Well whatddya know?

Two days in a row I'm posting on this here blog. Going back over the earliest entries, I can see why I started this thing: fear, mostly, combined with uncertainty about the rehab stint I was facing. I don't think I was afraid of rehab -- I was looking forward to it as much as dreading it -- but the fear was how I would cope with the pain without morphine and the sleep without alcohol.

A year later I can report that the pain is still bad, as is the sleep. But the morphine wasn't helping that much anyway, and the alcohol was doing such damage to my body that it was no solution at all, as I learned the hard way. I still think about the folks I met at that rehab place from time to time Chris, the lacrosse coach at Lake Braddock who needed a liver transplant, I sure hope he turned out okay. Greg, the oxy addict who was trying a new line of work, seemed well on his way. Eric, the alcoholic back from Iraq who doubled up on rehab both in Fairfax and down in Fredericksburg, I don't know about him: he seemed way too cocky to me, and I can easily see him thinking he has it all under control. But I can say the same about me. I thought I had it under control when I started up with the drinking, rationalizing it as a sleep aid until I was guzzling a fifth a night without realizing it.

Unlike just about everyone else at rehab, I could honestly say my addiction(s) had little or no affect on my personal or professional life. That's partly because I have none of either, but also because I rarely drank during the day, and in any case rarely felt intoxicated no matter how much I drank. As for the morphine, like the other opiates I've taken (and I've taken them all) they never made me "high", just fractionally less miserable. But the side effects of opiates, principally constipation, were such that I never wanted to take them to excess. So when others in rehab told their remorseful tales of career-ending debauches and shameful displays in front of their spouses and/or children, all I could do was shake my head in sympathy and think "you poor bastard." And when, in the case of at least three group members during my tenure, said it was their second go-round of AA after falling off the wagon, all I could think was "you poor stupid bastard."

I know, I know. Not very sympathetic, there but for the grace of God, etc. Still, I can't imagine how someone who has lost all he values in this world -- his family, his career -- can still go back to the same vice that brought him to this pit of despair in the first place. A disease? There is a medication for that now, I believe, called antibuse or something. Makes you physically ill if you drink. If I ever found myself tempted to drink again, I believe I would seek out this medication.

My head started aching this afternoon, and despite a nap it is still killing me. So we shall see what tomorrow brings.