Beyond Rehab

This morning I decided to watch (via Netfix’s “watch instantly” feature) “The Lost Weekend,” (1945).  It is the first movie to accurately portray an alcoholic in a character study.

In the following scene the main character, Don Birnam, an unsuccessful alcoholic writer, is in the middle of explaining to the bartender, “Nat,” the plot of a book he’s planning to write based on himself and his experience with the woman in his life, Helen. It’s about a how a high class lady got mixed up with an alcoholic.

Bartender: Okay, so they go to that cocktail party and he gets stinko and falls flat on his face.

Don: He does not. By this time he’s crazy about the girl. He drinks tomato juice. Doesn’t touch the liquor that whole week. For two weeks. For six weeks!

Bartender: In Love, huh?

Don: That’s what’s going be so hard to write. Love is the hardest thing in the world to write about. It’s so simple. You’ve got to catch it through details, like the early morning sunlight hitting the gray tin of the rose garden in front of her house, the ringing of a telephone that sounds like Beethoven’s Pastorale, a letter scribbled on her office stationary that you carry around in your pocket because it smells like all the lilacs in Ohio….

I find it interesting that both the cynical bartender and the alcoholic so easily—naturally—accept that love can make a grown man stop drinking.

Love—not only romantic love—is a central, essential human need. That is why I stress over and over the importance of self-care when healing from addictions. It is so important to nourish not only your physical body but your heart and soul as well, because that is where love blooms.

Returning to the movie…

Helen: The only way to start is to stop. There is no cure besides just stopping.
Don: Can’t be done.
Helen: Other people have stopped.
Don: People with a purpose, with something to do.

The “purpose” and “something to do” is that which inspires you to feel love towards yourself and love towards others. That is what will help you feel purpose and feel like you are doing (or can do) “something.” A good way to get started is to cultivate inner awareness. You can study from the teachings of the Dalai Lama or from those who have “examined” Socrates or from contemporary teachers such as Louis Hay, Shakti Gawain, Ron Scolastico. There are many others. Learn how to observe from those who have learned. You can expand your feelings of love, compassion and understanding.

“The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.” William Butler Yeats.

Why, oh, why is it so difficult to give up alcohol?

Well, it’s not the physical suffering of alcohol withdrawal that makes quitting so difficult. That suffering passes relatively quickly. What is so difficult is being emotionally uncomfortable—and for an undetermined length of time.

There are two ways a person can stop drinking. One way is to engage in a process of emotional transformation, part of which involves no longer drinking alcohol. The other way—the “Dry Drunk” way—is to just give up using alcohol without engaging in any process of emotional transformation.

If a person has only given up drinking—that is great! That is essential no matter what you decide to do with your thoughts and emotions after you quit. But if a person wants to feel better, then there is more to do.

A person who wishes not to be a “Dry Drunk” needs  to take action to find ways to enrich their soul as well as refrain from drinking. If not, the person could easily become angry, resentful and unpleasant—a dry drunk.