Alcohol Lied to Me Review
By Briana Baumann
Hello,
I wanted to write a review of your book and share my story with you.
Forgive the length, but it is necessary to give the history along with how I ultimately came to find your book on the internet.
I downloaded and read the book Alcohol Lied To Me August 7th, 2017.
MY entire life, which is almost 41 years at this point has had alcohol in it.
My grandfather on my mother’s side and his brother both had a SERIOUS drinking problem. His brother finally stopped drinking and asked his mom- my nana, to no matter what it takes give him his daily pill to help not drink. 1.5 years later, clean and sober, he was killed.
His brother, my grandfather, never found that freedom and ultimately killed himself driving off a mountain drunk. I don’t know when my mother started drinking, but I imagine it was pretty young. I do know of stories from my father he started in his late teens.
By the time the two met, they both were full-on daily, hourly, drinkers.
The alcohol, drugs, and personalities did not mix well together.
By the time I came along they both were crazy from the alcohol and other influences, so it’s needless to say that my childhood had hourly drinking in it mixing with violent fights and just a plain lack of caring attitudes regarding their children.
One of my brothers got spared this life of strife and angst and died when he was very, very young. My 2 other brothers and myself were not spared this lifestyle and family NORM.
Smoking and drinking go hand in hand in my family.
Literally! A cigarette in one hand, a bottle of booze, or beer or a wineglass full of poison in the other.
How anyone thought this wouldn’t influence the children involved is beyond me, but, we all know people don’t think too clearly- or even want too when alcohol is involved!
I started smoking when I was 4. Yes, a little young, but my older brother by 2 years was already smoking and I would tag along with him as his little shadow, so he taught me how to smoke so he wouldn’t be tattled on. My father ultimately found out and we were literally tied to our beds for days.
Before the age of 9 I was drinking from a bottle of vodka walking to elementary school with my friends. I would get drunk before my day even really started and of course, had a cigarette in my hand also. This was a norm to me and I, nor anyone else really cared to stop it.
By the age of 11 I had already been introduced to the adult world of parties, sex in all forms, and passing out drunkenness. I put my soul, body and mind at tremendous risk when I would attend these adult parties and me, nor my mother (my father was already out of the picture) cared.
By 18 I was a regular drinker with my mom at bars and working in some pretty shady places, doing some pretty horrific things all because this was my norm.
I, of course, stopped drinking and smoking when I was pregnant with both my daughter (soon to be 19) and son (16.5). The entire lives of my children have had drinking, smoking and other horrors in them. Is it any wonder my son smokes pot, drinks with friends and has occasionally smoked cigarettes!
Of course not! That is his norm.
It IS a miracle my daughter cannot stand alcohol (or so she says) but does smoke cigarettes (daily) and pot (occasionally).
For the last 18 years, my drinking went from occasionally (after my son and daughter were born) to daily. Oh I could go a few days, even a few weeks when I had too, but it was always there in my head.
I noticed several years ago that if a restaurant didn’t offer alcohol I always found something wrong with it and therefore would not return.
When I would do research at a restaurant I would look at the menu or reviews to see if they offered alcohol. If they did not, most likely I would pick a different restaurant with the attitude of “some of the reviews were bad, let’s pick a different place”. I thought what is the point of going to a restaurant if I can not enjoy a glass of wine or cocktail.
I allowed my kids to “sip” my wine/beer/cocktails as they grew up and even allowed my daughter to have a shot of hard alcohol on New Years Eve in celebration! What kind of madness is that????
That was the alcohol talking to me, that was my entire life’s norm talking to me, that was CHILD ABUSE!
Fast forward many, many nights of daily drinking, mixing in some afternoons and a few all day vacation drinking and we come to this year.
This year for me has been difficult. For the last couple of years I’ve been suffering from panic attacks which follow flashbacks of my childhood. Drinking to excess at such a young age had its consequences and passing out drunk at parties I had no business being at also had consequences. I will most likely never all the details, and honestly, I don’t want too, but I do know things happened to me that no child should ever have happen to them!
Maybe the alcohol was at fault, maybe not, it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. They happened.
I stopped smoking right after I turned 40 and for the last couple years I prayed, and prayed, and prayed, and begged, and screamed for God to help me stop smoking and drinking! I begged and begged for Him to remove this need, this desire, this want for alcohol.
I wanted that more than to stop smoking!
I knew I had a problem, I knew I was getting out of control and had lost control so many, many times in the last 30 odd years that I wanted it gone. However, I could not stop, I could not agree with what I knew in my heart was killing me.
I had never seen or learned of a different norm. Not from friends, family, my husband. No-one showed me differently, and I didn’t want to see anything else anyways.
The non-smoking did not last of course.
In my norm, one goes with the other and since I did not put down the wine glass it was so very simple to pick up a cigarette, especially since members of my family still smoked, drank and acted like fools by offering me a cigarette.
