This disease. Alcoholism. My disease. It wants me to drink. In fact, it wants me dead. It uses any opportunity to sneak it's way in to my life. Addiction masks itself in people, places and things all the time. And to stay sober, I have to be aware of this.

I don't think it's funny to make fun of the latest train wreck celebrity. I don't think it's funny to joke about taking a pill to make everything better. I don't think it's funny to drown your sorrows and problems in a bottle of wine night after night. I don't think it's funny...I think it's sad.

I still weave in and out of the stages of grief. Today, Grief is my friend. She is always there...sometimes all up in my business and other times she sits quietly in the background.  She has become a part of my life. And when you spend as much time with her as I have, you start to understand and appreciate her.

 Understand that they don’t want to be this way. They don’t mean to keep hurting their family and friends. It isn’t a matter of “knowing better” or “being too smart to go down that path”. Educate yourself! There are so many resources available. I feel guilty that I didn’t learn more in time to help Will. No family should have to lose someone they love to alcohol or drugs.

The disease does not discriminate. Alcoholism is a progressive disease. Those bums that we think about as being the "real alcoholics" were probably just like you and me at some point in their life too.