Powerless Over Alcohol

So I'm doing step 1 with my AA sponsor today and she wanted me to come up with 3 ways I am powerless over alcohol. I'm having a tough time coming up with 3 that are relevant to my drinking habits in my current phase of life. I could easily come up with 3 from back in my early 20's before I sobered up for the first time.

1. Once I start I can't predict what is going to happen. Will I be able to limit myself? Will I black out? Will I drive drunk? Will I go off with a bunch of bikers because they offer me more booze? Who knows? It's basically a game of drunk roulette.

2. Flight response is gone. I could be in emminent danger and be completely unaware leaving me vulnerable to sexual perdators. I could be getting raped or groped and not able to fight the assailant off because I'm so incapacitated. It's happened more than once in me before I sobered up the first time.

3. Neurotransmitter imbalance that causes panic attacks and anxiety once the alcohol wears off. The only way to stop this is either start drinking again, take a sedative or wait it out in agony until my brain starts producing the right balance of seretonin and dopamine again.

If I examine my drinking habits now, the only one that still applies is the 3rd one, which truth be told is enough on it's own to make me not want to drink. As of late I've deliberately binged on booze to shut my flight response off. 4 times in one month which to me was a sign that I was on a slippery slope.

PTSD is a cruel master and quite frankly I'm powerless over it's effect on my body. I cannot resort to drinking alcohol to shut my flight response off because it's guarunteed that the next day my neurotransmitters will be so out of whack that I'll have even more anxiety compounding the original anxiety. Anxiety of that extreme intensity will tempt me to drink again and create an endless cycle of drinking and anxiety until I either kill myself by suicide or liver failure like Kelly did.

I don't want to go down that path. Watching you deteriorate over the past few years since you started self medicating for your trauma serves as a cautionary tale. You said last week that you are only a few chapters behind Kelly in that story and I have accepted that I too am a character in the same story as you and Kelly. Even though I'm just a few chapters in, I'm closing the book and with God's help never opening it again.

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