We humans fear the beast within the wolf because we do not understand the beast within ourselves.
Gerald Hausman
Category Archives: ALCOHOLISM
You notice what I drink, and not the thirst I feel.
The Doctor’s opinion is that we have a physical allergy to alcohol:
“We believe, and so suggested a few years ago, that the action of alcohol on these chronic alcoholics is a manifestation of an allergy; that the phenomenon of craving is limited to this class and never occurs in the average temperate drinker. These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all; and once having formed the habit and found they cannot break it, once having lost their self-confidence, their reliance upon things human, their problems pile up on them and become astonishingly difficult to solve.”
The definition for the word “allergy” is, “Excess sensitiveness to certain substances which are harmless to most persons.”
Cela laisse a desirer = There is room for improvement; It is not quite the thing.
You scour the Bowery, ransack the Bronx,/ Through funeral parlours and honky-tonks./ From river to river you comb the town/ For a place to lay your family down.
“What if I’m so broken I can never do something as basic as feed myself? Do you realize how twisted that is? It amazes me sometimes that humans still exist. We’re just animals, after all. And how can an animal get so removed from nature that it loses the instinct to keep itself alive?” ― Amy Reed, Clean
Death, I need my little addiction to you. I need that tiny voice who, even as I rise from the sea, all woman, all there, says kill me, kill me.
[Anne Sexton (1928-1974), U.S
Stroke the churl, and he will scratch you, Strike him, and he will come to your hand. — Gaelic.
He that handles a nettle tenderly is soonest stung. — E. If you gently touch a nettle. It will sting you for your pains ; Grasp it like a man of mettle, . It as soft as silk remains.
Now I am in the public house and lean upon the wall,
So come in rags or come in silk,
in cloak or country shawl,
And come with learned lovers or with what men you may
For I can put the whole lot down,
and all I have to say
Is fol de rol de rolly O.
[William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish
Death and drink-draining are near neighbours.
There will be mud on the carpet tonight and blood in the gravy as well. The wifebeater is out, the childbeater is out eating soil and drinking bullets from a cup.
[Anne Sexton (1928-1974), U.S. poet. “The Wifebeater.”]
There is always a winner even in a monkey’s beauty contest. ~African
Billy Wilder :
You know, that stuff about pink elephants, that’s the bunk. It’s little animals. Little tiny turkeys in straw hats. Midget monkeys coming through the keyholes.
[Billy Wilder (b. 1906), Austrian-born U.S., and Charles Brackett (1892-1969), U.S. screenwriter. Bim (Frank Faylen), The Lost Weekend, talking about what happens when a person has the DTs (1945).]
Fowl gwine fat im begin fram him toe __ Adult behaviours begin in childhood
A feast uncovers a European’s wooden leg. N.B. —
Didime is a feast of course followed by a ” big drink,” which — “in vino Veritas” — makes people forget self-respect, and exposes defects which are usually concealed.
Even if it’s only in a tiny way, it’s nice to be part of a small dam that’s challenging our river of grog.
“No clowns were funny. That was the whole purpose of a clown. People laughed at clowns, but only out of nervousness. The point of clowns was that, after watching them, anything else that happened seemed enjoyable” Terry Pratchett, The City Watch Trilogy
“Kill you all!” The clown was laughing and screaming. “Try to stop me and I’ll kill you all! Drive you crazy and then kill you all! You can’t stop me!”
― Stephen King, It
Alcoholic drinking’s three stages: impulsive, compulsive, repulsive.
W.A.P.Martin ~1900?
On Drinking Alone by Moonlight
Here are flowers and here is wine,
But where’s a friend with me to join
Hand in hand and heart to heart
In one full cup before we part?
Rather than to drink alone,
I’ll make bold to ask the moon
To condescend to lend her face
The hour and the scene to grace.
Lo, she answers, and she brings
My shadow on her silver wings;
That makes three, and we shall be.
I ween, a merry company
The modest moon declines the cup,
But shadow promptly takes it up,
And when I dance my shadow fleet
Keeps measure with my flying feet.
But though the moon declines to tipple
She dances in yon shining ripple,
And when I sing, my festive song,
The echoes of the moon prolong.
Say, when shall we next meet together?
Surely not in cloudy weather,
For you my boon companions dear
Come only when the sky is clear.
Li Bai drinking alone (with the moon, his shadow, & 43 translators)
Like the crocodile, he strikes always at the weakest spot.” ― George Orwell, Burmese Days
Xander: She just means, you know, the geyser. You’re like a geyser of fun that goes off at regular intervals
Land where fire from Earth’s deep centre
Fights for breath in anguish furied,
Till she from the weight that pent her
Flings her flames out fiercely lurid;
Where the geysers hiss and seethe,
And the rocks groan far beneath.
Arthur Henry Adams
Maoriland
Alcoholism is a disease of the whole person.
MAURICE GELINAS, How to Overcome Alcoholism
One of the most important facts to remember about alcoholism is its progression. Alcoholism begins in an early stage that looks nothing at all like a life-threatening disease, proceeds into a middle stage where problems begin to appear and intensify, and gradually advances into the late, degenerative stages of obvious physiological dependence, physical and psychological deterioration, and loss of control.
