Originally Posted by
LProuse
First, no alcoholic is "reformed." They're recover(ed), or recovering, as I prefer.
"Reformed" might be appropriate for someone who's lived a life of crime, but alcoholics are not bad people who need to become good. They're sick and need to become well. And that's what recovery is about.
Yes, I WOULD give the keys to the Oval office to someone you refer to as "a reformed drunk." Why? Because I know what it takes to recover...and to live a life of recovery.
Not only that but when I need a doctor I go to one I know who's in recovery. I do the same if I need an attorney. And I feel much more comfortable in a business deal if I know that person is recovering. I'll discuss why shortly.
You are shot-through with tons of misinformation, as much of your phraseology certainly confirms.
Recovery from alcoholism is not the same as with other diseases. A cancer victim, for example, simply wants the cancer removed and a return to life as he or she once knew it. For an alcoholic, the alcohol is NOT the problem; it's the solution and merely a symptom of the real problem, which is the manner in which he or she responds to life itself. How we see things, how we react to things, what our belief system is, or has become, and how it plays into our reactions - THAT is the problem, buried deep within us and often covered by many false fronts and facades. The bottom line is that we cannot merely excise alcohol from our lives and achieve our goal. By so doing we only address a symptom and not the root cause. And most fail when they attempt to do it that way.
One of the prevailing attitudes of society, and certainly yourself, is that a recovering alcoholic will always be "less than," damaged goods, never as good as others or as he or she should have been.
Nothing could be further from the truth. I know millionaires, CEO's of a couple of Fortune 500 companies, priests, ministers, a world-famous heart surgeon (among tons of other doctors), prominent attorneys, judges, congressmen, sports superstars, and a whole plethora of others - all solidly recovering. I also know the homeless, the spurned, and the hopeless who are struggling.
Not long ago a man came up to me after I'd spoken somewhere. Years earlier he'd been living under a bridge, a hopeless drunk. He smiled as he shook my hand and told me he'd just finished his PhD. I get to witness these things all the time, everywhere I go.
An alcoholic who recovers must change his or her entire life; they must go above and beyond anything previous in order to stay sober and live happily. I am infinitely better at anything I do today, or have EVER done, due to my sobriety. Whether it's being a husband and father, flying an airplane, or just trying to be a better human being.
I watch recovering people die from horrific diseases and do so with a smile on their face and a whispered sense of gratitude for sobriety clear up to the end. I watch them deal with the loss of children and never turn back to the bottle. I watch them confront every imaginable calamity that life offers and find refuge in their recovery and their fellow recovering alcoholics who never leave their side. Recovering alcoholics are, in my view, the toughest, most tempered and resilient - and inspirational - people I know. I've been sober a long while, spoken all over the US and Canada (and once in Spain), and I know virtually thousands and thousands of recovering alcoholics. And what I've reported here is not unusual in the least.
So, yes, I would turn the keys over to anyone in ANY position of importance...if I knew they were recovering.
I hope you open and widen your horizons, learn more about all this, and become enlightened about this subject.
Blue skies,
Lyle