Answer Addiction

Tag: AA

  • Sex, Drunk and Sober

    Sex, Drunk and Sober

    Once I got sober again, I’d like to say my behavior towards men was completely different, that I only had sex when I was one hundred percent sure I wanted to, that I didn’t judge and hate.

    I remember the first time I had sex. I was 26, far past the age of most of my friends, and I’d waited for the first man I really loved. My mom had said a few things regarding the subject when I was growing up: wait for someone you love, and act like a prostitute in bed. A bit different, the two pieces of advice, but both valid in their own rights. Fortunately or not, I took both pieces to heart. I waited, and I waited, and I waited… until I felt both safe and in love, and once I’d grown to feel comfortable in bed, I did act a bit; well, maybe I overacted.

    The important part is: I remember the first time I had sex. As in, I was in a dry period in my life, a period that stretched about eight years when I wasn’t drinking/drugging and I wasn’t going to AA. I’d had my first drinks (or drunks) when I was quite young, but then I waited until I was an “adult” to really let go. My freshman year of college, I drank all the time. I went to so many fraternity parties I lost track, and each time I got drunk and found myself on a stranger’s bathroom floor throwing up into the toilet, I told myself that it would be the last time.

    College Crushes and Fraternity Parties

    That same year, I found myself in love with a fellow freshman from my English literature class. I spent the semester obsessing about him, how I would lose my virginity to him, and my emotional virginity, too—I’d had a boyfriend before but he never really knew me. Our high school relationship ended about three months into the beginning of my drinking career, when I found myself dating his friend while I was still dating him long distance. Nothing I would have done sober. Everything I would find myself doing drunk. 

    Which leads me astray from the young man I was in love with, the one with the dreamy blue eyes. My roommate, who’d become a good friend, told me one Saturday that the man I had a crush on was hideous and pale and ugly. I knew he was pale, a quality I found attractive on him, but hideous and ugly—that was a bit strong for a guy she hardly knew. Or maybe that was the point – she was tearing into someone she hardly knew. She then told me he was having sex with her good friend, who wanted to turn him into her boyfriend. I took this as: stay away, let her have a go at him, as if he was a piece of meat. I guess we did see men as meat back then.

    That same day, he called me on the hall phone in my dormitory and asked me to come with him to his fraternity party, the same one my roommate and I were already going to that night. I told him as much, and said no. The truth is, after the conversation with my roommate, I was more interested in how I would get alcohol for the pre-party since we were still underage. My character defects were working overtime, and I had already decided I didn’t like him anymore. “Love” went to “like” in the scope of an hour. 

    I cared so much about what others thought—I was deep in my drinking stage (one of them)—and even though my roommate was looking out for her friend and not necessarily me, the warning was working: When we got to the party, each time my former love tried to approach me, we giggled and ran away.

    Later, a mutual friend called me up to his room. 

    “I can’t believe you’re acting like this, it’s so out of character. You’re hurting his feelings. I didn’t think you were like that.” 

    I had no defense. Had I been in touch with my feelings, I would have said, “I’m not capable of an adult relationship. I’m not really an adult.” The truth is I didn’t want the responsibility that came with age; as much as I’d spent my childhood wanting to be older, I now found myself wanting to feel younger.

    Sex and Blackouts

    I was drunker that night than almost any night in my entire life. When I ran from my crush, the way alcohol crushes love and right thinking, I was ruined by beer and vodka and grain alcohol punch. 

    Wine before beer, drunk for a year, beer before liquor never been sicker. I think it was the latter that night. But I can’t blame my behavior on the alcohol any more than someone who gets a DUI can.

    That night, I left the party with someone else—I ran straight into the arms of a young man from my high school, someone I thought was cute and kind, and he drove us to his dorm room where he started to try to take off my clothes. When I ran outside and threw up in the bushes, he brought me back in, stuck some toothpaste in my mouth, and started kissing me again and attempted to rape me. I was so drunk I couldn’t push him off, but I did say, “We know the same people,” which ended up having the same effect, thank God. A kind rapist, I remember thinking later, in my innocence, my youth. 

    I couldn’t have sex very often when I was drunk because I hardly had the capacity to move. I don’t remember one sexual encounter when I was drunk because, though I am sure that they happened, I was brown- or blacked-out at the time. Or maybe I have blocked it out. I do remember in my twenties asking strangers from bars and parties to come home with me, and then I kissed them and told them I wouldn’t have sex with them. I don’t remember anyone raping me when I was drunk, but I was putting myself at risk.

    Once I got sober again, this time with the help of AA, I’d like to say my behavior towards men was completely different, that I only had sex when I was one hundred percent sure I wanted to, that I didn’t judge and hate like I had with my college crush. The truth is, I am flawed, even sober, or maybe especially sober. I take full responsibility for my behavior these days, so I feel the flaws strongly. I am older, but I am not perfect. 

    Learning to Date, Sober

    I remember sex now, most of the time, and I enjoy it. It was difficult for me to feel when I was numbing myself, both emotionally and physically. Today, I have boyfriends who treat me well or I break up with them, even if it might take a little time to see the full extent of how they are treating me. I wish I could say it’s better when I date someone who is also sober, but relationships have their hard and soft angles, their anger and their beauty, whether we are drinking or not. I find that being sober doesn’t make us good people, but it does allow us to strive to be good people. 

    It’s not like I was a bad person when I was drinking, I was just too lost and empty, unable to find or create an ethical foundation for my behavior. I would read a book without taking it in, because I had nowhere to absorb emotion. I was a Flatsy, one of those dolls from my youth, where there is no space to put love, or its opposite.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Religion, Secularism, and Spirituality – How Modern AA Gets It Wrong

    Religion, Secularism, and Spirituality – How Modern AA Gets It Wrong

    AA’s founders did not intend for AA to be religious, and unlike many modern-day members, they embraced a broad view of a Higher Power.

    The role of a Higher Power (hereinafter, HP) looms large in today’s recovery landscape. AA adopts it as the centerpiece of its program. Rehabs that adopt the 12 steps as a major part of their treatment protocol do, as well. Even secular groups such as SMART don’t discourage their members from prayer or spiritual belief.

    AA’s Founders: Higher Power Should Transcend Religion

    But to equate religion with HP would be disingenuous and simplistic. AA’s founders intentionally chose the term “HP” because it transcends religion, while encompassing some of its aspects such as spiritual beliefs, meditation and mindfulness.

    In a 1961 letter to Bill Wilson, Carl Jung wrote Spiritus Contra Spiritum which, roughly translated, means: Alcohol addiction can be fought with spirituality. Further, in the same letter, Jung says: “You might be led to that goal by an act of grace or through a personal and honest contact with friends, or through a higher education of the mind beyond the confines of mere rationalism.” You can see that Jung clearly leaves room for a secular path to recovery (namely: fellowship of friends, knowledge).

    What is really striking about Jung’s observation is that it clearly states that an addict is not limited to just a religious/spiritual HP. Not only does Jung allow for non-religious HP, he sees no need to pit the religious against the non-religious, offering the possibility of a symbiotic relationship between them. Bill Wilson seems to agree with Jung on this matter. And while people may point out that in later chapters of the Big Book, Bill speaks of God, it is clear that “God” is simply what Bill chooses to call his HP.

    The Big Book overtly allows for secular approaches to recovery and never flat-out (unlike modern-day AA and its copycats) rejects alternative views. Again, the founders chose to call their HPs God, yet Wilson understood and shared Jung’s thoughts on the matter.

    Many Modern Meetings Equate Higher Power with God

    This is not, however, what modern-day AA is about. In many meetings the newcomer is taught that the 12 steps are Gospel and HP is God (hence, the incessant recitation of the Lord’s Prayer). Yet half of the original fellowship was cut from agnostic cloth, according to Wilson himself (and including himself). Had they all been religious zealots, there never would have been the need for AA in the first place. The Oxford groups would have soldiered on en masse. The authors go on to say that their understanding of the Spirit is all-inclusive and never exclusive, and this is exactly where modern-day AA went astray from the original meaning of the Big Book.

    What is good for the goose is good for the gander, and if one adopts a broad view of HP (as envisioned by Wilson and supported by Jung), then the following belief should be a fair game.

    The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (hereinafter, CFSM) although widely-known is not an officially recognized religion in the U.S. However, The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides fertile ground for many quasi-religious views, however lighthearted or crazy (which religions are not?), and who is to say that this particular imaginary friend is somehow less credible than any other?

    If someone believes strongly enough, they will tap into whatever force they believe in, whether they are Christians believing in the power of Christ, Wiccans believing in the power of nature and the Goddess (or Goddesses), Atheists believing in the power of their own mind or of science, or Pastafarians believing in the FSM. And let us not forget Jung’s trifecta.

    Yes, some religions make it easier than others. The more developed a set of religious dogmas is, the handier it becomes when tangling with the unknown. Modern-day religions are nuanced clever hoaxes that provide a detailed roadmap to their particular Higher Power to all comers for a small fee (usually a tax-free, labor-free existence plus a little something for the priest).

    AA and other fellowships are not that far behind. Any modern-day 12-step-based program has a religion-based Higher Power front and center. Passing the plate across the aisles is so familiar that it triggers a muscle memory when reaching for the wallet. The elders lead the chorus, the speaker preaches (excuse me, shares) and a religious-like unity bordering on trance ensues.

