Answer Addiction

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  • Childhood Trauma, Body Dysmorphic Disorder, and Plastic Surgery Addiction

    Childhood Trauma, Body Dysmorphic Disorder, and Plastic Surgery Addiction

    Many people who have multiple plastic surgeries are looking for self-worth, not correction of a deformity.

    Most of the time when we talk about addiction, we’re referring to the compulsive or harmful use of substances. Only one behavioral addiction—gambling—is included in the Substance-Related and Addictive Disorders chapter of the DMS 5. Other behavioral addictions require further peer-reviewed research to become categorizable, diagnosable conditions. Addictive disorders involve a lack of ability to control substance use, social problems as a result of substance use, risk-taking to fulfill substance use urges, developing tolerance, and experiencing withdrawal symptoms when the substance is removed.

    Behavioral Addictions

    We no longer define addiction solely as physiological dependence on an ingested substance. We now have better categorizations for addictions, and the medical field is regularly adding more to the list, as society is constantly changing and addictive patterns become more apparent with time and research. The crux of what causes addiction is still an evolving conversation, one that keeps circling back to trauma.

    New Hampshire-based plastic surgeon Mark Constantian believes plastic surgery can become an addiction in people who have experienced childhood trauma. Outside of moral judgements, issues of class and privilege, and other health implications, plastic surgery is a choice, and for many people it has no negative mental health effects. Then there are those who get plastic surgery and are profoundly upset even though they obtain the exact aesthetic results they originally desired. Constantian became interested in the experiences of patients who responded with profound anger and disappointment despite good results.

    He describes this category of patients as being unhappy to an irrational degree. They expressed feelings of being betrayed and felt deceived. Constantian explains that they behaved “the way people behave when they’re traumatized and then triggered back to their childhood, they start acting and saying things that would have been appropriate to their abusers when they’re five or six years old but they’re no longer appropriate when they’re 40.”

    Constantian has been practicing since 1978 and has taught in his field with a focus on nasal surgery, particularly with people who have had prior nasal surgery. Patterns emerged, and he wrote a book chronicling his findings. He found that many people who have multiple plastic surgeries are looking for self-worth, not correction of a deformity.

    Body Dysmorphic Disorder

    Plastic surgery addiction, while not a diagnosable condition, seems to exist alongside body dysmorphic disorder, a mental illness defined in the DSM 5 as “preoccupation with one or more perceived defects or flaws in physical appearance that are not observable or appear slight to others.”

    According to Dr. Constantian, “Body dysmorphic disorder is looked at as a problem that arises out of the blue.” But that’s incorrect. “[A]ll of this starts in childhood. The family problems, the self-esteem problems are already there and it just percolates. Then you get to the teenage years and you start to compensate in some way, and you medicate the pain and it can be medicating with an eating disorder, with obesity, depression, cutting, drug or alcohol abuse. The characteristics I’m seeing are shared by all kinds of addiction.”

    People wanted to be different from who they were as children. “The original genesis of the original problem had nothing to do with the cosmetic issue.” The self-harming behaviors are fulfilling a need to soothe the loneliness and the isolation, which are the result of shame.

    Adverse Childhood Experiences Survey

    To test what he was seeing in his patients, Constantian surveyed patients using an adapted version of the Adverse Childhood Experiences survey (ACE). The ACE study is one of the biggest studies on childhood abuse and neglect and other difficult experiences, and how they affect health later in life. The ACE study has been found to be one of the best predictors of conditions in adulthood.

    Through years of neglect, abuse, or other traumas during childhood, we learn what adults are like. We learn how important we are in the world, what kind of space we occupy and how safe we are. We learn how dangerous the world is. How much we’re loved. Children learn to cope with those environments. 

    Constantian’s working theory was that if trauma works on the brain long enough, eventually it develops enough damage to create a disorder that a mental health professional can diagnose. It takes time to damage the brain to that extent. Traumatic experiences in childhood can influence an entire lifetime of decisions and alter how a person perceives themselves and the world around them. 

    Chronic unpredictable stress in childhood and adolescence can echo into adulthood with reverberations that translate into mental and physical health conditions. In Constantian’s study, he found that overall, 80% of surveyed plastic surgery patients had one or more Adverse Childhood Experience (compared to about 64% in the original study). For those with more than one cosmetic surgery, 90% had higher ACE scores than those in the original study. Emotional neglect was about four times higher. Drug abuse or alcoholism in the family was almost double. He noticed that emotional abuse was common in his patients.

    How to Prevent Plastic Surgery Addiction

    Categorizing someone as a poor candidate for plastic surgery cannot be calculated with something like the ACE score, because it leaves out a key feature: resiliency. Life changes and stressful situations arise for everyone at some point or another. Most people are able to recover from these conditions and adapt to change. 

    “Having cosmetic surgery is not a bad thing, as long as the reason for that is body dissatisfaction. As long as the person feels he or she has self-worth,” Constantian says. Lack of resilience is a huge factor in whether someone is more at risk of using plastic surgery as a maladaptive coping tool. Using the ACE study cannot rule out people not suitable for plastic surgery. Constantian couldn’t predict a patient’s trauma score, no matter how well he knew them.

    Resiliency is the ability to overcome challenges and bounce back from difficult, even traumatic, events. Resilience can be learned, although there is some evidence that suggests some people may develop resilience due to genetic and other natural factors. Children learn how to be resilient through their parents, or other caretakers. If those caretakers are unavailable, abusive, or otherwise neglectful, a child may not learn appropriate coping mechanisms and lack resiliency later in life. 

    Resilience is like the antidote to childhood trauma. Often people with strong resiliency and high ACE scores had someone in their life who created a sense of stability and support. It might have been a teacher, a religious leader, a friend’s parent, a coach. Someone who made them feel capable and loved, and could model healthy coping methods. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • On Moderation and Other Fantasies

    On Moderation and Other Fantasies

    Even though I’ve quit drinking, I don’t pretend to understand moderation. I will never be someone who stops when they’re full. Not really.

    I remember when I first became suspicious of moderation. 

    I was reading Prevention magazine long before it made any sense to me: I had no wrinkles, I had no libido, I was not in menopause. I was 11.

    Prevention informed me that, in moderation, chocolate was actually good for me! I was advised that dark chocolate (at least 70% cacao, whatever that was) is the best. Just a square or two, the article warned.

    Wait… why on earth would I eat a “square or two” of chocolate? What is the point?  It struck me as nonsense. A square or two equates to a maximum of 60 seconds of pleasure. Why waste the guilt?

    At 11, I already knew that if I was going to feel guilty about food, it had better be in exchange for at least 20 minutes of pleasure. Maybe even a whole evening of it.

    Moderation did not come naturally to me. I can still remember the first time I made myself sick with eating. My small-town church held a dessert auction to raise money, and my table bought the turtle cake. I ate so much I thought I would puke. When I got home, I stuck a finger down my throat. I vaguely understood that forced puking was something bad, but I also felt really bad.

    I wasn’t bulimic; I just needed relief. I just wanted the nasty feeling to go away. Do other people eat like this, too? How much cake did my sister eat? Even at that early age, I was desperate to see the same behavior mirrored in others. Especially in my naturally thin, naturally moderate older sister.

    Three years later, flipping through Prevention, I again wondered if I was alone in this. Perhaps the world is chock-full of women who feel satisfied after two squares of chocolate. Maybe they’re really just in it for the antioxidants.

    Eight years later, “antioxidants” once again provided the green light. A daily glass of wine is actually good for you; just make sure it isn’t two or three! (Wink.) By this time, I was learning to use alcohol as a social lubricant, and that playful admonishment – anything in moderation – was just as mystifying as it had been at age 11; just as unattainable as it was at 8. 

    Because: A single rum and coke, mixed in cheap plasticware on my dorm room floor, would ease my nerves just enough to get me out the door. It certainly wouldn’t see me through a night of small talk with strangers, trying to be cool and relaxed, trying to be just the type of girl who floats between parties with a gaggle of friends. The type of girl who forgets about her exposed midriff, and whispers to her friends that she shaved down there “just in case.”

    By age 22, the jig was up. When it came to alcohol, I gave up the quest for moderation pretty early. Now, at three and a half years sober, I stare in wonder as my friends nurse a single drink over the course of an hour or two. I marvel when they order a coke instead of a beer – not because they can’t or shouldn’t drink, but because they just don’t want to. My friends often opt to join me in sober activities rather than hitting the bars. But isn’t that boring? Aren’t I boring? Wouldn’t you rather be drinking?

    After all: If I wasn’t an alcoholic, I’d drink every day.

    Even though I’ve quit drinking, I don’t pretend to understand moderation. I will never be someone who stops when they’re full. Not really. I might stop in public, dutifully cutting my burger in half on a first date — but I will not be falling asleep on an empty stomach. I want that sense of fullness, sedation. And sometimes it feels like food can get me there.

