I have a friend in a bad state of denial about drinking. I am looking for a way in. And in the looking I understand something about myself. My loop went like this: tension — alcohol — relief. Then tension again. Alcohol again. Relief again. It was not even about the taste or the company. It was about the relief. Alcohol was the fastest shortcut to the place where the tension lets go, if only for a moment.
The loop did not break through understanding. It broke through one specific experience: I felt relief without alcohol. A pill helped me. Not
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