"Maybe I Can Drive That Car" -Getting in and driving your recovery vehicle.
An Alcohol and Drug Addiction Survival Kit
for alcoholics, addicts, professionals, and normies… by Steve J. Murray, NI-COR President and Founder
Introduction
This book is not about using fifty cent words. I could expound upon
extrapolation of eclectic within dialectic- but I would lose most of you, including myself. This book is about real life, real words, and real recovery. Recovery is like learning to drive for first time. In beginning we are nervous, hesitant, and make all kinds of errors. We over steer, under steer, hit brakes too hard, punch accelerator, run over curbs, scare little old ladies off sidewalks, and generally don’t think we have done so well. What appears to be a failure is really start of what will become a skilled driver- one that will, through practice, be a life of amazing exploration, growth, and peace. Being unsure and unsteady is all normal; especially in beginning. Being scared behind wheel is alright. Sometimes we are growing, but don’t realize it because of way we are feeling. On positive side, one benefit of this period is fact that you will probably not wreck car because of your heightened sense of awareness- it is when we get too confident in our driving abilities that caution is abandoned, and then we wreck car because of our complacency. To be a good driver, you must practice, practice, practice. To be good at recovery, you must practice, practice, practice. This book will teach you how to live life free of alcoholism and drug addiction. Hence we begin our analogy of driving and recovery.
Chapter One- Alcoholism
Are you an alcoholic? Think about times you were behind wheel, or as a passenger in a vehicle while intoxicated. Pretty scary huh? I can remember driving one time and my friend asked me if I was okay to drive. I replied with, “I can’t see windshield.”
We all have our tales of drinking and lived to tell about them. But are we really living. The following chapter will deal mostly with tales that should have been recognized as insane behaviors- clues to a problem that were ignored. How can you be fully functional and yet be in a blackout?
How many have driven from one place to another, only to realize that they can’t remember last four or five blocks. Did we run a red light? Perhaps we cut someone off, or driven too fast. So now we realize that it is possible to be fully functional, but not remember a thing about our actions. Imagine driving for three or four days and feeling same way as you did that time you drove four blocks and can’t remember. This is what it is like in a blackout. The person is fully functional, but comes out of blackout not remembering what they did, or where they went. I know of one habitual blackout drinker who would come out of his blackouts in a different part of country. Imagine starting out drinking in Arizona, and then waking up in Florida three days later. Imagine not knowing how you got there, or whose path you crossed, what you did and said. Not to mention if you committed a crime along way.
