Answer Addiction

Tag: coping skills

  • Zero Coping Skills: How Jackie Monahan Found Peace of Mind for the First Time

    Zero Coping Skills: How Jackie Monahan Found Peace of Mind for the First Time

    Contrast in life is inevitable, but I’m learning that I don’t have to have conflict. I don’t have to flip out because I got in the wrong line; I don’t need to make my poor planning everyone else’s emergency.

    I grew up being told over and over, “We are only given what we can handle.” I took that to mean, “If I flip out about the little things, nothing really bad can ever happen to me.”

    It has been said that if you have an alcoholic parent, the odds are good you will become an alcoholic. I had two. They say if you start drinking at 21, you might be okay. I did the inverse and started drinking at 12. I had a long run. I was surrounded by enablers. My mom still wants me to drink; she and my ex say things like “You weren’t this temperamental when you drank.”

    I want to be the best example of the program anyone has ever seen, but I am far from there yet. I have always been easily frustrated, and have always had zero coping skills, other than alcohol.

    My soul wanted to solve problems without alcohol, but I didn’t even know where to begin. If I got anxious for a second, everyone rushed to put a drink in my hand. It worked. I remember the one day in college that I didn’t drink. I was mad and yelling at all my roommates, wanting them to be as quiet as a mouse because I wasn’t drinking. Meanwhile, every other night I came home either with a party or from one, loudly.

    I entered parties saying, “You can start now, I am here.” I would black out and then yell at everyone the next day for letting me drink so much. They would say they had no idea I was blacked out; I was so funny and fun, they didn’t see what the problem was. I did. My life was getting really busy with stuff I wanted to do, and when I did have free time I wanted to enjoy the moment and remember it.

    My parents were functioning alcoholics. I say “were” because they are no longer functioning very well. My dad was far worse than my mother, but both are shells of what they could have been. They couldn’t get rigorously honest if someone paid them all the money in the world. I had to accept that at a very young age.

    There was never a way to know what I did to set my parents off. When either of them went into a rage, it was brutal. They were cheerful, cheerful, cheerful… then rage! They mostly raged when they were sober and it would come out of nowhere. I watched their tantrums work for them: with one another, with me, and with the unfortunate people who got my mother on the phone. You would think Colleen from Time Warner had stabbed her in the face. My mom unloaded all her marriage frustrations, alternately screaming at and belittling the customer service rep. And it worked every time — instead of getting overcharged, she got money off and reduced rates. She flew off the handle at everyone and got her way, then bragged about it.

    My parents would always say, “God made whiskey so the Irish could not rule the world.” Then they would laugh and laugh like they had something over on the rest of us. Meanwhile, I remember thinking, “Rule the world? How about trying to get through the week without throwing a plate?”

    With all this and more, it never even occurred to me not to drink. Of course I would drink, but I vowed to never be an alcoholic like you see on TV, or even a semi-functioning one like my parents. I could clearly see how their thinking was backwards, so backwards that my messed-up perception went undetected. They may have been successful financially, but their morals and values were out in space.

    In 2011 I made an independent movie and was too busy to drink. My wife at the time pointed out that I didn’t drink for two weeks. She was impressed with my work ethic. I was working 12-hour days because it took so long to put on and take off a bald cap for my role as an an alien. I couldn’t be hungover, so I wasn’t.

    A few years later I thought, “I wish another 12-hour a day project would come along to quit drinking for.” Now I know this should have been a red flag. But nope, instead I had an idea: “Wait, why don’t I make me the project. I will be sober for a while for me.” I was just going to do 11 days, until the Independent Spirit Awards. I would have to drink then. There would be free expensive wine and celebrity parties.

    The awards show came and went and I still didn’t want to drink. I felt almost addicted to being clear-headed. It felt euphoric. Then I was determined to tape Last Comic Standing sober. I was 33 days sober and I did great, but I just wasn’t myself. I wasn’t loose. I told a comic backstage who had five years sober that I didn’t feel comfortable. He said I was crazy, that he didn’t feel normal on stage until he had a year sober, and that I should have just had a drink. Looking back, he was right and I knew it. But I couldn’t drink. I liked being in my body so much. I hated blacking out.