    Founders Wanted AA to Be Accessible to Believers and Non-Believers

    And while the CFSM is obviously intended to be tongue in cheek, there are some members who take it seriously. And even if others don’t, who is to say that the Pastafari faith is not capable of tapping into their Higher Power in order to heal? Why would it not be in the spiritual tool kit that AA (and by extension all other “A”s) so often references? Why can’t a Flying Spaghetti Monster be as believable as any other man-created deity? After all, they are all equally unprovable and some are even more far-fetched than the Carb-Laden Creator.

    When the founders settled on a Higher Power described as a “God of your understanding,” they were most likely not envisioning a flying spaghetti monster. They weren’t envisioning anything at all. They left that up to each of us to choose. And they intended to leave the door open to anyone with a desire to stop drinking. That includes believers and non-believers, alike.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • But I’m Depressed, Not Addicted

    But I’m Depressed, Not Addicted

    I was there to treat my depression. I couldn’t tell the truth. I couldn’t say I got smashed almost every night, whiskey whistling through my veins, thinning my blood and seeping into my brain.

    “Why are you here today, Emma?”

    Hungover and filled with self-loathing, I’d just revved my car onto a usually-busy street, hoping to get hit by a truck, but nothing happened. Not even a Smartcar in sight. Shakily, I’d walked back into my apartment and asked my boyfriend for a ride to the St. Vincent’s Stress Center. After I’d sat for an hour in a sunny lobby with green chairs and green carpet, a man in glasses and khakis called me into a lamp-lit room.

    “I’m in crisis.”

    “Are you going to harm yourself?”

    “No. I mean, I don’t think so.” I couldn’t bring myself to mention the high-speed reverse onto one of northside Indianapolis’ main thoroughfares. This guy would have to work to get the truth. “I have a history of suicide attempts, though. And depression. I just can’t do it anymore. I’m so overwhelmed with school and work and my dogs and my boyfriend and my house and my…”

    He cut me off and flipped to a new page on his clipboard. “Would you say you’re having suicidal ideation? Do you wish you could just ‘go away?’” Air quotes. Meaningful pause.

    “Yeah. Sort of. I want things to get better, but I don’t know what that looks like. I’ve been through stuff like this before. Depression, I mean. If I have to be hospitalized, it’s okay.” I didn’t want to be responsible for myself anymore. Being in the hospital would mean I could blank out for a while and let someone else take care of me.

    The intake assessor tilted his head at me. “We won’t hospitalize you unless we have to. Let’s talk about your day-to-day. What does that look like?”

    I ticked off my work schedule, school schedule, social schedule; listing my life as if from a résumé. One boyfriend. One job. Two dogs. Fifteen credit hours. Good grades. Dad nearby, but we weren’t that tight. Close with my mom, but she lived far away. No clubs. No sports.

    “Do you drink alcohol or use drugs?”

    I looked up from my lap. “I drink. I mean, I’m a college student.” If there had been a window in the room, I would have glanced out of it. I needed something else to look at.

    “How much?”

    I couldn’t tell the truth. “It depends. Between one and six beers a night.”

    He blinked and frowned for a millisecond. Oops. That was an underestimate. Is between one and six too much?

    He didn’t say. Just returned to his neutral expression and kept moving down his clipboard. “How often do you drink between one and six beers a night?”

    “Oh, maybe three times a week? I guess it depends.” Again, I couldn’t tell the truth. I couldn’t say I got smashed almost every night, whiskey whistling through my veins, thinning my blood and seeping into my brain.

    He blinked again, made a note on his board, and kept questioning, reducing my depression to a list of symptoms. Suicidal ideation. Feelings of worthlessness. Guilt. Sleep disturbance. Headache. Was I missing work? Missing school? Maintaining good hygiene?

    I just ran my car blindly into traffic, I thought, and this asshole wants to know if I brushed my teeth. Medicalizing depression sure was depressing.

    In the end, Mr. Blinky decided that I didn’t need immediate hospitalization. Instead, I’d be admitted to IOP: intensive outpatient treatment. Three hours at the Stress Center, three days a week. “With all your commitments, this will be perfect for you,” he assured me.

    Although I downplayed all my problems, part of me must have known I needed help—serious help. But I couldn’t admit it, not even to a person whose job description included “assessing mental health condition and recommending appropriate care.” I wanted the help forced on me, wanted to be figured out, fixed. Someone needed to see beyond my deception. That would take the burden of recovery off of me and place it on them. Secretly, I wanted to spend a few days in the psych ward, locked away from work, papers, dogs, and dishes. I couldn’t confess that, I thought. I’d sound crazy. I didn’t see the irony of worrying about sounding crazy when I sat in a mental health intake office.

    Instead of screaming, I nodded. Blinky placed me in a “dual-diagnosis program,” a familiar phrase from my teen years that meant I’d qualified as both mentally ill and addicted.

    “Most folks graduate in four-to-six weeks,” he said, handing me a pamphlet. “Good luck.”

    ***

    On my first night of IOP, I entered the Stress Center’s lobby to find a sweater-vested receptionist behind the tall desk. “Walk straight down the hall to the first office on the right. I’ll tell Dave you’re here.”

    Dave, a soft-spoken therapist with glasses, a mustache, and a lisp, met me at the door of his office. Instead of sitting behind his desk, he pulled his chair around to sit across from me.

    “Bring this with you every night,” he instructed, passing me a maroon folder with the St. Vincent’s triple-dove logo stickered on the front. “It’s like your Bible for this group. It’s pretty empty now, but by the time you graduate, it’ll be full of handouts, worksheets, and journals.” He lowered his chin and raised his eyebrows. “Many of our patients hang on to these for years after they leave us because they find stuff they can use and reuse for the rest of their lives.” He closed his eyes, re-opened them. “That’s what we’re here to do. Help you get the skills you need to live.”

    I nodded, arranging my expression into eager, pliant, and friendly, my eyes sparkling, my smile full. Already, I was trying to charm my way out, as I had in my psych ward trips years before. Had I forgotten that putting up a front back then had led me to this place, this office, with its commercial-grade chairs, fluorescent lights, and a non-ironic “Hang in There” kitten poster?

    For the next 15 minutes, Dave explained what I could expect from my 12 weekly hours of IOP. Then he looked at me over his glasses. “You’ll also need to go to three meetings a week. Here’s a schedule of all the recovery groups in the area.”

    I took the pamphlet, thick as a chapbook, and showed off my nod-and-smile routine again. Skepticism crept in. Couldn’t this guy see that my problem was depression, not drinking?

    “We’re all set then. Let’s get you to your first group session. Don’t worry, we won’t expect you to speak up on your first night. Feel free to just sit and listen.”

    Dave led me to another fluorescent-lit room at the end of the hall. In it, a circle of identical chairs with padded green vinyl seats and backrests. I took an empty seat and surveyed the six nametagged patients around me. Robin, a thickset, bowl-cutted, auburn-haired, lip-ringed woman. Jack, a soft middle-aged guy who looked like Dave, but with a weaker mustache, aviator glasses, and adult acne. Madison, a thin girl who couldn’t have been more than 18. Ryan, a young guy with sagging, wide-legged jeans and a backwards baseball cap. Jane, a twitchy blonde with scars skimming her forearms. And Gladys, an older black woman who looked like an elementary-school principal.

    Dave walked in the room, smiling softly. “Everyone, meet Emma. This is her first night.”

    They replied in unison. “Hi, Emma.”

    Inside, I squirmed, but outwardly, I exuded alpha-dog confidence. Smile, lips closed. I told myself. Chin up. Relax in your chair, elbows hooked over the back. Cross your legs. Look at their foreheads when they talk. It’ll look like you’re making eye contact.

    The first group session consisted mostly of Ryan, the baseball-cap boy, talking about his “Moral Inventory.” To me, it looked like a scribbled list, but Ryan blushed with pride when he held it up. The other patients clapped as though he’d found a cure for lymphoma.

    “I finally did it,” he said. “I kept relapsing every time I got to this point, but now, I did it. I have my inventory.”

    Dave beamed. “Ryan, we’re proud of you. We all knew you could do it. Now, what did you learn?”

    Ryan’s gaze dropped to the floor. “It’s mostly fear. Fear is like this big demon, ready to eat me alive. It’s why I dropped out of school. Why I let my girl leave. Why I get in fights.”

    Dave turned to the group. “What are our two responses to fear, folks?” His lisp swallowed the “s” sounds. Rethponthes. Folkth.

    Robin raised her hand. “Fuck Everything And Run.” Dave looked at her over his glasses. “Sorry, Dave. ‘F’ Everything And Run.”

    “Or Face Everything And Rise.” Gladys, the school principal, finished the saying.

    It all sounded like cheerleading to me. Acronyms. Group responses. And a moral inventory? How could that not make me want to kill myself? If Dave hadn’t released us for a break, I might have asked to slit my wrists then and there.

    When we returned, I listened to the group members talk about hitting bottom. Four words bounced around my skull. I do not belong. Ryan had slugged his ex-girlfriend and blamed it on his dad, who had used him as a punching bag. Jack’s wife had left him after he got his third DUI and lost his license forever. He’d never been able to stand up to her, probably because he was raised by an overbearing mother. I do not belong. Jane smoked meth in the bathroom between double shifts at Burger King, her first job since she’d stopped prostituting. When she was eight, her dad had molested her. Gladys had gotten fired and had to move back in with her alcoholic mother. Church used to help her, but she couldn’t get herself out of bed before noon anymore. I. Do. Not. Belong. I was in college. I had a job. My driver’s license was intact, unsuspended. My parents loved me. I’d never been molested. I’d never stood on 38th Street in a miniskirt, hoping to snag a john. How could I be an addict?

