A quandary over my own bad habits.

"You can't go through life on another man's road; my habits protect my life, but they would assassinate you...." -Mark Twain



When I was a drinking man (and I was a PROFESSIONAL drinking man in my time), I was not what you would call gregarious drunkard. I'm naturally cynical, and when inebriated, I would become even more so.......oh, and cruel. Oh, I could be so cruel.

I can't think of a time back then when I can say I hated myself.

Now, all I can do is think back to those times and hate myself.

I'm grateful for the people who stuck with me through the early days of my recovery. It takes a saintly soul to have put up with the ugly drunk, and something just north of a saintly soul to put up with the ugly drunk going through withdrawal. I'm equally grateful to the people who accepted my long-overdue apologies for my behaviour in those times.

And forgive me for saying there isn't a day that goes by that I don't miss it.

I'm a smoker, too, by the way. It's a habit I can't seem to shake for very long, but I don't equate it with the drinking problem, because I never hurt anybody's feelings when I smoke. And, I tend not to smoke around people who don't smoke. I obey every single local regulation, I stay away from public entrances to buildings, and I don't complain if somebody asks me to extinguish.....

My alcoholism is seen by many as a romantic flaw; one worthy of Poe, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and others.

My fixation on tobacco makes me a pariah.

The thing that bothers me is this:

Why is alcoholism a disease, and smoking just a bad habit?