Another benefit of addiction

There are two themes that consistently pop up at AA meeting that recently came together for me.  The first is how much time we used to spend drinking and how surprising it is to find that time freed up.  The second theme is how drinking was essentially a means of hiding from the pain of life, a way of anaesthetizing ourselves rather than dealing with the problems and joys of being human.

It was only a couple of days ago that I realized that it wasn't just drinking, the actual consumption of that gloriously deadening liquid, that allowed us to hide from life.  It was the whole package: the time spent planning our drinking, figuring out which store we could buy from today so we weren't repeating too much and tipping the clerk off to our problem, the time spent figuring out how to dispose of the bottles, even the time spent hung over ("I'm in no shape to deal with financial planning now!").  All of these thoughts and actions, all of this time, is part of the addictive behaviour of the active alcoholic.  It is all part of crawling into our holes and hiding.

Which brings up a scary thought.  What rituals, what time-wasters am I using now to hide?  We talk about time spent 'pencil-sharpening' to avoid decisions and tasks for which we can be evaluated at work.  How about the rest of life?

"May you live all the days of your life."  - Jonathan Swift