    The next Monday, Dave invited me to his office after group. He wanted to “check in.” Air quotes. Meaningful look. He must have gone to the same training as the intake coordinator who’d interviewed me when I first walked in.

    “Have you found any meetings you like yet?”

    I hadn’t gone to a single one. “Adding on three hours’ worth of meetings on top of the 12 hours a week I’m here, on top of my 15-credit hour school load, on top of my 20-hour work week—it’s too much. I came here because I felt stressed and overwhelmed. How can I add more to my schedule when the main source of stress is my schedule?” My voice had risen in volume. I looked away, toward the door, and hunched my shoulders.

    Dave sighed. “If you want to get better, your sobriety should be a priority.”

    “But I’m depressed, not addicted. Maybe I could cut back a bit on the drinking, but addiction isn’t ruining my life. I don’t belong here. I’m not a meth-head. I haven’t lost my job. I haven’t lost my kids — I don’t even have kids. I’ve never gotten a DUI. I don’t do heroin.”

    Dave nodded and motioned for me to continue. He wasn’t going to let me off the hook.

    I didn’t know what else to say. I looked at my feet. “I’ll try, okay?”

    That night on my way out I threw my folder in the trash can, hoping the other patients would see it. I didn’t return. Instead of climbing the steps to IOP the following Wednesday, I slithered into a bar booth and ordered the usual, beer and a bourbon. Then a pitcher to split with my boyfriend. Fuck it, another shot. And another. Then—oblivion.

    That summer, while walking my dogs in the evening, I stared at the lives inside the yellow squares of windows I passed. I defined these lives, these people, as “good.” Young couples unloading groceries. Families sitting around oaky tables, eating dinner. A girl my age doing yoga in her living room. Husbands and wives suiting up for an evening run. It looked like love, warmth, virtue, balance. When I walked the dogs in the morning, I gaped at the men and women jogging or biking past me while I sucked on a cigarette and squinted my hungover eyes against the sun. Every morning, every night, as I contemplated everyone else’s healthy normalcy, I felt like an ugly exoskeleton, wishing I could fill myself with whatever they had. I could see it, but I couldn’t access it. Instead, I stumped down the road with my unwashed body and my stringy short hair, pulled along by two ill-behaved dogs. In my mind, my body, I couldn’t find those families’ goodness and light. The closest I knew to it was liquor, so I filled myself with that instead.

    ***

    That first round of IOP didn’t take, but maybe Dave and, more importantly, Ryan, Jack, Gladys, Robin, Jane, and Madison had planted a seed. A year later, I walked into my first meeting and said Hi, I’m Emma, and I’m an alcoholic. As soon as I said it, something cool and smooth moved to the center of my chest and clicked. That sentence was the most honest thing I’d said in years. It removed the barrier of I do not belong and replaced it with the doorway of Help me—I’m just like you. 

    Today, I’m ten years sober. When I give a lead, or speak at the psych ward, I try to remember the scared girl I was. Head thrown back, chin up, elbows wide; putting up a tough front to hide my fear. I look for her in every crowd, and when I find her, I make eye contact. She usually looks away, but that’s okay. Someday, she might be able to hold my gaze.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Sobbing with Sir Elton While Watching “Rocketman”

    Sobbing with Sir Elton While Watching “Rocketman”

    John’s seeking earned him fame and financial success and love from millions of fans, but it wasn’t enough for his emotionally starved heart.

    To me, a sign of a good movie is one that makes me cry at least three or four times. I sobbed during Rocketman. And apparently Sir Elton did the same. 

    In a piece he wrote the week before the movie came out, he said, “I was in the cinema for about 15 minutes before I started crying…really sobbing, in that loud unguarded emotionally destroyed way that makes people turn around and look at you with alarmed expressions.” 

    I never realized how much I connected with Elton John until now.

    The movie opens with John (played by Taron Egerton) decked out in an orange sequined satanic-like costume with magnificent horns and wings, striding down the hall of a treatment center. He barges into an AA meeting, the same 12-step group that helped get me sober. He then spouts the familiar introduction, “I’m Elton Hercules John and I’m an alcoholic,” followed by a list of his other addictions: cocaine, weed, sex, prescription drugs, bulimia, and shopping. 

    I’ve seen lots of movies about addicted personalities, but this is my new favorite. It just so happens that Elton and I not only belong to that same addiction club, but we also got sober the same year. 

    As vastly different as our lives have been—and I sense I’ll get some heat for this—we seem to have a lot in common, as many addicts do. We both came from an era rife with emotionally stilted fathers and discontented mothers. His dad was a quiet, reserved man, as was mine, while his mom was more outgoing. His mother seemed to despise his dad for his uncommunicative ways; their unhappy relationship was replicated in my own damaged family. 

    The scene at his Middlesex dinner table was painfully familiar and often the same one we had at my home in New Jersey. Angry parents and their innocent children, all who just wanted love. Unfortunately, the baggage that occupied the table was never addressed in a reasonable way. This was one part of the film that resonated deeply with me, making me (and Elton) sob. While my parents stayed miserably together, his split up, with a poignant scene of his father leaving the family without giving his son a hug. It’s an image many of us who grew up with addiction can relate to. 

    In a 2011 interview, John said of his dad, “He left us, remarried and had another family, and by all accounts was a great Dad to them. It wasn’t children, it was me.”

    My mom once told me, in the heat of an argument we had when I was 12, that my dad never liked me. She said he never picked me up as a baby and didn’t come home at night until I was in bed. This type of emotional abuse plays unconsciously on a still-developing brain and leaves lasting psychic wounds. When I finally found the numbing qualities of booze and drugs, I searched for a father figure in the men I pursued. I sensed it was the same for Elton. 

    As children, we all seek attention and validation, and when we don’t receive it from our parents, we’ll find other—frequently destructive—ways to get it. John’s seeking earned him fame and financial success and love from millions of fans, but it wasn’t enough for his emotionally starved heart.

    After the scene of young Reginald (Elton John was born Reginald Dwight) dancing with an ensemble in the cul-de-sac where he lived, he’s mostly portrayed as a shy, somewhat lonely child. Though extremely gifted, he doubted himself at every turn. As a child, I was so shy I’d hide in corners at family gatherings. And I still tend to doubt myself today. Our parents knew little of propping their children up and confidence was hard to come by, which made the insecurity-relieving properties of drugs and alcohol even more appealing. Like Elton, I discovered the buffering effects of substances as I forged my way into a terrifying world. 

    The movie’s use of the 12-step meeting as a story-telling vehicle was effective, with Elton gradually losing bits of the devil costume and the persona he used as a mask as he rambles on about family, revealing more of his wounded self each time, which I also did in early meetings. One of the ways we heal is by telling our stories, by venting and listening to others tell theirs. Identifying with someone else’s pain helps us to heal our own, releasing some of the shame that comes with things we did to ourselves and others while we were using. 

    Aside from the sad childhood memories, the part that brought the most tears for me was hearing still-Reggie Dwight play the beginnings of what became “Your Song,” the first Taupin and John hit and the piece that my Almost Cher impersonator friend, Helene, sang to me on my birthday while kneeling at my feet. She sang just for me, and for those moments provided some of the love I missed as a child.

    As the movie ends, we find out recovery’s been good to Sir Elton, as it has been for me. 

    We’ve both forgiven our parents and have been sober for 29 years. And yes, we’re both still standing.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • A Newborn Kitten, 12 Steps, and One Night of Fatherhood

    A Newborn Kitten, 12 Steps, and One Night of Fatherhood

    When I put him in his makeshift little crib I had the first of several revelations that night: “When you were using you probably would have let that kitten die.” At that moment I fully embraced the experience.

    As a product of too many 12-step meetings to count in my multi-decade fight with three addictions, many themes stream through my inner recovery. One recurring theme that is anchored in that addiction library is the seminal moment when a fellow brother shares their impending fatherhood as a monumental reason for getting sober. Having been denied the opportunity of fatherhood myself (through the trifecta of alcohol, gambling, smoking), I secretly envied those who could use parenthood as an inspiration for getting clean.

    Rightfully so! What could be a more powerful reason for getting clean than wanting to be present physically and spiritually during perhaps the most important time in your life? Especially when most of us enter adulthood as wounded children with no modern-day guide to change that reality. Consequently, parents need every vicissitude of human awareness to help their partners raise a child in as stable a way as possible. The idea of getting a fresh start and having an AA or GA baby is uber-logical to even the most helpless addict.

    However, even the strong evolutionary pull in our chromosomes for parenthood is sometimes no match for the intense psychological and physical demons that obfuscate our nature when addiction has hijacked our soul. Since I was never in a position to experience fatherhood, I could only postulate from the ill-formed axons, dendrites, synapses in a substance abuser’s brain that the conscious mind desperately wants to rise to the occasion, but the unconscious is probably already working out the details of its next encounter with dopamine.

    Fortunately, I have seen many addicts seamlessly climb out of the abyss and become great parents. There are a small minority who work on a quick timeline and apparently “will” themselves to sobriety, leaving the rest of us marveling at how easy they make it look. These are what I call the “one and done group.”

    The rest of us have to get well in small increments. If we are sincere about our recovery, we need to rehab for as long as it takes to get a reasonable modicum of sobriety. Detox, if needed, happens quickly, but it’s the ability to handle environmental cues that is the 800-pound gorilla. That learned process can take years to build adequate defenses to handle cravings. The good news is no matter what threshold you’re at, just the contemplation of getting clean for parenthood’s sake is huge.