    This chronic need for fullness isn’t just expressed through food or alcohol, but also through work, relationships, appearance. It’s never quite enough. 

    Although I have worked a strong program of recovery, I still look with total bewilderment at people who embrace moderation. People who drink beer for the taste; dine at interesting restaurants just for the experience; go for months without sex because they haven’t found the “right person” to share it with (and can’t be bothered to settle for less). People whose daily exercise involves mindfully listening to their bodies. People whose nighttime routine involves mindfully acknowledging their thoughts.

    At the dessert auction, in the wake of the turtle cake, I needed to know that others struggled too. No, I wasn’t a sadist; I didn’t wish pain on others. I was just afraid of being alone. Even at eight years old, I needed to know that others sometimes eat, drink, sleep, scroll, and swipe themselves into oblivion. I needed to know I wasn’t alone.

    I wasn’t. And if you can relate to me, you aren’t either. We just feel empty sometimes.

    Take a second to conjure up a shiny moment. It’s important that in this moment you were not chemically altered. A moment when you thought, Wow. Maybe sober life isn’t so bad. Maybe sometimes, it’s even great. A moment in which you felt closer than ever to serenity, bliss, and pure, shameless embodiment.

    Have you got it yet? This is important.

    Last week, I stood at the top of Table Rock in Boise, Idaho, next to a Scottish stranger I’d met three days before. He and I had a brief, perfect, crystalline connection. We understood each other deeply. For a moment, my belly was fully of gratitude. For a moment, the sun was on my back, there was laughter in my eyes, and I did not feel empty.

    That’s my moment. And I didn’t have to scour my memory for it. That was just last week.

    Within 24 hours of flying home, the moment had evaporated. The connection was lost. I will never see the Scot again, and maybe I will never again look out over the City of Trees from Table Rock. The bliss was fleeting, but no more so than the emptiness that sometimes stands between me and sleep. For better or worse, nothing lasts.

    In moments when you feel the most empty, you may find it necessary to submerge yourself. So do that, if you must — but forgive yourself for it. Forgive yourself and never lose hope. Never forget your deep, sober, and startling capacity to feel full.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Life After “Blackout”: An Interview with Sarah Hepola

    Life After “Blackout”: An Interview with Sarah Hepola

    I was far more scared to fail — to have written a lousy book that people ignored — than I was embarrassed about people knowing that, say, I had sex with some random guy in Paris.

    Sarah Hepola’s book, Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget was released four years ago, in the summer of 2015. It quickly became one of the best-known and most well-received memoirs about addiction. 

    In Blackout, Hepola recounts her long-term love affair with drinking and the lifestyle that comes with it, and then describes how her relationship with booze transformed into something complicated and dark. Literally dark, as in frequent blackouts where she didn’t remember what she did the night before, or sometimes who the person in bed next to her was. This behavior had disastrous results: “I drank myself to a place where I didn’t care,” she writes, “but I woke up a person who cared enormously.”

    The Fix recently caught up with Sarah to discuss life, recovery, and what it’s like to share your most intimate moments with the world. 

    While I am sure that you were thrilled to have a book deal for Blackout, did you have any trepidation before the book was released about having all of your dark secrets out in the open? Was there ever a feeling of ”Oh my God, what have I done?”

    I crashed my car twice in the months before the book came out. Once I was pulling out of a tricky underground garage, and the second time I was in a middle lane I mistook for a turning lane, and I just smashed into an SUV. I really shouldn’t have been driving. 

    The anxiety is weird. On one hand, maybe no one will read the book. Great! But wait, then nobody reads your book. Your surest route to comfort is your surest route to failure. I was far more scared to fail — to have written a lousy book, that people ignored — than I was embarrassed about people knowing that, say, I had sex with some random guy in Paris. My dark secrets were an exposure I could control, in the sense that I got to say what was included in that book. But to expose your secrets and discover no one cares? That is sad, like someone yawning in the middle of your striptease. 

    I was also deeply worried the book would have a negative effect on family and friends. That my parents would be judged harshly, or one of my friends would feel mistreated. I volunteered for that kind of scrutiny, I cashed the check, but those people never asked for a spotlight. They only made the mistake of loving me. I think in nearly every case, those relationships were made stronger for the experience, but I worried myself sick over it, which probably tells you something about me, or my deficiencies as a writer, or my overdeveloped sense of responsibility for other people’s happiness. But the short answer to your question is that I didn’t sleep well for months.

    What was it like for you when your book first hit and became hugely successful and your whole scene was out there for all to see? 

    I think it was about 4 p.m. on a Wednesday when my editor called and told me the book was on the New York Times bestseller list. Some part of me had been waiting for that call since I was a little girl, and afterward I walked around in a daze, like: I’m going to be a New York Times bestseller for the rest of my life. No matter what crap I put out after this, no matter how I fail, they can’t take that away from me. The next day, I was like: But why is it in LAST place on the list? Can we nudge that up a bit? So I’d say I felt astonished, and still hungry.

    As for how it felt to have my “whole scene” out there, I don’t know. I’d been writing candid first-person essays for a while, so disclosure was a comfortable position for me, but the book took it to another level. On one hand, I was deeply gratified to hear people connect with the material. On the other hand, it can be a cold and drafty feeling when strangers behave as though they already know you, or you know them. It’s made dating weird. I use the dating apps, and I try not to let potential romantic interests know my last name before we meet, but it doesn’t always work out. To this day, I’m never sure what the person across the table knows about me when I sit down. Usually it’s nothing, though, because it turns out most people don’t read books, or care much about them. 

    Your book has been inspirational to a lot of folks. Do you have a lot of people who are in recovery or considering recovery contact you and talk about how you’ve inspired them?

    Yes, and it’s one of the coolest parts. The emails are often quite personal about their drinking problems, or blackouts, or the struggles they’re having, and you’d think I’d get tired of those emails, but I devour each one. I read them in line at airports and in grocery lines and sitting in my driveway at home, because I’m so riveted by the story I can’t be bothered to turn off the engine and walk inside. I just sit in my parked car with my seat belt fastened, scrolling and scrolling like wow, huh, you don’t say, that’s wild. 

    I’ve always loved people’s stories, especially their darkest ones, and I think the emails have been an antidote to the lonely disconnect I felt when someone knew about me, but I didn’t know them. Every once in a while someone asks if I can call, or help them get sober, and I decided before the book came out I wouldn’t do that. In fact, I knew I wouldn’t respond to most emails. I didn’t have time. But most people just want to just say their piece, and move along. I do occasionally get late-night emails that will say things like, “I’ve never told anyone this, and please don’t write me back.” A couple have said, “I need to tell someone this before I die.” It’s a very strange perch to sit on, to be the recipient of these little confessionals. Mostly secret drinking problems, some affairs, risky sex, that kind of thing. I do have to wonder how many people are drunk when they write me. But many — the majority, by far — are sober people who want to say, “hey this was cool” or “hey, this meant something to me.” I never get tired of it. I’ve heard from a fair number of people who stopped drinking after they read the book, and a few send me updates on their birthday. “I have one year.” “I have two years.” That’s incredibly special. 

    Where are you at with your recovery now? 

    I was five years sober when Blackout came out, and my recovery felt so strong. I mean, jeez, why wouldn’t it? I gave up drinking, and I got the life I always wanted — I’d written a book, the book did well, I was traveling the country, people were cheering, cash and prizes, what’s not to love? I wondered how my recovery would hold up after the excitement went away and life threw me challenges, and — well, recovery got harder. I’ve had some tough years.

    I don’t struggle with a craving for alcohol, because whatever was wired in me got disconnected. I’m better without booze, and I know it. But I struggle with a craving … for what, exactly? For more. For a love relationship that I have never managed to maintain, for a family I never put together in all the years of slipping off bar stools, for a connection I found in alcohol — temporarily and ultimately at a cost that was too steep — but that can be hard to make when you are a quiet writer who works from home and lives with a rotating cast of over-loved tabbies. Twelve-steppers would tell you I need a stronger connection to my higher power, and who knows? Twelve-steppers have often been right, in my experience.

    The book I’m working on now, which has taken a long, long time, is an attempt to make sense of the frustration I’ve felt over the last few years as I edged into my forties as a single woman. Those can be confusing years for a woman who hasn’t had kids yet, if she wanted them—which I always did—because the window is closing on your fertility, and it’s like: Should I give up, or never give up? I also think that’s a challenging stretch in your sobriety. I’ve heard years six to ten referred to as “the desert years.” I just got nine years last May, so maybe I’m almost out of my little Sahara. 

    I’ve never regretted my decision to quit drinking. What I regret is not quitting sooner. But you know what they say: It takes what it takes. For me it took until the age of thirty-five. 