    And I refused to do AA: I 100 percent thought it was run by the Catholic Church and I couldn’t go back there. I was a member of the CIA: Catholic Irish Alcoholic. I survived 12 years of Catholic school: priests living in a mansion with gorgeous antique furniture and driving fancy sports cars while the nuns lived in poverty, in what were basically jail cells. One nun siphoned gas—so she could sell the 20-year-old station wagon she had just filled—and accidently swallowed some of the gas. That same day, Father Zino threw a lit cigarette out of his brand-new Porsche and it hit me. It got caught in my coat.

    I had no intention of going back to the Catholic Church and saying yes to things I knew to be wrong. They told us not to lie, then made us lie.

    I had friends in AA, but they all seemed miserable and unhappy. I would rather drink than be miserable. And I had quit drinking on my own before: once for 90 days (I was proud because I hadn’t intended to go that long), and then for 200 days (I was disappointed I hadn’t made it to a year). Both times, when I finally drank, it was because of things happening that I couldn’t bear to feel. I called my friends and said, “I don’t want to drink but I can’t bear the pain anymore.” They said, “Just drink. Drink and don’t beat yourself up about it.” So I drank. I didn’t have a choice.

    Then I made a new friend who was in AA and thriving. She seemed genuinely happy. When I told her I could quit on my own but couldn’t stay quit, she said that happens to a lot of alcoholics. That was the first time I thought “Hey, maybe I am an alcoholic.” She also said “You don’t have coping skills.” Coping skills!?! I must have said those two words a million times since then. Coping skills sounded like exactly what I needed. I didn’t have coping skills. I’d never even heard of them.

    I said I wanted to give it a try. I really wanted to make it to a year without drinking, and I was willing to do anything. Once I made that commitment to myself, I gave myself over to the program and my higher power. That was a critical tipping point, and my life changed. I got a sponsor who I knew would kick my butt: she knew when I was lying. I wanted what she had—not the dream car, home, partner, killer style, and beauty (all impressive, considering she had been living on the street). I didn’t need any of those things. I did not have the same goals at all.

    What I did want was her close relationship with her higher power, her program, and her unquestioning belief in both. These qualities make her absolutely, positively unflappable and a force to be reckoned with. She gets annoyed by things, but as soon as she feels an ounce of anger, she takes a breath and realigns with her higher power and the solution.

    My sponsor knows I had major resentments, and that I had a lot to be resentful about, but she showed me how to let go of them, for myself. I am now two years sober and I have peace in my mind for the first time in my life. I wouldn’t trade this gift of sobriety and serenity for anything in the world. I treat it like a gem that I hold safe. I guard that gem with my life.

    Contrast in life is inevitable, but I’m learning that I do not have to have conflict. I don’t have to flip out because I got in the wrong line somewhere; I don’t need to make my poor planning everyone else’s emergency. I didn’t even know how anxiety-riddled I was. I thought I had ADD, and doctors were treating it as such, with Adderall. What I actually have is PTSD and chronic anxiety. That medication combined with those diagnoses was like treating schizophrenia with acid.

    All my life, I never wanted to be like other people. Even though my life was messed-up, I loved being me. I always wanted to live, but I really didn’t know how. I felt like I was improvising constantly, while everyone else had a script. It made me a great improviser, but I now have the ability to turn that side of me off. I feel like I am getting a new, revised version of my script every day. If something happens, I no longer go into fight or flight mode. I get upset, of course, but now I respond instead of react. I am proactive instead of reactive. I can have contrast without conflict. I can go into solution mode and stop focusing on and feeding the problem.

    I made a decision to be the change I want to see in the world—which is peace. To see peace, I first must be peace. Alcoholics do not have the luxury of a negative thought. A resentment can kill us. If someone hates me, that is on them. I cannot control how someone feels about me, but I can control how I feel about them.

    I feel safe for the first time. For a long time I hid my fear from everyone, even myself. Feeling safe, in the moment, in control, is better than any feeling in this world. I wouldn’t trade the solution for anything.

