The other day on the drive home from school, my younger son said hippos were one of the most dangerous land animals on the planet.
I was incredulous, “What?! Hippos?! No way. Hippos are those cute fat animals that splash around and play with their young.”
The most logical next step of any modern family disagreement was to, “Google it.” So, we Googled it. And he was right. In fact, hippos are actually pretty darn aggressive. I gave him a dollar.
Laughing, my oldest son asked how old I was when I started using the internet. He looked stunned when I told him I was 25. It was one of those, “I had to WALK FIVE MILES to school in 8 FEET OF SNOW,” conversations we have with our kids to let them know how easy they have it compared to, “When I was your age!”
I told him if we wanted to find out about hippos, we’d have to get our parents to take us to the library, hope the specific volume of encyclopedia wasn’t already in use, and look up hippopotamuses…then find the specific section and passage which mentioned their temperaments. We’d have to take notes if we wanted to take the information home with us because we weren’t allowed to check out reference books.
By the look on his face, I think he actually felt sorry for me. (Mission accomplished, ha!)
What’s my point? Sometimes I annoy myself because I take way too long to get to my point when i write. SEARCHING. Searching is my point. We are all searching for answers…either to academic questions, trivia, lyrics to our favorite songs, or the meaning of the universe. So, we Google it.
Since I hadn’t blogged in such a long time, I checked the stats on the backend. Even when I wasn’t posting anything, I had thousands of visitors per month coming to my blog. WTF? So, I dug deeper. WordPress gives us the exact “search terms” that are most often used to find us.
Here they are…this is what people are SEARCHING for when they find Catholic Alcoholic through Google:
- catholic alcoholic
- alcoholic from a catholic perspective
- patron saints for alcoholics
- prayer for alcoholic
- my husband is an alcoholic, catholic view
- stop drinking catholic
- catholic aa
- help for catholic to stop drinking
- catholic and can’t do aa
- is there something other than aa for catholic alcoholic
- alcoholism catholic view
- prayers for my son alcoholic
- catholic addiction recovery
- catholic alternatives to aa
So, there you have it. We’re all searching. Searching for something, whether it’s why hippos are so angry all the time, what time is the Braves game tonight, or help me I’m Catholic and can’t stop drinking…. We don’t have to call a hotline and speak with anybody. We can do an anonymous Google search to hopefully find what we’re looking for.
Fortunately, questions about hippos have easy, definitive answers. Deeper questions, those that relate to recovery from alcoholism or helping a loved one with an addiction…those answers aren’t solved by Googling. Wouldn’t that be great, tho? If there was ONE right answer.
This blog post is sort of making me sad. I have no answers. I guess all I’d say is never give up, never stop searching. Giving up is NOT an option. Keep trying. Each day is a new beginning. Who CARES what “they” say? You’re worth it. Keep searching.
AA is a big part of my recovery equation. But don’t feel hopeless if you can’t do AA. Please. Keep searching. I can see from these search terms that there are thousands of alcoholics that really want help but can’t do AA. I get it. You are NOT ALONE. I’m not here to sell anybody on my way. One of my dear friends has been sober three years by daily recitation of the Rosary. Another by daily Mass and a commitment to weekly Reconciliation. I wish that was my story. I need all the help I can get. So that’s sort of why I started this blog to begin with…because I felt strange…i needed a Catholic slant to my recovery. I just did. It’s who I am. So, anyways, good night. This post isn’t making sense even to me.