    Since you started your recovery in 2010, what changes have you noticed in the drinking scene, and in the social scene in general?

    Well, I’m pretty checked out on “the drinking scene,” though everyone seemed jazzed about the Aperol spritz for a while. What took me by surprise was the growth of the non-drinking scene. Sober bars and sober parties and the “sober curious.” I’m curious to see where the recovery movement goes in the 21st century, because it’s becoming less tied to the spiritual solution of 12-step programs and more tied with health and wellness and lifestyle brands. Is that good? Bad? I have my suspicions, but we’ll see. 

    I’m certainly glad to see sobriety losing its stigma. I’m thrilled to be living in the golden age of seltzers. My refrigerator is filled with La Croix and Bubbly and Waterloo and my current favorite, Spindrift. I like that bartenders who used to be dicks about making a virgin cocktail treat it more like a challenge now. Do you like ginger? Do you like pineapple? That’s nice. Not long ago I went to this amazing restaurant in Oklahoma City called Nonesuch that had non-alcoholic pairings with their dinner that were arguably more interesting than the alcoholic ones. Incredible. I commend the creativity that went into that, but I’m also glad business owners are realizing the money they’ve been leaving on the table. Suckers like me will pay a LOT for pretty drinks with no booze in them. 

    A big change is that young people are drinking less. Fashions change. I suspect we’ll reach a place where the kind of drinking that defined my era — drink-till-you-puke binge drinking — will seem old-fashioned. We’re in an era of pot and pills and whatever behavioral addiction we are all currently acquiring through our phones. I did an event with Chelsea Handler not long ago, the famously vodka-swilling Chelsea Handler, and she’s a pot evangelist. She’s starting her own line, and she’s working on a strain that doesn’t give you the munchies. I’m not into marijuana, but whoa. That sounds like a growth industry. I’m watching mom friends put away the Chardonnay and pick up the one-hitters. 

    What projects are you working on now?

    The new book is another memoir. It pivots around questions I started asking as I edged into my forties, which also happens to be the years since Blackout came out: Why did I never get married? Why did I never have kids? Is singlehood something that happened to me, or did I choose it? Is my solitude a curse, or a gift? Something I should change, or accept? In a way it’s me working through what was underneath my drinking all along, which was loneliness.

    The book dips back into my past choices, and examines deep relationships — with men, with my family, with my writing, with my own body — to try to understand how my story has unfolded, at the same time it’s tracking a larger cultural story about women’s rising place in the world, along with shifting attitudes toward marriage, love and sex, parenthood, etc. I sold the book last summer to Whitney Frick at the Dial Press, which is part of Random House, and she’s been so insightful and patient with me because it’s shifted a bit as I’ve been working on it, as books often do. My hope is that we can push it into world in 2020, but that depends on me making my fast-approaching deadline (yikes), and whatever the fates have in store for the news cycle and the general mood with regard to the presidential election. Let me say this: I was stuck for a long time. But I’m writing as fast as I can.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • My Family Is My Greatest Disappointment

    My Family Is My Greatest Disappointment

    Even though my aunt knows I’ve scrubbed my stepmom from my life in an attempt to stop and reverse years of psychological abuse, manipulation, and mind fuckery, it’s a reality she refuses to accept.

    HE IS RISEN!

    This was the one-line email I woke up to on Easter Sunday. It was from my aunt, my dad’s youngest sibling. Growing up, my cousins and I agreed that she was the cool aunt, the one who took us to the Philadelphia Zoo in the summer and let us drink gallons of Pepsi when our parents weren’t around. But I wasn’t thinking about that when I opened her Easter email; instead, I was silently fuming over who she publicly copied. As I scrolled through the list, my stepmother’s address appeared directly under my dad’s and if I could see hers, that meant she could see mine.

    I imagined my aunt sitting in front of her computer screen. She would have entered my dad’s email first, because he’s her oldest brother. Immediately after, she’d insert my stepmother because she’s my dad’s wife. And I had no doubt my email was added under my stepmom’s because my aunt thought of the three of us—my dad, my stepmom, and me—as a family, as if we fell into a ditch and were covered over in cement. But we’re not, and we haven’t been for more than 20 years.

    And even though my aunt knows I’ve scrubbed my stepmom from my life in an attempt to stop and reverse years of psychological abuse, manipulation, and mind fuckery, it’s a reality she refuses to accept. As a result, my email address landed, free of charge, in my stepmom’s inbox. Whether she uses it or not is not the issue, it’s that she has it when my aunt knows I don’t want her to.

    This wasn’t the first time my aunt casually glossed over a boundary I erected to preserve my health and well-being.

    Years ago, there was an incident at my grandmother’s funeral. After the burial, everyone headed back to my aunt’s house for lunch. Both my dad and stepmom were there, and by that point, I’d been estranged from my stepmom for nearly a decade. As I climbed out of the car, my aunt, with camera in hand, corralled the three of us together on the front lawn. Looking at me she pulled her arms apart as if holding an accordion.

    “I want a picture of the three of you.”

    I looked at her and shook my head, “What?”

    “Please.” She said firmly. “I need a picture of the three of you.”

    My stepmom stood next to my dad, and I watched as she slowly rolled her shoulders in towards her chest and puffed her bottom lip out like a child on the verge of sticking her thumb in her mouth. Feeling outnumbered, I glared at my aunt, hoping she would give up and back off. But instead, she got angry. In a petulant fit, she slammed her arms down, stomped her right foot, and demanded, “I want a picture.”

    At that time, I didn’t know how to defend my boundaries. Saying no or walking away from my aunt at that moment would’ve been a blatant act of disrespect. I didn’t want to offend my aunt, but today I can’t help but wonder why it was okay for her to offend me.

    In the end, I did what I felt was the right thing to do; I walked over and stood next to my stepmom. Immediately, my body flared up in protest. My stomach cramped, my hands trembled, and my breath got caught in the back of my throat. My aunt raised her camera and took the shot. I don’t know about my dad or stepmom, but I know I didn’t smile.

    Back at my computer, I hit reply (not reply all) and mentally wrestled with my response. I was angry, but I didn’t know what I could tell my aunt about my relationship with my stepmom that I hadn’t already said before. And as my fingertips rested on the keyboard, I acknowledged, for the first time, what I was feeling was beyond anger. It was disappointment.

    I wanted to tell my aunt how disappointed I was in her. But then I realized it wasn’t just my aunt who let me down. It’s also my dad, who drank himself stupid, and my brothers, who in their fifth decade of life have yet to kick their drug habits. It’s a cousin who overdosed on heroin, and every uncle who died of alcoholism. It’s all the other addicts I’m related to who through the years traded blowjobs for crack. And it’s every other family member who, like my aunt, continues to look the other way because they don’t have the guts to acknowledge reality. I want to ask my aunt if she’s ever looked at the miserable picture she took of my dad, my stepmom, and me at my grandmother’s funeral and I want to know if she can see the truth now.

    As I mulled over my response, I decided the email I wanted to send—about how our family has been my greatest disappointment—wasn’t worth the effort. So, I replied to my aunt with a question I knew she’d be happy to answer.

    WHO’S RISEN?

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Lara B. Sharp's Transformation

    Lara B. Sharp's Transformation

    “AA is like parenting for adults. I got to have it as a child. My mom abandoning me in AA was the best thing she ever did for me.”

    Close your eyes for a sec and pretend you’re watching a movie. It’s Christmas Eve, 1975. Lara, a five-year-old girl with white-gold hair, big green eyes, and olive skin, is scurrying to keep up with her mother, a five-foot-eight beauty.

    Noni’s hair is black, her eyes blacker. Her stiletto heels click at a manic pace on the Manhattan pavement. With her large pupils and long-legged strides, she seems to be on speed but could also be soused. Her upper body teeters down Delancey Street. By rote she steps over drunks and around junkies without slowing, oblivious to her daughter racing behind. Lara mimics Noni’s dodges and weaves, also unfazed by the bodies littering the sidewalk. 

    Everybody Has a Screwed-Up Childhood, Right?

    The Lower East Side neighborhood was “kind of peaceful then. Heroin addicts are docile,” Sharp tells The Fix. “They don’t make trouble.” Yet, as she and her Mom laughed at the late shoppers, a speeding bullet whizzed by Sharp’s head.

    “It was so close it blew out my left ear. We never saw doctors so nobody knew I lost my hearing on that side.” Noni frequently exploded at Sharp for “ignoring” her, but the child couldn’t hear much of what was said. Noni mistook the lack of response as proof that Sharp was dimwitted, or willfully not paying attention.

    “Everybody has a screwed-­­­up childhood, right?” Sharp smiles and shrugs. “The only kids I knew were like me—living with a single mom, with no idea who their father was. We were like goldfish in water. You can’t see the water because it’s all you know.”

