Oh God, Oenophile, that's horrendous. Do you have any sight at all now? These are the realities for the still drinking alcoholic, and I am fortunate (and I do know it) that I am relatively unscathed health wise. It could have been so different: no matter how many things went wrong with my body, I just couldn't stop. I imagine losing your sight must be terrifying though. I have no idea how I would cope with that actually.
Havalina, I tend to use the distraction as a temporary measure. I've found that if I don't have other ongoing support to deal with the problems life throws at me, I'll just fall back into the same behaviour patterns. It takes a whole mind-set change to successfully recover from active alcoholism, so although distraction may work in the short term (to stave off really strong urges to drink), all the reasons we drank in the first place are still there. Namely that we are alcoholic and thus powerless over alcohol. I have learned that once I take that first drink, I no longer have any say in the matter. I will get drunk.
We need a longer term heavy hitting solution (which comes in the form of the 12 step programme of recovery). Distraction without learning how to deal with our emotions successfully will only be a sticking plaster in the short term.
I'll use an analogy. If you were a diabetic, you can't just "will" the condition to go away. You would need to accept that you are powerless over what's happening to your body's bichemistry and accept help and treatment from medical sources. Likewise, as an alcoholic I don't believe I will ever regain control of my drinking and the outside sources and treatment if for this condition (if you like) are AA and the 12 step programme.
I does seem scary and none of us wanted to believe that we were ultimately powerless of something in a bottle, we want to be in control of everything in our lives and be "normal". It's hard to admit that we've been defeated by drink. Until I was ready to accept that I couldn't control my drinking, I was powerless and my life had become unmanageable, I couldn't move forward. I kept repeating the same behaviours and expecting different results.
It was somewhat of a relief when I finally did say to myself. Do you know what? This isn't working. And I wasn't gracious in my defeat either, I had to be dragged kicking and screaming into recovery and not before I had wreaked havoc on so many people's lives round about me.
It's taken me a long time to get here - when you come through the doors of AA you're not expected to know all the answers or even be ready to say that you'll put down the drink forever. Yes, that is final, too final in fact for most of us, so instead we say "Today I won't drink". It's just 24 hours after all, not too difficult. That's all you have to promise yourself in the beginning. Keep going to meetings, and it won't only just be a distraction but a whole new way of living a contented life. Sounds unbelievable? I thought so too, I was the worst cynic ever. Here I am sometime down the line extolling the virtues of AA, and I never believed that would happen. I just had to have a wee bit of faith and willingness to accept that my way of doing things possible wasn't the best, and take on some other suggestions, discard my pride, and trust people who have done it before me. And it's there for the taking.
Keep talking to us. You don't have to decide anything. We've all been there so please know we're here to listen without judgement.