Answer Addiction

Tag: Features

  • Alcohol, Inflammation, and Chronic Illness: My Story

    Alcohol, Inflammation, and Chronic Illness: My Story

    For my particular condition as well as other inflammatory chronic illnesses, alcohol can actually mess up your gut flora, which is where many diseases originate.

    During graduate school—about seven years ago now—I was partying wildly. I was part of a theatrical show, which had me out late very often. Drinking was a sort of currency; it’s how we bonded, how we synced our feelings, how we operated. Alcohol was almost always used as a way to create our art; we believed the night was magical only if filled with wine and sparkling cava and fancy martinis. And I don’t blame us. We were young and energetic and in love with our lives.

    But as someone with both serious education debt and a full-time job, it was hard to balance my copious drinking. Real life—the daytimes—were sober and slow, and my evenings were wild and loud and, yes, usually drunk. Too many mornings were impossible. Too many days I’d show up late. Too many conversations half-remembered, blurry, embarrassing.

    And then my chronic illness kicked in. The official diagnosis was about a year ago, although I had been experiencing symptoms for years before that—and alcohol only ever made them worse, I’ve now realized.

    Living with a Chronic Disease

    I have ankylosing spondylitis (AS). It’s an inflammatory and degenerative spinal disease that causes immobility, disfigurement, and issues with my joints, eyes, stomach, and heart. Inflammation is the name of the game with this condition: my immune system attacks itself, leading to painful inflammation that, if left untreated, could prevent me from walking and moving in the future.

    Before my diagnosis, “wellness” wasn’t even in my vocabulary. I didn’t sleep enough, I didn’t take care of my mental health, I didn’t stretch or work out often, I didn’t put clean foods into my body. And I certainly didn’t look at alcohol as a problem.

    Around the time I hit my late 20s, I stopped wanting to be so wild, so I cut back on the partying and the drinking. I suffered from all sorts of AS-related symptoms—horrific pain, joint immobility, digestive issues, constant eye inflammation—which forced me into periods of rest. I realized that a life without all that alcohol was a better life. Not only was I sleeping more often, but my pain management was easier. I was able to quiet my mind, go inward, and find and develop tools to soothe myself. Life was better when I wasn’t filling my calendar with endless parties that were all centered around the idea of getting wasted.

    I don’t regret my younger days and I don’t judge people who drink. I still adore a few glasses of wine here and there, but I have learned that alcohol is something that doesn’t necessarily contribute to a person’s wellness.

    For me, and for many other people dealing with chronic illness, inflammation is our enemy and we must be proactive in preventing it. If alcohol plays a role in inflammatory processes, we need to know about it so we can make informed decisions about our health.

    What Is Inflammation?

    Inflammation is the body’s response to harmful toxins or infections. Acute inflammation is good. It protects you when you’ve got a cut by sending white blood cell soldiers to the area. Chronic inflammation is very bad. It creates a state of constant internal fighting.

    According to the Canadian Institute of Health, “Despite its crucial role in protecting the body, inflammation can also be inappropriate and ‘misplaced’ leading to a wide range of chronic conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, asthma, and multiple sclerosis. Inflammation also plays an important role in the most common causes of death worldwide, including atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, cancer, and chronic obstructive lung disease. Taken together, it is clear that inflammation contributes broadly to chronic illnesses.”

    Alcohol and Inflammation

    According to the World Journal of Gastroenterology, chronic usage of alcohol can lead to systemic inflammation.

    But what about less-than-chronic use of alcohol? According to Vincent M. Pedre, M.D. at mind body green, “Large amounts of alcohol can create intestinal inflammation through multiple pathways.” For my particular condition as well as other inflammatory chronic illnesses, alcohol can actually mess up your gut flora, which is where many diseases originate.

    When I got serious about taking care of my body, I spent a lot of time learning about the potential factors that could make me worse. I didn’t want to give up on all pleasures in life, and I’m not practicing complete abstinence, but I have cut drastically back on alcohol. If I didn’t, my pain levels would be through the roof.