    When her friend Marisol bragged about getting a letter from her father, Sharp didn’t believe her at first.

    “I was so jealous. Not only did Marisol have a father, she knew his name and where he was. She could go visit him. They had conversations.” In Sharp’s five-year-old brain, it didn’t matter that Marisol’s father lived in prison.

    Today Sharp is a graduate of Smith College and has written for Teen Vogue, Longreads, and is a top writer on Quora. Two years ago, her “Mansplaining Pool Post” went viral.

    Poolside Johnny

    Sharp explained what prompted the post: “Women all know a Poolside Johnny. We’ve met him in a hundred different places in a hundred different ways.” She was engrossed, reading Rebecca Solnit’s book Men Explain Things to Me, when a man walked up and offered to be her mentor. 

    “It was so funny. I started thumb-typing everything he said.” When she told him her name was Gloria Steinem, he responded “it’s too Jewish.”   

    “So I said, ‘How about Betty Friedan?’ He just wasn’t getting it. He didn’t know who they were or that they both went to Smith College. While he’s still talking, I popped the conversation on the internet.”

    When she realized he was not going to stop talking, she left. 

    “I took a long shower,” she said. “When I get out, my phone is blowing up! Facebook alerts. My first thought was a terrorist attack. Then I see it’s my post. It kept going and going.”

    The famous post has now been written about in 6 languages and 20 publications including Glamour, Elle, The Daily Mail, Huffington Post and Refinery29. Sharp was surprised by the attention, especially from literary agents who wanted to rep her memoir, Do the Hustle, about growing up in foster care.

    Love Is…

    “My mom taught me what I needed to know. Like how to falsify documents—birth certificates, marriage licenses. We ran them through tea and let them dry on the window sill to make them look aged.” She also gave Sharp notebooks “to write everything down,” and great advice, like “Sometimes abortions are better than husbands.”

    Beautiful Noni attracted men and married some. Sharp has no idea exactly how many.

    Sharp self-published her first book at age five. She folded pieces of paper into a book and punched holes in it with scissors, tying it together with a ribbon. The book was a gift for Noni’s most terrifying husband, who verbally and physically abused both of them. 

    Sharp’s book was titled Love Is. Each page contained an answer: A hug. A kiss. Asking someone how they are. She thought if he had that information, he would be nice.

    “It didn’t go as planned,” said Sharp. “He accused me of plagiarizing. A five-year-old. So yeah, that was my first book, Love Is for a sociopath.”

    Noni’s struggles with alcohol and drugs started before Sharp was born. “She was that way my whole life, which I think is good because if you had a great parent and then they go downhill, I’m sure it’s a lot harder.”

    Sharp didn’t know any other life: “I met a girl outside of our circle who invited me over. It was strange when we walked in and her mother wasn’t lying face down in a puddle of her own body fluid. I was so surprised when the girl’s mother served sandwiches at a table with matching chairs.”

    Sharp recalls Noni’s feelings were so overwhelming, she couldn’t control her behavior: “When my mother had a feeling, she expressed it by throwing a chair. When I voiced a feeling, even if it was just, I’m hungry, I’m hot, I’m tired, my mother’s immediate response was, ‘No you’re not.’”

    AA and Foster Care

    When Noni found AA, Sharp learned there were people in the world who lived and behaved differently. 

    “Sitting in those rooms, I listened to people express themselves. They did it so clearly, appropriately. Well, despite the cursing,” she laughs. “What I mean is, they’d use words to say what had happened and how it made them feel and talk about what they were going to do. They’d say things like, ‘I’m going to sit with the feeling.’ That’s when, at seven, I realized, ‘Wow, you don’t have to react to a feeling.’”

    By age eight, Sharp understood that Noni wasn’t bad, she was sick. “AA is like parenting for adults. I got to have it as a child. My mom abandoning me in AA was the best thing she ever did for me.” After getting her court slip signed, Noni would leave Sharp in the meeting while she went to the bar across the street. In those rooms, Sharp learned that addiction was hereditary and decided she didn’t want to test her luck. She considers herself an “alcoholic waiting to happen” and has always been cautious about drinking.

    At nine, Sharp went into foster care. At every new place she was shuffled to, she asked if they knew how to reach her mother.” Responses ranged from “No, she couldn’t take care of you” to “She left you and isn’t coming back.”

    “Noni never came to visit me. No one did.” She tried every number in her notebook. None worked. Finally, she reached one of Noni’s friends who said Noni had moved to Florida.

    “Birthdays passed—no calls, no cards. By 12, I started to believe she’d abandoned me,” Sharp said, “I figured nobody wants me because I’m unlovable. I talk too much, get in the way. I’m a burden.”

    Sharp told me, “I think those social workers were trying to help but, as fucked up as my mother was, before foster care, I knew she loved me. Foster care took that away.”

    The places she lived all had one thing in common: Jesus. Most of Sharp’s foster parents were fundamentalist Christians.

    “I didn’t do Jesus. I wasn’t down with that. I knew this hippie guy from Egypt didn’t look like Kurt Cobain. That nonsense never sat well with me. And I’m glad my mother passed on her rabid femininity. She never yelled ‘Oh my God.’ For her it was, ‘Oh my Goddess.’”

    On the Grift

    Some of the families had money, but many just liked collecting a check. They’d take in as many kids as they could but they’d spend the money and not feed the foster kids.

    “We were always so hungry,” said Sharp. “Whenever they gave us anything to eat it was rice.”

    As she got older, her options narrowed.

    “Once you hit double digits, the number of homes that will take you in plummets.”

    The majority of older kids live in group homes, residential facilities. Or, if there’s no place to put them, foster kids are sent to detention homes. Sharp says at group homes, there was a lot of Christianity, too.

    Sharp credits those East Village AA meetings with teaching her that if a situation is uncomfortable remove yourself from the situation. At 14, she ran away. Homeless, she wound up sleeping in Washington Square Park where she met “Gay Cher,” a transgender drug addict and sex worker.

    “We were on the grift together,” said Sharp. “Gay Cher became my BFF. She gave me a makeover so I could pass for 18, get a job, and earn enough to rent an apartment.”

    The plan worked. Sharp found jobs in the nightclub business: waitress, hostess, party promoter and bartender. She tried dancing and recalls: “I was a decent go-go dancer but never great at pole dancing. But I made a lot of money from then on.”

    Doing the Next Right Thing

    On 9/11 Sharp lost friends when the towers fell. Aching to do something but feeling helpless, she credits AA for guiding her to “do the next right thing.” At 31, she examined her life and realized she wanted to quit bartending. For years, she’d been serving alcohol to customers who had drinking problems. But, without any formal education, her opportunities were limited. As an avid reader since the days Noni left her alone in libraries, she decided to take the GED. On the day of the test, she ended up in the wrong room and was given a college exam instead of the high school equivalency placement. She aced it, and enrolled in a two-year associate’s degree program for free. After that she won a scholarship to Smith College. With hard work and luck, she found her way to a career as a writer. 

    “I’m not angry at my mom anymore. I’m grateful that she abandoned me in libraries and AA. Now I have a loving and kind husband. We live in a beautiful home in a safe and friendly neighborhood. I learned everything I needed to know to take care of myself. And I’ve done a damn good job.”

    Lara B. Sharp reads an excerpt from her memoir in progress:

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • 7 Ways to Be a Rebel…in Sobriety

    7 Ways to Be a Rebel…in Sobriety

    Alternate rebellion can help shake up ennui and distress, otherwise known as life. It’s a great act of self-acceptance in a world that wants you to follow their dumb unwritten rules. Guess what, world? I do what I want. 

    People who have struggled with addiction and alcoholism are rebels by nature. If you disagree, you’re just proving my point. Getting into recovery and following the rules we need to follow if we’re going to stay sober and have a better life can feel like something’s missing – that old Eff You to the face of the world. But what if there were ways to rebel that didn’t leave a trail of dumpster fires and broken bones in your wake?

    Alternate Rebellion, which is taught in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), is the idea that there are healthy, nondestructive ways to rebel, or “act out.” There are many ways to feel like yourself without hurting yourself. It’s also highly effective as a tool for distress tolerance (a term that describes one’s capacity to cope with or withstand negative emotions or stressful conditions).

    What follows is a list of several acts of alternate rebellion I have found to be very satisfying, and a link to a more comprehensive (and less aggressive) list. We already know how to get creative under pressure when it comes to self-destruction. Now, that same energy and talent can be used in ways that make you feel good about yourself before, during, and after. After all, everything we do in life is because we’re searching for a certain feeling. There are so many more ways to get there than the limited world of self-harm.

