Sir, - I was fascinated by your front page report, "Odd tipple alternative therapy for alcoholics" (The Irish Times, November 17th). But it was the fascination of the rabbit watching the snake.
I am an alcoholic. I believe, from reviewing the pattern of my drinking since student days, that I was an alcoholic from the beginning. To put it simply, I could not stop once I had begun and my behaviour was not normal. That for 30 years was the story of my life until I ended up crying for help and was sent to hospital.
For me that one hospitalisation of nine weeks was enough was to make me realise that I have a disease and, more important, that I can arrest its progress by not drinking. That was 20 years ago. So far, by accepting that drink is not for me, that I have only to abstain for a day from taking one drink, and that I have the choice of going through that misery and despair again if I want to, I have come to know a contented, serene life in sobriety. I have also been allowed, rather late, to grow up and to be responsible.
To me, it doesn't matter much whether you call my condition a disease or an addiction. I know what it did to me, in my head, in my relationships, in my job, and that's enough for me to know. I know that now I don't have to go to the early houses for a cure or keep a bottle in the garage or the car or pay a kind garda for Connemara poitin by the case. And I can cope with any situation that comes my way, instead of going to the pub in search of oblivion.
I have a wonderful life today, full of happy little bonuses and benefits that I could not have believed possible in my despair and loneliness. And then along comes the centre for alcohol and drug studies in Newcastle-upon-Tyne suggesting that, to quote your reporters, "moderate drinking is a realisable goal for all but the most serious alcoholics". Sir, I have seen too much of alcoholism and alcoholics to believe it.
Who is to play God and say to one: "You're all right; you can take steps to rehabilitate yourself and enjoy a glass or two"; and to another: "No, controlled drinking is not for you; you're too far gone"?
My difficulty is that I can see the most horrendous damage being done to people and families by offering a loophole to any of us.
I know the way our minds work. I know that to suggest to me that a future of social drinking lies before me could lead me to try the one drink that would destroy all that 20 years of sobriety has given me. And I am not prepared to take the gamble. In any case, drink for me now does not present an appealing face. I enjoy offering people drinks, but that's where it begins and ends.
I am seriously concerned lest analysis by the alcoholic should lead him or her to alter the perception that he or she can control the disease by any other method than by refraining from taking the first drink on a daily basis. - Yours, etc.,
From Donal O'Donovan
Bray, Co Wicklow.