Rabbit Hole: “A metaphor for something that transports someone into a wonderfully (or troublingly) surreal state or situation.
Dictionary.com
While I never fell down the white rabbit hole of addiction, I teetered close enough to its edge to peer into the darkness and have compassion for those who have fallen.
My drug of choice wasn’t even a drug. It was, in fact, a very legal substance conceived by the union of potatoes and brewers’ yeast. Once in a while, the child of fermented grapes was a guest at my dinner table. Sometimes there was actually food at that table.
My trip to the edge of the rabbit hole had a benign beginning … as do all things that are eventually taken to the extreme. And although the men on the chessboard never got up to tell me where to go, I did occasionally hear the white knight talking backward. And many a morning my head felt as if someone had followed the red queen’s orders., “Off with her head!”
But at some point, stories of addiction began to resonate with me. The online ads and memes that were supposed to be funny no longer made me laugh. Nights of overdrinking were followed by mornings of regret.
Meanwhile, studies came out trying to justify all types of drinking. Wine is good for you, they boasted. Look at the French. They eat rich, fatty foods, and they don’t have a cholesterol problem!
One study went so far as to boast that people who drank more than three drinks per day had a decreased risk of contracting dementia. This led to a plethora of online reactions, most of which were a variation on the “I’m way behind on my drinking” theme.
The fact that alcohol companies that stood to gain the most financially were sponsoring those “studies” did nothing to stop the spread of misinformation.
The rabbit hole beckoned louder and louder, and the rabbits ran faster and faster as I tried to contain their enthusiasm to get me to jump.
Even though the potatoes and grapes often made me feel 10 feet tall, I realized that if I kept chasing those rabbits, I was going to fall. And no matter how hard the caterpillar tried, it would never turn into a butterfly.
And so, I stopped. Drinking, that is.
Logic and proportion never fell sloppy dead. I just stopped.
There was no fanfare, no rehab, no physical withdrawal.
With the support of my guides — both human and spiritual — I JUST STOPPED.
That was more than two and a half years ago.
“What’s your secret for staying sober?” people ask me.
It’s simple, really. I stopped drinking alcohol. And the benefits far outweigh whatever pleasure alcohol seemed to provide.
Will I ever drink again? I don’t know.
Perhaps Alice knows. You should ask her.
If there’s one thing I know for sure after all my years on this planet, it’s that we should never say never. Just when you think life’s your bitch, she slaps you upside the head with an unexpected blow and says, “Who’s the bitch now?”
In the meantime, I’ve learned to feed my head with things the dormouse would approve of.
Will you do the same?
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“White Rabbit” — Words and music by Grace Slick, Performed by Jefferson Airplane
Trading Barbs With Barb 