Any Lengths

Alcoholics are a people of a unique personality type, with a unique diesease.  How so?  Well, for most alcoholics, they endure years of people telling them, "You have a problem," "You are sick," "You need to get some help."  The alcoholic does nothing but go on drinking even if they might agree that they are sick, alcoholic, allowing alcohol to kill them.  But tell the same person that they have cancer, and they go into action immediately.  They have a willingness to go to any lengths to get the needed treatment so they can be cured.  Both cancer and alcoholism are diseases.  But alcoholism is not simply a disease.  It is a disease that affects only alcoholics.  Cancer is never the friend of an alcoholic, nor is it the solution to their misery and unhappiness.  Cancer never "fixes" anyone, like alcohol can fix an alcoholic for a time.  Cancer is never a solution for happiness.  Alcohol is a solution for an alcoholic.  These differences are just some of the reasons that non-alcoholics cannot fathom the alcoholic thinking.  Only another alcoholic seems to understand.  Ironically, these people, "different" from normal life need one another to become free of the addictive lifestyle.  The past is prelude to the future if one enters onto a spiritual path of daily practice.  People who used to live very messy, destructive, bad behavior lives, become kind, compassionate and selfless in recovery.  Cancer treatment only cures a disease.  It does not change the soul.  You can put cancer into remission or even cure it, but you can still be the same jerk you were before treatment.  A recovering alcoholic is healed through and through, but they need a daily dose of treatment.  That  keeps them on their toes.