January 30 – The Excuse Machine
“It’s not a lie if you believe it.” — George Costanza, Seinfeld
Excuses kept us drunk longer than alcohol ever did. We had one for every situation — the bad day, the good day, the breakup, the promotion, the weather, the traffic, the nagging, the silence. We could explain away anything if it meant we got to keep drinking. The truth didn’t matter as long as the story worked.
We built a whole defense system around our drinking. We told ourselves we deserved it. We said we earned it. We said we could quit if we really wanted to. And we believed those lies because they made the hangovers easier to swallow. It’s amazing what an alcoholic can rationalize when they don’t want to be honest.
We used to think we were clever — like we were tricking everyone into believing we were fine. But the only one we were fooling was ourselves. The excuses were our way of avoiding the real question: What would happen if I stopped lying to myself? Because deep down, we already knew the answer — We’d have to change. And change scared us more than drinking ever did.
That’s the trap — the excuses keeps us comfortable, keeps us sick, keeps us drinking. The minute we stopped defending our drinking, we finally had a chance to get honest.
“Here’s how part of the mental side of the deal works: it builds you an Excuse Machine. Picture it like some crooked slot machine game sitting in the corner of your brain. You feed it your pain, your excuses, your alibis—and out comes a shiny little ticket stamped: Go drink.” — The 500-Pound Gorilla
What were some of the excuses you had that gave you the right to drink?
