After five years of off-and-on Kos-lurking, I wasn't sure I was ever going to write a diary at all. If I did, it wasn't going to be casual in nature; I was going to save my words for a subject that: (1) I was passionate about; and (2) I could bring a worthwhile voice & perspective to. I certainly didn't imagine my first diary here being an inarticulate call for help of an unknown and unspecified nature, but here we are. Life is like that.
I have the time to write a diary this morning because I didn't go to work, and I didn't go to work because I was too hung over and/or still drunk (unbelievably, I am not sure which one it was) to go and deliver the client presentation I was supposed to give. (File this under the category of "supreme irony": it was to be a presentation on Americans with Disabilities Act compliance...with some case studies on addressing employee addiction issues.) My wife, bless her, helped me craft my cover story as she poured all my bourbon down the kitchen sink, and the presentation (thank God for small favors) got covered by another attorney.
I am not quite forty, and more than half my life--twenty-one years of it, at least--have been dominated by a wild romance with alcohol. I've moved from a fraternity house to an Army barracks, to a law school dominated by half-pickled Irish Catholics, to a law firm where drinking is the optimal (and often, company-subsidized) stress-management method. I've experienced my share of disasters (face it: you haven't really lived until you've been fished out of a drainage ditch by the police in rural Georgia, and then called the police station the next day to ask if you'd been charged with anything) but always managed to pull it off, and stick the landing. No matter how much I was hurting, I was a good student, a good soldier, a good NCO, a good attorney; and I catalogued every booze-inspired near-miss right along with my tour in Iraq and my outlasting a brain tumor: as evidence that I was either indestructible, or else living an insanely charmed existence.
This morning's mess is the first tangible evidence that the magic is failing, and the wheels are finally coming off on this two-decade ride. I know that I could keep playing with fire, and wait around for a less mundane "rock bottom" story, but the fact is that at this moment, I want the ride to be over for good. I'm done, I'm done, I'm done, I'm fucking done, I've had it. I don't want this anymore.
So here's where the "inarticulate call for help of an unknown and unspecified nature" comes in. Can anyone give me some input on whether the AA system can be made to work for agnostics/atheists? (I'm in the former category.) I think I should recruit some outside support for this quitting effort, but all I have been seeing in my searches for local programs (and all I have been hearing from the one recovered-alcoholic friend I have) are spirituality-based approaches, which don't hold out much promise since I would have to fake the "spirituality" part. Is there a secular way to find group support, advice, and perspective on this process, that doesn't require me to join what seems to be a quasi-cult? There are a ton of Kossacks out there (even when we subtract the trolls, 'bots, and spammers); I figure someone has to have been down this road before. I would enormously appreciate any advice anyone can provide on how to go about this process without surrendering to a God that I am not certain even exists.
Apologies for the fact that this is a personal-drama diary rather than a political one. I don't like unloading my personal baggage on anyone, but this is the one place I know of online where I can cast a wide net for input from a pool of talented and experienced folks, and I can do it semi-anonymously.
Thanks in advance for any advice & perspective anyone is able to provide.
