by Alcomum

Created on: May 12, 2009   Last Updated: May 17, 2009

I'm a submarine Christian. I come up when I'm in trouble. Despite not being "religious", I do believe none of us are solely made of mind and body. We all experience another element, and many of us refer to it in different terms. Our conscience. Soul. Sixth sense. I call it spirit. And in the same way that I have to nurture my body and my mind to keep them strong and healthy, I have recently come to accept that the spiritual aspect of myself needs some nourishment too.

Before I had worked that out, I did manage to figure out that I had a drinking problem. And it was growing. But I continued to live my life as if I was just made of mind and body. My intangible bits were simply ignored.

Until one morning 10 weeks ago. Single - again - lonely, depressed, freaked out when the phone rang or the door knocked, unable to wash my hair, too panicked to leave the house unless utterly necessary, and drinking wine or gin every morning for breakfast after I had dispatched my children to school. I just couldn't do it anymore. Every day I swore I wouldn't drink, but every day I did. Every morning when I woke up, I didn't even want to drink. But I ended up doing it anyway. I just wanted to sleep. The longer the better.

But I woke up that day after a breakfast of 3 very stiff gins, and it wasn't even lunch time. And I KNEW I was going to get in the car and go out to buy 2 bottles of wine. And I KNEW I couldn't stop myself. I didn't see a day in my future that didn't have alcohol and that would have any sense of normality. I truly believed at that moment that I would never work again, and that I would be unable to raise my children and would lose them, and I needed to get to a doctor and get myself signed into some kind of mental hospital. I was in such a blind state of panic. So I prayed to the God I didn't know was still right there with me. I whispered, "Please God, help me" and I collapsed in tears in my living room. All very dramatic, but I'm learning that is a very common alcoholic trait.

That night, I managed (after considering it for many years) to haul myself to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. It was like coming home! I read Step 1 of the 12 Step Programme up on the wall, "admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable". Thank goodness - other people felt it too! I realised in that moment I had earlier in the day covered most of the groundwork I needed to take Step 1 of the Alcoholics Anonymous programme. I knew I was powerless

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