What does complete defeat look

the horror that life had become. It forced me to see that being happy had become almost impossible in any real sense. Here is my family and my friends, happy and joyful in this photo, and there’s me in the middle of it all, dying.

I used to fear having my photo taken, especially when it was a happy occasion. I’d have this sense of foreboding about what I’d look like in the photo. It was the eyes – they never lied. Sad, soulless eyes. They told me I was broken – that I was lying to myself and the people in the photo who were often my family and friends. I would try so hard to smile and look happy, but I was dead inside.

That was defeat for me – I had lost at life. These photos show my life going on around me, often in beautiful ways, and I am not there.

My wife at the time was a big social media user and these photos were often, sometimes daily. Torture….. daily.

I learned to try and workaround this by exaggerating my expression – trying to get a big silly smile to hide the sad story my eyes were telling. The cover up got noticed and my family would ask why I always made a “cartoon face” in photos.

Of course the best way to deal with the pain of all this was to have another drink, to do more stupid, shameful stuff and drain my soul a little more before the next photo op. But that’s another story.

This was part of the torture of being an active alcoholic, the most potent reminder of

For me, complete defeat came in stages. At each stage I truly believed I was defeated, and yet my disease and my ego were not finished with me. My first defeat came after my last drunk. Waking the morning after, with my wife in tears beside me in bed and calmly announcing that if this behavior continued she would leave, I knew that I could not continue the way I always had. I had used AA as a last resort, telling my wife that if I can’t control my drinking I will go to AA and quit forever. After my last drunk it was time to pay the piper.

every week or two, not working the steps nor being of service to other alcoholics. During this time it was slowly dawning on me that although I was powerless over alcohol and my life had become unmanageable, independent of alcohol it still continued to be unmanageable. The realization that my disease ran far deeper than an addiction to alcohol was terrifying. I came to understand that alcohol was not my problem but actually my solution. Over the years the dosage required to quieten my brain and give me the numbing sensation I needed to obliterate my problems temporarily had become lethal. When the medicine stops working one needs to find alternative remedies.

Listening to the reading “More About Alcoholism” at the beginning of my first ever AA meeting was my second defeat, and yet my happiest moment. It was in that instance that I admitted I was powerless over alcohol and I realized that my vain attempts to control my drinking would lead to nothing but incomprehensible demoralization and death.

In my naivety I tried to find a softer, easier way. I ignored the experience of other fellows who had what I wanted and believed that I knew better. How wrong I was!

Eighteen months of trying to do my version of the program ended in my most recent and complete defeat. My life had become truly unmanageable: I was at a crossroads with seemingly only two paths to take. On the left was picking up a drink and descending into what I knew would be a death spiral of alcoholism. Whilst on the right, thoughts of suicide and self-destruction. It was at this moment when I was granted a third way, the realization that all those other fellows who had what I wanted had also been at a similar juncture. It was finally, at this moment, I admitted complete defeat. I got down on my knees and, for the first time in my life, I prayed. I committed to putting aside my ego, my self-centeredness, and committed to working the 12 steps with honesty, open-mindedness and willingness.

This moment of defeat and the accompanying surrender was truly liberating. I finally saw the years of counting drinks, using apps to track my consumption, making promises, reading self-help books, switching between different types of alcohol for what they were: the desperate attempts of my disease to keep me in its thrall.

Awaking from this insanity was akin to being reborn. However, with this relief came self-confidence and arrogance. I shut my ears and my mind to all the words and advice that were being freely given by experienced fellows in the program. I believed that by just not drinking my life would become manageable and all of my problems would go away. As many of us know this is not the case.

In the end it took eighteen months and my third defeat. Eighteen months of hovering on the periphery of the program, attending a meeting

I continue to do so every day of my life and in turn, I am granted a daily reprieve. ~ Tom H.