The stages of alcoholism

2. June 2008 by Patrick Budowski.

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 our 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.

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