    1. Cut off a friend you find boring

    I had a friend — I suspect most of us have had this friend — who was sweet and loyal and utterly boring. Half the time I didn’t know, or care, what the hell she was talking about. I think a lot of us feel like we have to take what we can get in terms of human connection because we’re so fundamentally unlovable, but we don’t. Even if, say, that friend was there for you during a really dark period in your life — you realize that was their choice, and of course they got something out of it too. Ignore their calls. Refuse to read the Twilight fan fiction they keep pushing on you. When they reach out to say “What happened? Are you dead?” Refrain from saying, “Bitch, you know I’ve been posting on Insta.” Say you just don’t feel like chatting right now. Because you don’t. To them. Revel in the fact that you just did something kinda bad. It feels good.

    2. Disagree with an overly confident person

    I cannot recommend this enough. Especially people who can’t handle being disagreed with. Los Angeles is lousy with them. And I hate to state the obvious, but they are usually straight white men. Easy to find. You don’t have to lie; I guarantee you hear things you don’t agree with every day. And just like that: Hey. I don’t agree. Smile. The smiling is the best part. If you want to present your opposing view, have at it, but often the look on their face and their sheer inability to deal with being disagreed with is enough.

    3. Get a tattoo 

    I went from having zero tattoos because commitment issues to having six in eighteen months because addiction issues. I regret nothing. That’s actually the first tattoo I got: je ne regrette rien. I am not French, but I do identify as a snob. There’s a great story behind it, which I will happily tell anyone hitting on me and also you. It was posted by a friend of mine who was dear to me in only the way someone you’ve followed on Tumblr for many years and only met twice in person can be. She wrote that she spoke French and nobody knew that about her and also that it’s the title of a gorgeous song, so she wanted to get it as a tattoo.

    It was one of her last posts. She died suddenly in her bed at the age of 32. So I got the tattoo to honor her, and because all the bullshit got me here. Also, it’s a chance to stick a needle in your arm, but in a good way. I love my tattoos. They make me feel like a badass. Some people say oh no, they are forever, but guess what? The body is so temporary. Also: lasers.

    4. Play uncool music with your windows down

    I’m partial to Miley Cyrus’s Party in the U.S.A. right now, but you do you, boo. Don’t play it so loud that you scare dogs and upset children, but, you know, a little loud. Just loud enough that you feel like you shouldn’t. And dance. Dance and don’t let anyone looking at you stop you. And don’t stop at a red light next to a Tesla containing an outwardly perfect person. Party. In the U.S.A.

    5. Travel somewhere you’ve always wanted to. Alone. Even if you don’t have “enough money.”

    Traveling alone is my jam. I always wanted to go to Italy, and in rehab I moaned over the fact that it wasn’t fair that I couldn’t drink wine in Italy. Guess what? Nobody was taking drunk me to Italy. Traveling alone is the best because you don’t ever have to compromise on what to do or where to go or what to eat – every rebel’s dream.

    In the past two years I’ve been to Costa Rica, Thailand, and Bali alone as well as a dozen states in the continental U.S. I frequently bring my dog, who flies and stays everywhere free because I have a letter from my therapist, another fantastic act of alternate rebellion. I love whenever someone tries to tell me I can’t have my pet somewhere. I quietly offer to show them paperwork, while in my head I’m screaming “EXCUSE ME HE’S AN EMOTIONAL SUPPORT ANIMAL HE KEEPS ME CALM.” I’ve been nervous about how I’m going to pay for my upcoming Italy/Greece trip, but writing this helped me remember that I had no idea how I was going to pull off any of the other international trips either. Financial insecurity is lame, so I cured it with another act of alternate rebellion. 

    6. Take a bath in the middle of the day

    I actually did this in the middle of writing this article and it felt fantastic. I was sitting here feeling resistant about doing one of my favorite things on earth, writing, and contemplating shutting the computer down and taking a nap, eating even though I’m not hungry, turning on the TV, or a host of other things that are mildly self-destructive and won’t help me feel good about myself in the long run. So I lit my best candles, threw some crystals in there, added a few handfuls of epsom salts and a liberal amount of lavender bubbles, and in went my Juul and I. Right before I did it, I thought: I’m totally not supposed to do this, but it isn’t hurting me or anyone, so YAY. That is pretty much the definition of an act of alternate rebellion. 

    7. Wear your jammies out in public

    A lot of people have strong opinions about people wearing sweatpants in public and I think it’s so outdated. It’s nice to be comfy, especially when you’re in distress. When I was drinking and using, sure, I’d look a mess and probably have unbrushed teeth and hair as I went in search of an open liquor store on any morning of the week, but it’s so lovely to put a little makeup on, brush my hair and teeth, and put on my most stylish and comfortable loungewear, and go out…anywhere. The grocery store? Oh yeah. The movies? Even better. Something about wearing sweatpants in public tickles me. Always has, ever since my college roommate said when we were hungover one Sunday, “You’re going to wear THAT to the dining hall?” Yes, bitch, I certainly am.

    My intention with this piece is not to convince others to do exactly what I have done, but to inspire your wheels to turn toward what feels good to you. Alternate rebellion can help shake up ennui and distress, otherwise known as life. It feels like a secret even though it’s often the opposite. It’s the individuation so many of us missed out on in our lost adolescences. More than anything, it’s saying yes to yourself, to your inner child, to exactly who you are exactly at this moment. It’s a great act of self-acceptance in a world that wants you to follow their dumb unwritten rules. Guess what, world? I do what I want. 

    A list of tiny alternate rebellions can be found here: https://www.dbtselfhelp.com/html/alternate_rebellion.html

    And more information on DBT here: https://behavioraltech.org/resources/faqs/dialectical-behavior-therapy-dbt/

    How do you rebel in recovery? Tell us in the comments.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Finding Meaning in Tragedy: Addiction, Trauma, and Activism

    Finding Meaning in Tragedy: Addiction, Trauma, and Activism

    Turning grief into activism is a powerful way to process and give meaning to the pain of traumas like the death of a loved one who struggled with addiction. It is on the heels of tragedy that we can make voices of change be heard.

    Grief is complicated, individually experienced, and universal. And humans are not the only creatures on this planet who mourn their dead. Scientists continue to debate how complex the grief of non-human animals is, but the evidence points to many species grieving the loss of their kin and mates.

    For millennia, scholars have been searching for a way to explain the depths of human grief. Plato and Socrates mused on what death and dying meant and philosophized about the grieving man. Sigmund Freud, often considered the father of modern psychology, began psychological research into mourning in his 1917 essay “Mourning and Melancholia.” In 1969, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross published her influential book, On Death and Dying. The popular five stages of grief were born from her work.

    Social Media Affects How We Grieve

    Loss can be traumatic. Whether expected or sudden, close or removed but symbolic, grief can take hold when we lose someone or something significant. We mourn and ritualize loss as a means to process it. There are culturally distinct rituals for mourning families; processing the emotions that come with grief can be guided by these rituals. These customs help us find meaning in our grief, even when we don’t consciously recognize it.

    As social media continues to become a more ingrained aspect of modern life, people are developing new rituals to mark tragic loss. The social norms of these rituals (such as posting photos, posting on the wall of the recently deceased, or sharing a status that talks about special memories) is always in flux. But one norm that is constant in the age of social media is our immediate collective knowledge of loss. There is an urgency to information and the negotiation of emotions in a shared space. This immediacy is changing the old social norms of letting some time pass before talking about causes of death.

    There is another related but distinct way people sometimes process grief, and that’s by turning tragedy into a call for activism. Smithsonian Magazine published a powerful piece titled “The March for Our Lives Activists Showed Us How to Find Meaning in Tragedy.” The author, Maggie Jones, describes the instant response students had because they knew “time was not on their side.” With on-demand information, the collective conscience quickly moves from one tragedy to the next as new headlines take over. These Parkland students were not being inconsiderate in their quick call to activism, they were creating meaning from tragedy and were bolstered by the collective grief that took shape immediately, in large part because of social media.

    The Trauma of Drug-Related Deaths

    Across the United States, drug overdose deaths have been on the rise, particularly those involving synthetic narcotics (primarily fentanyl). Overdoses caused by the most commonly used drugs are tracked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). And deaths due to overdose are underreported and misclassified. The stigma that surrounds addiction and the prejudice against people with Substance Use Disorder (SUD) relegates many overdose deaths to the world of whispers and rumors.

    My life has been marked by traumatic losses due to the effects of SUD. People close to me have overdosed, some survived and some died. I’ve also lost people to complications due to a lifetime struggle with Alcohol Use Disorder. Only recently have I seen these losses become conversation starters, where people will openly talk about the battles once fought by the brave folks who lost their lives to disease. Maybe that means we’re turning a corner in addiction stigma. Maybe we’re opening the door for people to feel less shame in talking about their struggles while they still have a chance to change the course of their lives. We can pay homage to our lost loved ones by sharing their stories and removing the stigma that may have kept them from receiving the help they needed.

