Feelings

We were talking about how we feel and someone says, “I have all these feelings and I guess that’s how I know I’m an alcoholic”. Someone else says, “I was feeling OK and then I started to feel sad and then I didn’t know why and I got upset because I didn’t know why and then I got mad at myself.” Then another person says, “We are alcoholics, that’s why we have all these feelings.”

I don’t think any of that is true. These feelings that all of us have are not about being alcoholics. They are about being human. The alcoholic part is thinking that we shouldn’t have feelings. Everyone has feelings and has feelings that shift and change for unknown reasons. We alcoholics make that into something more because we think we are not supposed to have feelings or feelings that change or feelings that don’t make sense to us. But all of that is just being human. The real symptom of alcoholism is that we fight that.