    Learning to Take Care of Myself

    Part of growing up and taking accountability has been making this one particular change. I now say no to “another glass of wine” more often than I say yes. I now have to decline nights out because my health is a priority. And I now try to create experiences that don’t center on alcohol. I won’t lie and say it’s easy—because it’s not. Our society loves alcohol and most social and work functions utilize alcohol as a lubricant and a sort of badge of bonding. But knowing what’s at risk is more important than ordering that fancy martini.

    As a child of two people who suffered through addiction, I am aware of my own potential downfall when it comes to addictive behaviors. I try to be both cognizant and accountable when it comes to caring for my future health, and my body today.

    Living with a chronic illness means constantly managing your output, your pain, your relationships, your doctor appointments (or lack of healthcare). Adding dangerous variables that could erase all that effort just isn’t worth it to me anymore.

    Some people, especially those who live with chronic pain, use alcohol to self-medicate and manage their pain. We desperately need more advocacy and resources around this issue. According to Andrew Haig, MD, “Alcohol use must be understood in individuals with chronic pain, both because of the drug interactions induced by alcohol and because of the independent effect alcoholism has on disability and suffering.”

    It’s not an easy road. I’m a writer who lives in New York City—a city known for its nightlife. Drinking is part of the culture here. And I can be fairly introverted. These are all things that drinking is rumored to help with: alcohol makes you more creative, more outgoing, more fun. Right?

    In the end, the answer doesn’t matter, because today I choose my body. I choose my future. I choose to stay balanced and mindful. And when I do, my body responds in kind.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • What to Expect in Early Recovery from Addiction

    What to Expect in Early Recovery from Addiction

    In early recovery we may discover co-occurring mental health conditions, trauma, and exhaustion. We may even find ourselves engaging in compulsive behaviors in other areas, like gambling or sex.

    A few weeks ago, a woman contacted me in the throes of early recovery. I vividly recall those first few weeks — I was so out of my depth that I felt like I was jumping out of a plane every day. I had lost all sense of normalcy. I felt lost. And I had no reference points to validate what I was experiencing. But I sure as hell was determined to stay on this track, whatever it took.

    The woman I spoke with told me that Alcoholics Anonymous didn’t feel right for her, but she didn’t know what else to do. She was having restless nights and insomnia, and was kind of going out of her mind. I empathized and told her that in my experience, what she was going through is normal. I explained my struggles in early recovery and what I had found useful in those first few months. She was comforted by my advice and validation and after a few minutes I could sense her relief.

    That encounter led me to think: What do people in early recovery do if they aren’t in therapy or a support group? What are the common experiences we face psychologically and physiologically, and what are some of the natural and effective ways to help us feel comfortable and supported?

    When I was newly sober, AA was the only option for me. I ignored my instincts telling me that certain aspects of the program didn’t feel right, and instead threw myself into the fellowship and worked my way through the 12 steps. Even though I couldn’t continue to ignore my discomfort and eventually left AA, I will always be grateful for the mutual aid aspect the meetings provided, especially in the early days.

    “Getting support is vital. You can’t do this alone,” says therapist and recovery coach Veronica Valli. “Therapy, exercise, connection — all these things can build a solid foundation in early recovery.”

    In early recovery we may discover co-occurring mental health conditions, trauma, and exhaustion. We may even find ourselves engaging in compulsive behaviors in other areas, like gambling or sex. Below we’ve listed some of the most common problems you may experience in early recovery, their causes, and some possible solutions. Please consult your physician if you require medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

    Experience:
    Tiredness/exhaustion

    Possible Reason:
    Your body is recovering from years of abuse. Your brain and other vital organs need to regenerate and recover. This takes time and may make you feel like you could sleep for a year.

    Potential Solutions:

    • Sleep for a minimum of 8 hours a night and longer if possible.
    • Honor your body and rest as much as possible.
    • Scale back commitments so you can physically recover as well as emotionally.
    • Try restorative or yin yoga.

    Experience:
    Insomnia

    Possible Reason:
    “Sleeping” pre-recovery often meant drinking or using to the point of passing out. Your body’s natural sleep rhythm is completely disrupted and it’s going to take time to adjust. That can mean you’ll feel restless and struggle to fall or stay asleep. But your sleep cycle should normalize, especially if you prioritize your sleep routine.