    Most of my adult life I was in self-destruct mode and the insanity of it all was that I was conscious of it, but if anyone tried to stop me, I would hit the jettison button sooner rather than later. Even though when I was high, I often wished that a stork would knock at my door and a wife and a child would magically appear, I knew deep down that I was not equipped for fatherhood at that time and it would have been an unmitigated disaster.

    Fast forward many years and today at 58 I have been clean of all the aforementioned vices “for many a 24 hour” as they say in 12-step parlance. It took many years but fortunately I stopped just short of the triple-crown (insanity, prison and death). I was a very slow learner.

    When I look back at my state of entropy, what bothers me the most was how selfish I was. If I saw a person who needed help or a good friend needed a ride to a doctor’s appointment I would give them a half-baked excuse. The only time I did something for others was if it furthered my self-interest. Today I cringe just thinking about how I let so many people down (including myself). I was oblivious to the world that existed outside my addictions.

    Today I feel like I am one with the universe. Whether it is an injured bird or counseling work with addicts, I am grateful that my desire to help people has been restored to what I feel is my purpose in life. I try to put forth a reparative approach to all organisms in the universe whether animals or humans (I draw the line with candida in my gut). However, my one big regret which I am patiently learning to accept is that I will never be a father. But that all changed a couple of weeks ago. I experienced one night of fatherhood that only could have happened if I was clean and sober. Ironically, the experience left me higher than a kite!

    My Fatherhood Tripalogue

    We are all guilty of talking the talk and not walking the walk at times. It is especially true of writers/addicts like myself who are sometimes guilty of “pontification by proxy,” whereby we sit on our cozy perch and lecture about things we may not have experienced, but we have book or third party knowledge of. While I have street and book credentials about addiction, I have never been a father. But after 58 years on this planet, sooner or later you’re apt to experience a temporary role as a father, even if the source of your caretaking is a kitten. And this kitten was especially dicey because it was only four ounces.

    About 6 p.m. one day last week I was returning from the grocery store, looking forward to putting on the baseball game and relaxing. As I walked up the three wooden steps to my front door, I heard this faint whine and between the wood steps was what looked like a small baby stuffed animal, the size of a potato. Wait a minute, I thought, stuffed animals do not make sounds unless you wind them up. This rocket scientist then realized it was a newborn kitten. Wonderful, I thought as I picked it up gently. I know as much about newborn kittens as I do about opera.

    My first response was I wanted to bolt, like the first time I went to AA and wished I was in the witness protection plan and was relocated to Siberia, but sanity prevailed and I assessed the situation.

    I realized that the kitten was no more than a few hours old. Not only was it not of my species, but now we’re talking about neonatal care of a kitten. Now Mr. Bigshot, purveyor of love, a Holden Caulfield wannabe was thrust in the middle of a conundrum: do I take care of the cat or watch the ballgame? Thankfully, since getting sober I’ve learned not to trust my first instinct.

    I thought of a compromise: I will pass the kitten off to all those cat lovers I know! But my sudden relief didn’t last as all of those ubiquitous cat lovers were not calling me back. A neighbor passing by told me to go get kitten milk and wait several hours for the mother to come back.

    Guilty thoughts permeated: “well that’s what I get for not going to enough meetings or maybe because I lied about jury duty or some other white fib, the gods were punishing me.” I stood in the open doorway waiting and watching for what seemed like an eternity for the mother to come back. (I was feeding it special kitten milk and put a light knitted blanket on it and picked it up every 15 minutes.) I then had a horrible thought: the nocturnal raccoons would probably eat it.

    Right then and there I drew a line in the sand and said to myself “that ain’t happening on my watch.” I picked the little guy up (I did not know the gender) and brought him inside and realized that at least for that night I was going to be his father and mother. When I put him in his makeshift little crib I had the first of several revelations that night: when you were using you probably would have let that kitten die. At that moment I fully embraced the experience.

    After giving him a couple of drops of milk (not as easy as it seems—I managed to get more on the little guy’s cheeks and neck then in his tiny mouth), I figured the cat and I would have a long snooze. No such luck, 10 minutes later he was crying. I petted him for a bit and got back into my crib. A cat person friend finally called and said “it is 50/50 whether he will survive the night without his mother.” Once again I said chauvinistically “that ain’t happening on my watch.”

    “Just hold him as much as you can,” she said. Realization #2 then crept into my brain: Whether you like it or not, you are going to have to be a surrogate parent for the night. Incredulous as this sounds, I said to myself, “here is your shot at fatherhood.”

    As the night drew on, I would pick him up for 10 minutes then put him down and he would cry, and just by hearing my utterance “it is all right little friend,” he would sleep for about 20 minutes. (Once I learned that kittens can’t hear or see for a week after birth, I realized my talking was a placebo for me; it calmed me down and maybe my little buddy sensed that and also relaxed). After holding him for another 10 minutes, I realized I was too nervous to sleep and at about 3 a.m. I took him with a towel and small knitted blanket and put him on my chest. He only cried three brief times after that. I think the little guy probably thought I was his feline mother because he positioned his body right over my heart. 

    It is incredible: these little guys do not have working ears, eyes, legs at birth and their thermostats are very nebulous. No wonder my cat friend gave him a 50 percent shot of making it through the night!

    When light befell this newly anointed kitten kennel, I realized I was responsible for the kitten’s life. Eye-opener #3: I might have saved him from the raccoons that night, but most importantly, his welfare was in my hands and I knew I had to get him some professional help.

    As soon as 8 a.m. rolled around, I went to the local vet and lucky for me, the newbie, they said they would take care of him and find a home for him. I felt relieved, but then epiphany #4 hit me like a load of bricks: I realized I would miss this itsy bitsy bundle of joy.

    Before my deep seated abandonment issues kicked in, out of nowhere a warm sense of calmness pervaded my being. Vision #5: I was “high.” For the last 10 hours my ego went into some sort of dissolution…I was tripping, like a psychedelic high — my sense of well-being was no longer about me, my whole apparatus shifted to the care for a four ounce cat.

    That is about as stoked up as I ever felt in recovery.

    HAPPY FATHER’S DAY!

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • You Are Not My Father

    You Are Not My Father

    I had spent my whole life seeking certainty and security and this break exposed the foolhardiness of that quest. Here was the raw slate of rock bottom once again.

    Last year, a few days before Father’s Day, we were driving home after a week in South Carolina with my parents, the kids asleep in the back. My husband and I had basically just spent a whole week as strangers, sleeping in different bedrooms, not connecting. He had to work late every night — his reason for sleeping in a separate room. I felt our bodies repelling each other from the moment we arrived at their house. I had sensed that force around him often but something about the new setting made it more palpable.

    For months I had been unable to wear my wedding bands because a rash flared up each time I kept them on for more than a few hours. Denial protected me from these not-so-subtle warning signs.

    On one of the first nights of the trip my son woke up screaming with ear pain. It could have been from the pool water or from the mounting pressure of his parents’ silent stalemate. His dad very kindly ran out to get him medicine; he was always very loving about things like that. Our little boy’s seeming agony mysteriously vanished as quickly as it came on and we retreated to our separate rooms.

    I made some really terrible meals that trip. I had brought my Insta-pot, which I was not yet savvy with. I made big pots of mushy things amidst a lot of steam. I worried he was quiet because the food sucked; he wasn’t super on board with my change to a plant-based diet. It was both sweet and heartbreaking how hard I was trying. As if I could make it all okay by making a good enough meal; so the family could be good enough, so I can be good enough. Food wasn’t going to fix it.

    The hardest moment was on the third day of the trip. We were in the living room and it was late morning. He and I had been coming and going in opposite directions. He’d take our son to a golf lesson early, then I’d take the kids to the beach while he stayed at the house to work. That third morning I decided to speak up.

    “Do you have to work so much? Usually when people go on vacation they send an auto-response email that they will be unavailable until such and such time. Do you think you could do that?”

    To be fair, I don’t even know if I asked him. It’s very possible that I was indirect, and just insinuated that he was being a big old disappointment for working.

    He erupted. He was clearly under stress and I had poked the bear. His explosive anger was nothing new. On that day I didn’t know the full extent of what was really going on with him, but I would find out soon enough.

    I decided to make the most of the trip with the kids and my parents’ company. I made sure I got to some recovery meetings. I called my sponsor. I’m sure she and I laughed at some things. Which brings me back to the beginning of this story about the end of my 12-year marriage.

    I was sitting on the passenger’s side, well into the 13-hour drive back to New Jersey, when he turned to me.

    “What are you going to get me for Father’s Day?”

    Cool as a cucumber, out glided: “Why would I get you a Father’s Day gift, you’re not my father.” Suffice to say I got the intended reaction, both from him and for myself. He raged and banged the steering wheel saying I was so heartless and cruel, while I was able to seal myself off inside, emotionally protected and walled off. The next day I tried to make it right with a card and apology. My comment that day in the car is not the reason for what happened next, but it has taken me a long time to truly accept that.

    By the end of that week he told me he was leaving, that our relationship had been “too turbulent” and that he “needed to stop living his life trying to please other people.”

    I didn’t see my husband as a man, but as a burden, an overgrown child. At times I hated him for that and other times I took advantage of it. That is not a partnership and this was no longer a union. I suspect it may never have been. A part of me understood his announced departure. The loudest parts of me did not.

