Answer Addiction

Tag: AA

  • In Memoriam: Bob Kaplan

    Bob taught me that when someone reaches out for help, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing or how you’re feeling… You just go!

    I’m going to miss you.

    My sponsor Bob Kaplan passed away last week, on January 1st. He was my sponsor of 22 years, and I loved him terribly.

    Today would have been Bob’s 37th sober birthday. He lived 77 years, the same as my father. Bob was like a father to me, I was certainly closer to him than to my old man.

    ***

    It took me three years of daily 12-step meetings to get 30 sober days in a row. I got 29 days three different times, but I just couldn’t get over the hump, and my eskimo Steve D. had all but had it with me. He and my sponsor at the time literally kicked me out of their 12-step group… And this was no ordinary group, there were legends there like Jack F. and Bob H., true old-time heroes to many in the 12-step community.

    I know what you’re thinking, how can you be kicked out of a 12-step group?

    But it was the most loving thing they could’ve done. They told me I needed to go to the Pacific Group because that’s where the sickest go to get help, but first I should go to AA Central Office and speak to the manager, a man named Harvey P. Harvey reminded me of an army general with a deep raspy voice. He was going to be my new sponsor.

    God bless Harvey’s soul, he took one look at me and marched me into a back office.

    “You’re not for me,” he said. “You’re for Bob.”

    A man who looked old enough to be my father was sitting behind a desk, leaning back in his chair with his feet up and talking on the phone. He held up his finger as if to say, I’ll just be another moment, take a seat.

    Then, out of nowhere, he started screaming at the person on the phone, and then hung up on him.

    Now you have to understand what the last three years had been like for me. I had a sponsor who told me I had to change everything about myself if I wanted to stay sober. And now here was this guy sitting across from me undressing someone the exact same way I would have if I was angry. I was in shock.

    After he hung up the phone, his face all red and a garden hose pumping generously through his forehead, he looked up at me. I spoke quickly before he could say anything.

    “Will you be my sponsor?”

    As excited as I’ve ever seen anyone, he stood up and screamed at the top of his lungs, “Oh yeah!”

    I don’t remember anything else from that day, but I left there with a sense of hope. I could still be me and be sober. I didn’t have to be some goody-good.

    A week later I got really sick and I called Bob in the morning to tell him I was going to the doctor.

    He was afraid I was going to “med seek,” so he told me to skip the doctor and go to the pet store instead and to call him when I got there.

    This is like 22 years ago so I hope I’m remembering this right, but when I called him, he told me to get something called amoxicillin. I grabbed a salesperson to help me and called Bob back when I had the medication.

    He told me to take two pills every four hours until they were gone.

    “You know, Bob, this is fish penicillin. For fish?” I said.

    “Yeah, I know what it is,” he said.

    “Bob, it’s got a skull and crossbones on the packaging and says ‘not for human consumption.’ I’m no genius, but doesn’t skull and crossbones mean poison?”

    “Son, I’ve got 12 and a half years sober,” Bob said. “Take it, don’t take it, I don’t give a shit. But if you want to stay sober, do what I told you to do.”

    Truth be told, I don’t know if I wanted to be sober for good back then, but I loved this guy already. He was nuts, but in the best possible way. I took the fish penicillin, and I got better right away, just like he said I would.

    One day shortly after that, I was so newly sober and so crazy, I drove around and around in a parking garage for 15 minutes, looking for the exit. I was lost and I just started crying. So I called Bob. He got me out of that garage in 60 seconds.

    We would speak every morning and meet up at meetings and then grab something to eat. Sometimes it was just the two of us, but most of the time my 12-step brothers and sisters joined us. Bob sponsored a ton of people, and his sponsees, old friends, and his magnificent wife Signe became our extended family.

    He taught me everything, everything that’s important.

    He taught me that when someone reaches out for help, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing or how you’re feeling… You just go!

    I got that from him!

    He would say, “there’s nothing to get, only to give.”

    I got that from him!

    One day I called Bob while he was at work and asked him to come see a house I wanted to buy. He left work to meet me and check out the house.

    Walking through the house, he says: “You got a lotta fireplaces in this place, kid, how many you got?”

    “Seven.”

    “This house is huge, how many square feet you got here?”

    I answered all his questions, giving him the details of this great house I’d found, speaking with pride and joy, the pride and joy you feel when somebody really gets you. Then he dropped the hammer.

    “Single guy, nine months sober. Do I have this right?” He asked. I nodded.

    “Get in the car, asshole, I’ll show you where you’re living. I can see you can’t be left unattended.”

    I got in his car and left my car behind. I did what I was told, his will was stronger than mine. It always was.

    We drove back to his condo in West Hollywood and he got on the phone with his real estate agent. I can still hear him saying, “Vita, come to my house and show my kid everything in the building… He needs a new place to live and can’t be left unattended.”

    I picked a unit on the same floor as his.

    Every night before bed, he came over in his pajamas, slippers, and bathrobe and hung out for an hour or so screaming at the game on television if we had sports on, and eating those super spicy vegetables in a jar that he loved.

    The four years I lived in Bob’s building I don’t think a day went by where we didn’t see each other. I loved him, and I miss him very much.

    In 2003 I had this crazy idea that I wanted to move to Malibu. The traffic and noise from the city were just too much for me.

    When I told Bob I was going to buy a house in Malibu, he told me to rent for three months before I bought anything to see if I liked it.

    “Bob, how is anybody going to not like living on the beach?” I remember saying to him.

    “You’re an animal, rent for three months and if you like it you can get it.”

    Again, he was right! I hated living on the beach. The wind and the noise, and whether your windows are open or closed, you always wake up in the morning with sand in your bed. (I still can’t figure out how that happens?)

    Instead, I bought a house about a half mile from the ocean with the most gorgeous white-water views. It was everything I loved about Malibu without the hassle of being on the beach.

    Bob was also right about being in a big house as a single guy. I was used to being in a small space and this new place was giant in comparison. I wasn’t comfortable there. It was too much for me, so I turned it into what would become a world-renowned treatment center and bought a two-bedroom cottage down the street that felt much better to me.

    I was not a clinician, I didn’t have any healthcare experience, and I didn’t have an MBA. I had never even been to rehab.

    But what I did have was very good training. Bob lived a life of service and he taught me how to do that — in a joyful way!

    There are very few people who have actually been on a true 12-step call with their sponsor, where they visit someone they’ve never met before in hopes of helping them get sober. I was so lucky to have gotten to do this with Bob.

    Bob and I were sitting at Central Office together when a call came in. He picked up the phone.

    Now, the people who answer the phone at Central Office are supposed to find out where the caller is, then look in the directory and give them directions to the closest meeting.

    That’s not what Bob did.

    He looked at me and said, “Let’s go, Rich!” We got in his car and drove to the caller’s house.

    After we parked, Bob turned off the car and grabbed my arm.

    “I want you to find a chair and go to the corner of the room,” he said, serious as he’s ever been. “You’re not to draw any attention to yourself and you’re not to say a word. Do you understand?”

    “Yes,” I said.

    “I need him focusing on me and what I’m telling him. Not a word, okay?”

    “Okay.”

    I don’t remember exactly what he said but I was 110% present at the time and I hung on every word.

    What I noticed was his command over the room.

    I noticed the empathy.

    I noticed the honesty.

    I learned these things from Bob. Everything that truly matters, I learned from Bob.

    ***

    Today, Bob’s doing just fine. Right now he’s eating breakfast with his wife Signe in heaven. She’s been gone 11 months and he hadn’t been the same since.

    And like any good father, he made certain that we would all be okay too. Mark, William, Big Rich, Fat Rich, and all my other 12-step brothers and sisters will be fine because our sponsor showed us how to live the right way.

    This man taught me everything, and although we’re all going to be okay, the world lost a genuine hero, a great man.

    Thank you, Bob. Make certain you come get me to take me to the other side when it’s time.

    I love you!
     

    In lieu of flowers, please make donations in Bob’s memory to Three Square. Read Bob’s obituary here.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Return to Sender: What an Unsent Postcard Taught Me About Addiction

    A timely message from my much younger, unsober self.

    Summer, 2020

    The Unsent Postcard

    I have a stack of unwritten postcards, collected from my travels, purchased with the intent of sending them to those back home. In recent months, I have taken to writing out these postcards to friends and family, both to cheer them with sunny images as they shelter in, and to support the United States Postal System.

    Not long ago, I came across a card featuring a hand-colored photograph of a windmill in East Hampton, New York. To my surprise, it was not blank. Tightly scrawled sentences, in rudimentary French, it was meant for a friend in Paris.

    No postage, never mailed.

    17 Septembre, 1991

    Chère Delphine,

    Salut! I am at the beach with my mother. My God! My poor back! I am ready for a big change in my life. We must talk. I’m going to write you a real letter soon.

    Ton Amie, Maria.

    Here I was, standing at the edge of big change, poised to plunge into some grand announcement, too large for the 4” x 6” space given. These words never crossed the Atlantic. Instead, I held them now, between my fingertips, twenty-nine years later.

    What are the chances of this? I thought. Of all these blank cards, only one has writing, and not just any writing, but words that speak to my alcoholic “bottom” — the physical, mental and spiritual low-point of my young life.

    My back hasn’t bothered me for years, thank heaven. I take it for granted. I walk with ease everywhere today. Until this moment, I’d forgotten just how bad things were with my lower lumbar at age twenty-four, that hell year when I couldn’t stand up straight without sciatica shackling my ankles, seizing my spine, and clamping down hard at the cervical vertebrae. This physical agony — an exclamation point to my mental and spiritual state — had literally brought me to my knees.

