I got my first random response from someone who saw my site from a blogring.  Ok so I find that relatively cool.  Random Strangers dropping by should always feel free to post a thought or two.

So recently the four month anniversary of my last drink past.  On that day I was locked up in the State of Missouri’s Weekend Intervention Program. A 48 Hour weekend class designed for repeat drunk drivers.  Four months earlier I got my second DWI.  I got my first in ’97 shortly before returning to college.  That was my last night of drinking and for all intensive purposes the last drink I will ever have (Blvd Pale Ale if you were wondering).

I am not someone who makes the best decisions after they have been drinking.  It was not the only time I had done it, but it is a rare thing.  I blew a .096.  To put that in perspective I am 5’11” and weigh 170.  This allows me to drink 2 beers each of the first 2 hours and 1 beer each hour after that and still blow below a .08 (MO legal limit which was lowered from .1 a few years ago).  I was drinking about 2 an hour.  Now I have been drinking for about 12 years.  I am a seasoned social drinker and and can handle a 2 beer per hour pace for quite some time without showing any effects.  Unfortunately that is due to a tolerance to a higher BAC not that alcohol effects my BAC less rapidly.  In other words I can have a higher BAC without it effecting me as quickly.  I wasn’t out of control, my friends would have no reason to think I was impaired.  I learned in this class that the police know that at that time of night on that highway 6 out of 10 drivers are impaired.  So just randomly picking they do have better than a 50/50 chance of catching a drunk driver.  If they can profile the car they can raise these odds significantly.  I got caught and went to jail.

This is where life really begins to suck and a fate you might think twice about before putting yourself in.  The sheer cost alone is absurd:

• Bail $500
  
• Tow and Impound $165
  
• Lawyer $1,500 (this is super cheap for a good lawyer, but we have known each other 15 years and I was almost his son in law)
  
• SATOP Assessment $245 (this is mandated by the state to determine what treatment class you are subject too)
  
• SATOP Class $400 (This also could have been much worse the alternative i was first referred too was $1000 and 12 weeks, 3 nights a week for 2 hours a night.  You can’t get your license back til you complete this class.)
  
• SATOP Re Assessment $120 (more on this later)
  
• Fines: $1000
  
• SR22- $50 per month I believe for 2 years.  $1200
  
• License Reinstatement fee: $45
  
• Probation: $25 per month for 2 years: $600
  
• Increased Insurance: Killer.  I estimate about $75 per month increase for me lasting 2 years: $1800

This is alot of money.  You also are going to lose your license for 30-90.  Bumming rides really gets old after a while.  You can lose your job just for getting one in many jobs.  If you live a fair distance from work bumming rides or catching the bus can be impossible.  If you go to apply for a new job and they do a criminal or driving record check they will see it.  You lose an entire weekend to this class.  Lights out time, locked in a hotel room with a stranger, and basically in custody for 48 hours.  Taking off for court is always a joy.  Getting life insurance just got more expensive if possible at all.  You also do 2 years supervised probation so you will be taking off a couple hours one day a month to make a visit and pay a fee, maybe you’ll even get a random piss test..  Community service is also a great time.  These jobs aren’t real fun and 40 hours taking of your job to go clean kennels at the pound for free is not the ideal use of time.  Your third drunk driving charge in your entire life gets you charged with a felony.  Now you are doing jail time (federal pen) and after your release you are a convicted felon who can’t vote or own a gun.

So it just doesn’t seem worth it to drink anymore.  I’m not saying anyone else shouldn’t, but weigh the consequences.  I just choose not to drink.  It is a conscious decision.  I don’t meet the DSM-IV criteria for dependency so I don’t consider it a disease.  I am absolutely not “powerless to control my drinking.”  I do not need a higher power to save me from drinking.  I may still have the urge to drink, but I am capable of making the decision not to act upon it.  I may see a beautiful woman walking down the street and have the urge to see her naked, that doesn’t mean I am powerless to prevent myself from ripping her clothes off.  Humans are more evolved creatures for having control over their instincts and impulses.  Unless someone holds me down and pours booze down my throat I must make the purposeful decision to drink, therefore it is not a disease. 

The entire system is so filled with this Alcoholics Anonymous rhetoric.  Everyone seems to buy into this idea that alcoholism disease.  That an alcoholic is powerless over it and if you want to quit the best way to do so is to go to AA meetings and work the program.  AA works on a 12 step system.  The first step is to admit that you are an alcoholic and admit you are powerless to control your drinking.  Step two is to accept that the only way you can quit drinking is to get help from “a higher power”.  AA stays away from saying “God”.  They say your higher power can be anything you want it to be, yet in step 7 you ask this higher power to humbly remove our short comings and in step 11 you try to reach a higher level of consciousness towards god as you understand him.  Higher power sure sounds alot like a god to me.  My big problem is that the whole system sets people up for failure.  You start out telling someone they are powerless to control something and they become a victim of circumstance.  They can’t just stop drinking, it’s a disease.  When they give into temptation it has to be because their higher power wasn’t looking out for them.  Now that one drink with a friend or to calm their nerves before a date has turned into a whole bender.  Another common AA line is “one is too many and a thousand isn’t enough”.  These people have been taught to think this is their natural pattern of consumption due to their disease and now they are on a binge that lasts until something bad happens and makes them see the need to quit.  Not to worry AA will welcome them back with open arms.  You see the system didn’t fail them, they failed the system.  Instead of them seeing AA as ineffective in stopping them from drinking, they are told that the program works and the reason they drank again was because they didn’t follow the system.  Their line is “it works if you work it”.  No one seems to question this at all.  No other system in the world is judged by this standard.  If anyone in the program starts drinking, it is that persons fault for not following the program.  The program can never be wrong.

Granted I have only been sober for slightly over 4 months, but it can’t be any longer, it has only been four months.  Hope you learned something from this.  Hell if you made it to the end you are quite the trooper.