The stages of alcoholism; these are mine, not anyone else’s but they could apply to anyone.
Stage one is the fun part, it’s the first time you drink, and for me
it lasted till I was about 25 so from 12 to 25 I was having fun. Well
most of the time. After all I did get married at 23 so the last 2 years
of stage one may not have been all that much fun. However it defense of
my ex-wife I do recall some good times. Not that my memory is all that
good but there were some. As well as both of my boy’s being born!
Stage two is when normal folks start questioning your behavior, when
you’re out drinking. Your judgment is worse than it was in stage one,
the things you do are not as funny to others as they are too you. Most
days when you wake up you look to see if the car is out front. While
this may seem funny, it’s not. When I say normal people I mean those
who can have one or two drinks, more sometimes and not feel the need to
get hammered every time they drink. They keep their drinking to social
settings, and behave for the most part. Stage two drunks are what I
call heavy drinkers; if they cut back they still may avoid getting the
disease. Some do and some do not. It has nothing to do with will power,
anyone who tells you that is full of crap. Trust me, as a very good
wrestler in High School, I know all about will power. What seems to
happen is those heavy drinkers look around and are embarrassed by what
they have done the night before, and decide it’s time to take it easy.
These people are always border line, at any given moment they can cross
over from heavy to the disease.
Stage three is the selfish mode for drunks, not that we have not
always been selfish, but now we go to the extremes. It’s all about the
next drink, when and with whom. See at this stage you know you have
some type of problem but as long as you’re drinking with someone else
you can’t be an alcoholic, right? Since you still go to work, you’re
not drinking alone; you’re meeting most if not all of your obligations.
Here is a tip, if you think you may be in this stage, look at the
people you’re drinking with, are they the same as 2 years ago? How have
they changed? Do they go home early?
Stage four is when you go into the spiral stage, you stop function
as well as you were, the friends you have, no longer really want to
come around. Your wife, husband is really nagging you about the way you
drink. Your work starts to suffer. You need that first drink a lot
earlier than before. If you don’t get help now then the shit really
hits the fan. Now I can only tell you about my stage four, and to be
honest I am not sure if other drunks even think of stages, but this
seems to me the easiest way to explain it. In stage four, I hit my
first rehab. Was a nice place, food was great, and I was sober for 28
days. I got out and my body and mind started to feel really good, so my
second stop after the bank was the beer store. Now I only had a few
beers. Stopped that night, when I woke up the next morning, I smiled
and said hey I am not an alcoholic; I can now handle my drinking. I
think I even skipped a few days before my next drink. Please keep in
mind, these rehabs teach you all you need to know about addictions.
Trust me after 10 rehabs, I know the drill. They are there to help you.
However since I was not ready to stop drinking, after all I was only
25; I wanted to do things my way. So as I made the slide from stage
four to stage five, I knew the truth about myself, that I was a
alcoholic , however I told myself I was still in control.
Patrick Budowski
Maryland