    I spent weeks in bed self-medicating on whiskey sours and muscle relaxants. Somehow I’d convinced the corner pharmacist to dispense refills beyond the legal limit.

    I‘m skeptical when people make meaning from random events. It feels self-indulgent to interpret every rainbow as a reference to my personal recovery. Yet finding this card, all these years later, didn’t feel like coincidence. It felt intentionally planted to remind me of why I’d sobered up.

    It also felt like something I had to share with others.

    September, 1991

    Watching waves

    In those mellow days following Labor Day, when the water is warmer than the salt air, I was with my mother in a rented bungalow at the tip of Long Island, now emptied of humans. I was twenty-five, unemployed, and reeling from a bad break-up.

    I remember the lunch mom served on or about the day I’d written that postcard: linguine with shrimp and mussels, and flutes of rosé wine. Mom was a faithful clipper of the Wednesday food section of The New York Times. Maybe she’d sourced this seafood pasta recipe there, or maybe she’d been inspired by one of the influencers of Hamptons entertaining at the time: Martha Stewart or The Barefoot Contessa.

    However it came to be, it was a memorable meal presented with panache, from a bare-bones rental kitchen. And it was a meal where my mother enjoyed alcohol as she always did, in moderation. More often than not in my childhood home, there was an appropriate wine, served in stemware, to compliment every dish.

    My mother drank the way Jacques Pépin did on public television, and the way I always wanted to, but never could — with class. At the end of an episode of making something like, say, classic Beef Bourguignon, he would raise his glass of Cabernet Sauvignon in a toast: “Aah-pee Coo-keeeng!” and tilt it lightly to his lips.

    But that’s not the way I drank this glass of blush wine. I downed it.

    Plagued by sciatica, a still larger pain loomed; it had been moving in slowly for years, like a cold front, now dipping as an arctic depression over this lovely lunch.

    I remember craving more flutes of Zinfandel than that one bottle held, but I was checked at two because mom was watching. Two drinks were the limit if you were female, and raised right — and you cared about appearances — which we did. But I couldn’t comply.

    I found myself watching the waves from that deck all afternoon. I watched them crest and crash, one after the other, in rhythmic indifference to my pain. Then it hit me. It felt big. Big like the feeling I get reading an inspirational poem from an anthology with a daffodil or seagull on the cover. Though the feeling was big I, myself, suddenly felt small. And weirdly enough, I was okay with that.

    It was a relief. The waves kept rolling in, oblivious to my situation. It was freeing to see that my pain — sharp and ugly — couldn’t stand up to the beauty of light and dark scattering the water’s surface.

    Scared, self-involved me was no match for the folding waves. For hours I watched them flatten at the shore and return to the sea, gradually eroding the moat I’d dug around myself. Yes, my experience of this landscape could be captured in a bad sonnet in a book with a hokey cover — the kind you’d find in a hospital gift shop.

    It was neither subtle nor original, my “white light” oceanfront awakening, but it was genuine.

    The next day, a masseuse with strong hands and a soft voice got me to open up about my drinking on a massage table in Amagansett. A recovering alcoholic himself, Sean R. is much of the reason I made it to my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting when I returned to Brooklyn that next week.

    1991–2013

    A Bridge Back to a Good Life, Then Some Slippery Turns

    As the postcard predicted, big change followed. “A.A. is a bridge back to life.” That’s true. I did cross over to a full life with marriage, kids, and a semi-detached house. But it was a life further into Brooklyn, and further from my home group, the A.A. group where I had first gotten sober and stayed that way.

    Yes, I was still not drinking, but I can’t claim I was emotionally sober. Somewhere along the way I stopped going to meetings. Lost touch with my sponsor. Quit working with other recovering alcoholics. You know where this is going. Eventually, I drank.

    It started small: communion wine on Sundays, the occasional “non-alcoholic” beer, and the argument with my dentist. He wanted to give me local anesthesia for minor dental work, but I pushed for hit after hit of nitrous oxide on top of that. I wanted to numb my brain, not just my molar.

    “The idea that somehow, someday he(she/they) will control and enjoy his (her/their) drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker.” — from Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter 3, ‘More About Alcoholism’

    I went along like this for years, skating on the edge of my sobriety, doing figure-eights on April ice, until seven years ago I found myself sitting in the sun porch of my friend Samantha’s historic, center hall colonial home.

    Our kids were playing together somewhere on the periphery. I always found my way here, to this snug room off the parlor, with floor-to-ceiling bookcases and a loveseat. I’d marked it as my space, where I could step away, sink into the cushions and watch the cardinal at the feeder.

    On this day I was thinking about my marriage. It had been a good run, but after fourteen years, two sons and a poodle, it was over. During the past months, this reality had settled over me like snowfall hitting pavement at the freezing mark, melting first, before catching hold, white landing on grey, gradually building, til nothing remained of the sidewalk below. I was scared as hell now.

    Samantha stood over me with finger sandwiches and two flutes filled with golden bubbles on a silver tray. It had been so long since I’d been to a meeting, so long since I’d said out loud to a roomful of people: “I’m an alcoholic.” So long that I had a new circle of friends that never knew I had a problem and older friends who had forgotten that I didn’t drink.

    In that moment, I forgot I didn’t drink.

    Alcohol, catching sunlight, was presented to me on a slender stem, the way it had been twenty-two years earlier at the beach.

    Why not? If ever I deserved a mimosa, it’s now.

    I took a sip.

    Holy shit, what the hell am I doing?

    I ran to the powder room and poured the rest down a sink with a swan head faucet.

    “The alcoholic, at certain times, has no effective mental defense against the first drink. Except in a few rare cases, neither he (she/they) nor any other human being can provide such a defense. His (her/their) defense must come from a Higher Power.” — from Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter 3, “More About Alcoholism”

    It had happened —I had drunk again. I never thought I would. It had been more than two decades since my last real drunk, and I had good reason never to drink again — actually two very good reasons, their names were Leo and Liam. Sure I could rationalize the Sunday morning communion wine and the occasional hit of laughing gas — after all, I was accountable to no one for my behavior now— but when I let that bubbly pass my teeth and slide down my throat, I recognized that for what it was —a slip.

    I remember the taste of it clearly — that citrus effervescence in my mouth — and I remember my conscious decision to swallow. Like countless alcoholics before me, I had now proven what the Big Book drives home in the conclusion of Chapter 3.

    I had had “no effective mental defense against the first drink.”

    September, 2013

    The Room Above the Fish Store

    Thankfully, at the same moment, I realized my problem when I took that sip of spiked o.j. , I also remembered the solution.

    Alcoholics Anonymous had worked for me, for as long as I had shown up for myself and others. What became obvious to me with this slip was that I’d do well to return to a community of recovering alcoholics if I wanted to get sober again, and stay that way. I needed to plug back into a sober support network.

    So on the heels of my slip in late September, 2013, I climbed a staircase to a room above a fish store filled with retired seniors and flies circling overhead. I’d stepped into an A.A. Big Book meeting, already in progress. They were reading one of the personal stories from the back of the book, round-robin style. Right away I could see myself in ‘The Housewife Who Drank at Home.’ When she described herself as a ‘Jekyll-and-Hyde’ PTA mom, I lost it. That was me. Someone passed me a box of Kleenex. I will never forget that kindness.

    September, 2020

    Today

    Willpower and the passage of time are no guarantees against the first drink. I was humbled by this realization when I slipped.

    I like my life today; some days I love it. I don’t live in unreasonable fear, but I accept this fact: on any ordinary day, my alcoholic mind could observe the oven clock turn five and think: A snifter of eighteen-year-old single malt whiskey, served neat, alongside a bowl of salted cashews, would be a fine idea!

    And today I understand, right down to the jelly marrow of my bones, that this is typical alcoholic wishful thinking.

    I also recognize — and appreciate — other approaches to solving problem drinking, or at least to blunting the devastating effects of alcohol and other addictive substances and habits. Some of these solutions have developed in my lifetime, and some have been there all along.

    I have a friend who threw herself back into her childhood faith in earnest, and another who found help in Buddhist-inspired Refuge Recovery. I am happy for these friends, and for everyone who finds lasting recovery, however and whenever. And for those who have chosen the A.A. path, I am especially gratified to welcome back those like me — humbled humans who have returned to the fellowship later in life.

    On the last day of this month, I’ll have seven years back in the rooms. Once again, Alcoholics Anonymous has been a bridge back to a good life. I’ve got a sunny apartment, two sturdy teens, and an Australian lizard. The ex and I have each other’s back in the co-parenting game. I’ve got a day job where I feel purposeful, and my writing at night, which lights a votive in my soul.

    I was lucky to find my way back to A.A. at forty-seven, and lucky to turn up this picture-postcard now — this four-by-six inch card stock talisman, a reminder of who I was at twenty-five, and who I am now, twenty-nine years later — sandwiched between sunbathers on the Jersey shore and Niagara Falls at night. To me this is no coincidence: this postcard, lost then miraculously recovered, does parallel my own recovery, lost for twenty-two years, then found again in a new group, above an Italian fishmonger.

    And so, my dear friend Delphine, here is the full story, the real letter I promised you, delivered now, almost thirty years later. You are not an alcoholic, but maybe some of this makes sense. I hope so. We must talk soon.
     

     

    This piece originally appeared on Medium on September 13, 2020.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • What Happened When I Spent Christmas Eve in a Basement with a Crazy Cat

    I didn’t exactly catch the holiday spirit, but I took a suggestion that kept me hanging on by my claws through the Next 12 Days of Christmas…

    It was Christmas Eve, 2013, and I was scooping poop from a litter box in my neighbors’ basement. Leticia and Dana had rescued a feral kitten whose new habitat extended from the hot water heater to the washer/dryer. Although it was icy outdoors and toasty within, this foster feline wasn’t buying into her rehabilitation. But I was. I was three months sober.

