Today was my third day in the 12-week treatment program, and I felt like a few of the pieces started to fall into place. Not the emotional part, that one’s been loud for years, but the biological part. The mechanical part.
The “how the hell did my brain get here?” part.
We spent the session breaking down the biopsychosocial model of addiction, and for the first time I understood that alcohol wasn’t just something I “chose.” It became something my brain learned, prioritized, and finally depended on.
It is about Dopamine, Endorphins, Serotonin and a The Hijacked System.
The whiteboard looked like a battlefield.
Arrows up when drinking.
Arrows down after.
Dopamine skyrockets, giving that rush, that “relief,” that temporary feeling that everything is manageable.
Endorphins push you into artificial calm.
Serotonin lifts your mood for a moment and then crashes you into the floor.
GABA shuts off the anxiety, until it later comes back ten times stronger.
Glutamate, the system that keeps you alert and thinking, gets scrambled.
It was painful to look at because it matched my life perfectly.
Post-Acute Withdrawal and The Long Tail
I’ve always wondered why my mental state could feel so chaotic long after the last drink.
Today I got the answer...
The brain stays unbalanced for weeks or even months after the alcohol is gone.
That imbalance is the craving.
That imbalance is the fog, the anxiety, the irritability, the emptiness.
Understanding that doesn’t fix everything,
but damn, it explains a lot.
Genes don’t decide, but they guide and we also talked about genetics how genes don’t determine who becomes an alcoholic, but they can open the door.
Some families pass down heart disease.
Some pass down anxiety.
Mine passed down escape mechanisms and self-medication.
Which made today’s assignment hit even harder.
Presenting My Family Tree
I presented my family tree today, not the friendly “who is who” version, but the real one.
Mental health, addiction tendencies, trauma, patterns repeating themselves silently across generations.
It was uncomfortable.
It was emotional.
But it was also clarifying.
Seeing it mapped out on paper removed the shame.
Patterns don’t excuse anything, but they explain why I was standing at the cliff edge with gasoline in my backpack long before my first drink.
Looking Back at My Own Timeline
Part of the session involved reflecting on how long alcohol has played a role in our lives.
For me:
- First time drunk: 9th grade, completely out of control.
- First long relationship: 16 years old, two children.
- Separated at 32, life in pieces.
- Another relationship later, intense, addictive, with high tops and low lows.
- And somewhere between all that:
periodic alcoholism,
an inability to control alcohol,
a long CV of incidents,
and “luck” in situations where the outcome could’ve been much worse.
The truth is that even before the periods of heavy drinking,
I never, not once, had control.
My relationship with alcohol was chaos dressed as a weekend.
What I Took With Me Today
Today wasn’t about shame.
It wasn’t about blaming myself or others.
It was about understanding the machinery behind the addiction and the chemistry, the genes, the patterns, the stress response, the loss of choice.
For the first time, I saw the whole picture. Also for the first time, it felt like maybe, just maybe I’m not trying to fix “my personality” or “my failures,” but a system in my brain that can be rewired with time, work, and honesty.
Tomorrow the real work continues.
But tonight, for once, clarity is enough.
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