    Potential Solutions:

    • Build a sleep routine: turn off electronic devices two hours before bed.
    • Create a calm sleep environment.
    • Use aromatherapy (like lavender essential oils).
    • Take supplements to promote sleep: some people swear by melatonin or L-theanine, but be sure to consult your doctor before taking any medication or supplements. 

    Experience:
    Feeling sad or down

    Possible Reason:
    Often our brain chemistry is disrupted when we stop using drugs and alcohol. As with sleep, it is going to take time for your body to adjust to producing feel-good chemicals naturally.

    If you experience depression for more than two weeks or if it is disrupting your daily life, consult a doctor or other mental health care professional. If you feel like hurting yourself or you are at risk for suicide, immediately seek help. Call the U.S. National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or text “HOME” to 741-741.

    Potential Solutions:

    Experience:
    Physical Illness 

    Possible Reason:
    Your immune system may be working overtime to remove the buildup of toxins in your body from years of drug use, especially during the acute phase of withdrawal. It will take time to detoxify and rebuild the body’s natural defenses.

    Potential Solutions:

    • Seek professional assistance from a medical provider.
    • Once detoxed, try to make lifestyle adjustments to improve your health by increasing exercise (in accordance with your doctor’s advice), and ensuring you maintain a healthy diet.

    Experience:
    Stress and feeling overwhelmed

    Possible Reason:
    We’ve spent a long time using substances to numb and escape our feelings. It is only natural that when we stop, we will begin to feel overwhelmed and stressed out. This is normal in recovery.

    Potential Solutions:

    • Find stress-relieving activities that work for you such as: exercise, therapy, yoga, journaling, or meditation.
    • Give yourself a break and work on developing self-compassion.

    Experience:
    Feelings of disconnection

    Possible Reason:
    Having been numb or in a state of intoxication for so long, it may feel abnormal to be sober. You may want to withdraw and isolate, feeling like you are disconnected from your body and from other people. This is really common.

    Potential Solutions:

    • Find activities that increase connection to yourself and others, such as social events, mutual-aid meetings, meditation groups and solo meditation, and time with friends and family.
    • Work with a somatic specialist who can help you connect with your body.

    Experience:
    Addictive/compulsive behaviors

    Possible Reason:
    You may find yourself engaging excessively in gaming, gambling, sex, shopping, eating — anything that gives you that same feeling of escape and a rush of dopamine. This is called addiction transfer and it is frequently experienced by people in early recovery.

    Potential Solutions:

    • There are 12-step fellowships for addiction to sex and love, gambling, eating, and more, but many of us have found we need help beyond what a 12-step program can provide. Try working with a therapist if possible.
    • Think about some healthy ways to relax and increase feel-good hormones naturally, such as exercise and connection with others.

    Experience:
    Mental illness

    Possible Reason:
    Sometimes getting sober uncovers an underlying mental illness. If you experience mania, intrusive thoughts, severe depression, or any other troubling or disruptive symptoms, seek the help of a medical professional.

    The prevalence of co-occurring disorders is high in people with addiction, with nearly 40 percent of us also having a mental health diagnosis.

    Potential Solutions:

    • Seek professional help; if medication is prescribed, take as directed.

    Experience:
    Discovering past trauma

    Possible Reason:
    Like mental illness, the occurrence of past trauma in those with substance use disorder is high. Research has shown that one in four children and adolescents experience at least one traumatic event by the age of 16, and more than 13 percent of 17-year-olds have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Many teens have used alcohol and drugs to self-medicate and numb the memories of this trauma.

    Once the drugs are removed, we may begin to recall trauma and may have untreated PTSD.

    Potential Solutions:

    • Seek professional help, working with a doctor and therapist as recommended.
    • Recover the capacity to self-regulate in a healthy way through therapeutic help, and learn effective rest and relaxation practices.

    Experience:
    Lack of joy; not knowing what to do in your free time

    Possible Reason:
    It is very common for sober people to have no idea how to have fun. That’s because we always associated enjoyment with getting loaded!

    Potential Solutions:

    Experience:
    No sober friends

    Possible Reason:
    Now that you’ve stopped hanging around with your drinking buddies, you might find that you don’t have as many friends as you want. This is also normal.