    For the first month I chewed on his abandonment (I mean break-up) speech in my mind and was reminded of what my first sponsor said to me when I disingenuously bemoaned my people pleasing defect. She looked me in the eye and said “Jane, there is no such thing as people pleasing, the only person you are interested in pleasing is yourself.” That resonated. I had considered myself a virtuous victim and was seeking attention for how taken for granted I felt. But I wasn’t able to use that card anymore. And yet here I was, years later, applying my sponsor’s observation to my husband’s behavior so I could justify my resentment, superiority, and self-pity. Ugh, I had become a smug sober person.

    He had to rehearse his break up speech to me several times, as I tried coaxing him to go see a therapist together or be open to any more conversation about it. He was resolute, and he moved out the next day. He had been in therapy for six months and knew this is what he wanted. The last night with him in the house, I lay alone in the giant king-size bed, a terrified child. I had spent my whole life seeking certainty and security and this break exposed the foolhardiness of that quest. Here was the raw slate of rock bottom once again.

    From the beginning my wrongs and disappointment haunted me: I see-sawed between guilt/shame and blame/anger. I had been sober long enough at this point to remember men and women who had walked through the death of children, unexpected illness, and other horrific circumstances, and they continued to show up and not drink. So I knew I could do that too, one day at a time.

    The following weeks and months after were brutal. I rapidly dropped 20 pounds, found a lump in my breast, got into twisted relations with an older man in a 12-step meeting and did my best to care for two confused and upset children as an angry-hungry-tired-lonely-just-not-drinking mommy. I got an excellent therapist right away. I upped my meditation game by taking the TM training and sticking with it. I wrote a fourth step, did the fifth, immediately tried to make amends and get him back (yes I’m embarrassed to write that).

    After about six months I started coming out of it. I learned that my willingness to talk and express and work things out with people can go to an extreme, placing me in a position to be harmed. I made my circle smaller. Slowly I’ve experienced a loosening of all the places inside me that had wrapped and toiled and contorted to survive in what I had perceived as a very unfriendly place to live, because it had been, because of how I had been living.

    We got married before I got sober. We spent 15 years together, during which I discovered 12-step recovery. My husband never objected to my meetings and I was able to make recovery the center of my life from the beginning. While together, I gave birth to two healthy, loving, fearless children. I’m grateful for all that my marriage gave.

    I’ve grieved the loss of what I thought we could have had. There are days when I am hurt and take his choices and continued actions personally but I do not miss his presence in my life. I’ve experienced a year full of character defect withdrawal. I notice how the spaces where the unhealthy behaviors used to be sometimes fill up with stories about how terrible I am, how unworthy I must be of love and belonging, how I’m too much, and don’t really matter. These stories are loud and call for my attention. I tell them I hear them and continue taking positive action in my life anyway.

    Now, a year out from that car ride and the ensuing events, I am changed. I speak up where I once would have avoided a conversation, I am no longer interested in being all things to all people, I don’t feel the need to be busy all the time, and I’m really good at enjoying my own company. My relationship with my family of origin also dramatically changed this past year and sometimes I feel that as an unexpected additional loss. And yet, having grown up within a family with the disease of alcoholism, it’s a loss I have been suffering my entire life and not grieving.

    My husband’s leaving revealed a lot of my dependencies. I had used his presence as a source of security after getting sober. His absence is no longer a source of insecurity.

    On Father’s Day this year I know my God as an unconditionally loving parent. Like it says in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous “He is the father, we are his children.” I didn’t have to drink to hit bottom and find a new relationship to a Power that allows me to thrive. If I had continued living like I was, I would be missing out on the experience of my own sobriety.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • AA Takes Center Stage in "Love in Recovery" from BBC Radio

    AA Takes Center Stage in "Love in Recovery" from BBC Radio

    No one is well-behaved here – they cross-talk, cheat, gossip, fight – but they love each other in the way only a group of alcoholics who have bared their souls to each other can.

    Love in Recovery, an award-nominated BBC radio comedy drama set in Alcoholics Anonymous, is now available in the U.S. via Audible. 

    The three-season (plus Christmas Special) series features actors John Hannah, Rebecca Front, Sue Johnston, Paul Kaye, Eddie Marsan, Julie Deakin, Johnny Vegas, and Samantha Bond. It was created and written by Pete Jackson, and is based on his life experiences, but, according to him, “in an abstract way.”

    “None of the specific stories are taken from my life or anyone else’s. I certainly wouldn’t betray anyone else in recovery’s trust by drawing on any of their experiences. But what I did was take all of the facets of my own recovery — the shame and regret and hope and disappointment and confusion and so on, and invent stories to convey those things.”

    His hope in writing the series was to “explore the complexities of alcoholism, and perhaps show those who don’t struggle with it that alcoholism is in no way as simple as they might expect. I’m ten years sober and I still can’t make total sense of why I so desperately sought out oblivion for so long.”

    The cast is small, which allows a lot of character development and interaction, and most of the story takes place in their weekly AA meeting, allowing years to pass in only three seasons. 

    Many archetypes are represented. There is Andy, the self-appointed group leader, who cares more than anyone else. In a hilarious recurring bit that runs for the first two seasons, Andy is always first to the meeting to set up the chairs; he is literally the only character that does any service, and each time, he runs into the same cleaning woman who has no idea who he is. Is he here to teach dance, ceramics, have a party? She never recognizes him, and it frustrates him every time. Andy thinks nobody appreciates him or the time he puts in to making the meeting happen, and so it’s incredibly moving when they surprise him with a cake on his birthday. (This ain’t no L.A. sobriety – I mean actual day of birth.) 

    Then there is Julie, the older housewife whose husband left her due to her drinking. She has been sober several years now, “except for a few slips.” Julie’s unlikely friendship with Danno, a young gay man with a chest tattoo he is so terrified of revealing to his new boyfriend that the rest of the group thinks he’s talking about AIDS when he alludes to it, demonstrates another kind of love in recovery. As it says in the book, “we are people who would not normally meet.” 

    In the first episode, Fiona walks into her first AA meeting ever, not sure she is an alcoholic but sure something needs to change. Fiona, a high-powered banker sick of embarrassing herself at business functions and waking up in strange places, becomes a stellar AA after a lot of initial resistance, humbling herself by working as a receptionist. Fiona doesn’t relapse on booze during the series, but does (spoiler alert) cheat on her fiancé, Simon, right before their wedding with a man who treats her like garbage, a classic alcoholic move we can all relate to – self-sabotaging when life is going well in order to have control of the inevitable rug coming out from under us. 

    Simon is not an alcoholic, just a normal guy who was ordered to go to meetings for six weeks for drunk driving (though Brits call it drink driving, which, I promise, will inadvertently crack you up every time, and, if you’re like me, you’ll repeat it out loud and giggle more) and stays for the camaraderie and love. Simon shows us the difficulty that normal people have in understanding us alcoholic/addicts, and also teaches Fiona unconditional love. He gets frustrated with her extreme self-centeredness, but he believes in their love so deeply that they persevere.

    Unlike people in the U.S., Brits are known for being quite reserved, something my ex-patriot friends living in London found hard to get used to. This reticence makes what happens in the rooms of AA even more of a departure from everyday life. As Jackson says, “I have been shocked, and thrilled, by how quick some Americans are to open up and get to the heart of things. That’s why AA is an extraordinary place (in the U.K.) sometimes. Once the doors are closed, people open up and talk about themselves and their experiences in a very un-English way. And perhaps because it’s been bottled up so long, it often comes flooding out in an extraordinary way.”

    No one is well-behaved here — they cross-talk, cheat, gossip, fight — but they love each other in the way only a group of alcoholics who have bared their souls and hopes to each other can. We learn about their children, their extended families, their generational trauma and alcoholic mothers, their codependencies, and of course, the war stories. It’s impossible to listen to this and not fall in love.

    While listening, I often wished it was a television show; I wanted so badly to see the characters’ faces and watch their interactions. Jackson chose radio because “The freedom you’re given on radio is extraordinary. The commissioners and execs don’t read scripts or give notes, so you can go away and do exactly what you want, which, for something as personal as this, was very important, I thought. Myself and producer Ben Worsfield (who’s a bit of a genius and without whom the show wouldn’t exist) would sit and talk about the things I wanted to explore, put together a bit of an outline and then I’d go away and write it. Then we’d get the cast together and record it. It was incredibly streamlined and free. Also, radio draws the listener in. It requires a little more concentration I think, so people are more involved, and feel almost part of the group.”

    He isn’t wrong. Having to imagine the visuals requires a bit more work, but it did draw me in and I felt close to the characters. Having the audio alone was somehow more intimate than watching video; there was no digital screen separating me from everyone. I don’t know what this series would have been like on TV, but it doesn’t matter. It’s perfect the way it is. I fell in love with these characters, and I know you will too.

    You can download Love In Recovery here.

    And follow Pete Jackson on Twitter, to see what he comes up with next: @PeteJackson79.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Everybody Knows: 10 Lessons from 10 Years of Sobriety Without AA

    Everybody Knows: 10 Lessons from 10 Years of Sobriety Without AA

    In early sobriety, someone told me that since I’d gotten sober without AA, I wasn’t an alcoholic, and that since I didn’t go to meetings and ate the occasional mushroom, I wasn’t sober.