    Recently a person in recovery told me that their co-workers do not know about their history and they will never tell them because multiple times they have made comments like “drug addicts are scum and should be shot” and “addicts are worse than rabid dogs.” The negative perceptions of people with SUD grated on this person and fed their alcoholism in a detrimental way. They believe they are simply a bad person who does not deserve help because addiction cannot be cured. This is a falsehood perpetuated by ignorant and fearful people.

    When we lose people and we share the entirety of our memories about them, from childhood to work life, and we share the truth of their battles with addiction, we are combating these dangerous preconceptions and prejudice.

    Overdoses aren’t the only way addiction kills. According to drugabuse.gov, “drug-related deaths have more than doubled since 2000 [and] there are more deaths, illness, and disabilities from substance use than from any other preventable health condition.” SUD is a diagnosable and treatable condition that deserves as much recognition as any other health issue for which there are awareness campaigns and funds devoted to find treatments to save and improve lives. Substance use disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental and behavioral disorder.

    Tragedy as a Call for Activism

    In a world where so many people process aspects of their grief online and where tragic events unfold live for millions of people around the world at the same time, finding meaning in tragedy is necessary for our mental health. When we experience trauma, we are at risk of developing post-traumatic stress. Trauma can manifest as a strong psychological or emotional response to a distressing or disturbing event or experience. We can be traumatized when we lose someone; we can even be traumatized when we hear that someone we care for went through a terrifying ordeal. If our ability to cope is overwhelmed, that is trauma. When someone develops post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), their sense of self in relation to the world around them has become damaged. Trauma has the potential to shatter our beliefs about our place in the world and our sense of safety.

    Finding meaning in tragedy can go a long way in preventing the development of post-traumatic stress and can be a marker in recovery from PTSD.

    In our changing experience of bereavement, tragedy is a call for activism. It is on the heels of tragedy that we can make voices of change be heard. Tragedy creates space in which people listen. Frequently, we want to connect with others when we experience loss; sharing grief reduces its intensity. Turning grief into activism is a powerful way to process and give meaning to the pain of traumas like the death of someone who struggled with addiction.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • How I Learned to Show Up for Life Without Alcohol

    How I Learned to Show Up for Life Without Alcohol

    Sobriety means—or will come to mean—different things for different people. But I can attest to one thing: The path is beautiful, and the difficulties you may encounter along the way are worth it.

    You would think that being smart enough to get into an elite university would mean I’d be “smart enough” about recognizing the signs of my disease. It took me a nearly fifteen-year drinking career, a six-year engagement, at least five psychiatric hospital visits, and maybe fifty face-to-face run-ins with actual, imminent death before I knew something had to change. 

    Forced to Change

    This time, the change would have nothing to do with my intellectual rigor, the dynamic quality of my ideas, or really anything in terms of my personal pursuits. Neither was this about a spiritual makeover of sorts, or a renewed commitment to my health. I was forced to change or face the end. I hadn’t even turned 30 yet.

    My engagement—a union with an emotionally absent partner, the result of my desperate need to not be alone with my demons—was becoming more and more codependent, unhealthy, and financially dominating, and less and less loving, protecting, viable. Still, we smiled in all of our pics. 

    The hardest thing to admit was that I could no longer pursue “the life of the mind” when my own mind was lost—null—from an almost continuous state of being under the influence.

    The process of recovery has not been easy, even three years down this road. While I have since become comfortable not drinking, and with telling people that I don’t drink, it wasn’t always that way. There were times I felt not only uncomfortable but sad, and at times jealous or angry, wishing I could have a drink. There were times of full-body anxiety that made the sober life seem like another kind of death sentence. 

    But I am fiercer now. I defend my right to be well. 

    Recovery as Self-Love and Self-Preservation

    When Audre Lorde said that self-love is an act of political warfare, I think part of what she meant is that if I care about myself, then I have to defend my sole, autonomous house—my body. I take Lorde’s words to heart when I think about my own recovery—that I indeed have had to become defensive about my health. Being in active recovery is a lifelong process of sticking up for yourself—your best self and your worst self. It is also a way of being that demands you treat your body as a temple, rather than an outhouse. 

    Now that I haven’t touched a drink in three years, not only have the clouds lifted, but I know what to do when life gives me rain. 

    Today, I have to be diligent about my health and about the truth of my alcoholism. It is a disease with branches in the family tree(s). It is also a disease that can go from dormant to full-fledged before you’ve had time to give it a name.

    The myth of drinking as self-care (at least for some of us) was apparent in the ways I had been taught to “decompress” from the stressors of graduate studies, a place made all the more difficult to navigate as a black, mixed-race woman (who has struggled with anxiety, depression, disordered eating, and of course drinking—my favorite form of self-love and self-abuse). 

    The truth is that I loved drinking enough to have developed a habit of it. At the time, I loved what drinking did for me (despite the pain of what it was doing to me). It brought me a social life, it furnished me with (false) self-confidence. 

    It also stole time from me. So many years spent in various states of relative alarm—how to get my drinks for the day and morning after, if I had enough money (somehow I always did), would I be able to last through that 12-step meeting without a drink?

    Clearly, I wasn’t ready to heal yet. 

    I can’t tell you when I became ready, or precisely what day it was; I had been on and off the wagon so many times that I’d stopped believing in myself. 

    What I did want to believe in was the line of thinking that told me I could control my disease and drink like normal people. If I could control it, maybe I would be “cured.”

    Seizures, Psych Wards, and Liver Failure

    My thinking changed when I had my first withdrawal-induced seizure. 

    Or was it after my second major stint in a psych ward? When did I become ready to change? Was it when I resorted to hiding liquor in shampoo bottles? Oh, I know—it must have been when my eyes started to turn yellow (though I remember still drinking—at that point, having to drink—in the face of these obvious symptoms of liver failure).

    Eventually, the dreadful condition of being caught in the throes of all kinds of dependency caught up to me, as they do for the luckier alcoholics among us. 

    When you’re in the midst of active addiction, it’s the drug that keeps you “alive” and “well.” But when you’re in recovery, you see the drug for what it is—the thing that is killing you and keeping you unwell. To complicate matters, your drug was your best friend—the friend who was there when you were stressed, sad, or having suicidal thoughts… never mind that it was the same friend who implanted these thoughts in your mind to begin with. 

    Not everyone thinks of alcohol abuse as an illness or disease, and that’s okay. What isn’t okay is the promotion of cute slogans like “wine not?”—in a world where more women are abusing alcohol than ever before. 

    Getting sober from alcohol coincided with my decision to withdraw from my studies abroad. Becoming dependent on alcohol had largely destroyed my independent spirit—the same one that had guided me to want to study abroad in the first place. 

    For years I had chosen alcohol as my drug of choice—what I “used” when things were going well, not well, and also when I was well, or unwell. My kind of drinking was pure self-destruction—mind you, I had continued to tell myself it was a feasible form of self-care. Plus, I deserved it. At the end of the day, if you worked hard, you deserved some kind of reward, didn’t you? That’s why they invented martinis, wasn’t it?

    I’ll spare you the details of my last hospital stint, but it was arduous, and at times left me hopeless, wanting to burn the wagon if possible. Now I had to learn to live and cope with life without that substance, and accept that in the end, the drug chose me.

    I Made It Out Alive… And I’m Thriving

    Fast forward three years, and what I really want to talk about is all the amazing things that can happen when you’re not drinking—being willing and able to forge authentic relationships with people, for example, and learning what it means to heal emotions through the body. Oh, and meeting people, whether romantically or as friends, does get weird, though in some ways more exciting. 

    The list is long, and I am learning new things about myself, but I think it imperative we put a new spin on recovery rhetoric—not all of it is a struggle, there is so much to take delight in. There are things that will pleasantly surprise you (like getting a real good night’s sleep). 

    I eventually accepted that my kind of sobriety from alcohol would have to be a total one.

    Because the severity of alcoholism lies on a spectrum, there are people who can drink alcohol and not become addicted (must be aliens), there are folks (total weirdos) who can just stick to one drink. But I know after many years of trying and lying to myself, that I am not one of them… and never will be. 

    Likewise, there are many ways to get sober and no one right path. Sobriety means—or will come to mean—different things for different people. But I can attest to one thing: The path is beautiful, and the difficulties you may encounter along the way are worth it.

    This summer I am celebrating three years (okurrrrrrr?!) of sobriety from alcohol. I do not define myself any longer by my disease. Of course, I work to ensure I never lose sight of the fact that my disease isn’t ever “going away,” but recovery sure beats bodily warfare, chronic sickness, and a fear of the future. 