    Kitty was ambivalent towards humans. She darted about the boiler room, kicking up supermarket circulars that had been neatly layered for her comfort. As I shook Friskies into the bowl, she shouldered up to me, twitching her tail against my forearm, her throat vibrating under a flea collar. As I reached to pet her, she caught my wrist between her paws and bit down hard on the hand that fed her.

    I was tempted to punt the little ingrate into the sewer trap, but instead I dialed a sober friend. Darlyne listened as I droned on about what I was sure would be my worst holiday ever, the bluest Blue Christmas imaginable. After fourteen years of marriage, my husband and I had agreed to call it quits in September. Here we were now in December, Yuletide upon us, and that sparkling snow globe of a mental construct—the family Christmas—was shattering. There would be two trees this year instead of one, two piles of hastily-wrapped presents, and even two plates of sugar cookies, left for two Santas, because our younger son was only six, and very much still a believer.

    I never doubted my decision to divorce, but I had misgivings when it came to the kids. I feared the emotional fall-out from all those times when mom’s temper met dad’s radioactive passive-aggression. I saw an acid cloud of neuroses raining down upon my sons from their parents’ split, a psychic soaker that would take them years of therapy before they’d start to dry out.

    I watched two lines of red dots on my forearms swell and connect where the beast had scratched me. Then I lost it. I broke down bawling on the basement floor. After a while, Darlyne interrupted me. “Viv I get it. I do. it’s a rough time. A really rough time. And it’s good you’re letting it all out. But we’ve been on the phone thirty minutes now and I’m gonna pee my pants.”

    “Ok,” I said as I blew my nose into the deli section.

    “But listen,” Darlyne said before signing off, “I want you to do something.”

    Change or Die

    I had no idea what she was going to say, but I already knew I didn’t want to do it. The default of my defiant alcoholic mind—then and now, drinking or sober— is “NO.” But recovery, I have learned, is about change. And change often means saying “YES” instead of “NO.” It means being willing to take suggestions—often awkward, tedious or unsexy actions that force me to sit with feelings and stretch my tolerance for discomfort.

    “It’s just going to be so weird for the kids to wake up Christmas morning and not see two parents!” I wailed, ignoring my friend’s bladder. I wasn’t done catastrophizing.

    “Just listen,” Darlyne was louder now. “I want you to do something, and I promise it will help.”

    At that moment, I had a choice: take in what my friend was telling me, or tune her out. Sobriety is about making choices, and I’ve made some doozies in my fifty-five years of frolicking between a few zip codes in New York City, with or without a Bacardi and Coke in hand. And the takeaways from all my choices—good and bad—have always been there too. Only now I’m actually able to take these takeaways. Free of mind and mood-altering substances, I’m present for each new experience, and I can see my part in it. Sometimes I repeat the same mistakes, but these successive ones occur less often, and feel less calamitous. It’s getting better. And that feels good.

    But I wasn’t feeling good that morning. I was cold and panicky.

    “What is it?” I choked.

    “Make a list of ten things you’re grateful for,” said Darlyne, “and save it in your phone. Then read it back to yourself, over and over again, for the next two weeks. Got it?”

    “I got it,” I sniffled.

    “You’ll feel better. Trust me.” Then she hung up.

    I was skeptical, and I didn’t feel better yet, but I did it. I squatted on that cellar floor, my tailbone pressed against the cold cement, and I took that sober woman’s suggestion. It was one of the better moves I’ve ever made.

    …

    Ten things I’m grateful for:

    1. My sobriety
    2. My sons
    3. My family (most of the time)
    4. My soon-to-be ex (He’s a good dad after all.)
    5. All my friends (from 4th grade to the present)

    What else?

    1. My first cup of coffee in the morning
    2. A good mattress
    3. Food in my stomach
    4. The sun rising over the rooftops

    I don’t remember the tenth. So I’ll just add something now, something that could have been on that first list.

    1. Pannetone

    Yes, the fluffy bread, loaded with raisins, that you only see in supermarkets at the holidays. To go with number 6. For me, the small things on my list have come to matter too. Even when the big ticket items are absent—like the job with benefits, or the boyfriend—the small, quiet things are always there, if I look for them. Like the neighbor with the beehive in his backyard, who feeds my Poohish habit with a steady supply of golden honey nine months of the year out of twelve.

    There! I read the list in my cupped palm. Then I reread it. Well, I wasn’t jolly yet, but I was functional. Mrs. Santa Clause dried her tears in an ad for holiday ham, then stood up and got on with the business of making magic for her kids that Christmas Eve. And she muttered that merry mantra over and over for the next twelve days and arrived at the new year, clean, sober, and—to her surprise—not absolutely miserable for every second of it.

    Flash forward to 2020, amicably-divorced and effectively co-parenting, I feel far-removed from that bleak midwinter morning spent bawling in a basement with a bipolar cat. I still have days where I forget that I’m wildly blessed, days where I watch my teen on the tennis court and forget the shattered ankle, the surgery, the cast, and the flawless recovery. I still have sour days where I see only another wet towel on the bathroom floor and pistachio shells on the pillow case.

    But on these days, thankfully, I remember what will slap me back into gratitude. I know that if I just jot ten things I’ve got going for me, it’ll make me feel better. I also know that when I neglect to count my blessings, I’m more likely to cry over every glass of spilt milk or busted garbage bag.

    When my twelve-year-old quips: “Quit trying to make your own disgusting chicken fingers and just take me to McDonald’s,” I don’t collapse in tears on the linoleum anymore; instead, I rattle off my list. My sobriety is always on top, and my sons still take the number two spot (except today, the younger slides down to number eight). My good health follows, then my elderly parents and my brother, who mows their lawn and drives them to doctors’ appointments. I acknowledge my good neighbors, my shrink, my deep pre-war apartment bathtub, fat dogs with short legs, and my self-respect.

    Then I turn to Liam and say: “Put on your hoodie, we’re going to McDonald’s.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Double or Nothing: The Two Diseases That Want Me Dead

    My depression didn’t entirely cause my alcoholism, but it certainly played a key role.

    I have two diseases that want me dead.

    One is addiction, a progressive, incurable and potentially fatal disease that presents as a physical compulsion and mental obsession. I am addicted to alcohol and, as an alcoholic, can never successfully drink again.

    There is no cure, only ways of arresting the vicious cycle of binge, remorse and repeat that leads to ever-deeper bottoms. My alcoholism took me not only to unemployment but unemployability; not only selfishness but self-destruction; not only deteriorating health and heartache but abject desperation and insanity.

    My other deadly illness is depression. By this, I mean clinical depression – a necessary distinction considering the widespread, ill-informed use of the phrase “I’m depressed” to describe mere sadness. The difference is that sadness is rational while depression decidedly is not. Depression is not an emotion; it is a chemical imbalance that leads to hopelessness and self-loathing and, for that reason, is the leading cause of suicide.

    Mourning a loved one is understandable and altogether appropriate; that is sadness. Climbing to the roof of a six-story building and nearly jumping because I considered myself toxic and worthless, as I did in my mid-20s, is not normal and certainly not healthy; that is depression.

    I will be an alcoholic and depressive for as long as I am alive. But while neither is curable, both are certainly treatable. And increasingly, I’m finding that my progress in recovering from one disease is paying substantial dividends in combatting the other.

    Weller Than Well

    I took my final drink on October 10, 2011, the last in a long line of cheap beer cans littering my car. Wherever I was going, I never got there; instead, I crashed into a taxi and kept driving. Police frown upon that. I spent the night in jail and the next six months sans license. I was in trouble physically, spiritually, and now legally, and I had finally experienced enough pain to seek salvation.

    I got sober through Alcoholics Anonymous. There are several programs effective in arresting addiction; AA just happens to be the most prolific, and embodied the sort of group-centric empathy I needed during the precarious early stages of recovery. There are few things more alienating than being unable to stop doing something that you damn well know is destroying your life. Meeting consistently with others who’ve experienced this tragic uniqueness made me realize I wasn’t alone, and provided a glimmer of something that had long been extinguished: hope.

    Unlike traditional ailments, addiction is largely a “takes one to help one” disease. I needed to know that others had drank like me and gone on to recover by following certain suggestions. AA provided both the road to recovery and, through those that had walked the path before me, the trail guides. 

    It isn’t rocket science. AA and other forms of group-centric recovery thrive on a few basic tenets. I admitted I had a problem, and saw that others had solved that problem by adhering to certain instructions. I accepted that my addiction had been driven by certain personality flaws, and that active addiction had only exacerbated these shortcomings. I made concerted efforts to begin not only amending my actions through face-to-face apologies, but also diminishing the underlying character defects that had fueled my alcoholism.

    In the process, I did not recover so much as reinvent myself. Nine years into my recovery, I am not the same person I was before becoming an alcoholic. I am better than that catastrophically damaged person.

    Like no other illnesses, recovery from addiction can make sufferers weller than well. I am not 2005 Chris – pre-problem drinker Chris. I am Chris 2.0. Stronger, smarter, wiser.

    And that brings me to my other incurable illness.

    So Low I Might Get High

    My battle with depression predates my alcoholism. In fact, the aforementioned rooftop suicidal gesture came before I was a heavy drinker. Like many people with concurrent diseases that impact mental health, one malady helped lead to another. My depression didn’t entirely cause my alcoholism, but it certainly played a key role.