    On May 26th, I celebrated ten years of sobriety. People have found my story noteworthy because I got sober without rehab and stayed sober without AA. I don’t understand my story to be a unique miracle; in my travels in the last ten years, I’ve encountered a lot of folks with similar experiences. But I struggled in early sobriety with no roadmap for recovery. Much of what “everybody knows” to be true about alcoholism, getting sober, and recovery simply did not apply to me.

    Here’s what I learned as I forged my own path and created my recovery. Whether you’re deeply immersed in sobriety, newly sober, considering getting sober, or just feel like the structure of AA isn’t serving you, I hope this will help. 

    1. You Don’t Need to Be an Alcoholic in Order to Stop Drinking

    Seems obvious, doesn’t it? But when the monolithic sobriety support group that eclipses all others has “alcoholic” in the title, it’s a small logistical leap in the mind of someone reluctant to quit drinking.

    “It says ‘Alcoholics Anonymous,’ and I’m not totally sure I’m an alcoholic, and everybody knows that AA is the only way to get sober so… let’s do shots!”

    After 17 years of problem drinking, I still wasn’t certain I was an alcoholic. I’d filled out questionnaire after questionnaire — haven’t we all? Sure, there were a few warning signs: I’d blacked out repeatedly and I’d pissed the bed repeatedly and I drank alone and I sometimes drank in the morning and my life had become an uncontrollable mess… But there were still a lot of loopholes. Several times, I had been able to quit drinking for a week or a month or a couple months; once even a year. I didn’t drink at work or show up late or call in sick. Sometimes I was able to have one drink and go straight home (usually when I was already so hungover I felt like my heart was going to stop, but they didn’t ask for those specific details in the questionnaire). 

    For simplicity, I’ve winnowed all those questionnaires down to one question: Would your life be better, easier, more manageable if you stopped drinking? If the answer is yes, then stop drinking, just for a month. If you can’t do it, then yes, you’re an alcoholic and you need to stop drinking. And if you can, why not just go another month? And then another? Once you’ve been sober for nine months, then let’s tackle the scary question of whether you’re an alcoholic or not. I think I’d been sober for nearly a year before I could cop to that ugly word and by then I was so entrenched in sobriety that there was no turning back.

    2. AA Does Not Define Alcoholism or Sobriety

    In early sobriety, someone told me that since I’d gotten sober without AA, I wasn’t an alcoholic, and that since I didn’t go to meetings and ate the occasional mushroom, I wasn’t sober. This neatly dismissed my life-defining problem, my hard-won solution, and the humiliating, laborious hell I had endured in order to find a solution to my problem. I wish I’d had the confidence to respond with one word: bullshit.

    The Oxford English Dictionary defines alcoholism as “addiction to the consumption of alcoholic drink; alcohol dependency.” It defines sober as “not affected by alcohol; not drunk.” Dependence upon AA is not specified as a requirement for alcoholism. Nor is there any mention of attendance at AA as a necessary qualifier for sobriety. Another secretive society that tries to own both the illness and the cure is Scientology, which is to say these tactics are the mark of a cult. If you have accepted that you’re sick and you recognize that you are getting better, do not let anything slow you down.

    3. If You’re Waiting to Hit Rock Bottom, You’ve Stumbled Into Something Worse

    “Everybody knows” that an alcoholic has to hit bottom before they’re ready to quit drinking. A friend once marveled to me that I plowed through life-changing experience after life-changing experience without changing at all. Similarly, I endured low after low without making any corrections.

    A staple of my childhood cartoon viewing was The Mighty Hercules, a low-budget animated series created in the 60s that played early mornings on public access TV in the sticks in Canada where I was born. Nearly every episode revolved around the evil wizard Daedalus nearly destroying Hercules before he put on his magic ring and… listen, it hasn’t aged well. But the show was my first introduction to the concept of a bottomless pit, this horrifying sensation of falling for all eternity.

    That bottomless pit is where I found myself in early 2009. The Handsome Family neatly capture the alcoholic’s escapist conundrum in the final lines of their song “The Bottomless Hole”:

    And still I am there falling, down in this evil pit / but until I hit the bottom, I won’t believe it’s bottomless.

    I never found bottom. Mercifully, I had the realization one day that I never would, that I would just keep falling. In terror, I stopped immediately. I never went back.

    4. There Is No Singular Epiphany, No Billboard From God Stating YOU MUST CHANGE YOUR LIFE

    When I quit drinking, I had no inkling that I was quitting for good. I just knew that I couldn’t go on. I put a couple of days together, then a couple weeks, then a couple of months. After ten years, yes, I recognize now that I was quitting for good. But it wasn’t because I knew the next bender would kill me. It was an accumulation of small grievances that, in aggregate, made me want to die. I always had a headache, I never had any energy, I was always nauseous, I had exhausted all excuses and apologies beyond reason, I had no prospects, I knew my drinking life was unsustainable, and I couldn’t see a future. You can waste your entire life waiting for that crystalline, cataclysmic epiphany. Instead, I made a big change for small reasons and discovered a new life.

    5. Cry As Much As You Can

    Quitting is hard. Jesus, before you even get to quitting, life is hard, mornings are a hell both reliable and surprising, working for a living is a sustained slow-motion nightmare. Quitting drinking is admirable and you should not be expected to suffer in stoic silence. It’s okay to feel sad, it’s okay to get mad, it’s okay to mourn your old life and fear the future and hate yourself. Soak your pillow every chance you get. Eventually, you’ll run out of tears. You’ll cry yourself dry and you’ll have to get on with the living.

    6. Quitting Drinking Immediately Makes You a Hero, But It Doesn’t Immediately Make You a Good Person

    In early sobriety, I was lost. I was depressed, humorless, anxious, silent as a stone, exhausted and insomniac, quietly fuming and easily enraged. I imagine my friends hoped I wouldn’t relapse… and also prayed I would so they could bear to hang out with me again.

    Be generous and forgiving with yourself as you ride out these extended unpleasant withdrawals. Be forthright with your peers if you can, and ask them to be generous and forgiving with you. Getting sober is to be admired and supported even in the ugliest phases. In the first few days, the first few weeks, even, let it be enough just to not drink. The rest will come, in time.

    7. Emotions Are Temporary

    The word “emotion” is comprised mostly of “motion,” which is to say emotions are always in flux, storming into us with no warning and often retreating as suddenly. I had poison ivy often as a kid and I learned that cold water temporarily lessened the itching, but if I could submit myself to a blazing hot shower and moments of torturous itching, the heat burned the itch receptors out and then I’d feel no itching at all, sometimes for hours.

    In early sobriety, I was subject to unexpected attacks of fury or terror or paralyzing sadness. Fighting the feeling only prolonged it, sometimes for the entire day. Sitting in it, marinating in the negative emotion —actively trying to get as mad or scared or sad as possible for as long as possible — burned through it quickly and released me.

    8. Every Illness Is a Physical Illness

    Mental illness lives in the brain… but the brain lives in the body. If you deny a schizophrenic water, dehydration will end their life before mental illness can even damage it. I once made the mistake of posting a Bill Philips quote on my Facebook — “Food is the most widely abused anti-anxiety drug in America, and exercise is the most potent yet underutilized antidepressant” — and watched my feed catch fire, my friends suffering from mental illness protesting that they didn’t need to go for a walk in the woods, damn it, they needed their pills, and how could I diminish their suffering?

    Mental illness is real. But if you smoke cigarettes, pound coffee and soda and energy drinks, eat Burger King and Sour Patch Kids and lie on the couch in front of the TV all day, you won’t need mental illness in order to feel insane. I have clinically diagnosed anxiety and depression. When I got sober, I treated it with anti-depressants… and exercise and sunshine and tons of fresh fruits and vegetables and vitamins and lots of water. I’ve been off meds for years now, but I think getting a clinical diagnosis and a prescription for psychiatric medication were integral to my early success. If you need medication, by all means, take your meds and feel proud for practicing self-care. But caring for your body — exercise, sunshine, sleep, fresh fruits and vegetables, lots of water — helps everything.

    9. Getting Sober Doesn’t Have to Mean Being Reborn; Reinventing Yourself Is Optional

    I wanted to quit drinking for years but I feared AA and “inspirational” sobriety so much that I was willing to endure the worsening horrors of my alcoholism. When I finally stopped, I certainly didn’t feel like an image on Instagram of a sun peeking through clouds. I felt shell-shocked, with no idea who I was. Could I still laugh at dick jokes? Could I still resent America and fear capitalism and think the world was basically full of shit? Could I still play in fun, dumb, dead-end bands and listen to the Murder City Devils and flip off assholes who cut me off on the BQE? Yes, yes, yes.

    Sobriety doesn’t come with mandatory enrollment in some flowery cult of positivity. Making the decision to quit alcohol means that and only that, everything else is optional. Sobriety and long-distance running helped soften my dead-end nihilism and my contempt for humanity but that’s because it was a change I elected to make. After ten years of sobriety, I’m healthier and happier and less self-loathing but still largely the same cynical prick I was before, because that works for me. 

    10. There Are No Straight Lines in Nature, There Are No Straight Lines in Recovery

    In my ten years of sobriety, I’ve infrequently used marijuana, mushrooms, DMT, MDMA, prescription painkillers, etc. Pot has always felt like a flawed way to unwind, usually just a waste of time. CBD, on the other hand, has been tremendously helpful for managing pain and getting to sleep at night. Mushrooms have been integral to my sobriety, and I honestly believe they’ve made me a better person. DMT was painfully intense and deeply transformative, too complex to describe as “good” or “bad” but I’m grateful to have done it. None of these substances have ever made me crave alcohol. Painkillers have gotten me through muscle spasms and surgery and MDMA has provided great connection with people I care about, but neither has felt particularly therapeutic and both have left me depressed and craving alcohol at times.

