Promoted to the front page from the user blogs. I want to thank my friend Jasmine for her contributions. You can find her previous postings here at Jasmine’s blog.
Tomorrow will mark four weeks since my last drink. On that near-distant Tuesday night in early February I found this site while drinking through my stout beers and fearing for my life. I stayed there hunched over the computer for three and a half hours reading about recovery, then made a vow to myself to start sobriety the following day, then went to the liquor store, drank and read some more, and finally fell asleep and woke up the next morning scared but relieved to be on my way out of that freak-show of a nightmare that is alcohol abuse and addiction.Tonight I broke down while trying to sort through the absolute mountain of a mess that my life somehow, and somewhere, had become. I felt helpless as I sobbed into space and yet I haven’t cried in a while and so it had something of a cathartic effect…and I was cognizant of the fact that a month ago I would have been too numbed at this hour in the evening to feel anything enough to cry. So crying means I’m alive? The fear is intense here because I do not know how to begin sorting through this mess and yet I feel I have been doing nothing but trying to recollect and reorganize myself for four weeks and there is barely a dent made in the work to do. It is like running your first marathon and already having leg cramps and blisters in the second mile.
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It was a Santana song that moved me, notably the lyrics: “You were a victim of my cries/A product of my rage/you were a beautiful distraction.” Thinking of all the people I love so dearly, it tore my heart open thinking of how I have been so lonely and distant all these years. I want to be there for them (the ones I haven’t lost) more and yet I am in such a state that I cannot even offer my whole self to those precious souls that have made life beautiful, despite everything. I felt like a bad and selfish sister, daughter and friend as I listened to the music, and it crushed me. It has been four weeks and I feel confident at times because the cravings have mostly stopped and I have been nourishing myself, trying to be kinder and wiser and gentler…and yet I have haunting moments when I fear that I will never get out of the corner I have so stupidly painted myself into.
I feel lucky for all the “beautiful distractions” from the downward spiraling into darkness that my adult life has been marked by. If it had not been for the love I have for and receive from these people I doubt I would even be here today. So many times I would have thrown in the towel if not for this love, this needing to be here for them and with them along this journey of life. This love I do not question and these beautiful distractions were and are what keeps me in the game at all.
I have always felt ashamed that I have not been able to thrive on their love alone and had to self-medicate to survive. (I mean, that is what I believed and that is what I did.) As if my unhappiness were an expression of a lack of appreciation. It wasn’t. I did see the blazing sunsets and the brilliant spirits surrounding me. I just couldn’t stop feeling so torn up inside. I just couldn’t stay sober and felt too broken at too young of an age.
Throughout this past month I have noticed many things, including: 1) That my inner critique is seething and merciless, 2) An almost complete inability to communicate with anybody meaningfully (I can hold frivolous, anecdotal or intellectual/art-related conversations) with the exception of the people on this blog (thank-you all so much), and 3) That words like Responsibility can be as awful and cruel as the mirrors I dodge regularly.
There are thoughts that creep up on me out of nowhere and scare me. Tonight for instance I wondered why the results I was expecting from not drinking my nights into oblivion weren’t greater than they are: what if it’s not the alcohol, I wondered, what if I am just a lazy, misanthropic***, irresponsible B____! ?
So there is still so much fear and mountains of debt and obligations to deal with here and I am not even strong enough to have a real conversation with a real friend. Earlier I responded to a mail from a close woman friend overseas who wanted to know if everything was alright and said she was starting to get concerned (my silence). I responded as best I could, telling her how much her friendship means to me and that I thought of her often but that things were a little hard for me and I didn’t know how to talk about it (we’ve been trying to set up a phone date for two months!) honestly and with transparency. And it is the truth: I DON’T know how to talk anymore…
I don’t know why I feel so weak, so unable to get a handle on anything. I can’t get back the time lost so I want to start taking action, but feel like I’m running down the street with one leg.
I’d be interested to know if others have felt an inability to answer the question “are you alright?” asked by a trusted friend during early recovery.
***Although I have amazing friends and can get along easily with people upon contact, I do struggle with misanthropy. How much of this is a product of my own imbalance is left to be seen. I have noticed that I have a very hard time with authority and institutions and do not always play well with others. It is hard to know how much my doing (or not doing) is because although I would be happy to hold myself accountable for bad relationships at work, etc, I do also see a lot of hypocrisy, back-stabbing and ignorance amongst the general public. I suppose if I was healthier I would be able to work better with people I don’t like or respect (because of their behavior and attitudes), but I still think I wouldn’t like them. At least I’d have a job though…
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
…even with both legs. That’s the good thing about recovery; when you can’t drink away your troubles you’re forced to fix them. The bad thing about this in early recovery is that about the only tool we have in our kit at this time is a bottle. But it gets better, and before you know it you have a whole new box of tools and your life is in the best order it had ever been.
I can remember the first time I realized I had been sleeping soundly through the night- it had snuck up on me, been doing it for months because I had was not stressing over the next day/week/life. Nice.