    For me, bouts of depression descend like a dense, befuddling fog. At its worst, I have been struck suddenly dumb, unable to complete coherent sentences or comprehend dialogue. My wife once likened my slow, confused aura to talking with an astronaut on the moon; there was a five-second delay in transmission, and my response was garbled even when it finally arrived.

    My depression is clinical, meaning it is officially diagnosed. I am medicated for it and see a psychiatrist regularly. Upon getting sober, the first cross-disease benefit was that the anti-depressants I took daily were no longer being drowned in a sea of booze. The result of this newfound “as directed” prescription regimen was the depression tamping down from chronic to episodic. For the first time in nearly a decade, there were significant stretches where I was depression-free.

    Still, come the depression did, in random waves that enveloped me out of nowhere, zapping the hopeful vibes and purposeful momentum of early recovery. The sudden shift in mood and motivation was stark, striking and scary. Above all else, I was frightened that an episode of depression would trigger a relapse of alcoholism.

    In recovery from addiction we are taught, for good reason, that sobriety is the most important thing in our lives, because we are patently unable to do anything truly worthwhile without it. If we drink or drug, the blessings of recovery will disappear, and fast.

    Ironically, and perhaps tragicomically, by far the most formidable threat to my sobriety was my depression. One of the diseases trying to kill me was persistently attempting to get its partner in crime back. Inject some hopelessness and self-loathing into a recently sober addict’s tenuous optimism and self-esteem, and there’s a good chance he’ll piss away the best shot he’s ever had at a happy, content existence.

    For months and even years into recovery, my only defense against depression episodes was intentional inactivity. Upon recognizing the syrupy sludge of depression draining my energy – a quicksand that made everything more strenuous and, mentally, seem not worth the extra effort – I would do my best to detach from as much as possible. My routine would dwindle to a questionably effective workday and, if any energy was left, what little exercise I could muster, an attempt to dislodge some depression with some natural dopamine – a stopgap measure that rarely bought more than half an hour of relief.

    Most alarmingly, during bouts of depression I would disconnect from my recovery from alcoholism, often going weeks without attending meetings or reaching out to sober companions. In depressive episodes, the hopeful messages of group-centric recovery rang hollow, and at times even felt offensive. How dare these people be joyous, grateful and free while I was miserable, bitter and stuck.

    Over an extended timeline, though, life had improved dramatically. As a direct result of sobriety and its teachings, my status as a husband and an executive improved drastically. In rapid succession I bought a house, rescued a dog and became a father. My depressive episodes grew fewer and further between.

    But when they came, I was playing a dangerous game. I now had a lot more to lose than my physical sobriety and, despite being rarer, my depressive episodes were almost more intimidating for what they represented: irrational hopelessness amid a life that, when compared to many others, was fortunate and blessed. So when depression descended, I did the only thing that seemed logical: I whittled life down to its barest minimum, and waited the disease out. I put life on pause while the blackness slowly receded to varying shades of gray and, finally, clearheaded lucidity returned.

    Essentially, I became depression’s willing hostage. I didn’t want it to derail me, and didn’t have a healthier means of dealing with it.

    And then suddenly, I did.

    Beating Back a Bully

    For the second time in my life, I have hope against an incurable disease where before there was hopelessness. And though I can’t place into precise words exactly how it happened, I’m hoping my experience can benefit others. For the countless battling mental illness while recovering from addiction, my hope is to give you hope.

    Last fall, just as I was celebrating eight years sober, I hit a wall of depression the likes of which I hadn’t encountered in a while. Like most depressive episodes, its origin was indistinct. It had indeed been a tough year – I had lost a close relative and had an unrelated health scare, among other challenges – but trying to pinpoint depression triggers is generally guesswork.

    Anyway, there it was. A big, fat funk, deeper and darker than I’d experienced in years. But for whatever reason, this time my reaction was different. Always, my routine was to place mental roadblocks in front of my depression. I justified this by telling myself, understandably, that depression’s feelings were irrational and, therefore, not worth confronting.

    This time, for whatever reason, I took a different tack. For the first time, I leaned in rather than leaning out. I stood there and felt the harsh feelings brought on by depression rather than running from them. Whether it was sober muscle memory or simple fed-upedness, I had had enough of cowering in a corner while depression pressed pause on my life.

    The result? It hurt. A lot. But if battling depression is a prize fight, I won by majority decision. And having stood up to my most menacing bully, I fear the inevitable rematch far less.

    This would not have been possible – and is not recommended – earlier in recovery. In hindsight, I’m realizing that at least part of the reason I finally confronted my depression was that, after eight years of recovery work and a vastly improved life, I had placed enough positives around me that depression’s irrational pessimism couldn’t fully penetrate them. I had built up just enough self-esteem through just enough estimable acts that the self-loathing pull of depression couldn’t drag me down as far. I stumbled and wobbled, but I did not fall.

    Depression also prompted a highly unexpected reaction: gratitude. Its wistful sadness made me pause, sigh, even tear up. It made me look around longingly and grasp the blessings that, during my typically time-impoverished existence, I often take for granted. It made me feel guilty for not fully appreciating the positives in my life… but this guilt was laced with vows to cherish life more once depression invariably lifted, as it always did. There’s a difference between hopeless shame and hopeful guilt; the former yields self-hatred, the latter self-improvement.

    In this way, the tools acquired in recovery from addiction were wielded effectively against depression. There is a retail recovery element at play here: Though not as simple as a “buy one get one free” scenario, I’ve learned that fully buying into continued recovery from alcoholism can lead to significant savings on the pain depression can cause me. I have a craziness-combating coupon, and it’s not expiring anytime soon.

    To be clear: This is by no means a “totally solved” happy ending. Confronting my depression meant facing some demons that have been stalking me for decades. You don’t slay dragons that large in one sitting. I have, however, made a promising start. I have discovered that progress against complicated chronic afflictions is indeed possible, and can sometimes flow unexpectedly from sources one wouldn’t expect.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Forgive and Remember

    Better to face the discomfort than continue to trudge along under a false impression that it’s not dormant inside, oblivious to the ticking of the time bomb that will eventually go off.

    Weekday morning programming kept me company in the background. The crispy and cold bedspread gave me some solace. My parents had just left the apartment and I was curled up like a fetus at the foot of the bed. It had been a while since I entertained the unwelcome visitor. What the hell was he doing here? Everything was going great, or so I believed. Two days with them proved me wrong. What seemed to be progress in acceptance and personal growth was only a by-product of spending a year on the other side of the world. No wonder I wasn’t feeling good and stayed in that day. The illusion of the enlightened and perfect world I’d been living in was shattered. The mourning of this started as a slow downward spiral that quickly turned into a tailspin but felt more like a free fall. I had not wished I hadn’t been born for a couple years now. But it was as if it had never left my side felt stronger than ever. I was drowning and didn’t know which way was up. It seemed that no matter what I did, I’d always come back to this powerlessness. What was the point to keep on trying? “Forget this. Life is too hard. You wouldn’t have to deal with all this if you ended it”, he suggested.

    Awakened unresolved issues were kicking and screaming. This is a very scary place to be, especially in this dangerous company. Running in fear was actually the courageous thing to do. It was time to resort to what saved my life a couple years prior. It was time to go back to basics. I knew a lot of meeting rooms in Miami, but this one was my favorite. There were some faces I recognized and others I didn’t. Most were friendly; mine was not. There was a thick fog of negativity inside my head and it was probably clear in my blank stare. Like a good friend used to say, sometimes we go to give sometimes we go to receive. I was in dire need.

    Some say it’s magic, others call it God, to avoid charged debates most refer to a Higher Power. Whatever you choose to call it, there is Something that definitely moves through those present. I lost count of how many times I heard exactly what I needed in those circles. The first times it was unbelievable how the day’s conversation addressed exactly what was eating away at me. It’s not just me. Others share this surprise as well. Even though it’s happened too many times to keep count, I am still at awe when it happens. It makes me feel special and reminds me that I am not alone. It doesn’t surprise me like it did at the beginning. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t take it for granted. I guess it has to do with worthiness and accepting that I am loved and cared for. I appreciate it deeply and it definitely keeps me coming back.

    As soon as the chairperson started the meeting it was obvious, we’d be talking about forgiveness. There were many nuggets of wisdom as each person shared their experience, strength, and hope. I had not forgiven, or rather accepted parts of my childhood. Spending a year on the Beautiful Island made me believe I was at peace with my past, but crossing the Pacific was a wake up call I needed to escape denial once again. It’s always a rude one, but an awakening, nonetheless. Better to face the discomfort than continue to trudge along under a false impression that it’s not dormant inside oblivious to the ticking of the time bomb that will eventually go off.

    The last person that shared might as well have been the first and only. Her share is the only one I remember from that day and one I will never forget. She helped me see things in a new light. She was molested at a young age by her uncle. Hard to believe but she said it was fairly easy for her to forgive him. She had finally forgiven herself after years of struggle and anguish. Her reasons for this challenge had to do with guilt, shame, and self-image. It was a very moving story. It made me uncomfortable to hear, but honored and grateful at the same time. There are details that escape me, but she closed with a line that changed it all for me and I have shared with many when discussing these issues. She said, “forgive and forget? That’s bullshit! We forgive and remember without pain”.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Finding Emotional Sobriety in a Pandemic

    I never realized I was the cause of my negative thinking by willfully trying to “make” my life happen then getting angry that everyone wasn’t doing what I wanted.

    I used to work at this weird hotel and one of the door guys told me when he was in prison he kept going to solitary confinement until he was sitting there one day and realized he was the problem. I was still using then and thought to myself “Weird. I’m going to go get high in one of the rooms upstairs and think about that.” Well, now I get it. Left alone with me during this quarantine I realized I was the problem.