    Today, I identify as an artist, a writer; and more specifically as a Catholic witch, poet, and intuitive. If you told me during my drinking years that I would one day not only make it out alive but drink-free for over 1,000 days, I’d say you were lying. But here I am, not just surviving but thriving. I have my sad days, but I let them be what they are. It’s good to cry sometimes. It’s good to feel your feelings. Now, I have an array of tools and ways for navigating those feelings, especially when I think of the darknesses of my past. But mostly, and most importantly, I feel excited for the future. Now, I show up to life. And as long as I can show up to life (and for life), my intuition tells me it is bound to be an amazing ride.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • In Recovery, on Suboxone, and in the Weed Business

    In Recovery, on Suboxone, and in the Weed Business

    In print and online, I preached cannabis. In life, I practiced therapy and Suboxone.

    I had a few days left on my Suboxone script when I interviewed Justin “Bong King.” He was a professional bong-racer and self-described champion of the competitive smoking circuit. An affable guy, nonetheless his was an image of American cannabis long past, pushed aside by marketing grads and stay-at-home moms who sold branded CBD and touted the benefits of micro-dosing. 

    But Justin drew a crowd, and an entourage to boot. And his natural talent for hitting the fastest gram of weed would corner me into compromising my recovery.

    Throughout my career as a cannabis journalist, I’ve kept silent about my sobriety. Finding freelance gigs is hard enough without the added burden of having to be that guy. Besides, if I learned anything from active addiction, it was how to lie at my job.

    Covering Cannabis Events and Lying About My Sobriety

    But as time passed, I felt withdrawn and disconnected. My recovery had no place in the cannabis industry. Moreover, medication-assisted treatment (MAT) seemed anathema to its goals, according to experts and the news. Rep. Matt Gaetz openly questioned whether buprenorphine and methadone are “a more effective offramp [to opioid use disorder] than medical cannabis.” CNN announced that CBD cures heroin addiction. And the editors of Leafly figured out how to combat the opioid crisis with medical cannabis two years prior.

    After 20 years, recovery had finally become routine. As a cannabis journalist; as an editor in chief — so had my lies.

    Some lies were easy. Weekly therapy appointments usually coincided with editorial meetings or deadlines. I worked from home, my boss was lax, and anyway, I kept hours around the clock. Monthly visits to my psych and 30-day Suboxone refills upped the number of undisclosed appointments I logged, but still, no one seemed to care.

    On assignment was a different story. I covered cannabis expos or dispensary openings — events where the drug laws were lax and the supply was liberal. At a hotel in Hell’s Kitchen, I spent three nights alone avoiding networking galas and after-parties hosted by music moguls turned industry entrepreneurs. In the world’s largest dispensary off the Las Vegas strip, I dodged more questions than I asked when leaving empty-handed. With hand waves and head shakes and less-than-assertive no’s, I passed over pot by lying about my sobriety.

    But face to face with Justin “Bong King,” there was nowhere to hide — no hotel room to run to, no door from which to make a quick exit. There was a crowd around us, boxing us in as he finished his gram smoking demonstration. I shook his hand and stumbled over my words as I signed off the segment on camera.

    It was either a contact high or placebo effect, or maybe just panic anticipating the piss test I would take in the next few days.

    Intensive Outpatient: 12 Steps and Scoring Drugs

    When I had about two months left in my treatment program, I walked out of group for good. It was an intensive outpatient program; a six-month IOP run by Philly’s NHS that championed the Big Book and 90 days. For a minute it worked, but it’s drug rehab mired in a puritan past. The 12 steps are great, but they shouldn’t be a front-line defense.

    Besides, all I did there was make friends and score drugs. Thirty addicts in a room is an excellent opportunity to network and learn.

    By Easter Sunday that year, I felt broken. I was in a dirty motel on Route 1, hopped up on Benzedrex cottons and a $60 baggie of hex-en I purchased online from China. After 20 years of addiction, I had no drug of choice, save for anything that made me high.

    My wife and kids back home slept together in one bed, a little less worried than the last time I disappeared. I was out of work and estranged from everyone. My best friend joined AA and realized I was one of his people, places, and things.

    All I had was my family, and I was losing them too.

    One lie allowed my addictions to grow without the worry of what would happen tomorrow. It’s the lie I told myself when I stole my ex-wife’s Dilaudid two days after her shoulder surgery. It’s the lie that made me laugh when I snorted enough Adderall to make my nose blue. And it’s the same lie that made me indignant when my ex-girlfriend’s brother became angry that I was a sloppy drunk in front of his small children.

    On the Monday after Easter, I drove home before sunrise. It was dark and muggy and difficult to see through my tears and dilated pupils. When I got home, I faced my wife and children and ended the lie that had followed me through two decades of addiction.

    “I can’t stop,” I whispered. That week, I discussed MAT options with my doctor. I’ve been in recovery since that day.

    Cannabis as the Magic Bullet for the Opioid Crisis?

    Tyler Sash won the Super Bowl in his rookie year with the New York Giants. At the time, he didn’t know he only had a few years left to live. A sixth-round draft pick out of Iowa, he overdosed on a combination of methadone and hydrocodone at the age of 27.

    “[He] asked if he could smoke marijuana for his pain like the other players,” recalled his one-time girlfriend, former Miss Iowa and reality-show contestant Jessica VerSteeg. I interviewed VerSteeg when she was promoting a new blockchain-bitcoin something-or-other product in the cannabis space. She recounted Sash’s tragic tale during our interview, explaining how it became the backbone of her business.

    “I wanted to change the way that other people saw cannabis,” she said.

    VerSteeg’s article drew in readers, as did most CEO and celebrity interviews. Her story reminded me of how lonely my secrecy about my recovery had become. I often wished I could reach out and say that I understood. There are millions of people with substance use disorders, and we’re all so alone.

    But like most of the executive class in the cannabis industry, her hot take on opioids ended up being bullshit. Conventional wisdom in the cannabis industry had run somewhat amok on this topic, and it forced me, I felt, into compromising everything.

    There was the DEA agent who was so disgusted with opioids that he became a cannabis executive. Without irony, he told me that more research would prove the plant’s medicinal value. The head of an “innovation accelerator” in my city held a conference on the role of medical cannabis in the opioid crisis. He quoted research showing that states with medical cannabis laws have lower rates of opioid overdose deaths. Cannabis, they were convinced, would solve the opioid epidemic.

    But Where’s the Evidence?

    “Morphine, when it was introduced, was promised to cure what they called alcoholism at the time,” Dr. Keith Humphreys told me. A professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, he’s also worked at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy under Presidents Bush and Obama. “Then, people got addicted to morphine, and cocaine was introduced.”

    He continued: “In general, there’s been this enthusiasm of if we just add a different class of addictive drug on top then that will drive the other addictions out. Generally, what happens is we get more addiction to that drug, and we still have the original problem.”

    I spoke with Dr. Humphreys after reading his research on cannabis laws and opioid overdose mortality rates. Contrary to conventional wisdom, he found the correlation to be spurious at best. It’s alarming — though not unsurprising — to see the industry ignore his findings. Several states, including Pennsylvania, where I live, approved opioid use disorder as a qualifying condition for medical cannabis.

    “I couldn’t recommend something medically without clinical trials, well-controlled by credible groups [and] checked for safety,” Dr. Humphreys said. He explained that in the case of cannabis, there was little more than these state-level correlational studies. “None of that has been done.”

    “I’m amazed and disappointed that we don’t care more about people who are addicted to heroin [and other] opioids, that we would wave through something like [medical cannabis] without making sure that it will help people, not hurt them,” he continued, noting that cannabis has shown no efficacy as either a replacement for or an adjunct to any MAT therapy.

    Listening to Dr. Humphreys made me realize how little I stand up for what I believe. Sometimes, when you’re an addict and you lie so much, you lose any sense of truth.

    Tyler Sash’s family asked Jessica VerSteeg to stop using his name to promote her business. According to a report in the Des Moines Register, they didn’t want his name associated with drugs anymore, neither opioids nor marijuana. VerSteeg refused, repeating the story she told me to several news outlets.

    For two years, I wrote about and reported on the emerging cannabis industry while hiding my ongoing recovery. In print and online, I preached cannabis while practicing therapy and Suboxone.

    Even in recovery, you can still have regrets.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Heidi Fleiss Talks Sex, Drugs, and Saving Macaws

    Heidi Fleiss Talks Sex, Drugs, and Saving Macaws

    I’ll get high to hide my pain and as an excuse. It’s stupid, just plain stupid. I’ve never known drugs to help anyone. It’s so crazy to hate it so much but to do it still. I don’t understand that insanity.

    The “Hollywood Madam” lives today with scores of noisy exotic birds in the small town of Pahrump, Nevada. Remembering her prison days, she now dedicates herself to freeing macaws from their cages.