How rude is that?
You know someone has stopped something bad for them, yet you offer, plead, convince them into ingesting the same poison as you!
I have always made fun of people who get caught driving while intoxicated in my head. I don’t (normally) say the things I would think out loud, but the thoughts were there. “What an idiot! Couldn’t he/she act sober?” “Couldn’t he/she drive better”? I’ve never had a DUI, or been stopped for reckless driving.
I have come across roadblock checks while I had been drinking and passed through without a problem.
Well, this past June I came AWFULLY close to getting a DUI, and I KNEW I shouldn’t have been driving. I KNEW I should have called Uber, or Lyft or for that fact walked the ½ (or less) mile home!!! But, no, that was not my norm, that was not something I learned from watching all those people in my life who drank.
I had a glass of wine ( no problem for me to drive home on, even 2, MAYBE 3 I could handle) and ( I think) 2 shrubs. I don’t know if you know what a shrub is but it is a cocktail so complex it is like a meal in your mouth!
They are very good, VERY potent, and very Dangerous! I even asked the bartender how many a person could drink and still drive home. Her answer was 4! 4! 4 shots of tequila in the the yummy blackberry one. 4 shots of vodka in the others! 4 shots of HARD liquor! That right there should have opened my eyes to my problem!
Not only did I ask, BUT I took it as Gospel! I can handle 4— she said so! No problem!
Well, I had 2, plus the wine, and I was quite loose, quite drunk, making quite a fool of myself! I drove home! I also called my husband on the way home and lied to him when he started in on me on driving while drunk! Nope I said, Im not, I only had a glass of wine.
BULLSHIT!
Yes, that was bad, but then again a lot of things in my life were bad by that point and there were far, far, far more problems than just my drinking, or his drinking, or, or, or!
He demanded I stop drinking all alcohol completely, stop cooking with it, stop having wine at dinner in restaurants, stop it all completely or he’s filing for divorce.
Demands don’t work on me. Threats push me farther into defense mode. We are still getting a divorce.
However, I was already over the last year coming to the conclusion I needed to back WAY off of alcohol but I couldn’t do it on my own. I sure as heck didn’t have a support system I would turn too. My prayers, pleading, begging had been ignored. I was on my own!
So I decided to look for a pill to help take some of the load. Even though I’m allergic to most meds out there I didn’t care. I needed help in some way and a pill was a perfect answer in my thinking.
First thing I found was Alcohol Lied To me! I thought “What a Silly Name for a book- alcohol doesn’t talk to you. It doesn’t have a way TO lie to you! Ridiculous!”
Well I signed up and received the book and proceeded to read it. Completely, in one sitting!
Maybe my prayers were finally answered. Maybe I was in the perfect storm of my life and was ready to listen. Maybe I knew deep in my soul my Norm had to change. I don’t know. Maybe it was a combination of all 3.
I read that book and a switch was flipped in my thinking, in my beliefs, in the deepest part of my soul I changed. Just like that!
I got up and went to the bottle of vodka that was hidden in my drawer and opened it on the way to the sink. I purposefully smelled the vodka thinking “one last smell, then down the sink it goes!” I liked the smell of vodka- or at least told myself I did.
I also lied to myself and said I liked the smell of wine.
No I didn’t! I actually would never touch wine until after I got married because my mother threw up all over me when I was a teenager red, red, red wine!
Looked like blood. Smelled horrific!
Traumatized me for many many years! It became my number one go to these last 14 years!
So, I was walking to the sink and smelled this poison. I fully believed at that point (and still do) it and all alcohol is and was poison. When I smelled that vodka my stomach twisted and tried to crawl up my throat!
It was so foul, so disgusting it was mind-boggling! How could I have been ingesting this daily, for years, and never smelled it for what it was?
How could I claim vodka smelled good, or how can you smell vodka- it has no smell- for years!!!
Down the sink, it went with a proud and joyful heart!
I have not had a single sip of poison since the night before I found that book. I have zero desire for it. I will never again partake in the Norm of alcohol!
I am so very grateful to Craig Beck for writing Alcohol Lied to Me! For all the hours it must have taken, for his humility of admitting just how bad it was for him, for his research and honesty regarding alcohol detox and for his funny points that drove the story home deep into my soul and brain!
I know the road will be different now for me, for my children, for the new people in my life. I know it will be weeks before the chemistry in my brain is corrected and years for the damage (whatever damage there is) to my liver to be corrected.
I know I just added years to my life, years to spend with my family and however many grandchildren I get in the future.
I know if I see a young mother giving her child a shot for a celebration I will speak up. I will try to protect that child, as no person ever did for me!
I know in every cell of my being that book changed my life and the lives around me!
I hope and pray it does the same for all who read it! I hope and pray that the societies NORM will be forever changed!
I pray for all people to open their eyes to the lies regarding alcohol!
Briana Baumann
New Mexico 8-12-17