    Unlike most people I was so excited for the quarantine because I cherish my alone time. I loved it! I cooked, I meditated, I read books and I did a bunch of writing. Auditions I would normally drive into the city for, I was able to do from my apartment, along with our podcast. I saved so much money in gas! I did service, and still went to meetings. I relaxed somewhat, and it seemed like a dream come true. A nice, long, staycation! Minus the complete panic over the economy, being worried about family members overseas, and my aging gracefully mother who would kill me if I called her elderly (she is). Then it happened…..

    The negative thinking.

    The repetitive, negative thinking.

    Feeling like a victim.

    Not of COVID-19, but of the past, alcoholism, and that thing that happened in 2004. Or 1997. Or the day before at Shoprite!

    This has happened to me many, many times since sobriety and many, many times before that but there was always a PERSON, or a SITUATION that “caused” it. Honestly, I couldn’t even blame my boyfriend during the quarantine because he kept leaving and going to his office every day. I was alone, working from home, and doing whatever I wanted. I was having a great time!

    I cleaned out everything! Put pictures in frames from 10 years ago! Cleaned out every drawer, closet, journal, and my entire bookcase. I donated books, clothes, shoes, and jewelry. But still – I was LOSING MY FUCKING MIND. Because unbeknownst to me I had not achieved emotional sobriety yet.

    And I was addicted to negative thinking.

    And it didn’t just happen – my realization of it just happened. I was sitting here alone with myself and my thoughts and realized I have still – after all this time – been people-pleasing. And doing it in large part to get what I want. I was like (subconsciously) “I want what I want and if I’m nice to people and do stuff for them – I AM GOING TO GET WHAT I WANT.”

    Well, it took sitting here alone for months to realize once and for all – there’s a 3rd step and I wasn’t doing it, and people-pleasing doesn’t work. It’s always an inside job. Inside our own heads and hearts. For me, it’s only when I let go that I have seen the evidence of my higher power.

    It’s so hard to trust.

    Once again I am seeing “spiritual road signs” on the ground whenever I am outside exercising, via fallen tree branches. For some reason I get direction from these twigs and branches and lately they are all right or left turns. So it feels like something very different, and I believe emotional sobriety is the path I am meant to turn on. It’s something I never even really thought about but it makes so much sense now. I need to be sober in my head and heart, not just my body.

    I mean I have heard so many people share about this – that they came for their drinking and stayed for their thinking. I have said it! And I meant it! I just didn’t realize I was the CAUSE of my negative thinking by willfully trying to “make” my life happen then getting angry everyone wasn’t doing what I wanted. So what do I do about this? Because I have realized that this negative thinking is toxic for me and my body and I can’t have that. I already had cancer once! And honestly and truly I value my sobriety more than anything. I am nothing without it. So this is the next layer of my stupid alcoholic onion. I want to grow. I know that my spiritual condition relies on daily maintenance and as I begin to train my thoughts to the positive it has become a moment to moment training. I had just been letting my thoughts go crazy all the time and I was too busy to realize it. It’s like early sobriety again – taking it moment by moment sometimes. I rage at someone in my mind and then say “No, no – let’s go with a different thought.” It’s so frustrating and tedious! I have made this analogy lately that came about from COVID-19 and the subsequent quarantine.

    A positive one! Say it to myself all the time.

    I wash my hands 30-50 times a day. At least 25!

    I cook all the time and was a big hand-washer before all this – regardless I wash my hands a lot – right?

    So why not do the spiritual work 30-50 times a day? If right now, that’s what I have to do to get my head sober then why not? Pray more. Meditate an additional time each day. Reach out to other alcoholics so I stop obsessing over myself – more often. Spiritual hand-wash all day long.

    I can do more work! I started to do the Traditions with my sponsor.

    I started to do what I did when I got cancer and beefed up my program.

    This is bringing me to freedom – even though I feel a little beat up from all of this. Not as beat up as after cancer treatment or at the end of my drinking and drugging! And I am almost positive I don’t feel as beat up as that poor guy being in solitary confinement. But that’s what it has taken for me to realize I’m the problem. 

    So ultimately it has been people-pleasing and willfulness. This willfulness has come from a lack of trust in my higher power.

    I have this beautiful higher power that has brought me so much peace and clarity – and I haven’t trusted the strength of that higher power. It’s like there’s been a higher power budget I thought I had to be on.

    I can rely on my higher power to not only carry other people’s stuff but to guide me while I take care of myself around other people. I can worry about myself and my inner life and turn to my higher power to guide me where I will be the most useful next. I don’t need to manipulate anything.

    My sponsor always says we can be happy. We can be happy, joyous, and free – and that we work so hard for that. So this new awareness is bringing freedom. Ah, what a place to be! Awareness!

    It’s a beautiful thing.

    A beautiful, uncomfortable, and freeing thing.

    Sometimes freedom isn’t comfortable.

    I am going to put that into my higher power’s hands, along with everything else in my head and heart.

    There’s a lot to lose our minds over right now. Wasn’t there always? It’s not easy waking up and recovering. I am going to practice (one day at a time) not fighting anyone or anything and accepting that I am enough – as is. I don’t have to pick up a drink, drug or thought today and I don’t have to fight with myself, or anyone at Shoprite. I don’t even need to take care of anyone at Shoprite! 

    I can also practice being grateful that this quarantine helped me to remember an amazing lesson I learned at a weird hotel in 2003 from a poor guy who–I just realized–was probably recovering, just like me.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Don't Relapse Now

    Time has paused, life has paused, why can’t sobriety pause too?

    Reader, I will make a deal with you. I will talk to you like an adult and say some uncomfortable things. I won’t be your sponsor and I won’t throw the Big Book at your face. But in exchange, you need to promise me you’ll read this to the end. No skips, no tag outs, no skimmy skims. Okay? Okay, great.

    I understand the urge to relapse right now. I’m feeling it too. A lot of us have severely diminished responsibilities – my work has nearly dried up. I hate the Zoom meetings, which feel like impersonal shadow plays where I have to stare at my new fat face. All our other distractions that can’t be done from the couch have been cancelled. My normie friends are mixing up quarantinis before the 5 o’clock news starts. Most importantly, we are all being treated to a daily blast of death, inequity, and press conferences where a poorly tanned moron tells us to shoot up with bleach. It is so much. It is a daily mental weight that is difficult to bear even on the best days.

    If you are saying to yourself, maybe I can’t hold out on this, maybe I am going to break, that is a sane response. It is, in some ways, a rational response. Time has paused, life has paused, why can’t sobriety pause too? The other day I found myself telling a friend that I won’t be jobless, locked down, without the beach (my favorite distraction), and sober. In full Scarlett O’Hara mode, I declared, “Sorry, but I won’t do it!” It felt good to say, the way forbidden things sometimes do. Total, unapologetic narcissism has its pleasures.

    I could probably get away with it, too. I could probably go on a few-days bender and maybe my boyfriend would figure it out (he is sharp!), but no one else would. I could even keep my day count! Why not?!? This is the sort of self-dealing I’ve been doing. I am so good at it. I am the Clarence Darrow of fucking my own shit up.

    But it is wrong. I know it’s wrong. If you are having similar thoughts, you probably know they are wrong too. Even now, with life halted and pain and injustice ascendant, there are reasons both practical and metaphysical that it is crucial for you and me to keep our sober time. Even if every word we ever heard at an AA meeting was false, even if the Big Book itself is a decades-long scam to sell us on religion.

    Practically, you are going to regret it. You know you are! Sorry, but you do. You are going to be annoyed, at the very least, that you need to restart your day count, which yes, you eventually will be forced to do because you won’t be able to lie to your support network for that long. Whatever bender you have in mind is going to come to an end, in what will feel like the blink of an eye, and all you’ll have left is regret and likely, a terrible headache or worse. You also, of course, might take it too far and die.

    If things get really bad, as they very well may, people are going to know what you did and that is going to suck for you. Your family and friends are already extremely stressed out right now (just like you!) – the last thing they need is to hear that you relapsed, in your tiny apartment in some faraway city, and no one can travel to you to make sure you get it together. Your mom is going to cry.

    On that note, if you need hospital care because you overdose or can’t stop, great, you are taxing an already overtaxed healthcare system and exposing yourself to COVID19 at the same time. From a million different standpoints, any decision to relapse right now is selfish, even if it feels like the only person being punished is you.

    Okay, who cares, right? I hear that. When I was first trying to get sober and in a relapse cycle, other people’s problems were some theoretical concern that was a not-close second to my immediate ego gratification. I did not give a shit, and honestly I didn’t care much if I died, either. What worked for me, though, was spite – not giving my enemies the pleasure of seeing me fall.

    Spite could be helpful right now. Picture Donald Trump, in all his 300 pounds of dense mass, standing over you as you take that first drink. “I was always right,” he says without laughing, as he never laughs, “You’re weak. Libs like you, weak, lazy.” Do you want Donald Trump to think he’s better than you? How about the maskless crowds begging states to let them kill themselves, and each other? Should these yahoos and sociopaths be allowed to feel morally superior to you? Or picture a little closer to home. Do you want your douchebag ex to hear that you fucked up again? No you do not.

    The time we’ve all spent cooped up indoors losing our gourds has been an achievement which can be measured in days and lives saved. We’ve been doing this for well over thirty days now. In New York and elsewhere, we’ve flattened the curve. Your sobriety is the same. It’s not some fungible commodity that can be lent out and borrowed back at will – it has a character in itself composed in part of a temporal element. Your sobriety after you relapse is not the same as your sobriety before. When you give it up, you give up effort, sacrifice, things you can never get back. That might not feel important now, but it will feel devastating later.

