(11-10-2012, 09:44 PM)midnightblues Wrote: Looks like I might have to give away my age here, I started smoking weed 1963 and it wasn't until 1986 when my second child was born that I stopped. Everything in between throughout the service civilian life the hippie generation there was a lot of experiences some good some not so good. There was an expression that We to say it goes like this there's no hope without dope. It just all starts with pot and it escalates. And even if it was legal the government would find some way to screw it up. And yes this is very true it all starts with marijuana, I dabbled in a lot of different psychedelics ,opiates Aven tried smoking banana peels at one time, remember the mellow yellow? To me I think it's over with the drugs and alcohol and im fortunate to have had the opportunity to walk away from it. That's really having the monkey off my back. And it's was a huge burden I regret many things that I did while under the influence. I'm just pretty lucky that I never ended up killing anybody you know driving and drinking and smoking. I think my biggest regret is screwing up my musical career I had a good thing going, but I chose getting loaded over that. Anyways I'm just rambling on.
Wow, Midnight, that’s a personal story and I think you know that I understand every word of it.
I like to look at it more like "the 10,000 nth drink was enough" (wish it were only that many but hey). I enjoyed my share of the bountiful harvest enough to last a lifetime ( bit of a wink there, but not entirely)
No need to draw judgments on what others should do or universally reject all the great memories that did happen while having a few because of the not so pleasant memories. That unsolvable riddle of whether drinking was good or bad or what the exact definition of a problem is etc are all distractions used for delaying a decision going forward…today is today.
I’ll share one personal piece of advice though:
If you let that monkey climb back on everyonce in a while you’ll be continually spending a great deal of focus and energy struggling to keep him off.
It will take a couple years of consistently turning him away 100% of the time before he stops being a distraction …but he’ll stop pestering you to get back on board eventually if you never give him a glimmer of a chance.
I can pour my friends drinks at my house now and keep wine and beer in the refrigerator without a thought. I now have no longing watching others drink or watering of my mouth seeing the bottles occasionally at the back of the fridge (though I wouldn’t have tortured myself like that that the first few years after finishing up my life’s allotment).
I think a occasionally having a few drinks is good for most people... but I've had my share already.
Now, I only get a slight shudder of horror when I see a friend I used to party with leave ½ of his third drink on the table without having given it a thought. I don’t have the quote exactly but Steven King had something like that in his semi biography - “ I’ve been sober for 7 years and have no wavering doubts about it but to this day if I’m at a restaurant and I see someone at a neighboring table get up leaving half a glass of wine , a voice inside me wants to shout at her as she leaves “will you finish that fucking thing” (that wasn’t precisely his words but close… and damn its too true…that monkey still lurks) . I'm sure it sounds like irrational hyperbole to people who'd never even notice a detail like that let alone feel an irrational lunge of emotion over it.
