Hornswoggled

You know the feeling. You've just come out of the convenience store and you realize that you gave a twenty but only got change for a ten. Or worse, you discover that you've invested your retirement savings with a crook and now instead of retiring you have to work at Walmart the rest of your life.

You've been cheated. Even when only a little bit of your life has been stolen from you, it's a horrifying and debilitating feeling. If you've lost a lot, it can be excruciating.

Alcohol is a massive scam that robs you of your life every bit as much as the convenience store clerk or the investment swindler. If you stop drinking long enough to see what it has done to you, you're going to have that awful feeling that you've been "hornswoggled". Alcohol is the most vicious con of them all.

That knot in your stomach, the cold chills, when the realization hits you that you've been cheated, I call it the "awakening". It's just about the worst feeling ever, enough to drive you to drink. And that's probably what you'll do, any time you wake up sober with reality staring you cold in the face like your worst zombie nightmare. Have a drink, get back on the train to dreamland, and make that awful feeling go away.

Except it keeps coming back, that hoary ghost of intoxications past. So you drink some more to keep it at bay. You simply can't face up to the cesspool that alcohol has made of your life.

If you do ever manage to stop drinking and struggle through the depression, there is real happiness waiting at the end of that long, dark tunnel. It may take a year, maybe two, maybe more, but eventually you will come out into the light. You will have rescued your life from the great swindler and be on the road to a good life.