    Potential Solutions:

    • Build friendships though healthy activities: find a gym community, go to meditation classes, (re)discover a hobby and practice it with a meetup group, or find friends in mutual-aid groups.

    Experience:
    AA isn’t for you

    Possible Reason:
    12-step groups aren’t the right fit for everyone.

    Potential Solutions:

    Experience:
    Relationship difficulties

    Possible Reason:
    This can be one of the most painful things we experience in recovery. Often we don’t know how to relate to others, especially when it comes to romance and intimacy.

    Potential Solutions:

    Experience:
    Feeling socially and emotionally drained

    Possible Reason:
    Often we commit to doing too much while in recovery because we’re no longer hungover all the time, and we have much more energy. But we also find ourselves tired, overwhelmed, and not wanting to go out a lot.

    Potential Solutions:

    • Learn how to say no and honor your needs. Beyond getting sober, becoming comfortable with saying no is perhaps the most freeing thing you’ll do!

    Note: The Fix does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, nor does anything on this website create a physician/patient relationship. If you require medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, please consult your physician.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • How to Find Sobriety in the New Year

    How to Find Sobriety in the New Year

    If you’re abusing alcohol and have decided it’s time to stop, here are some tactics that helped me to get and stay sober. You don’t have to undertake this daunting task alone.

    You stumble to your car after a night out drinking. Not just any night, New Year’s Fucking Eve! You pounded more beers and downed more shots than the other people in your party combined. Some of them are wondering how you are still conscious. Yet they let you drive home – again. You wake up the next morning only half remembering the night before. You can’t remember how the hell you got home – again. This has to stop. Your resolution is sobriety in the New Year – again.

    Quitting drinking is one of the hardest things for an alcoholic to do. I’ve struggled with drinking and have now been sober for over four years. In this time, I have completely changed my life for the better. I’ve written about my struggle and the role the industry I work in plays in promoting alcohol use and abuse. I want to share insight and actionable tips on how I’ve managed to stop drinking and stay clean since April 2014 – known as forever in active alcohol abuser years. I hope this will help people struggling with alcohol abuse to make the decision to find sobriety, and help others to support people who are trying to stay sober.

    Most people don’t realize overnight that they are abusing alcohol. It takes a whole lot of wasted time that you can never get back. Alcoholics are burning the candle of life at both ends when we couple blackout drinking with the life-shortening ailments that come along with binge and heavy drinking. A New Year brings the opportunity for you to inventory your life and make a change if needed.

    Realizing I was an alcoholic was a slow process, like realizing I was Sasquatch or some other mythical creature I had heard others talk about in hushed voices, but never truly thought existed. I have some traits that are similar to Sasquatch, I would wake up thinking, and, I’ll try harder not to be Sasquatch. But I’d usually go to bed as Sasquatch that night.

    Accepting I was an alcoholic was even harder. I thought embracing the label meant embracing my banishment from society. We don’t see Sasquatch running around in the open and no one needed to tell me alcohol abusers are stigmatized. “We do not associate with alcoholics,” my mother had told me from as young as I could remember, referencing my multiple drunk uncles we would see only on the holidays.

    My Life As an Alcoholic

    I struggled with alcohol all of my adult life. I started as a lightweight, puking my plunder every time I would drink and downing a six-pack of whatever beer I could get my hands on. It was all about speed. “Am I drunk yet?” I would think while chugging past the point of no return. Meanwhile, people around me were still on their first beer, even when it was time for me to retire for the night. I continued to push the throttle on drinking. Sasquatch loved the taste of beer.

    I developed a tolerance. I was wrapping up my PhD and working full time, which left me with enough time to engage in a nightly ritual of drinking until I passed out. Sasquatch liked routines. I also argued with my girlfriend when I drank. It would usually start on a Friday, mid-afternoon, and I would be buzzed or beyond by the time she got home from work. Sasquatch was waiting to pounce.

    I started missing work, often when traveling, due to being hungover. I worked for a place that didn’t reimburse for alcohol, but my meals were free which meant I could make up the savings in beer. I would show up for a morning meeting and claim to feel ill from dinner the night before, then excuse myself to spend the rest of the day throwing up in my hotel room.

