Selfish Intent
AFF Newsletter on Substack #12
Welcome to the AFF Newsletter on Substack.
Alcohol makes you selfish. This is what I’ve come to understand during my five-plus years of sobriety.
You yourself might not be a selfish person and your actions while you are drinking might not be selfish either, but deep down, they are born from alcohol's seed of selfish intent.
A very general example of this could be something like taking your loved one to a medical appointment. The act of driving them to the appointment and being there for them is not selfish, it’s kind. But an alcoholics’ intention, whether they know it or not, is to receive the reward of alcohol for doing the good deed.
It could also give you a self-pitying excuse to drink: “My loved one has been having ‘X’ problems and life is so stressful, I need a drink.”
Believe me, reward and self-pity are just two of the reasons why alcohol users drink like they do.
Another general example would be purposely navigating people out of your house under the pretence of a good deed but really in order to have time to drink by yourself.
Speaking from my own experience, self-pity was a big trigger for my selfish behaviour when I was drinking.
After my mum died I would deliberately put myself in situations, or create my own scenarios, where I could lean on my self-pity in order to drink.
It’s through years of sobriety that I realised this was how I behaved.
If you’re still drinking, do you notice you are sometimes purposely creating scenarios in order to facilitate your drinking?
Do you do things in order to “reward” yourself with a drink?
Are you full of self-pity?
As I said, most people are not selfish but once they get a drink inside them the booze takes over.
It possesses them.
https://twitter.com/AFFathers/status/1648649776366333953?t=lkrcGl4OGUmSxQctNlWwEQ&s=19
Years of alcohol abuse will likely create a selfish person, whether they realise it or not.
An addiction to alcohol, as you can imagine, means that alcohol becomes ‘God’ in an addict’s life and it’s not until they reach out for help and ditch booze that they realise this.
If you’re in recovery, have a think back into your past drinking exploits, do you think this sentiment applies?
I’d love to hear from you.
Take care and have a great day,