Adding Fire to the Fuel: Challenging shame and the stigma of alcoholism

You always add fuel to a fire, not the other way around. Adding fire to the fuel will test your firefighter merit badge skills … IF it doesn’t kill you. A forest floor coated in pine needles is fuel. Add fire to that fuel, you’ve got some explaining to do. You take a match to a can of gasoline and it’s going to blow. You’ll still get a wicked fireball if you add that volatile fuel to a fire, but you’re probably going to live. When stigma, aka: shame (fire) is added to the raw fuel of an alcoholic body and mind, one can reasonably expect a fireball proportional to that alcoholic’s capacity for handling fire. It’s an unrealistic expectation that society is going to stop the stigma and shaming overnight. Or in a generation. Maybe this book can be a fire extinguisher for public use - to further the dialogue - and for personal use for those like me with the disease of alcoholism. And their families.