Alcoholism: turning the tide requires trusting people – 04/15/2024 – Life of an Alcoholic

It took trusting some people to turn the almost lost game of my alcoholism around. Dealing with this silent and subtle illness requires something we don’t have much of these days, which is trust in other human beings. One of my doctors, the one who supported me when I had a flare-up, told me, “Alice, you need to trust me.” Because as I felt thrown to the margins of my social group, with no one to talk to or even understand what was going on, I became even more isolated. And here I remember last week’s question: the danger of isolation.

Talking about my illness sounds repetitive, and it is. Many times in AA classes we hear the same stories, lots of clichés… More than once a friend warned me when reading my texts, before they were published: “There are a lot of commonplaces!”. But that’s right: situations and sensations repeat themselves…

Stubborn as I am, it took me a while to open my mind and accept suggestions, advice and treatment. In the absence of an accurate diagnosis, it is necessary to have a lot of trust in the doctor, and to hear the same thing a lot. It’s the typical situation of soft water in hard stone… It ends up piercing the stone. This miracle is a conjunction of many things: trust in the professional, attentive listening on his part and the falls that get worse and worse. There is time! (another cliché). If you go to an AA room, you know about the messages we put in big letters.

I always heard that I drank too much. I myself, deep down, also knew that there was something wrong with the way I drank, but then until I stopped drinking for good it was too much… Woe betide anyone who suggested I stop drinking… I reacted fiercely, I thought the person wanted take something precious from me. I couldn’t bear the idea of ​​giving up something that had given me a possible life (and so bad, I know now, but at the time I couldn’t realize it).

In my loyalty to alcohol, I was suspicious of anyone who looked at me the wrong way when I was on my fourth or fifth glass. Or if she was reproached for flirting over a drink in the morning (first on Saturday mornings, then any day of the week). Whoever it was, if they came between me and alcohol, I would blast it and/or remove it from my social list. Unless it was family, there was no way.

Alcohol took away my ability to believe, to dream and above all to trust people. I thought, for example, that my cousin meant me harm when she suggested that perhaps the solution was to opt for alternative programs, without drinking. I would get angry, hateful, and move away. I lost complicity and trust. I acted the same way I treated doctors: I left and changed professionals when my alcohol problem became an issue.

The trust I placed in Dr. E. gave me a turning point. He was always very polite, kind and supportive, but at the same time firm in his stance on alcohol. If I started to argue, he would stop and listen to me, and wouldn’t say anything else. That silence was bothering me, it was encouraging me to think. He was always there for me, he attended to me in a spectacular way, but he didn’t hide the truth from me. He explained to me, as if to a child, what alcohol did to me. Sometimes he really irritated me. But when I confronted him, he simply listened to me with a calm smile and a reassuring face.

Basically, that’s it, my trust with him was because he never spoke negatively about alcohol, he simply showed me, little by little, that the substance wasn’t good for me. He showed me new paths and, most importantly, he took me seriously. I’ll never forget when I moved in with my sister and started to find work. She called him, who answered her but claimed he was with another patient. And he asked her to tell me, emphatically, that at the time of the call he was with someone who was trying to commit suicide. The shock of reality and the importance he gave to my case made our relationship very good and effective in trying to break the impregnable barrier that I built with drinking.

Today I haven’t drunk any alcohol for a few years, I try to be honest with myself and with others (lying hurts me because it reminds me of my active duty period). With this more transparent scenario, I begin to observe others and try to identify people who speak the same language as me, who can not only humanize my illness but also consider me.

I’m an alcoholic and I work, I have friends, I have a life. All this because I am in recovery. And once again I quote my editor at Folha de S.Paulo: Thank you, Mariana, for always making me very welcome. The trust in you made this blog possible. And from what I receive from messages, I know that he is helping some people to clarify this chaos that is alcoholism.

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