What If Alcohol Isn’t the Problem?

What Really Causes Addiction—and Why We Keep Missing the Signals

Smoke Signals: What Addiction Is Really Telling Us

Native Americans once read smoke signals to send messages across vast distances—rising symbols meant to be interpreted by those who knew how to see.

I’ve come to believe addiction works the same way.

Alcohol, drugs, food, gambling, shopping—these are the smoke. They signal that something deeper is happening. But we don’t treat them as signs. We treat them as the problem.

Chasing Smoke, Ignoring the Fire

Just over five years ago, when I began my recovery journey, I thought if I could just stop drinking, everything would be fine. I didn’t yet understand the connection between addiction and mental health. I didn’t know the bottle wasn’t the fire—it was the smoke. Like most women I now work with, I had spent my life trying to outrun a blaze I couldn’t see, carrying pain I didn’t have the words to name.

We’re focused on the wrong end of the problem.

When people ask me, “How do I get my husband… my daughter… my friend… to stop drinking?” I gently tell them:

You’re asking the wrong question.

The bottle isn’t the real problem.

It’s the visible smoke—the thing that sets off alarms and gets all the attention.

But the source of the smoke—the fire—was buried deep inside.

And fear was holding the match.

Born Into Fear

They say humans are only born with two natural fears: falling and loud noises. Every other fear is learned—absorbed, imprinted, layered onto us before we have the words to question it.

Some of us weren’t just taught fear.

We were born into it.

It was the atmosphere.

The language.

The first thing we breathed in.

I try to imagine the scene in the delivery room the day I was born: a nurse wrapping me in a pink blanket, bringing me to my mother. But I picture my mother’s face—not lit up with joy at her fifth daughter, but clouded by disappointment at not seeing a blue blanket instead.

Some babies aren’t met with warmth. They’re met with warning.

“The brain organizes itself around the experience of safety or threat.” —Dr. Bruce Perry

I didn’t know the word for rejection yet. But my nervous system did.

Before I could crawl, I had already received the message:

This is not safe.

Love would have to be earned.

Approval came with conditions.

Safety came not from being held, but from being quiet, compliant, easy to manage.

If you grow up with that message lodged deep in your bones, you don’t learn how to live.

You learn how to survive.

Cleaning House: The Fourth Step

Most people have no idea what the 12 Steps are—

and even fewer know what the Fourth Step means.

In simple terms, the Fourth Step is like clearing out all the clutter in your house. Not just the stuff you see—but the boxes buried in the attic, the garbage under the bed, and the forgotten things that could go up in flames without warning.

Because the clutter isn’t in our closets.

It’s in our brains.

In our upside-down thoughts and tangled-up emotions.

The Fourth Step is a “searching and fearless moral inventory”—

where you begin to uncover your so-called character flaws: anger, jealousy, pride—

not to shame you, but to guide you as you finally take a hard look at what’s been silently fueling your fire.

And the more I worked on this step, the more patterns I found. One day, staring at that twisted mess—those defects, that upside-down thinking—I saw it:

Fear was under everything.

It wasn’t just a feeling—

it was the spark igniting my emotion.

The fuel.

The accelerant.

The backdraft.

Fear was the source of my raging fire.

Fear was the one running my show.

“Fear ought to be classed with stealing—it seems to cause more trouble.”—Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 67

The Fire Was Always There

Some of us drink in public—loudly, sloppily.

Some of us drink alone—quietly, controlled, measured.

I was what the clinical director at my rehab called a “lace curtain drunk”—

someone who drinks alone, behind closed curtains.

I opened windows and turned on fans before my husband came home.

He could smell something in the air, but not enough to set off alarms.

The truth is, I wasn’t fooling anyone—especially not myself.

I saw the empties piling up in my closet.

I knew what was really in my water bottle.

I felt the fire burning out of control, even when I told myself I was fine.

But Billy Joel and I know—I didn’t start the fire.

It had been smoldering for decades.

It started long before the vodka.

Long before I ever poured a drink.

It started the moment I learned to be afraid of who I was,

to hide the parts of me that felt too big, too much, too real.

I wasn’t born broken.

I was born into fear.

And fear became the script:

Perfectionism. People-pleasing. Performing.

At the beginning—back when I was a sapling, before the kindling.

A child with paint on her fingers, singing “Do-Re-Mi” without a care in the world.

No one watching me then—finger painting, laughing, blending in with the chorus—would have thought,

“There’s a future alcoholic.”

There was no visible smoke then.

But the flames had already been lit.

What Recovery Really Means

So no, I didn’t drink because I liked the taste.

I drank because it turned the volume down.

For a few brief hours, I could forget the fire.

That’s not weakness.

That’s pain.

“The question is not why the addiction, but why the pain.”—Dr. Gabor Maté

If you’ve spent your life trying to be good—trying to be acceptable, manageable, lovable—

then drinking isn’t the mystery.

It’s the smoke.

Recovery isn’t about putting down the bottle and pretending the fire never existed.

It’s about finally turning toward the flames.

Tracing them back to their source.

And learning how to put them out—not just once, but for good.

This isn’t about willpower.

It’s about truth.

And the courage to stop blaming the smoke…and face the fire instead.

Reflection

What smoke signals are showing up in your life?

What fire might they be pointing to?

The courage to face the fire is the beginning of real recovery—

for all of us.

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Ready to See What’s Really Fueling Your Fire?

Before you fan the flame, take a breath—and take the quiz.

It’s short, eye-opening, and might reveal the hidden beliefs that keep sabotaging your progress.

How savvy are you? Take the quick quiz!

Because awareness is the first step toward emotional sobriety.

And change doesn’t begin with shame.

It begins with truth.