    When I hit my early 30’s the blackouts started. I entered a period where I struggled to remember the details of nights involving drinking, with the only record in the form of angry emails sent to those I felt had crossed me, stupid Facebook posts (song lyrics, ugh), and texts to random people I’d met at the bar.

    I ignored the problem: Sasquatch dressed in business casual trying to blend in behind a computer; Sasquatch stumbling across the bar and spilling other people’s drinks as he laughs his way to the bathroom; Sasquatch, in bed next to his fiancé with the room spinning, staring at the ceiling, wasted for another night. I wasn’t fooling anyone, particularly not myself.

    I didn’t embrace the role alcohol was playing in my downfall until I was 35. My lack of satisfaction with life was tangible. I was doing the same thing daily and getting the same outcome. I woke up one day surrounded by my smashed possessions, with a great paying job but no money to replace them. I was frustrated at work, in my personal life, and with my health. Sasquatch needed help.

    Accepting I had a problem with alcohol felt like accepting I was a failure. Sasquatch blew his cover. I had to accept I had wasted all the time and money I’d invested in alcohol over the years. I had no idea how I could go about changing as there were no former Sasquatches in my life that I was aware of – no reference points setting a path for me to follow.

    Sasquatch alone in a haunted forest.

    I was able to find my way to sobriety, though it wasn’t an easy path, and I needed help. If you’re abusing alcohol, and have decided it is time to stop, here are some tactics I found helpful. You don’t have to undertake this daunting task alone.

    Find Support

    This comes first for a reason. I cannot stress how important it is to share what you are going through with others. Many have come before you, so you don’t need to do this alone. You need a reference point for sobriety and a sober lifestyle. Most likely, you have been hanging out with people who won’t serve as good examples for an alcohol-free lifestyle.

    I did both counseling and AA for the first few months of sobriety. My counselor challenged me to do AA meetings for 90 straight days. I did about 50 in that time and continued attending meetings for the first four months of my sobriety. I wouldn’t give them back for anything. You don’t have to do AA specifically, but it is a huge organization with a lot of diversity. There are atheist meetings, LGBTQ+ meetings, and more, and people of all ages and walks of life attend. If you can’t get to an in-person meeting, you can attend meetings online via Skype or a chat room. I found it encouraging in my fledgling days of sobriety to hear about the experiences of those with more time under their belt, hearing over and over that it gets easier, and learning how many of them had turned their life, health, and relationships around in the same way I was seeking. You might find a similar situation in any other group in existence, so please don’t tune me out because I say AA worked for me.

    Replace the Habit

    How does someone go from being fixated on something 95% of the time to reducing that to near nil? By fixating on other things. I’ve already written about my experience with channeling my compulsions. Addicts are good at routines and fixating on things, not just drinking. The goal, from my perspective, is to find something positive to fixate on: your job, your wife, your writing, your church, your local professional organization, jump roping. Anything that doesn’t destroy your life physically or mentally is better than something that does. Anyone that says you shouldn’t replace an addiction with something else is giving bad advice.

    I knew I wanted to write more. I daydreamed about writing while drinking myself into a stupor. Now I had the dream and the ability to achieve it. I implemented a writing routine as structured as my drinking routine. This led to publishing multiple articles in relevant professional publications, and achieving a lifelong goal of writing a book.

    Maintain Perspective

    If you attend an AA meeting or know others that have become sober, you will know that falling off the wagon is a common story. Staying sober is nothing short of altering your life in every way. This does not happen magically overnight. If you slip up in your pursuit of sobriety it means you are normal. Get over it and keep trying. It will get easier as you accrue more sober days.

    I haven’t slipped up, but it’s not because I’m above it. I have frequent cravings and fond memories of the good old days. I stood in the airport three weeks into sobriety while traveling for work and knew I could slide into a comfy seat at the bar and get loaded before my plane boarded. No one would ever find out and I could pretend I had stayed sober when I returned. Instead, I bought the largest Perrier I could find and downloaded some new music to listen to on the flight. I hope I would have been gentle on myself if I had made the decision to take a drink that day. It happens.