WILLIAM F. ASBURY, Beyond the Influence
Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/a/alcoholism_quotes.html#b887PmOgtxwWzy5L.99
Praying Drunk Our Father who art in heaven, I am drunk. Again. Red wine. Andrew Hudgins.
For most normal folks, drinking means conviviality, companionship and colorful imagination. It means release from care, boredom and worry. It is joyous intimacy with friends and a feeling that life is good. But not so with us in those last days of heavy drinking.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, The Big Book
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunk man is happier than a sober one. George Bernard Shaw,
Love We Recognize
by Kim Downs
Jane’s father used to drink and bash up his wife.
Jane’s mother forgave him again and again.
She thought love was like that. She didn’t know better.
She told Jane her father just had a bad temper.
She shouldn’t provoke him. It was mostly her fault.
Jane’s father used to drink and bash up his wife.
Jane watched this happen two hundred times
Before she reached puberty; and then … and later.
She thought love was like that. She didn’t know better.
At eighteen, Jane started to take her first lovers.
She chose ones with tempers. They seemed so familiar.
Jane’s father used to drink and bash up his wife.
Jane married Bill, a motor mechanic.
She fell pregnant. Had a daughter. Then another. Then a son.
She thought love was like that. She didn’t know better.
When Bill would get drunk … then angry … then hit her,
Jane forgave him. Like her mother. Like her daughters. Because:
Jane’s father used to drink and bash up his wife.
She thought love was like that. She didn’t know better.
Elizabeth Joceline: Drunkennesse is the highway to hell.
George Ade:
R-e-m-o-r-s-e,
Those dry Martinis were too much for me.
Last night I really felt immense,
To-day I feel like thirty cents;
It is no time for mirth and laughter
In the cold grey dawn of the morning after.
e. e. cummings:
humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn you
intelligence to buy a drink.
A man’s true character comes out when he’s drunk. Charles Chaplin
Please Stop, Mom.
© Kayla S. Birdno
I smell the whiskey on your breath.
And you beg for me to put your temper to the test.
You slap me around, and call me names.
Mom, I’m sick of playing these games.
And you beg for me to put your temper to the test.
You slap me around, and call me names.
Mom, I’m sick of playing these games.
Source: Please Stop Drinking, Mom, Addiction Poem about Family http://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/please-stop-drinking-mom#ixzz2uPNTXqOz
Family Friend Poems
Alcohol is perfectly consistent in its effects upon man. Drunkenness is merely an exaggeration. A foolish man drunk becomes maudlin; a bloody man, vicious; a coarse man, vulgar.
WILLA CATHER, “On the Divide,” The Troll Garden
Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/a/alcoholism_quotes.html#K71wx3yMtQWE4xcO.99
Illustrated Sydney News (NSW : 1853 – 1872), Saturday 13 May 1893
My room is a grave yard of whisky bottles in a swamp of stale beer, cigar ashes, and dick jokes. Vincent Brooks
In the UK we used to have ‘jug and bottle’ which was (usually) a hatch
from a corridor in a pub through which off-sales (into jugs and bottles,
unsurprisingly) were made, the customer not needing to go into the bar,
lounge, snug or smoke-room. Now very rare, alas.As others have said, places with an off-licence only (no on-licence to
drink on the premises) are affectionately known as ‘offies‘
Stolen, Lost And Found | The Global Mail
Stolen, Lost And Found | The Global Mail.
via Stolen, Lost And Found | The Global Mail.
The face is a little fuller, movement comes slower. A small tremor ripples across his hands. A slight cough betrays a recent illness. But the old presence is here, the gentle dignity that comes to a man who knows more loss and pain than men should; who found not rage nor bitterness but forgiveness and gratitude.
Along the way Archie Roach nearly gave up. In 2010, his partner Ruby Hunter died; she’d been his music soul mate and the mother of the couple’s two boys. The next year a stroke felled Roach just as he was resuming his musical career at Turkey Creek, near Broome. Last year he was told he had lung cancer.
Who could not understand his desolation? The stroke was as cruel as the loss of Ruby. The pair, who had been together almost 40 years, met as teenagers on the streets of Melbourne; both were homeless then and heading for addictions. Children came. So did more alcohol. Ruby left with the kids and Archie had to make a decision: the bottle or the family? She’d told him: “Alcohol — I can’t do that anymore and see my children suffer.”
Archie remembers: “Ruby took the kids and left me. So it was a choice I had to make. Either keep drinking alcohol or have my children with me. So it wasn’t really a hard choice.”
See – chaos spark, struck from flint and the plunging distemper, flare in the dawn’s dull seep of milkcart horse, morning horse chaos horse
Mithridatum of Despair
We know no mithridatum of despair
as drunks, the angry penguins of the night,
straddling the cobbles of the square,
tying a shoelace by fogged lamplight.
We know no astringent pain,
no flecking of thought’s dull eternal sea
in garret image, of Spain
and love…now love’s parody.