    Look, I am not Mr. Lockdown. I eat loaves of bread as a snack. I stay up most nights until 5 AM and I sleep till 11. I bleached my hair. I play Nintendo Switch and try to get one or two productive hours into a day. My sheets smell like farts. All of this is fine! You do what it takes to make it to the next day. The people doing pilates every morning, learning a second language, making OnlyFans, whatever – they are fine, too. And it’s even fine to hate them!

    “One day at a time” is a relentless cliché in sobriety circles. But right now, it feels appropriate, as all of the stupid sayings eventually do. The world is a miserable place, maybe always, definitely right now. Don’t add to the misery by giving in to the demons you fought so hard to keep at bay. Be strong, stay home, save lives, stay sober. Good luck.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Sober Reflections From the Dance Floor

    One gift of sobriety, along with holding down a job and not losing my kids to the courts, is that I now get to do something I really love, dancing—safely.

    For Mary.

    I got sober here almost thirty years ago. That’s what struck me last December 31, as I danced my butt off in the basement of St. Anthony of Padua’s Roman Catholic Church on Sullivan Street in New York City, welcoming in the New Year with a mob of sober drunks. Yes, here I was dancing under the influence of something more heady than Moet this New Year’s Eve, surrounded by mylar waterfall curtains, and the familiar pull down shades of AA’s Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, changing color with every turn of the disco ball.

    In the fall of 1991 I was sitting in the second of sixteen rows of folding chairs, a box of Kleenex on my lap, flanked by massive columns that supported both church above and my shaky sobriety below. Now here in the countdown to midnight, voguing to Madonna with a Woodstock hippie in pajamas, I realized this was the very spot I had counted my first 90 days without a drink or a drug decades ago. This was where the Soho Group of Alcoholics Anonymous met, and still meets today. Flash back to me in gold tights and a green suede mini skirt, crushing on a rockabilly cat across the aisle. Thank you Johnny Cash wannabe in the stretched T, you kept me coming back to AA for that first year—you and my sponsor Cindy, the big sis I never had. After the meeting, Cindy and I would hit the Malibu Diner on 23rd Street for oversized Greek salads with extra dressing and bottomless cups of decaf. Cindy taught me how to stay away from the first drink and how to smudge a make-up pencil to get that smoky eye look. From September to December, 1991, the Soho Group, the boy with the ducktail, and my glamourous sponsor, poured the pillars of my foundation for a life lived without mood-altering substances, one-day-at-a-time.

    . . .

    Around midnight on December 31, 2019, wearing frames I’d picked up at the dollar store that flashed “2020” in three speeds, I felt safe—safe and happy raving with a few hundred personalities swigging seltzer. In my drinking days, going out dancing never felt safe. There was the time I fell off the stage GoGo dancing on the boardwalk at Coney Island, and once I walked home alone over the Brooklyn Bridge, at 3AM, in a red sundress. I meant to take a cab, and had even tucked a twenty dollar bill in my bra for that purpose, but I ended up spending it on more vodka cranberries instead. Staggering barefoot in the pre-dawn down an unlit staircase onto the off ramp of the Brooklyn Bridge, heels in hand, fear overtook me and I started running. For blocks and blocks I ran down the middle of the street, where it felt safer, where I could spot shadows lurking between cars, all the way home, until I reached my building—relieved, ashamed and baffled by my behavior. Scared of waking my landlord, I tiptoed up three flights—this was not new—but every creaky step betrayed me. I dreaded passing Babe the next morning, sitting on the bench in his dooryard, combing the supermarket circulars. He was less like a landlord you write a check out to on the first of the month, and more like an Italian uncle who would scold you for parking too far from the curb, or wasting money buying coffee out, instead of brewing it at home. I knew Babe always heard my key in the lock as dawn broke over South Brooklyn, and I knew he saw those empty bottles of Chianti, tucked under tomato cans in the recycling bin. 

    . . .

    Yes, now I felt safe—here clasping hands with a little girl and her sober mom, twirling around a church cellar at the Soho Group’s New Year’s Eve Dance. I felt safe, happy and damn lucky to be back here on the very spot that I had clung to for that first year, that spot where I first surrendered to sobriety and felt safe, as I cupped warm urn coffee, and took it all in, in small sips. Tonight I knew where I was, and I knew I’d get home safely. I knew I’d remember everything the next day, without remorse or a sour stomach. 

    “Some don’t make it back.” I’ve heard that said often in the rooms of A.A. After sobering up in my mid twenties at the Soho Group, I stayed alcohol-free for thirteen years, making Brooklyn Heights my home group for years, until just after the birth of my first son. The promise of A.A. as “a bridge back to life” had come true. I had a life: a husband, a house, and now a fat baby at the baptismal font. But I was doing zero maintenance on that bridge—my connection back to AA was crumbling. I’d drifted. I’d moved deeper into Brooklyn with my non-alcoholic husband and away from my homegroup. I’d lost touch with my sponsor and most of my sober friends. And then it happened. I slipped. But I was one of the super lucky ones. I didn’t have a full out sloppy slip, with blackouts and benders and smash-ups with the family KIA. It started with just a sip. In my mind I’d decided it was safe to start taking communion wine with my wafer at Sunday mass. No matter that countless practicing Episcopalians take the host but pass on that sip from the silver chalice. And for years, this was the extent of my drinking, one sneaky sip I looked forward to on Sunday mornings. Then other things happened. I’d heard that beer was good for breast-feeding. I latched onto that rumor, like a babe at the breast. I started downing O’Douls “non-alcoholic” ale at our weekly mommy nights. When I went to my dentist for a routine filling, I insisted he tap the tank of laughing gas, when novocaine would have numbed well enough. I remember that buzz which settled over me in the dentist’s chair. Relief, I thought. From everything.

    Soon after I woke up and realized my marriage was over. I was a wreck. Day drinking seemed like an option. A friend offered me a mimosa in her home. I took one sip—panicked—snuck to her bathroom and poured the rest down the drain. Soon after that, I climbed up one flight of stairs over a fish store and entered a crowded room with flies circling. I started counting days, for the second time around. At forty-eight, I was a humbled newcomer again. My sponsor was twelve years my junior. It was awkward, yes, but it felt honest and right to reset my sobriety clock. And thanks in large part to these no-nonsense oldtimers of Old Park Slope Caton, my kids have never seen me drunk.

    . . .

    In my twenties, before I poured that last bottle of Four Roses whiskey down the kitchen sink, my twin loves were drinking and dancing. I started drinking fairly late, at 19, when I’d help myself to my father’s scotch, put on his headphones, raise the volume on his Ohm speakers, and burn rubber to The Gap Band. Booze and boogie shoes quickly became my dream couple, allowing me to float in a fantasy stupor where all care and self-doubt slipped away. From there I went on to be a “maniac on the dance floor”—a self-destructive eighties girl flash dancing her way through four years of college—squeezing that last cup of beer from a warm keg.

    For fun, my alcoholic brain sometimes likes to play this game where I remember fondly (but falsely) occasions where liquor paired perfectly with certain activities like ball games with Budweiser, or tailgate parties with pina coladas, picnics with blushing Zinfandels, or art gallery openings with jugs of Gallo red. But the winner of this stagger-down-memory-lane game is always dancing with drinking. Evenings out started the same: plug in the hot rollers, mix a cocktail, and get down while dolling up, still in my underwear, to the Saturday night line-up of DJs on WBLS and Hot97. A whiskey sour next to my make-up mirror was the kick-off. Stepping out an hour later, with coral lips and cat eyes, and Run-DMC in my head, I felt just fine. And that’s how it went, in my twenties. But over time, nights out ended in close calls with questionable characters and near scrapes in unknown neighborhoods. Every one of those nights, however, had started out just fine. From Halloween dance parties in Bushwick lofts with Solo cups of mystery punch, to doing the twist on the Coney Island Boardwalk while taking nips from a hip flask of Jack Daniels, it was always a good time. Until it wasn’t—until someone flicked a cigarette and started a fire, or until I fell off the band stage on that Coney Island boardwalk.

    . . .

    If only evenings could have ended as safe and fun as they had started out. It really only ever felt safe to drink at the start of my drinking, as a teen, in front of my dad’s turntable, moving to Stevie Wonder coming from his Koss headphones, in the safety of my childhood home. And if only my drinking and dancing partner Mary was still here. Mary, who dared me to put down my rum and Coke and never-finished Times crossword, and climb up onto the bar with her at Peter McManus Pub in Chelsea. Dear, departed drinking playmate and party girl Mary. Quirky, curly-haired writer Mary, in rhinestone glasses and GoGo boots. Loyal friend Mary, who helped me through heartbreaks and hangovers. Subversive yet wholesome Mary from Michigan, who baked soda bread, wrote thank you notes, remembered nieces’ birthdays and snorted lines of heroin. I never made the connection between her non-stop runny nose and her habit until years later, when her boyfriend called me to say he’d found Mary dead from an overdose. I pictured her slumped in a fake Queen Anne armchair, pale as parchment, her dark curls against floral upholstery. She was forty-six.

    Indeed, I danced my way through my drinking twenties, but I was hardly dancing with the stars. I was working as a waitress at the LoneStar Roadhouse near Times Square. At closing time I’d do lines at the end of the bar with the manager, and once, with a customer who talked me into leaving with him. I went home with this grown man who, as it turned out, still lived with his parents somewhere way the hell out on Long Island. I remember feeling increasingly unsafe passing exit after exit on the LIE, riding unbelted in the death seat of a stranger’s Toyota. I remember turning up the volume on the radio and singing along to Chaka Khan: “I’m Every Woman… It’s all in MEEE…” Any drug that can delude you into believing you’ve got the pipes of a 10-time Grammy Award winner, well, that’s a great drug. Until it isn’t. He led me to a mattress on the floor of his parents garage. I’ve heard it said in the rooms of A.A. that God watches out for children and drunks. Which maybe explains how I got myself out of that one—while still fully clothed—and was able to call a cab to take me all the way home in those pre-Lyft late-eighties.