    Find a Goal

    Set goals. Set lofty, impossible goals, then achieve them. Don’t set a goal of trying every beer on tap in a single night, or tasting every vintage of wine the local vineyard produces. Those are shitty goals for an alcohol abuser. They waste your time and hurt those around you.

    Positive goals include: losing weight and gaining muscle, learning something new, spending more quality time with your family, doing volunteer work, presenting at a conference, professional development, getting a promotion or new job, starting (or returning to) a hobby, or not being drunk for an entire week. You see where this is going. Goals are like New Year’s resolutions you actually keep.

    Stay Motivated

    You will need to keep your eye on the prize of sobriety, especially during the times you are craving one drink or ten. Look around and find something to motivate you: your children, your marriage, your colleague who was promoted over you. Get pumped up. You can do it! But not if you’re drunk.

    I have created an imaginary enemy; someone who would relish the fact that I fail in my attempt to stay sober. I use this to motivate me when I need a confidence boost and then get to tell this imaginary asshole I got another article published, another book deal, or that my family is happy with my sobriety. I couldn’t say any of this if I went back to being a drunk.

    Put It Into Practice

    I’ve covered a few things that help me stay sober. You need to remember that not every day is easy. Especially in the beginning, you will actively look for reasons to have a drink. My car was broken into and vandalized and my work computer permanently crashed within the first two weeks of my sobriety and I wanted these to be signs from above that I deserved a drink. Instead I chose to occupy my time in other ways and I’m glad I did. I recommend trying everything I’ve discussed in this article, and many others here on The Fix, and using what works for you to stay sober.

    What worked for you? Let us know in the comments!

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • 5 Self-Destructive Habits to Leave Behind in 2018

    5 Self-Destructive Habits to Leave Behind in 2018

    Here’s to deeper connection through owning our imperfections, attracting more abundance by believing there’s enough for everyone, and freeing ourselves from these other self-destructive habits.

    New Year, New You? How about New Year, Real You? I do not think Life is about becoming some other person, as society would have you believe. I think Life is about shedding the things that are not you, about remembering who you truly are, about becoming who you already are and bringing into this reality who you were meant to be. 

    It’s so easy to get caught up in the false refuge of maladaptive beliefs and behaviors — everybody is doing it. As the year prepares to turn over, there is a symbolic and energetic push for a fresh start. 

    If your goals for the new year involve getting your whites whiter, finding a partner, and ditching sugar for good!, stop reading now. 

    But perhaps this is the year you strive for internal rearrangement. Maybe you will find that when you put that first, the rest sort of falls into place. Even your butt.

    1. Scarcity Mindset
    When you’re in scarcity mindset you feel like there isn’t enough of anything, yet you’re also unwilling to get out of your comfort zone to look for more opportunities. Scarcity turns everyone else into our enemies, as we perceive they are taking from a finite pool of resources and therefore anything that they have means there is less available to us. The saddest of scarcity mindsets revolve around love. Love begets more love, but sometimes we feel that any love being directed at something else is love being taken away from us. If you’ve ever wondered how someone can be jealous of a little puppy, the answer is scarcity mindset. This is prevalent in my field, stand-up comedy, as there are only so many clubs and so many weekends a year in which to get booked. But what if people in comedy focused on lifting each other up? Wouldn’t comedy as a whole get better? And if that happened, wouldn’t there be more comedy fans and more demand? And then more clubs and more spots?

    2. Dissociating
    This is when we run away without leaving the room. First, we separate the details of an event from our awareness; it can be as simple as ignoring red flags on a first date. We can dissociate the meaning of something to make excuses for it — that way we don’t have to take responsibility or act based on what is actually happening. He jumped out of the cab and left me to pay for it because….I paid for things earlier in the night and he didn’t want to be emasculated by watching me pay again…Uhhhh. Maybe he’s just a dick?

