hour, this day.

Just for today, I don't drink. And just for today, my recovery goes on
and my life continues to get better.

Steve Wildsmith is a recovering addict and the Weekend editor for The
Daily Times. His weekly entertainment column and stories appear every
Friday in the Weekend section.