Living sober by Aa Services Aa Services, Alcoholics Anonymous

hospital anesthesiologist the whole truth about our former drinking (and pill taking, if any), just as we make sure they know other facts about our health history
    The two following accounts seem to be typical of AA members' experiences with psychotropic (mind-affecting) drugs other than alcohol.
    One of us, sober almost thirty years, decided he wanted to try pot, which he had never touched before. So he did. He enjoyed the effects and for months was able to use it on social occasions without any problem at all, he felt. Then someone said a small sip of wine made the effect even better, and he tried that, too, without even thinking about his bad history of alcoholism. After all, he was having only one sip of a very light wine.
    Within a month, he was drinking heavily and realized he was again in the thrall of acute alcoholism.
    We could put a hundred or so dittos under that tale, with only small modifications. It is a pleasure to report that this particular fellow sobered up, also gave up the weed, and has now been totally pot-and booze-free for two years. He is again a happy, active sober alcoholic, enjoying his AA life.
    Not all who have similarly experimented with marijuana have made it back into sobriety. For some of these AA members, whose pot-smoking likewise led them to start drinking again, their original addiction progressed to the point of death.
    The other story is that of a young woman, sober ten years, who was hospitalized for serious surgery.
    Her physician, who was an expert on alcoholism, told her it would be necessary after the surgery to give her a small dose of morphine once or twice for the pain, but he assured her she wouldn't need it any longer after that. This woman had never in her life used anything stronger than one aspirin tablet, for a rare headache.
    The second night after the operation, she asked her doctor for one more dose of the morphine. She had already had the two. "Are you in pain?" he asked.
    "No," she replied. Then she added in complete innocence, "But I might be later."
    When he grinned at her, she realized what she had said, and what it apparently meant. Her mind and body in some way were already craving the drug.

    She laughed and did without it, and has had no such desire since. Five years later, she is still sober and healthy. She occasionally tells of the incident at AA meetings to illustrate her own belief that a permanent "addiction proneness" persists even during sobriety in anyone who has ever had a drinking problem.
    So most of us try to make sure any physician or dentist who serves us understands our personal history accurately, and is sufficiently knowledgeable about alcoholism to understand our risk with medications.
    And we are wary of what we take on our own; we steer away from cough syrups with alcohol, codeine, or bromides, and from all those assorted smokes, powders, synthetic painkillers, liquids, and vapors that are sometimes freely handed around by unauthorized pharmacists or amateur anesthesiologists.
    Why take a chance?
    It is not at all difficult, we find, to skip such risky brushes with disaster—purely on grounds of health, not of morality. Through Alcoholics Anonymous, we have found a drug-free way of life which, to us, is far more satisfying than any we ever experienced with mood-changing substances.
    The chemical "magic" we felt from alcohol (or substitutes for it) was all locked within our own heads, anyhow. Nobody else could share the pleasant sensations inside us. Now, we enjoy sharing with one another in AA—or with anybody outside AA—our natural, undoped happiness.
    In time, the nervous system becomes healthy and thoroughly conditioned to the absence of mood-changing drugs, such as firewater. When we feel more comfortable without chemical substances than we felt while we were dependent on them, we come to accept and trust our normal feelings, whether high or low.
    Then we have the strength to make healthful, independent decisions, relying less on