    When you’re dissociating, you’re spaced out, you’re numb. I remember thinking I had a superpower in my early 20’s when I learned I could dissociate in the dentist’s chair and not need Novocain. This magic gift was just a side effect of child abuse. You’re thinking: this shouldn’t be happening right now, and then you leave. You are there, but you aren’t. We use our phones to leave the present all the time. But we came to this earth at this time for a reason — to be here. You can stop dissociating by grounding yourself in the present reality with your five senses. Grab a cold drink or take a hot shower. Get back in your body. It’s okay to feel your emotions; I often dissociate when I get social anxiety and then I tell myself that it’s not okay to have social anxiety and then I “fix” the unwanted emotion by fleeing it. Self-compassion helps me stay in the moment and feeling. I remember that everything belongs, even this unwanted emotion. 

    3. Playing Prisoner and Warden
    The most common way we do this is in intimate relationships, as in the old refrain of “He/She/They won’t let me. We make others play one of these roles so we can rebel against it. It’s an externalization of a fragment of ourselves that is judging the behavior that we are seemingly trying to get over on our designated warden. For example, once I relapsed (LOL ONCE) at a birthday party at a bar full of my peers. I spotted someone there who was in recovery. They were not my sponsor or even my friend, and deep down, I knew my recovery and relapse had absolutely nothing to do with them. But I hid from them all night long; I even triangulated, telling other people I couldn’t have them see me drink! I actually hid the can behind my back when I talked to them, though it was all for naught when I drunkenly tripped and fell flat on my face a few minutes later. Here’s the thing: they didn’t know or care. I used this person to deflect responsibility for myself, to shame myself, and to rebel against myself. 

    4. Explaining Yourself
    I always felt I needed to explain my existence, and could give you a detailed history that led me to such a place, but the irony! Explaining yourself is goddamn exhausting for everyone. I actively work to not do this by asking myself what people truly need to know during interactions. It’s always less than my original impulse. When I was in college I was such an extreme over-explainer that I felt like every time I ran into someone, I had to tell them everything that had happened since we last spoke. I never had time to see what was going on with them, and that is how I went through life, just assuming others were better than me and together and I needed everyone to understand how hard it was for me and you would, maybe you would, if you’d only let me explain. Every time I don’t explain myself or make excuses for my actions and existence I call a tiny bit of my power back. I become a bit more self-contained, a bit more confident. I feel like a grown-up in the very best way.

    5. Waiting to Enjoy It
    The idea that you can only enjoy your life once you’ve become a person worthy of enjoying it is a lie and it needs to be smashed. You have value simply because you exist. You are here, and that is the only requirement for being worth enjoying life. If you swear you’ll allow yourself to enjoy being alive once you attain a certain external achievement — no matter what it is — you’ll be disappointed when you attain it. There is nothing that can fill the void of feeling unworthy, except, perhaps, deciding to enjoy your life and yourself as they are. The great paradox is that it’s only when you get there that you can truly effect lasting change. We are all in such a rush to get nowhere. The end of the road is just another road. There is no arriving, and there is always a state of arrival. A palm tree against a darkening sky, a joke landing perfectly, your dog snuggling into you in the night. There isn’t much more to life than that, and if you’re really inhabiting your life, you don’t need there to be. Enjoy it. What are you waiting for? There’s a caveat though: it’s impossible to enjoy your life and control your life at the same time. Good luck. Oh, also, sometimes I say you when I mean I.

    As you can see, these maladaptive behavioral traits overlap as they all transform dysfunction into a grand discord of an unfulfilled life. 

    When I first met recovery I couldn’t admit anything I did wrong. I was so afraid to look at myself, terrified of what I might find. I found that when I was able to admit mistakes and faults that people actually responded better to me than when I was pretending that I was perfect. I was never fooling anyone. That was the beginning of learning to own my shit, but in order to own my shit, I had to look at my shit too. I may not have created the problem, but it is my responsibility to solve it. I know what I want. Sometimes I don’t think I can have it, or I am looking for permission. Actually I am always looking for permission, so if you’re like me, consider this your permission slip. You have permission to go after the things you truly want. Yes, even you. Yes, even that.

    We’ve all got more work to do on ourselves than we hope, but it’s not as insurmountable as we fear. I promise you that. Here’s to more freedom through discipline, deeper connection through owning our imperfections, attracting more abundance by believing there’s enough for everyone, and all the other paradoxes that make life worth living. May this list serve to remind you and validate what your inner being knows already. Happy New Year!

