Addiction & Recovery

I certainly had no idea that you ever had an alcohol problem. You're a very smart woman as I know from your posts.

I don't like to talk about it, but I had a terrible time overcoming pot addiction, and let's be clear, it was an just that, an addiction.

I really have no use for the claim that pot isn't addictive. I know better.

My addiction made me fat, lazy, and stupid.

I quit sometime in the late 1970's. I don't actually recall the date or even the exact year. It just happened. One day I was a pothead, and the next day I wasn't.

(It was then, post pothead that I discovered that the Grateful Dead were rarely playing in tune.)

I did not seek or get outside help; I went cold turkey on my own, which is not to say that I have any objection at all to seeking help; I recommend seeking help in fact.

My nephew, who is prone to depression, has been a pot addict since high school, apparently the 9th grade. He recently quit; I hope he makes it. I saw him at Thanksgiving, and I would say I enjoyed him more than at any other time of his life. He's in his early 20s, about the same age I was when I quit.

I've lost a lot of sleep worrying about that young man. He has often been suicidal. The pot didn't help with that. It just made things worse. I've tried very hard to engage and help him, to be as close to being as good an uncle to him as my uncles were to me.

As for myself, I can, and do, drink occasionally, generally in social settings and business dinners. Sometimes my wife and I will have a glass of wine or a beer.

I have an unused bottle of champagne in my house which will be opened when the orange pedophile dies, assuming I outlive the disastrous excuse for a human being.

My wife and I just each had a glass of champagne when celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary.

All this said, I know very well that my genetics predisposes me to substance abuse but I haven't been drunk in a very long time; I can't recall the last time in fact. Still, I have to keep a wary eye on myself:

My Grandfather was a terrible, violent, alcoholic, suffering as well, as I suspect, from post traumatic stress disorder after trench warfare in the First World War, partially as a result of a severe head wound which required the use of a silver plate to address part of a missing skull.

He was murdered, probably in a bar fight or a robbery. No one actually cared, although the British Army paid for an elaborate funeral after finding out about his death. My father identified the body. My grandfather must have been carrying some form of ID when he was killed.

The last time my father saw his father alive, he threw him down the stairs leading to my Grandmother's apartment where he was beating her and threatening her life. My father told his father never to set foot in the house again.

He didn't.

When I was growing up, I never saw my father drunk. My parents didn't drink at home. We had a few bottles of liquor in our house, but they stayed unused for decades. I did see my father drunk after my mother's death and for a while, his drinking was worrisome. In those years, my substance abuse was also worrisome. We were deformed by my mother's painful, slow death, but that really isn't an excuse. Substance abuse made it worse.

We both got past it.

When my father remarried, his drinking problem went away. Psychological state is clearly connected with the genetic predisposition.

His stepsons, my step brothers, all five of them, his second wife's children from her first marriage, all had alcohol problems. One was killed in a drunk driving accident, fortunately not killing anyone else, having run into a parked tow truck. I think my father nevertheless, helped the other guys, their father having been killed by a drunk driver while supervising a road crew. Those guys grew to love my father as I did. Interestingly, I never saw either of my two step sisters drunk.

Like I say, I have the genetics for it. I would not be surprised to learn that I have dysfunctional dehydrogenases, although my genes haven't been mapped and won't be.

I have warned my sons about it. So far, so good. Neither of them have displayed evidence of a sustained a substance abuse problem. (I have seen my oldest son drunk, but it's very rare to do so.) They may have functional genes from their mother's side of the family, which is a good thing. She's genetically my superior. Happily, I know it since it was obvious from the very beginning.