    Though some of these experiences have not supported my sobriety, none of them have compromised my sobriety. I am a pure alcoholic and I know one drink would be my undoing. But as my sobriety is solely my creation, I own it. I define its parameters.

    Two months after my “official” sobriety date in 2009, I flew out to Colorado for three days to play a music festival. I got drunk before my flight and stayed drunk the entire weekend. I blew an important show, I embarrassed myself in front of a woman I’d had a crush on since we were kids, and I threw up scotch out of my nose on the street. I drank on the flight home but when I woke up the next day, I went right back to sobriety and haven’t taken a drink since.

    When I tried to write about this episode in The Long Run, my first narrative about getting sober, my editor took it out. When I wrote it into a book proposal, my agent took it out. When I wrote it into my memoir, I Swear I’ll Make It Up to You, my editor took it out. People love this bullshit Hollywood narrative of “hopeless alcoholic hits bottom, has a lightning bolt epiphany, and goes forth to never drink again.”

    Fuck that. Getting sober is a messy process. Stick with it, it’s worth it.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Sex Work Made Recovery Possible for Me

    Sex Work Made Recovery Possible for Me

    The idea that someone would pay to be around me when I had spent my life feeling worthless changed my self-perception forever.

    When I entered the world of sex work almost three years ago, I had been fired from yet another waitressing job for reasons related to my drinking. A friend invited me to do a play that was for and by sex workers to benefit the Sex Workers Project, which “provides client-centered legal and social services to individuals who engage in sex work.” It paid, so I said yes.

    I loved the fast pace, changing clientele, and quick money of waiting tables. Booze and drugs were always present. Most of my jobs allowed us to drink on the job; just not the way I drank on the job. The last job I waitressed I would be sober for a few weeks or months, then a particularly difficult customer would lead me to drinking half-empty wine glasses as I carried them to the dish pit. I was fired because, as the nursery rhyme goes: When she was good, she was very, very good. But when she was bad, she was horrid.

    I went to rehearsals for the play and met the other women. Mostly they were artists with the time to pursue it, in grad school with the money to pay for it, and one had just purchased a home in Detroit. They were free to sit in a park and discuss Mae West at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday. Society had led me to believe that sex work of any kind would steal my soul in some way, would take something from me I could never get back, and would only hurt my struggle for sobriety. That is a lie.

    I always thought I would be an excellent sex worker — it’s a job women are trained for from adolescence: sexy emotional laborer. These skills may be especially honed in women who struggle with addiction and alcoholism. As a tech in my first rehab reflected, “Women stay out longer. They have the golden box.”

    The women I met doing the play encouraged me and taught me everything they knew as I worked towards my goal of gathering the courage to try it out. Then later, they allowed me to text them every time I went to meet a client with his name and my location as I developed my sense for red flags. It’s a mentorship program, there is no other way.

    I learned quickly that if I did coke with a client I was screwed. It was impossible to maintain boundaries, or my mind. Each time I did this, not only was there a scarily unlimited amount of drugs, but at some point the client would stop paying me for my time. Those were the only sessions I ever had that made me feel what society says sex work should make you feel: incomprehensible demoralization.

    And there were many times in those early days when a client offered me a drink and I took it, hoping to seem normal. And then I went home and drank. Within a few months I realized I couldn’t drink or use around these men. When I was using, I didn’t require verification, I couldn’t maintain boundaries, and I couldn’t retain control of the situation. One of my mentors told me if I went on like this I would die or get arrested. I stopped everything but weed, and then I stopped everything.

    Life got better. And then I experienced all the benefits to recovery sex work can offer.

    I had more money, and a lot of that panic was gone. I could clothe myself properly, I knew my rent would be paid, I was able to travel. Drugs and drink are a poor man’s vacation. I had the time to meditate, to go to lots of meetings, to join a yoga studio, to read and study anything I wanted that I thought could help.

    And it was empowering — the idea that someone would pay to be around me when I had spent my life feeling worthless changed my self-perception forever.

    Eventually I saw how even weed had clouded my judgement in sex work and thus in life. I went to see a client I had previously seen several times stoned. He was a huge pain in the ass — always sending the Uber to the wrong location, ordering “food” that was just a pile of sodas when I was starving, never having the money right, forgetting his ATM password. It took me to show up completely clear-minded to realize that he was provoking me so that I would yell at him. On yet another walk to the ATM, he asked, “Why do you still have to go to so many AA classes?” I didn’t even remember telling him that, but people babble when they’re high. I asked him not to mention it again, and that they weren’t classes.

    “I knew it! You hate me!” He shouted into the Brooklyn night. He pulled all the same stunts he always did that night, but this time, I didn’t want to deal with it. The beauty of escorting is that it isn’t prostitution. I am paid for my time only, and legally, I never have to sleep with anyone unless I want to. And that night I did not want to. I grabbed my things and made for the door after he said something gross about having the funds to keep me there for several days. “Your AA classes aren’t going to make you a better person!” He shouted at my retreating form.

    Wrong again, Jack.

    I began charging more and more for my time, and began advertising on the most high-end site. You may think that’s an oxymoron, but I don’t care.

    The longer I was in the industry, the more time and space I had to work on myself, and the better I was able to treat myself. I watched how my self-care transformed the clients I attracted, how the way I conducted my business radiated into the rest of my life. I got a therapist. I spent an entire month in Bali. 

    Rehab couldn’t get me sober. Sex work did. Perhaps it had to be that life and death, that cut and dry, for me to see it all. I’ve never been happier or more free. And I’ve never put together this many days of continuous sobriety. 

    There were a few times in sobriety I showed up to work and the client was on cocaine. When I didn’t partake, I saw how sad it was. One night, when Phish was in town (my phone BLOWS up when Phish is in town), I went to a hotel where an adorable middle-aged man had laid out my old favorite things — pink champagne and cocaine. Because I didn’t partake I maintained the upper hand, stayed several hours without ever taking my clothes off, and the night ended with him crying on my shoulder and confiding in me about his drug problem. I hope I helped. 

    That wasn’t the only time I inadvertently 12-stepped a client or potential one. Recently, someone reached out to ask about the Hebrew lettering tattoo that is featured in one of my photos. I find Hebrew tattoos hilarious. I explained that it meant “the strength to stand after we fall.” 

    “Are you a former junkie?” he asked.

    “Something like that.”

    We went on to have the kind of gut-wrenchingly honest conversation that only two addicts can, and by the end of the conversation, we were working to find him a bed in a detox. I hope he went.

    Sex work isn’t for everyone, and I can’t do it forever. I haven’t been able to date normally, which is fine because I haven’t finished the steps or gotten a year yet. So that seeming downside has also benefited my recovery. My goal is to make my living from writing in the next five years. Sex work, a career with no long-term future, is another way to burn the ships. There is no plan B, no safe career that could deter me from my true goals. I like that, too.

    It’s also helped me weed out people in the program who aren’t good for me, not that I speak about it much — I’ve never spoken about it as much as I have in this article. When I needed a new sponsor after a move, I found one who had her own experience with sex work so I felt like it was a good match. But I quickly realized that she couldn’t see past her own history of street prostitution to understand how different my work was. When she pushed me to get a “sober job,” I fired her. I need to live alone and make my car payment, and that isn’t happening on $15 an hour. These things are important to my serenity, and I’m willing to do what it takes to maintain them. The next woman who almost took me through the steps sucked in her breath and said, “It must be hard to stay sober in that job.” 

    Actually, it was much harder to stay sober waitressing, where I couldn’t choose whom I served, and where I couldn’t walk away from a situation with alcohol. And it was much harder to stay sober as a housewife. I never got to leave. 

    My current sponsor thinks it should be completely legal, like it is in New Zealand, and without stigma. We just finished Step Five. I haven’t gotten that far with anyone in 11 years. I was a 1-2-3-step-and-hate-my-sponsor kind of gal.

    Becoming a sex worker has helped me to get and stay sober, and to have a better quality of life than I ever thought possible. 

    Sex work is real work. And it really set me free.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • 5 Messes I’ve Had to Clean Up in Recovery

    5 Messes I’ve Had to Clean Up in Recovery

    When I’m on top of my 10th step game, it goes something like this: Sorry, my bad. How can I fix it? The apologies come easily, and I promptly follow up with offers to make up for all harms done. But I’m not always on top of my game.

    What Does Recovery Feel Like to Me Right Now?

    Good question.

    It feels like making less mess, less often and…
    It feels like cleaning up the messes I still manage to make.

    When I’m really on top of my 10th step game, it goes something like this: Sorry, my bad. How can I fix it? The apologies come easily throughout my day, and I promptly follow up with offers to make up for all harms done. Then at night, under the covers, I make sure to scribble in my journal for those few minutes before Mr. Sandman knocks me out cold. Surprisingly, I learn a lot about myself in those last illegible minutes of consciousness. I see the patterns within the actions, where someone (sometimes me) gets hurt.

    But I’m not always on top of my game.

    Here are five messes for the first five months of 2019 and how I’ve managed to mop them all up.