    Jackie Monahan appears in Wild Nights with Emily, in theatres on April 12th. Her album “These Lips” is streaming everywhere and on Sirius.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Relapse Prevention: Staying Sober Through Life Setbacks

    Relapse Prevention: Staying Sober Through Life Setbacks

    Without recovery tools or a relapse prevention plan, it can be difficult to stay sober while dealing with a significant life setback. The lure of the drink or drug to ease the pain and bring comfort becomes too great to resist.

    When people at treatment centers or in 12-step meetings say that relapse is part of recovery, it turns my stomach. Although the door to recovery remains open after a relapse—as long as a person survives such dangerous waters—relapse is not part of recovery. At the same time, however, the slip and slide process that leads to a relapse does happen in recovery.

    Whether we are newly clean and sober or have stacked up many years—even decades—of sobriety, the triggers that lead to a relapse happen before we pick up the first drink or drug. But if we have done the work and have recovery tools in place, these triggering events can be processed successfully instead of leading to a relapse. We acquire recovery tools through 12-step programs, SMART Recovery, therapy, or whichever recovery pathway we have chosen, and we use them for relapse prevention.

    Without recovery tools, it can be immensely difficult to stay sober while dealing with a significant life setback. The lure of the drink or drug to ease the pain and restore a sense of comfort becomes too great to resist. It reminds me of the mantra of Dr. Gabor Maté: “The question is not why the addiction, but why the pain.”

    But we have to know how and when to use the tools properly, which requires practice. We gain this practice by working the 12 steps or taking other constructive actions in our recovery pathway well before a triggering event occurs. Then, when we hit a life setback, we are prepared.

    Here are four life setbacks which can lead to relapse if we do not have recovery tools.

    1. The loss of a job, a promotion, or a major work opportunity

    One of my favorite sayings in 12-step programs is that an expectation is a resentment under construction. When you miss out on a significant work opportunity or you’re let go from your job or passed over for a promotion, it is natural to feel crushed and overwhelmed. Many people in recovery take professional setbacks personally, punishing themselves for a perceived failure. There is a reason alcoholism is called a disease of perception. We will drink or use to escape the pain of a perceived failure, or—in a masochistic fashion—to inflict more damage on themselves as the vicious punishment for such a failure. When you consider the consequences, this outcome can be devastating.

    Rather than sinking into depression and self-blame, you can use recovery tools to put the setback into context. Did you know people change jobs an average of 12 times during their career? In January 2018, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the median employee tenure was 4.3 years for men and 4.0 years for women. The very nature of employment is a roller coaster ride of ups and downs.

    Given these statistics, it’s easy to apply the second and third steps to a career setback. If you turn over the disappointment to a higher power and have faith that another opportunity will arise, then relapse is less likely to occur. If you discuss the problem in a group, you will receive support and learn from the similar experiences of other people.

    2. Global events like elections, terrorist attacks, and natural disasters

    People in recovery tend to take everything personally. We sometimes use big events that may have no direct impact on our lives as reasons to drink or use. After the last presidential election, I heard many people in meetings bitterly joke that they were either moving to Canada or having a drink. Luckily, most of them did neither, regaining their focus on the microcosm of their own lives. They focused on what was right in front of them, remembering to take things one day at a time.

    When seemingly apocalyptic moments arise, there is an urge to console ourselves. We feel the pain and horror of terrorist attacks and natural disasters and use those feelings as a justification for a relapse.

    An essential recovery tool for sidestepping this kind of relapse is avoiding isolation. When we are alone and in our heads, we are in dangerous neighborhoods. By going out and spending time within a supportive community, the disaster loses some of its power over us. We come to understand that it’s not only our tragedy and can share our pain with others. We do not minimize the horror or sadness of what happened, but we also do not use it as a reason to relapse. We don’t have to make our lives worse in response to disaster.

    3. The death of a family member or a close friend, and the pain of mourning

    Death can be one of the hardest challenges to face for anyone in any context. The loss of a family member, a loved one, or a close friend can be incredibly painful, both spiritually and emotionally. For someone in recovery, the situations in which we grieve present their own unique difficulties. In circles of mourning, alcohol is a conventional lubricant. It can be easy for someone without recovery tools to pick up a drink during this time.