    . . .

    One gift of sobriety, along with holding down a job and not losing my kids to the courts, is that I now get to do something I really love, dancing—safely. I’ve hit many an A.A. group anniversary, where I’ve joined Friends of Bill W. on subterranean church linoleum, cleared for dancing. I still start getting ready at five, with my own creation: The Magoo (cranberry juice, sparkling water and two wedges of lime, served up in a fancy glass.) I still tune into WBLS. I wear less make-up now, but still move to the music. At six I head out to scoop a friend in my KIA beater. The koolest legend, Kool D.J. Red Alert, is blowin’ it up over the airwaves and through my car speakers. I pull up, safety-belted and chair dancing in the driver’s seat. My date is tall and her dress is short and sparkly. “Damn girl, who’s your target? These all gotta watch out!” Beatrice has all the head boss and eye looks as Mary. And a wit just like Mary’s too, drier than a Wasa cracker or top-shelf vermouth. It’s going to be a fun night, I think. Throw your hands up.

    I really love Alcoholics Anonymous group anniversaries. They are feel good phenomena that pretty much follow the same format: a meeting, followed by a potluck, then sometimes, dancing. I gravitate to the ones where there’s dancing. Everyone shows up bathed and beaming to celebrate the founding of their “homegroup,” the group they most regularly attend, where they know other people, and are known in return. Sober drunks with sixty years and sixty days come to these. A church basement or parish hall is dressed up in balloons and crepe garland; Hershey kisses scatter folding tables, covered in plastic cloths. The speakers are often old-timers with good stories to tell, pulling in outrageous details of their “drunkalogues” or firsthand details about the group’s early days. The dinner spread is legit. A line of volunteers dish out baked ziti, collards and fried fish from foil casseroles set up over sternos. Urn coffee and birthday cake for dessert. I’ve developed a taste for those giant sheet cakes with piped icing. The ritual of eating that 2” square of cake, along with every alcoholic in the room eating theirs, is a highlight for sure. A centered feeling comes over me as I lick frosting off a plastic fork under twinkle lights. I am safe. And this is fun. Details may vary from group to group, but every space feels hallowed on these nights. The people who populate it are thankful for their lives, freed from the hamster wheel of addiction, just for today. 

    Then dancing happens. I bring the DJ a bottle of Poland Spring and I’m “setting it off” to one-hit-hip-hop wonder Strafe, while folks are still on the food line. When the clean up crew starts collecting cola cans and rolling up tablecloths, I’m still on the linoleum with any takers I can pull up off their folding chairs. I can’t say Beatrice and I have shut down every A.A. party from northern Manhattan to the outer banks of Brooklyn, but the bulletin board of Alcoholic Anonymous’ Intergroup is a good place to start for leads on sober dance happenings.

    We head home a little after eleven. DJ Chuck Chillout has pulled out his airhorn. I drop Beatrice off, she bends into the passenger window and smirks: “I had a great time tonight. Maria N. gets a second date.” 

    . . .

    Group anniversaries and sober New Year’s Eve parties aside, I dance mostly on my yoga mat, to the line-up of Saturday Night DJs on WBLS, or to my own ‘80s Hip Hop and New Wave playlists. I’m still self-conscious when I share in meetings, or read at open mics, or take my top off to new a lover, but at home or in public, I’m comfortable on the dance floor, even if I’m the only one dancing. I don’t claim to quite find my Nasty with Miss Jackson anymore, but even well into middle age, and without a craft beer in hand, dancing still brings on my happy—more than ever. Clear-headed, I tap into that elusive “conscious contact” with my higher power. I feel everything in the present moment—neurons firing through my fingertips, the beat beneath my bare feet. I am a consenting adult at my own one-woman rave, enjoying this gift of sobriety: a healthy body doing what it loves, and hurting no one, especially not itself. Of course, when I’m out dancing, there’s the bonus of connection with other abstaining alcoholics. Doing the Electric Slide with fifty friends of Bill—in-sync, or close enough—well, It’s Electric.

    . . .

    “We drank alone. But we don’t get sober—then stay sober—alone.” 

    It’s 1:30AM and I’m still on the dance floor, throwing hands up with oldtimers and seven-year-olds. The Woodstock hippie shuffles in his drawstring polar fleece, cotton wadded in his ears. But no amount of cotton can drown out the cheer that went up at the stroke of midnight and echoes even now.If it’s in the cards, in twenty years, on New Year’s Eve, 2040, I’ll be 75 and I’ll be here, surrounded by these poured cement columns, getting what’s left of my groove on with a beautiful group of sober drunks. 

    . . . 

    Where can you go to dance yourself happy? For one thing, the International Conference of Young People in Alcoholics Anonymous of New York City (ICYPAA NYC) throws a serenity dance cruise on the Hudson in July. But if AA dances aren’t your thing, consider “Conscious clubbing,” a term coined by Samantha Moyo, founder of Morning Gloryville, a sober breakfast rave phenomenon launched in East London in 2013, and which has spread to cities worldwide. Some Morning Gloryville events have been postponed due to the COVID-19 outbreak, but online raves are happening right now. And LOOSID a sober social network, with a mission to make sobriety fun, puts out playlists, and pairs subscribers to events of interest too.

    Tonight, still sheltering-in-place here in The Baked Apple, New York City—one hot spot of the COVID-19 pandemic—Beatrice invited me to Reprieve, a clean & sober non-stop dance party. I registered for free through Eventbrite and joined the dance floor, courtesy of Zoom. By the end of it we were doing backbends over our sofas to Total Eclipse of the Heart. Before signing off, I reached out to Beatrice in the comment thread : “Let’s do it again,” I typed. “Totes.” she typed back. Sure, I’ll return this Saturday night to dance with sober drunks. It looks like it’ll just become the latest turn in my healthy sober dance move.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Addiction Is ‘A Disease Of Isolation’ — So Pandemic Puts Recovery At Risk

    Addiction Is ‘A Disease Of Isolation’ — So Pandemic Puts Recovery At Risk

    “We consider addiction a disease of isolation…Now we’re isolating all these people and expecting them to pick up the phone, get online, that sort of thing — and it may not work out as well.”

    Before the coronavirus became a pandemic, Emma went to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting every week in the Boston area and to another support group at her methadone clinic. She said she felt safe, secure and never judged.

    “No one is thinking, ‘Oh, my God. She did that?’” said Emma, “’cause they’ve been there.”

    Now, with AA and other 12-step groups moving online, and the methadone clinic shifting to phone meetings and appointments, Emma said she is feeling more isolated. (KHN is not using her last name because she still uses illegal drugs sometimes.) Emma said the coronavirus may make it harder to stay in recovery.

    “Maybe I’m old fashioned,” said Emma, “but the whole point of going to a meeting is to be around people and be social and feel connected, and I’d be totally missing that if I did it online.”

    While it’s safer to stay home to avoid getting and spreading COVID-19, addiction specialists acknowledge Emma’s concern: Doing so may increase feelings of depression and anxiety among people in recovery — and those are underlying causes of drug and alcohol use and addiction.

    “We consider addiction a disease of isolation,” said Dr. Marvin Seppala, chief medical officer at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. “Now we’re isolating all these people and expecting them to pick up the phone, get online, that sort of thing — and it may not work out as well.”

    Emma has another frustration: If the methadone clinic isn’t allowing gatherings, why is she still required to show up daily and wait in line for her dose of the pink liquid medication?

    The answer is in tangled rules for methadone dispensing. The federal government has loosened them during the pandemic — so that patients don’t all have to make a daily trip to the methadone clinic, even if they are sick. But patients say clinics have been slow to adopt the new rules.

    Mark Parrino, president of the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence, said he issued guidelines to members late last week about how to operate during pandemics. He recommended that clinics stop collecting urine samples to test for drug use. Many patients can now get a 14- to 28-day supply of their addiction treatment medication so they can make fewer trips to methadone or buprenorphine clinics.

    “But there has to be caution about giving significant take-home medication to patients who are clinically unstable or actively still using other drugs,” Parrino said, “because that could lead to more problems.”

    The new rules have a downside for clinics: Programs will lose money during the pandemic as fewer patients make daily visits, although Medicare and some other providers are adjusting reimbursements based on the new stay-at-home guidelines.

    And for active drug users, being alone when taking high levels of opioids increases the risk of a fatal overdose.

    These are just some of the challenges that emerge as the public health crisis of addiction collides with the global pandemic of COVID-19. Doctors worry deaths will escalate unless people struggling with excessive drug and alcohol use and those in recovery — as well as addiction treatment programs — quickly change the way they do business.

    But treatment options are becoming even scarcer during the pandemic.

    “It’s shutting down everything,” said John, a homeless man who’s wandering the streets of Boston while he waits for a detox bed. (KHN is not including his last name because he still buys illegal drugs.) “Detoxes are closing their doors and halfway houses,” he said. “It’s really affecting people getting help.”

    Adding to the scarcity of treatment options: Some inpatient and outpatient programs are not accepting new patients because they aren’t yet prepared to operate under the physical distancing rules. In many residential treatment facilities, bedrooms and bathrooms for patients are shared, and most daily activities happen in groups — those are all settings that would increase the risk of transmitting the novel coronavirus.

