)DLD. My observations are mostly my own, being from a family for one of borderline diabetics, and/or hypoclycemics, though not being either myself. Mom also has a thyroid condition, which is another similar condition. My uncle drank himself to death in the Minnesota State Prison System. Mom quit years ago on her own. Her sister some years before in AA. Dad and his brother could never "handle" it and never tried. None of my living family drinks at this writing.
The "problem" manifests itself in the liver. When sugar fiends crave sugar, it's the liver that is what is "calling for it". Alcohol is "super sugar" and the liver really wants it. I don't know the biological mechanics, but you sure don't feel like playing your steel when your liver isn't getting something that it wants. ( Steel Guitar Content). Much more when it is used to getting hyper refined sugar ( COOH).
The best way to stop an alcohol craving is a can of pop. You can even feel that old "burning sensation" in your liver. For the first few years I quit I'd pour down as much pop as I did beer. I'd didn't make me feel like wrecking a car.
There are other parts of your body that become dependent on alcohol too. Most heavy drinkers, after quitting ecperience leg pains from new blood vein growth I'm told as your "old system" isn't used to having to work as hard with "thinned blood", or whatever it is. Probably brain functions too. The physical symptoms as called the "heebie jeebies" ( no anti-semitic connotations). Your body makes you feel like there are unfriendly bugs crawling on it. It takes about a year for those to go away totally.
WHen I mentioned the likeness between sugar related conditions, I meant mostly the difference in appearance of them between different people. In diabetes, some are born that way, some develop it at 10, 20, 50 etc, and some people like one of my nonrelated grandparents can drink heavily their whole lives without any "incident".
I drank heavily on and off, ( mostly off) since age 15, with varying degrees of success. I could take it or leave it. About age 20 I started regular maintenance drinking. About age 23 I started losing my self preservation instinct as well as my sense of humor. Should I start "again" I would still be at the last level of intolerance. That much I take on faith.
Mentally, I think many of us develop "soft spots" where our thinking goes into the "red zone" in different areas as some of us get older. Some with politics, some with religion, some with music. Without alcohol, there are internal mechanisms that will compensate and just let a person "mellow out". With it, in a lot of cases, the "mulling" process takes over, and within a short period of time, those "red zones" will not allow us to "let a certain situation go", put down the paper, or just avoid the temtation to call up Aunt Grizzelda and tell her what you think.
Most people have these "tendencies" whether manic, paranoid, schizophrenic, and whatever mine are.
Alcoholism isn't like the flu, hepatitis, MS, ALS, or cancer, anymore than diabtetes is. In the old days the term "affliction" was probably a better term. Not an "illness" or a "disease".
Where I "split" with the AA community were two areas.
One: I continued to smoke pot for a couple years afterward. It never made me lose my self preservation instinct. ( interestingly pot has a heavy blood sugar level connection too). I quit it because of mandatory drug testing in USDOT regs. Once quit, I never really got the urge to risk a prison term after a minor truck wreck 6 months after smoking a joint. I also felt that my "sugar system" was in a better place without it.
Two: somewhere after 15 or 16 years I felt stupid getting up at meetings and introducing my self as "an alcoholic" since Honesty was my ONE thread to my life having been saved, I felt I was being dishonest. I could have called myself "Alcoholic", but it would have been like the "Restoration Semantics" in a group that seemed to demand my admission that I still possessed, or was posessed by the demons of the drunk. I simply decided to live my life alcohol free. From the FIRST day I quit, I had no doubt that I could no longer drink. I am lucky in that respect.
I CAN tell you that the whole process can and does damage one's "self image". No not the hung over kid that can "shake it off" and go back to "living the fast adolescent life", but the seemingly indelible things that YOU see in the mirror, that others mostly can't, and take YEARS for them to not show up to you. Getting through "that period" is what requires YEARS of counselling, or in my case self-forced interaction with others with the same "affliction". No short cuts or magic pil to get your "self respect" back.
I am completely open to myself actually having these "drunken" characteristics, but I find most of my life totally free of them ( except for some of my literary pursuits.. hehehehe) and my PSG compulsions.
In short ( kind of late noww..) I'd easily add "An" to my condition if I found that things in my life were gone wrong on account of "it". Wouldn't hurt me at all.
Anybody interested in the "mechanics of alcohol intolerance" should pick up a free copy of the "Big Book" of AA somewhere and read how "it" hits different people differently. I know it sounds corny, but I care not a whit or a diddle.
The important thing, and what shows in GC's case is that for myriad reasons, one day a person can finally admit to themselves ( and others) that they cannot tolerate drinking alcohol.
It's the simplest of things. No loss of dignity.
However, the way "the world" is set up, it is one of the most difficult.
Alcohol kills more people than heroin.
Most of the autopsies never show it as the true cause either..
Cause of death: Loss of self preservation instinct..?
I'm done now..
That's my story.. as one of my musical friends said...
EJL.
