“I hurt people and I drink them because of it.” Excerpt from the book “HALT. Notes from the house of tartarization”

As the publisher announces (Wielka Litera), it is a must-read for addicts as well as their relatives. In the book, the author combined two silently competing methods of treatment – the one characteristic of Alcoholics Anonymous and the psychotherapeutic one. HALT also collides two perspectives on alcoholism. One is a personal experience of alienation. The second is an objective, therapeutic lecture on the disease.

Jakub Zając in his book, which will be premiered on March 9, confronts his hero with personal demons. He says: we all dream horribly, we all live in fear, we are all addicted. You have to know that this is a story without a happy ending, because the author rewrites the ending every day.

The abbreviation HALT comes from the words of the English language: Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired, in translation: hungry, angry, lonely and tired. The Halt program assumes that when the level of these four states increases (too hungry, too angry, too lonely, too tired, too hungry, too angry, etc …), alcohol craving may become active or intensified, and the addicted person succumbs to the “compulsion to drink” more easily.

Jakub Zając “HALT. Notes from the house of sobering” – excerpt:

Now I come back to the first question – “am I addicted to alcohol?” My answer is yes, I am addicted because my life is focused on drinking or the thought of drinking. Alcohol dominated my time, it influenced the way I perceive the world and people, the organization of my time, it systematically deprives me of my savings and makes me want to do the things I loved to do, it lowered my self-esteem and satisfaction with life, distracted me from the desire to perform basic activities, cooled my emotions, he made me loathe people and treat them like objects. I cheat more and then reel my lies, I don’t remember what and when I said it and if it was true. I hurt people and I go to drink because of it. I have holes in my memory, several minutes long, when I feel like after a short nap, and longer, several days, which I have been unable to fill with any content for months.

***

K. escaped. Two days after reading the self-diagnosis, he did not show up first for dinner and then for the evening film show. The professor went to his room and, on his return, declared that the room was empty. K.’s things also disappeared. Pro forma the basement where K. was exercising, the garage where he smoked when he had a cold, and the garden where he fed his neighbors’ dog with his half-eaten dinner were checked. He was nowhere to be found. H. informed by phone calmly received the information about the patient’s disappearance, and half an hour later the living room was filled with the drone of a van parked in Haltu’s driveway. H. went inside, bringing with him the smell of damp leaves and tobacco faintness. Without a word, he pointed at me and the professor, and a few minutes later all three of us were sitting in the car, ready to search. K. did not turn out to be an original fugitive. H., with the skill of an experienced detective, first went to a gas station about three kilometers away and after a short conversation with a friend of the seller he returned to the car and said that Pigeon had been here two hours ago, bought a few beers, a bottle of vodka and cigarettes, and then left on foot .

H. left his car at the station, and the three of us started walking. The surrounding landscape was mainly filled with fields and forest groves, the space was open and, if it were not for the darkness, it would have given us an advantage over the fleeing people. In the dark and crisp October air, we moved quickly and efficiently at first. K, younger than us and much lighter, could have been even faster. Even so, we were sure it was nearby. How long could he keep his purchases in a plastic bag? He must have sat down somewhere nearby, and after his first hunger is satisfied, he now drinks calmly and conscientiously. Each of us was perfectly able to feel his way of thinking. Our legs were guided by a collective, alcoholic intuition, and our nostrils segregated rural smells in search of the path followed by K. When, after more than an hour’s walk, we did not find him, H. began to worry. The darkness was thickening, the cold was growing, and H. did not want to agree to individual searches. Following our footsteps in concentric circles around a village gas station, we finally arrived at a dry cornfield. In the dry and leafless palisade that formed the wall, there was a fresh cave that turned into a long and narrow tunnel that finally led us to our destination. The moon suddenly rose somehow higher or it was only from there that it could be seen. He amplified the light of the extinguishing flashlight and painted a scene with a mysterious mood.

K. was lying in a pit half a meter deep, which he had torn from the ground with his own hands. He placed the dry corn leaves on the bottom as if he were making a bed for himself. He slept, breathing quietly. The half-liter bottle of vodka standing in the well next to a sealed four-pack of beer was almost empty. He woke up to the sound of my voice, and I realized that for several dozen minutes there had been absolute silence around me. H. took the beer noiselessly and emptied the vodka bottle, pouring its contents into the field house of K., who watched the pantomime we were playing sleepily and indifferently: “I went out to drink to finally sleep. Why did you wake me up?”

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