I have never done any snow skiing. I do, however, enjoy watching Olympic skiing and I've seen the comedies where the newbie starts out on the "bunny slope" and somehow winds up on the expert run with the predictable slap stick results.
I bring it up because it occurs to me that somewhere in there is a pretty good analogy for how my drinking progressed. Even though I drank alcoholically for a long, long time I was one of the drunks that maintained pretty well and the downward slope I was on stayed gentle for a long time. I know a lot of people that hit the extreme slopes almost as soon as they started drinking. It wasn't that way for me.
Although I came into the rooms in 2003 it was for the wrong reasons and I tried to play AA my way, cafeteria style. Pretty soon my complacency, the lack of honest surrender to Step 1, etc., etc., let me convince myself everything was OK and I could drink "just a little." I can hear you asking now: "And how did that work out for you?"
The ensuing six years found me jumping from the green circle right past the blue squares to the double black diamonds -- do not pass Go, do not collect $200, just head for the bottom and try to not die before you get there.
What I love about analogies is that they give me an imagery that helps me better understand the subject at hand. Without using the imagery of the analogy I look back on the past 30+ years and ask those questions that will inevitably lead me back to the bottle. You know the ones. "Was is really that bad?" "Did I really drink like an alcoholic?" "Why me?"
But with the imagery I can see the gradual downward slope that led, inevitably, to the dive. I could graph it -- after all I'm a computer nerd -- and do a risk analysis on it. Just to tell me that I'm an alcoholic. I have a disease. I can never drink alcohol safely. I don't need to graph it though. the imagery helps me see it as clearly as I need.
I finally got off the slopes and can sit in the lodge with a cigar and rich coffee enjoying life while others are still out in the cold. I can stay off the slopes as long as I don't convince myself it's OK to strap on the skis again.