    By talking about your feelings and reaching out for support, you can be guided through the pain. You will learn that by staying sober and clear, you have the opportunity to be present for your family and friends. You can be of service in a time of great need. Moreover, you honor your loved one by maintaining your sobriety. If you feel like you were not able to make amends for a past wrong, then make a living amends by staying sober and honoring their memory.

    4. The end of a relationship

    Have you ever heard the story of a person in early recovery who started dating and turned their partner into their higher power? Rather than focus on their own recovery and sanity, they focus on the relationship. What they fail to realize is that whenever recovery becomes supported mainly by a human relationship, the recovery (and usually the relationship) are on thin ice.

    Sometimes, the end of such a relationship leads to a relapse. When someone in early recovery focuses with such fervor on a partner, they no longer can keep the focus on themselves. This is why you hear the recommendation to stay out of relationships during the first year of recovery, or until you’ve worked all 12 steps.

    The end of a healthy relationship in long-term recovery can be dangerous as well. Breaking up can hurt so deeply that you feel you can’t bear it; having a drink or taking a drug seems to be the only way to stop the heartache. However, the pain is so much worse when it’s kept inside and remains unspoken; and while drinking or using may look like a way to find quick relief, you can’t actually escape this hurt. You only postpone the feelings and frequently the relapse brings more misery. By sharing the pain and talking about it with other people, you can obtain perspective. Although applying the principles of recovery to a breakup may help you avoid a relapse, it’s not a cure-all. When love ends, we suffer, and such suffering takes time to heal.

    Whatever life setback you might face today or in the future, taking a drink or using a drug will not help resolve the difficulty and in the vast majority of cases, it will make a bad situation much worse. Instead, cut the cord that connects drinking and using with pain relief. It’s a temporary and usually ineffective fix. For people who have lived with addiction or substance use disorders, the most powerful recovery tool is the simple and honest realization that drugs and alcohol are never the solution.

    What’s in your recovery toolkit? How do you deal with life setbacks without using or drinking?

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Garbage's Shirley Manson Pens Essay About Self-Harm

    Garbage's Shirley Manson Pens Essay About Self-Harm

    “Today I try to remain vigilant against these old thought patterns. I vow to hold my ground. I attempt to be kind, not only to myself but also to other people.”

    Shirley Manson has written a vulnerable op-ed for The New York Times, revealing that she began cutting herself as a teenager.

    Manson writes that as a rage-filled teenager who had been bullied, had no direction in life, and felt “crushing depression” and the beginnings of alcoholism, she had no outlet for her emotions.

    “I didn’t know I was a cutter until the first time I chose to cut. I didn’t even know it was a ‘thing,’” Manson wrote.

    After an argument with a boyfriend, Manson took a small, silver knife she had tied to her shoelace and spontaneously cut her arm. She experienced feelings of relief and release from rage.

    Manson wrote, “The problem of course with any practice of self-harm is that once you choose to indulge in it, you get better, more efficient, at it. I started to hurt myself more regularly. The cuts got deeper. I hid the scars under my stockings and never breathed a word about it to anyone.”

    After a long reprieve from cutting, Manson returned to self-harm when again under incredible stress, this time as a famous musician. She was finally able to work free from the self-destructive act with time, emotional growth, and recognition of what was leading her to cut.

    Manson reflects, “Today I try to remain vigilant against these old thought patterns. I vow to hold my ground. I choose to speak up. I attempt to be kind, not only to myself but also to other people. I surround myself with those who treat me well. I strive to be creative and determine to do things that make me happy. I believe it is not what we look like that is important, but who we are. It is how we choose to move through this bewildering world of ours that truly matters.”

    Shirley Manson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. She became famous as the vocalist for the alt-rock band Garbage. Garbage released their self-titled debut album in 1995 which went double platinum, with hits like “Only Happy When It Rains” and “Stupid Girl.”

    Manson told Consequence of Sound that Garbage will release a new album in 2019.

    On the band’s future U.S. concert schedule, Manson said, “It will be a very limited run. This year is supposed to be us writing our new record, so we loathe to take off too much time. But we understand there’s been a frenzy demand from the fans, so we’re going to try to put on a few dates [in the U.S.].”

    View the original article at thefix.com