    1. My Kid’s Library Fines

    In January I tore open another notice from the collection agency looking for me to make good on my son’s library fines. It was at least the sixth notice, and it had been years since I’d declared the book lost. ‘Til that point, though, I’d refused to send payment, both for the late fees accrued while I waited for it to turn up under the bed or at school, and for its replacement charge (because it never did).

    I was waiting for amnesty. I’d heard the library does this from time to time, waive all late fees. I didn’t feel I should have to pay $41.10 on a fantasy book about cats. My kid’s read all of them: the series on cats, dogs, wolves, and bears—for free, but I couldn’t cough up $41.10 for accrued fines? That’s insanity!

    Finally I saw it. I could screw up my kid’s credit before he gets the chance to do it himself. Everyone should have the right to ruin their own credit. No one should be robbed of that privilege by say, a spendthrift spouse, or a stingy, stubborn parent.

    So last week I finally fed three twenties, one single and one dime into the fine box at the local library. It felt great: a clear account and a clear conscience. The cost of coughing up proved well worth the relief it bought. Lesson learned: going forward, I’ll suck it up, pay promptly, and stop getting those “important notices” in my mailbox which have a way of souring my serenity.

    2. My Speeding Ticket

    Contrary to what the bumper sticker reads, I want to believe my choices behind the wheel don’t really matter.

    Not long after the library’s collection agency stopped courting me, I tore open another “important notice,” this time a $50 citation for speeding in a school zone.

    My first response was to defend myself: Oh brother, I wasn’t speeding! According to the fine print, I was going “41 mph in a 30 mph zone.” My second response was to rationalize: Come on, I was only going 11 miles over the legal limit. And my third response, finally, was acceptance. Yes, I was unlawfully speeding.

    I don’t write out many checks anymore, which might be why I get all pouty when I have to actually do it. It’s so damn involved: the writing, folding, sealing and licking (do I have a stamp?) and then the envelope knocks around my backpack for a week before I remember to mail it. But the mailing of that check made payable to the NYC Department of Finance felt good — the act of popping it into the blue box on the corner, both a physical acknowledgement of my error and a conscious effort to rectify it. It was another Step 10 moment, making amends to my fellow drivers and pedestrians of central Brooklyn. And hey, I found myself feeling a fourth response rising, gratitude: Hey, it was a school zone after all. I could have hit a kid crossing Ocean Parkway on the way home.

    3. My Unhappy Downstairs Neighbor

    Who does jumping jacks at 10:30 at night? I do, and it’s a problem because I have a neighbor below me who doesn’t sleep well. Sometimes my teen doesn’t get around to practicing piano until 10:30 pm either, and if it’s Haydn, I’ll break out into pretty awful pirouettes on the living room rug. Born about when Stalin first came to power, my neighbor always smiles kindly at my kids on the elevator. This babushka’s done nothing to deserve my thoughtlessness. It’s taken her banging the broom handle against her ceiling — more than once — to make me realize her reality and stop. This last time she knocked on my door in her housecoat.

    It shouldn’t have come to that. I apologized, again, but this time it felt different. I felt her frustration with me, and her chronic fatigue, bordering on despair. I prayed for the willingness to find a solution, and got one. My teen now practices by 9:30 pm, or not at all (mostly not at all). And instead of performing leaps and bounds to my reflection in the living room mirror, I’m using a folding chair from a funeral parlor as a ballet barre to do late-night low-impact leg lifts and silent swan arms. And I’m saving all jumping jacks for the laundry room.

    4. My Coffee Table Catastrophe

    Clumsiness isn’t a defect per se, but the carelessness that leads to avoidable accidents is. If you’re a good housekeeper, and sober, you don’t usually break shit. But when you’re willful, preoccupied, or impatient —whether drunk or dry — the odds are less in your favor. I was feeling all three when, to earn a few extra bucks, I was cleaning my neighbor’s home recently.

    It was an Ethan Allen bicentennial-era colonial table from the ‘70s, with a smoky glass insert. I could have just wiped down the glass. Or I could have taken a few moments to study the situation, then gingerly lift the glass to clean the crumbs along the maple-esque ledge upon which it rested. I did neither. In my haste to move onto activities more worthy of my talents coupled with my resolve to get at that damned dirt at all costs, I reached down underneath the glass and pushed it up with force. In slo-mo horror, I watched the six-foot tinted glass oval slip from my fingers, tilt up, then fall smack through the frame and shatter against the parquet floor.

    Oh f*&$%!

    Thankfully, after a little conscious breathing and a lot more profanity, I had the presence of mind to pray. I credit the serenity prayer for helping me come up with a sober 10th step strategy: apologize, clean it up, save a shard, identify a glass factory in the tri-state area that makes custom inserts for vintage coffee tables, place the order, pick it up and deliver the replacement glass to its rightful spot, nestled in that oval frame set between two plaid sofas in Mr. Donald’s living room. Good as new!

    The problem was, I didn’t want to do any of this. I wanted to cry and run home instead. I wanted to bail on this good neighbor, who’d been a true friend to me, my sons, even my ex, all these years, pre- and post-divorce. This neighbor who brought me fresh mint from the farmer’s market and cannolis from Bay Ridge, who got my latchkey kids off the doorstep and into their home when they’d forgotten their keys. I wanted to leave this true friend with a true mess. Fortunately, though, I didn’t. I sucked it up and swept it up, and followed through on all the rest. Today I’m even more grateful for the friendship of my forgiving neighbor. And I’m not ever allowed to touch his new coffee table.

    5. My $700 Face Cream

    And here’s a real dollop of sloppy spending. One recent morning I was trudging that road to happy destiny and stumbled. I fell, hard. Nose to pavement, that mindful breath knocked clean out of me, knees bleeding through the exposed portions of my distressed denim, I saw the cause: it was those stubborn roots of that ancient tree — my character defects. They’d buckled the pavement and tripped me up again.

    I’d just performed the single most obscene act of overspending in my not-short lifetime: I dropped down the Visa for a $765 face cream. My sober spending habits — and my sanity — snagged by those sinewy tendrils: vanity and fear. In that shockingly short-sighted moment when I confirmed the purchase, I sought false comfort in cosmetics instead of in the care of my creator.

    Pre-sobriety, I tried to self-soothe with a bubbly Bellini or a pitcher of sangria. Towards the end, it was bargain barrel red and Four Roses blended whiskey. Typical addict’s descent: desperately seeking substance for relief from self. So it was humbling now, five years into recovery, to admit to this irresponsible oopsie with the ol’ plastic. And no surprise, the high from spending on skincare lasted only as long as it took that confirmation email to hit my inbox. Almost instantaneously, I added panic and guilt to my shopping cart.

    That nagging itch of fear around aging, illness, and dying with a Siamese instead of a soulmate was now the sharp pain of fear and remorse that I might not make next month’s rent, and my kids’ summer holiday could be spent at the rundown neighborhood triplex — rumored to have bedbugs — instead of lobbing lemony tennis balls all day long at camp.

    I was stunned and embarrassed by my reckless misuse of purchasing power — certainly too embarrassed to admit to my sponsor that, in my quest for an eternally youthful jawline, I was galloping straight into the jaws of debt instead.

    Luckily I had just enough recovery to rein it in, and turn towards Step 2. I asked HP for guidance and got it:

    The solution was obvious:

    Return it.

    And still more lucky, dermstore.com, with more than 10K visitors monthly, takes all returns, no questions asked. What’s even better is that when those unsaleable items in my character — fear and vanity — trip me up, I can pick myself up today, blot my bloody shins, and choose a different path. In my drinking days, I was down for the count on all my defects….

    So, thanks, Second Step, you stopped the runaway horse of spree spending, and you too, Step 10, because I was able to reverse the financial harm done to self. My face, while not slathered in luxe cream tonight, feels radiant and clean, because I can face the Visa bill in the morning.

    My Sober Strategy for the Second Half of 2019: Steps 6 and 7

    But the habit of relying on Steps 2 and 10 to bail me out of scrapes is wearing on me. It feels un-sober. I’m starting to think that lasting emotional sobriety depends on my willingness to keep plugging away at 6 and 7, to really yank at those defective roots of self-centered fear and vanity.

    Soon after that life-affirming afternoon five and a half years ago, reading my 5th step aloud in a garden gazebo as mosquitoes ate me alive, my sponsor suggested I follow up by reading Drop the Rock: Steps 6 and 7: Removing Character Defects. Four years after that, I finally Primed the paperback to my doorstep and began reading. One story is resonating right now. A gal beset by sloth, who struggled with clutter for years, finally struck on a solution that pretty much sums up my strategy today:

    “I now know that if I don’t want to live in a mess,” she realized, “I need to pray to God for the willingness, courage and motivation to clean up my own mess.”

    Isn’t that what I tell my own teen 20 times a day anyway?

    I may never completely stop this habit of compulsively punching 16 digits into devices for ill-conceived purchases (did I mention I want to lease an Audi Q5?) but this week my impulse purchase was three Wham-O Frisbees. Progress.

    Half-measures avail me nothing. I gotta push myself to make those 10th step amends, to others and to myself, as promptly as possible, but better late than never! And I can use the steps (and the slogans, and my sponsor, and my sober sisters) to help me break each amends down into baby steps, steps that will take me further from, rather than closer to, that first drink. This feels like recovery, and a better set up for long-term sobriety and my happy life.

    Final Takeaway: Do the right thing, even when I don’t want to, even when it doesn’t seem like a big deal. Or, even when it is actually sort of a big deal; in fact, it feels so big, it’s kinda overwhelming:

    Still do the right thing.

    View the original article at thefix.com