    “If somebody were to become symptomatic or were to spread within a unit, it would have a significant impact,” said Lisa Blanchard, vice president of clinical services at Spectrum Health Systems. Spectrum runs two detox and residential treatment programs in Massachusetts. Its facilities and programs are all still accepting patients.

    Seppala said inpatient programs at Hazelden Betty Ford are open, but with new precautions. All patients, staff and visitors have their temperature checked daily and are monitored for other COVID-19 symptoms. Intensive outpatient programs will run on virtual platforms online for the immediate future. Some insurers cover online and telehealth addiction treatment, but not all do.

    Seppala worried that all the disruptions — canceled meetings, the search for new support networks and fear of the coronavirus — will be dangerous for people in recovery.

    “That can really drive people to an elevated level of anxiety,” he said, “and anxiety certainly can result in relapse.”

    Doctors say some people with a history of drug and alcohol use may be more susceptible to COVID-19 because they are more likely to have weak immune systems and have existing infections such as hepatitis C or HIV.

    “They also have very high rates of nicotine addiction and smoking, and high rates of chronic lung disease,” said Dr. Peter Friedmann, president of the Massachusetts Society of Addiction Medicine. “Those [are] things we’ve seen in the outbreak in China [that] put folks at higher risk for more severe respiratory complications of this virus.”

    Counselors and street outreach workers are redoubling their efforts to explain the pandemic and all the related dangers to people living on the streets. Kristin Doneski, who runs One Stop, a needle exchange and outreach program in Gloucester, Massachusetts, worried it won’t be clear when some drug users have COVID-19.

    “When folks are in withdrawal, a lot of those symptoms can kind of mask some of the COVID-19 stuff,” said Doneski. “So people might not be taking some of their [symptoms seriously], because they think it’s just withdrawal and they’ve experienced it before.”

    Doneski is concerned that doctors and nurses evaluating drug users will also mistake a case of COVID-19 for withdrawal.

    During the coronavirus pandemic, needle exchange programs are changing their procedures; some have stopped allowing people to gather inside for services, safety supplies, food and support.

    There’s also a lot of fear about how quickly the coronavirus could spread through communities of drug users who’ve lost their homes.

    “It’s scary to see how this will pan out,” said Meredith Cunniff, a nurse from Quincy, Massachusetts, who is in recovery for an opioid use disorder. “How do you wash your hands and practice social distancing if you’re living in a tent?”

    This story is part of a partnership that includes WBUR, NPR and Kaiser Health News.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Why I Choose Not to Be Anonymous in Recovery

    Why I Choose Not to Be Anonymous in Recovery

    I am in favor of a sober revolution in which everyone is comfortable speaking frankly about their struggle with alcohol and other substances.

    “I can’t believe how some people will share the most intimate details of their lives on social media. People they don’t even know can see these things. Future employers. It’s shocking.”

    I nodded my head in agreement as my biggest client shared her opinion of oversharing the details of your life. We were at dinner with a group, but this was a one on one conversation. I stopped processing what she said after that. My mind raced through the intimate details of my life that I’ve shared with strangers. I’m way beyond Facebook posts when it comes to sharing my struggles with alcohol and how mental illness has impacted my life.

    A quick Google search would show my client I’ve written articles, spoken at conferences and on podcasts, and frequently posted about alcohol abuse and mental health issues on my social media. I felt on edge as I drove home that night. Would my client find out I’m an oversharing alcohol abuser? Most importantly, it was the first time I was questioning if it was a good idea for me to attach my name to the issue of alcohol abuse since I wrote my first article on the topic nearly five years ago. Why didn’t I stay anonymous? Was it worth it? Why would anyone choose to make their struggles public?

    Why Didn’t I Stay Anonymous?

    Five years ago, I made a personal and voluntary choice to write about my struggle with alcohol abuse. I wanted to raise awareness of the role I felt alcohol was playing in my field of design and technology. I had one year of sobriety. I struggled during that year to find a good reference point among my colleagues and friends for what not-drinking looked like. I knew there were others like me. I wanted them to know they weren’t alone. I wanted to put my name and face out as someone they could trust on this issue.

    I believe we are more impactful when we remove anonymity from sharing our struggles. People pay attention when an A-list celebrity comes out with their struggle with alcohol or drug abuse. We feel more connected to a disease or condition when someone we know shares with us they have it. In that same way, though not at all a celebrity, I wanted to maximize the impact of sharing my experience. I also thought having others know my desire to stay sober would help hold me accountable in times I craved alcohol.

    I had an anonymous childhood. I grew up in a family where one parent had a significant mental illness, and I went through middle school and high school avoiding attention. I reflected on this before I made my alcohol abuse public. I didn’t want to live a life of anonymity when I realized my struggles — both with alcohol and mentally ill family members — are shared by large numbers of people. Perhaps everyone knows someone impacted by one or both of these issues. But we don’t talk about it; not nearly as often as we should. I wanted to contribute to changing that for the better.

    I made the commitment to attempt publishing and speaking on the topic of alcohol abuse. I haven’t set the world on fire, but I’ve gained enough traction. I’ve published over a dozen articles and blog posts, videos of conference presentations, and podcasts on this topic. I’ve lived four years with my issues made public.

    The Present: Things change – Things Stay the same.

    I couldn’t have predicted many of the changes that have occurred since I left anonymity; changes that perhaps would have caused me to reconsider going public.

    My works situation has changed. Four years ago, I sat down with one of the partners at the design firm I work for. I told him I’d been sober for a year and I wanted to go public about the need for our industry to do more for those struggling with alcohol issues. I knew my first article on the topic was set for release within 48 hours. I wanted his permission to affiliate myself with the studio in my bio statement. He gave me his full support and that of the other two partners. I knew I wouldn’t lose my job when the article came out.

    One year later, a mega-company acquired our studio. A company with many restrictions around communication with the outside world, a company with many restrictions against affiliating yourself with their name. I’ve now worked for this company for over three years. No one at the company from outside of our studio has commented on my alcohol-related writing or speaking.

    I’ve done some things to help limit the possibility I’ll get in trouble at work. I’ve shifted how I affiliate myself in my bio: I don’t name my company; I don’t claim any affiliation with my opinion and the company I work for. I post less on social media, as many people from my studio and the larger company follow some of my accounts. I do have anxiety over being asked to remove my writing from public view. I knew this was a possibility if I decided to change employers after going public, but I was surprised to find myself with the same employer but different policies almost overnight

    I’m not as concerned about future employers. As I continue to build a foundation of writing and speaking, I’m hopeful to move more towards the space of advocating for awareness of issues related to alcohol abuse as part of my profession. I will choose a future employer based on the support and flexibility they are able to provide me around this goal. And I haven’t given up on exploring the potential for acceptance of my advocacy at my current employer.

    My personal life has changed. I was engaged and then married when I first shared my issues with alcohol abuse. I had my wife’s consent to go public. I wasn’t concerned she would judge me; she’d lived through what I was writing about.

    I’m now divorced and dating. Potential dates ask for a last name to look me up online prior to meeting and I’m proud of what they will find. I know some might develop negative opinions based on what I’ve written. I’m not concerned about what I might miss, but it’s an example of something I hadn’t considered because my relationship status seemed solid four years ago.

    I’m not set on having a sober partner. Almost every woman I’ve had a date with stated they drink. They ask if I mind them drinking on our dates. I don’t. One woman canceled a date after finding out I am sober. She was coming out of a marriage to an alcohol abuser and said she still felt triggered. I respect that. My lack of anonymity allowed us to avoid investing time in something that would not have worked.

    Outside of work and relationship changes, I was aware of the potential pitfalls. People know my shit. You can know my flaws before you meet me. I can’t speak for how that might have impacted me. Many people have introduced themselves and congratulated me on staying sober or thanked me for sharing insights they found valuable. No one has ever said to my face they think I’m oversharing or embarrassing myself.

    I constantly deal with imposter syndrome, which is when you feel like a fraud for putting yourself forward as someone with expertise. I struggle with this whenever I start writing an article or post meant to help others. I focus on the fact that I’m sharing my experiences in a way I hope helps people. I’m not saying what I’ve done is the only way, or even the best way to get and stay sober. I’m not an imposter as a sober person. No one is. We each do it our own way. If I do something that’s effective for another person then I want to take the opportunity to share that.

    What if I do drink? If I relapse or decide I want to become a casual drinker (probably impossible), I will look very hypocritical. I find that helpful in adding to the sense of accountability I have. I know that’s shallow, to care what others think, but I’ve interjected myself into the how to be sober conversation and would deservedly look foolish for failing to hold up my end of the discussion.

    A Personal Decision

    I can’t speak to whether anyone else should make their sober status public. I am in favor of a sober revolution in which everyone is comfortable speaking frankly about their struggle with alcohol and other substances. Today, we are far from that. I always appreciate when actors, musicians, and sports icons share their struggles. These people have large platforms and can impact society at the change level much quicker than I can.

    I believe the benefits of being open about my alcohol issues have outweighed the costs. I’ve been able to play a small part in shaping a message that will need to be repeated through the end of time, it seems: Not everyone drinks. It doesn’t matter why. We need to support those who choose not to drink. We need to support those who are struggling to recognize and treat alcohol abuse, as well as their families. I wouldn’t feel as comfortable entering these conversations if I didn’t have a small body of work to support my experience. I understand most people have no idea who I am or what my background is, but knowing I exist in public forums as a confessed alcohol abuser on a mission to help others with alcohol issues is enough to keep me engaged.

    As far as the client from the opening of this piece, I don’t know if they have ever looked me up online or found any of my posts on sobriety. But I have made them aware I’m sober, and they are grateful to have me as the designated driver when we go out for entertainment.

    View the original article at thefix.com