    When Fleiss was arrested in 1993 for charges including attempted pandering, her escort service employed 500 beautiful girls-next-door who were like porn stars in the bedroom. They charged clients what today would be almost $3,000 a night, and Fleiss grew rich by keeping 40 percent of those earnings. Partying hard and living in the fast lane led to struggles with addiction.

    Although she never served time for her work in the sex industry, a federal tax evasion case led to 20 months in prison in Dublin, California. While incarcerated, she longed for her freedom; this longing served as the genesis of her efforts with macaw rescue.

    We recently got the inside scoop from Heidi on prison, reality TV, addiction, and her mission to free birds.

    The Fix: Today, your passion is providing freedom to dozens of macaws, beautiful parrot-like exotic birds that you live with on the outskirts of Pahrump, Nevada. You describe how seeing a caged bird reminded you of your experience in prison. Is being of service to these birds who once were forced to live in boxes a reflection of personal redemption?

    Heidi Fleiss: You pretty much got it. After prison, I did see the world differently. I saw a beautiful macaw in a cage, and it really bothered me. I asked the owner when was the last time it was out of its cage. She said, “I don’t know. Maybe 20 or 30 years.” The bird actually had dust on it. I realized I could not go on with my life, knowing that bird was still in that cage. It seemed so awful to have wings and be stuck in a cage, of all things. Imagine 45 years in a basement with another 45 years to go.

    It has never been properly addressed. We are a civilized society. How can we do this? The subjugation of this species is selfish and self-absorbed. It’s a tortuous, bleak existence. It’s so painful for them because their bodies aren’t meant for sedentary lives. They struggle with this lonely, painful existence. Do you really think these animals with wings are on this earth to say bad words and to dance for us? It’s disgusting, and everybody should find it offensive. Are we really that selfish?

    Before prison, I never paid attention to or cared about a bird in a cage. I lived with this one rich boyfriend, and we had lots of birds in cages. I’d walk by them every day, and I looked at them like I looked at pictures on the wall. It didn’t matter. Now that I’m aware, I can’t ignore it. I have to be proactive. I rescue them from parrot prison and give them a life outside of a cage. (In the background, macaws screech loudly.) They need to have some other option beyond living and dying in a cage. Today, I am that option. I did not want to do this with my life. I still do not want to do this, but somebody has to do it.

    In terms of your attempts to maintain your sobriety, you say, “I struggle. I struggle with my addiction. And it’s tough because I’ll be doing so well. And I don’t know what will make me flip.” When you have fallen off the proverbial wagon in the past, what triggered you? What tools do you use today to avoid such triggers?

    I am just coming off of a slip right now. I’m barely off of one. Obviously, there are some personal demons that I can’t confront. Sometimes I cannot accept the mistakes that I’ve made. Dealing with a relapse seems easier than continuing to deal with the pain. I’ll get high to hide my pain and as an excuse. It’s stupid, just plain stupid. I’ve never known drugs to help anyone. It’s so crazy to hate it so much but to do it still. I don’t understand that insanity.

    Was the business a pure money-making venture for you? How many of the women involved in the sex business view it purely as a money-making business, and how many of the women struggle with substance use or behavioral disorders like love addiction and sex addiction? Do you think a madam is to a sex addict what a dealer is to a drug addict?

    Absolutely not. In any professional field, whether it’s the medical industry or the legal industry or education or the sex industry, you’re going to find the same amount of problems: sex addiction, drug addiction, hang-ups from being molested, or this and that. You’re going to find just about the same ratio that I went through in the sex industry with just about any of these other professions. You really will.

    As for the sex addiction question, that’s the man’s point of view. They think the women do it because they love it. They don’t do it because they love it. They do it for money. And they are introduced to a world they would never have experienced otherwise. Who else gets to spend a summer yachting on the French Riviera? The people that worked for me traveled the world, and many had incredible, unique experiences. It’s very hard for people to understand the world that I was in. When you are dealing with the wealthiest people in the world, what happens is rare and beyond expectation. A million dollars is nothing to a billionaire. It’s hard to fathom that kind of life when it’s combined with having a good time.

    You don’t have to have a golden pussy to get a hundred thousand dollars. It has nothing to do with that. Rather, it’s about the circles you travel in, and I was able to access the people with that kind of money. That’s what it’s all about, and it’s really hard to understand the way money works at that level. All that stuff was a long time ago, it was a lot of fun, but it seems silly now to me, particularly in light of what I do today.

    Speaking to Vice, you said that the public humiliation you experienced on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew was actually therapeutic. Can you help us understand how it was therapeutic to have dirty laundry aired on national television? 

    When I was asked to do that show, I was like no way. I’m not going to be humiliated on television. You have to be a real idiot to do that show. There’s no way on earth. I turned it down, and then they contacted me again. I changed my mind. I don’t know why I decided to do it, but it was probably the five hundred thousand dollars. It turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life, and I wish they would start doing that show again.

    Really?

    Yes.

    Why?

    I think it’s really helpful to people both on and off the show. Yes, you’re watching someone else’s train wreck, but that’s what we always do. I don’t think it’s any more exploitive than anything else. You learn when you watch other people that you’re not alone whatever you’re going through and that there might be a way out.

    Dr. Drew is a genuine person and a great guy. He truly cares, and I found him to be one hundred percent sincere. He’s the real deal. He’s not a fraud or a phony. Ever since I first met him when I was 27 and sent to my first rehab, he’s been a consistently wonderful guy.

    You are famously quoted as saying, “I was too lazy in bed to be a prostitute.” Did this laziness change when crystal meth entered the picture? Was your sexual relationship with Tom Sizemore as charged and powerful as Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew made it out to be?

    I hate crystal meth. It still plagues me. I don’t see it as a sex drug. I think if you connect with someone, you connect with someone. I did crystal meth before and after I was with Tom, and I didn’t have these freakily intense sexual relationships. If you do not want to sleep with someone, drugs certainly do help. They really help.

    Personally, when it comes to sex, I don’t want to see anyone disrobe in front of me again. When it comes to sex, I’m done. I don’t want to have sex ever again. And this is from someone who’s slept with everything and everyone. I slept with a guy who rode on the Queen Mary when it was a ship, and I’ve only known it to be a tourist attraction. I’m not saying that I’m a new virgin or anything, but I don’t even want to have sex ever again. It doesn’t matter to me at all.

    Do you think people can be addicted to sex? What about addicted to love? Do you believe that you have suffered from sex addiction or love addiction?

    I definitely have never had a sex addiction. I’ve had a sex drive, and I’ve had lots of sex, it’s never dominated my life. I’ve felt that I’ve got to get laid or I got to have sex or my life will fall apart. That’s not me. Mind you, I’ve had mornings where I’ve woken up and looked over to find someone in my bed, and I have to ask myself, “Is that a boy or a girl?” Never ever has sex been the driving force in my life. I think the word “addiction” can mean a lot of things. People always talk about moderation, but I don’t believe in any of that. If you want to ruin your life, just do drugs.

    Love addiction can be co-dependency. I know women who do not feel complete unless they have a man in their life. I also know girls who go out at night with one purpose in mind. If they don’t get laid, then no matter what happens, it’s not a good night. It’s only good if they get laid. Father complexes and mother complexes drive those behaviors. They feed off of abandonment issues and get even complex.

    Also, my girls were not sex addicts or love addicts. They were prostitutes, and they were professionals. I went for the best. I wanted the cover of Seventeen magazine. None of them were underage, but I wanted the girls that looked like cheerleaders. I wanted the girls that knew how to fuck like a porn star but looked like the girl next door. (The squawking of the macaws intensifies.)

    You once lived a life that most people cannot even imagine. You told Vice about the parties at your house in the Hollywood Hills, saying, “They didn’t have sex for money at my house, but they would come to hang out. It was social… You’ve got people like Jack Nicholson and Mick Jagger partying at your house… I remember coming home, and Prince was dancing in my living room.” Do you miss those days?

    I remember walking out of my bedroom to see Prince dancing in my living room. I thought it was way cool, and I couldn’t even stick around to enjoy it. I had to go to a Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow to check in so I could manage my business. It was too loud at my house to get anything done. There were a lot of good times, but I also worked hard.

    Do I miss it? (There is a pause as a macaw screeches in the background.) Look, when you’re young and a girl in Los Angeles, it’s hard to do any better than I did. For a long time, I had the best of everything: food, sex, drugs, people, clubs, hotels, and more. I was having a good time, and it seemed like the party never ends.

    As a woman gets older, it’s harder and different. When those things don’t work anymore, it changes you. The only thing I miss about Los Angeles today is there’s a lot of opportunity there. I don’t miss that life even when these birds are driving me crazy. I’ve had a great life and good times, but saving these birds right now is the only thing that matters to me.

    (This interview was edited for length and clarity.)

    View the original article at thefix.com