See – chaos spark, struck from flint
and the plunging distemper, flare in the dawn’s dull seep
of milkcart horse, morning horse
chaos horse, walking at three to the doors of sleep
with the creamy poison.
convulsions endure
from nine to five,
all life immure.
and still alive.
we know no mithridatum, nor the remembered dregs of fear,
the glass stands dry and silted; no end is near.
MAX HARRIS
http://www.ernmalley.com/harris_poetry.html
The World’s News (Sydney, NSW : 1901 – 1955), Saturday 23 April 1927
I smell the whiskey on your breath. And you beg for me to put your temper to the test. You slap me around, and call me names. Mom, I’m sick of playing these games.
Please Stop, Mom. © Kayla S. Birdno
The Daily News (Perth, WA : 1882 – 1950), Tuesday 8 August 1950,
Warriors should suffer their pain silently.” Erin Hunter, Into the Wild
Warrior’s Journey
Father dies
mother leaves
sisters taken away.
Helpless, defenceless.
No hand to cling to,
Welfare Property
Ward number 77318
another number, another mouth,
another body, another untouched soul,
another heart to be healed,
another shadow in the dark of night.
She is two years old.
From one dwelling to another she is sent.
Disconnected, her child’s heart broken, the need for love
Unquenched.
A vacuum for her confidence and sense of self;
anxiety and anger her constant companions
she struggles to belong, she doesn’t belong.
Hands shake, body trembles,
cries unheard, muffled under bed covers.
She is ten years old.She thinks of death to escape the anguish.
She believes she has no right to take up space,
to breathe air.
She believes there will be rejoicing at her passing,
a problem solved.
She releases the genie in the bottle,
life goes on about her,
she closes her eyes and waits.
She is marked. She is spared.
Like the first born of the Israelites, the Angel of Death passes her by.
She is twelve years old.Tormented by anger, a prisoner of rage.
Her cries for justice, she fights to be heard.
They say, ‘she’s a psychiatric case’
and needs to be medicated.
Silence her voice, dull her mind, and inhibit her strong emotions.
She must endure the rash, the itch, the weight gain, the hand tremors, and the sluggish thoughts.
Now they say ‘she’s boring with no powers of conversation’.
In school she sits, eyes heavy; she drops her head – just for a moment.
She sleeps her days away.
She is fourteen years oldShe hears the call of the warrior soul.
She resists sedation; the murder of her spirit.
Pills hurtle across the fence, a cry goes out
‘I won’t do what you want any more!’
Strong male hands force her down, inject her into submission.
They say ‘it’s for her own good and for the good of others’.
She is ‘disturbed’, ‘mad’, emotionally retarded’.
She is fifteen years old.She is released, pushed out into a world of strangers.
They don’t understand or care about her sorrow.
She must find work, forge relationships, and build a life. There is no help, there is no social net to catch her, and there is no family to
give her connection.
She must find her own way.
She is lost, jobs are transient, and relationships unravel.
Booze is her solace, drugs her respite, madness her rescuer.
The streets her home.
She is seventeen years old.She is a mother;
frightened, solitary,
how can she care for the infant in her arms?
She needs help, she reaches out,
her children are removed.
She can’t be trusted, she can’t trust herself.
It’s for her own good ‘in the best interest of the children’.
She seeks the comfort of death,
but death rejects her plea.
The ‘Warrior Soul’ calls her to life.
She yearns to be a mother, she craves to do it right,
Her children are ‘restored’,
She is twenty-four years old.A single mother, living in poverty.
She hears the call of her warrior soul
She needs to dream, she needs to believe,
She needs to hope.
However, she is mad.
Her mind has betrayed her,
what can she anticipate?
The pills, the booze, the violence.
How can she break the will to self-annihilate?
She is determined.
She must find a way.
She is twenty-seven years old.
She treads the road of trials,
She cries out ‘there is no God!’
Lost within her madness,
admitted to the Clinic.
‘What is wrong with me?’ she pleads.
She is thirty-three years old.The warrior soul is stronger
than the darkness, that binds her.
She heeds its call.
Is there a God? She prays to believe.
She dares for more than mere survival,
she crawls out from within the sewage of her life.
She is thirty-six years old.Her untaught soul greets the morning.
She discovers she is far more than all her experiences.
More than her illness.
She knows now, in each one of us
there is a gold of great worth.
There is a warrior soul of strength and courage.
Compelled to transform her suffering.
she studies, she learns, she grows,
finds enduring love, personal value.
She connects.
Passes on her hope,
helps others finds their way.
Sometimes death still whispers her name,
however, she grips the hand of the warrior within,
she has learnt to trust.
She has found power and strength within,
She is forty-five years old.
copyright Margaret Spivey 2003
There’s no speeding in the trudging zone.
http://www.teen-anon.com/quotes.htm
Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.
(Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed., 26)
Wine hath drowned more men than the sea. THOMAS FULLER
Am fear dan dàn a’chroich, cha tèid gu bràth a bhàthadh.
Who is born to be hanged will never be drowned.
THE OLD PROVERBIAL RECOVERY 