Believe it or not, Jasmine, all of the people who love you still love you in spite of all that’s been done or not done. Try not to worry about them, right now. EVERYTHING you describe feeling is right on track. The most important thing is not to drink. The rest of it really will come with time. One thing that may help is understanding that addiction is the result of the chemical and structural changes in your brain caused by the years of substance abuse. This means that it takes time for those chemical and structural changes to correct themselves, and they will, as long as the substance is not present to interfere. This understanding is only possible in the past 10-15 years due to the huge advances in brain imaging technologies (PET, MRI, SPECT). When people understand that addiction is a chronic relapsing brain disease, it helps explain why, the using alcoholic / drug addict cannot make any decisions other than the ones they make if they are using — their brain structure has changed and no longer operates like “normal.” Try browsing through the following website for more understanding of addiction, http://www.hbo.com/addiction, and check out the “SPECT gallery” on this website, http://www.amenclinics.com, to see actual brain images of what the brain looks like after prolonged drug or alcohol use. The best part is that the brain can change… it just takes some time and no substance use. Something else… in time, if your loved ones can look at these two sites, as well, they may gather a better understanding of just what addiction is (it is NOT a moral, shameful lack of willpower, for example), and therefore why you behaved the way you did and why you haven’t just sprung back to normal. I’ve had decades of experience of loving / living with alcohol abusers and alcoholics — it was finally learning this information that truly helped me understand what was/had been going on and allowed me to move forward in my own recovery as a codependent.
The large mountain of problems that I faced when getting sober fell to the time honored solution of work. Take one and do the best with it you can. Then shelve it. Go on to the next one or take one that I could solve and do it. Sooner or later (depending on the actual size of the mountain, not the perceived size.) it became a small pile of manageable problems. Some continue with me to this day.
Obsessing over problems makes me freeze.
There are solutions to the lack of tools for social interaction. I found them with a good sponsor(s) and a fair amount of hard (step) work.
Giving up is the short term solution. After a good binge, the problems were still there.
It’s been more than five years. I have done things that I thought impossible, been places that I’d only dreamed of.
The hard road has been worth it.
P.S: Bass and Rumpleminze were my poisons of choice!
all for your encouragement, it really does help.
Lisa–it is reassuring to think about my brain scientifically. I checked out the hbo site a month ago and found it quite useful. Thanks.
As far as family members go I am not sure how much they even knew I had a problem as I VERY rarely drank with them. Part of my problem was that there were so many contexts in which I didn’t drink (ie with family, when travelling, before a sports event or school/work pressures) that it took me years to realize I had a problem. Perhaps with my family I would have a glass of wine or beer or two but I was the kind of drinker who drank to get messed up, so light drinking was wholly unappealing and i couldn’t trust myself to get drunk around them for fear of making a complete fool of myself. There is also a lot of alcoholism and addiction on both sides of my family so it would take really acting out for people to think I had a problem. Also my mother is an enabler. My dad died a junkie. The man who raised me drinks one beer a night, every night, and or rare occasions two. I think three if not four of my grand-parents were alcoholics (two were extreme). My mothers parents had a huge clan of kids and I think back in their day it was considered normal for the man to come home from work and have a few whiskies with his wife–anyhow, he was DEFINITELY an alkie but I’m not sure about my grandmother because she died before I was born and nobody has ever said a bad word about her. Out of all the kids they had what is amazing is that none of them have a drinking problem…(is this normal? Not one drinks to excess and yet mostly all of their demons come from the actions of a drunken father) but they do display other symptoms that I’ve heard are common amongst children of alkies–ie being enablers, not seeing or speaking out against other people’s addictions, being in denial almost constantly, and boundary issues. Anger issues too. As a teen-ager my mother would sometimes yell at me in the exact same way one would imagine a drunken parent yelling–with hot anger, disproportionate to the situation at hand!
I come from a large family as well and fear that three of my siblings–despite our parents not drinking at all (mother) or drinking one beer a night–might have problems. Do have problems. For the time being I will take the advice garnered from all of you and just take care of myself. But Lisa, your site in particular will be very helpful when I do talk to my siblings about their issues.
All this to say that I don’t worry about explaining my problems to them as I believe they think I was just depressed all these years…I am more concerned that they will be uncomfotable and/or disappointed about my sobriety.
My mother has expressed concern about one of my siblings but she assumes it is because he is so young. Another sibling is very wealthy, and although his abuse problem is probably the worse out of the lot of us, because he is such a successful entrepreneur nobody questions what he does.
Just another drunk–thanks for you wise words. Part of my problem right now is that aside from researching recovery sites I am completely unproductive. But you’re right, hard work is a wonderful solution to so many problems.
Thank-you all so much for your poignant and consistent support–you have been like sponsors to me whether you intended to or not (especially TDA), and for this I cherish and respect you all so much. It is my dream to get back on my feet in order to serve society so please know that by helping me you are also helping others down the road.
I know now how hard four weeks of not drinking has been and so I appreciate that much more the courage and strength of five or fourteen YEARS of sobriety. Congratulations to all of you and again, thanks.