You May Never Overcome Alcohol

Reminded gently by a recent comment that alcohol abuse and routine drinking to the exclusion of more important items, people and pursuits, may not be something surmountable (because of one's genes), I am again left at a harder point than I planned to be when starting this blog, and when deciding not to drink for enough months to add up to a year or so: I may have to stop drinking completely, as in, the rest of my life.  Damnit, and I really didn't want to make that decision right now.  I didn't really want this to be a struggle, is what I'm saying, and I'll admit that I look forward more to the excitement of a possible accomplishment than the hard work it may take to get there .Why not, after all, I'm human, and delayed satisfaction isn't a particular trait that humans tend to be good at attaining.

From what I can tell, folks that are more inclined to booze get more pleasure out of booze and hit a maximal threshold (wherein normal people get tired and have simply had enough) at a very late point, leading to, you guessed it, increased tolerance and more of the original substance to hit the same high one once achieved earlier.  That's enough to propel a lot of people into some bad places.  How to know that you're one of them: just look around at your family.  Do any of them exhibit the tell tale signs?  That's the shortcut to figuring out whether you should consider halting any and all alcohol consumption.  It is an easy line and it is readily available for most people.  So, if you're reading this, and you know you have a family member that has suffered, and you know that you have suffered a little because of your own indulgence, or because of the family member, then consider not drinking, however fast you might defend your drinking.

See, I'm really just talking to myself.

To make another distinction.  I know that functioning alcoholics exist--people that can work and be successful in the world and still abuse booze.  But, I'm no longer under some romantic assumption that their behaviors don't come at some cost, even though such costs must be well hidden.  Smart people are not immune from alcoholistic tendencies, they may just be better at self-denial and hiding type behavior.