    Now, go be you. You’re doing a great job.

    Further reading:

    7 Reasons to Shift from a Scarcity Mindset to an Abundance Mindset – Lucy Vinestock

    The Scarcity Mindset – Shahram Heshmat Ph.D.

    Dissociation Isn’t a Life Skill – Sandra L. Brown M.A.

    Triangulation: The Trap Of The Problematic Person – Támara Hill, MS, LPC

    Stop Looking Outside Yourself for Answers – Kathryn Eggins

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • 4 Quick Tips for Staying Sober and Avoiding FOMO on New Year's Eve

    4 Quick Tips for Staying Sober and Avoiding FOMO on New Year's Eve

    FOMO—Fear Of Missing Out—took enough away from me in my addiction. I spent countless nights wishing I hadn’t gone out or drunk as much as I did. In sobriety, I’ve never regretted not going to the party.

    If there is one thing that describes my addiction, it was the yearning for connection. Ironic, isn’t it? The thing I spent the most time striving for is the thing that I ultimately couldn’t get, even from the substances that I thought were helping me find it.

    As far back as I can remember, I wanted to be popular. In 5th grade I remember the girls who were considered “cool” inviting people to their “boy-girl” party. I patiently waited for an invitation that never came. Then in middle school, my peers started getting boyfriends and girlfriends and slow dancing at school dances, but I was never included. I did everything I could to make it seem like I should be included in these exclusive pastimes, but I never felt like I succeeded… until I started drinking.

    Taking shots, chugging beer, puke and rally; these dangerous drinking habits are what ultimately gave me the street cred I needed to become part of the in crowd. Boys finally found me cool and desirable and girls wanted to be friends with me. This theme followed my entire drinking career. I evolved from a scared child with a couple friends to an outgoing woman with more friend groups than you could count. Keeping up with my new reputation was exhausting, but it’s how I lived throughout my entire time at college.

    When I first heard about FOMO — Fear Of Missing Out — something in me clicked and I realized this was the feeling I always got when I couldn’t stand not being at the party. FOMO was what motivated me to drink every night from Wednesday through Sunday during college. I needed to be at every outing and party because if I wasn’t, I risked my popular, cool-girl reputation. I risked not seeing the drama or hearing the gossip. Just like the acronym-dubbed phenomenon, I was fearful I’d miss something, and I couldn’t let that happen.

    Now that I’m sober, I’ve realized that so many of us former drinkers had an intimate relationship with FOMO. It’s often what drove our drinking. It can also be what drives our return to using, or our obsession with still going to the places and parties we frequented while we were in active addiction. The holidays can be an especially daunting time for FOMO. In particular, New Year’s Eve is known for lavish and booze-filled celebrations. If you’re sober and worried about FOMO creeping in this NYE, here are some tips to help you play it safe.

    1. Plan something new and different. I can’t tell you how satisfying it is to make plans in sobriety. Instead of the same old drunken ball-drop open-bar nightclub or wine-infested awkward house party, you get to decide what your New Year’s plans are and they don’t have to include any of those things. You get to plan something fun, new, and exciting. You could travel to a new place, visit a zoo, volunteer at a homeless shelter, watch fireworks, or host your own alcohol-free party. The point is, the decision is yours and your plans don’t have to be anything like they were during your drinking years. Plan something new and different to look forward to. You could even invite your friends and family to your non-alcohol-centered event and avoid FOMO altogether.

    2. Read up on the concept of romanticizing. Yes, I’m telling you to Google “romanticize.” This is something we occasionally do about our drinking when we’re sober. We often remember the best and more fun parts of our drinking, but not the times it made us feel horrible or our worst hangovers. I’ve also heard these rose-colored memories referred to as “euphoric recall.” It’s good to have an awareness about this extremely common tactic of our mind. Remember the truth! Just because other people are out there binge drinking or going to events with alcohol doesn’t mean you have to. Just because you used to have fun at these types of events doesn’t mean you will in sobriety. Just because society tries to tell us we need alcohol to have fun does not make it true! Trust yourself. Don’t romanticize any substances you’ve tried hard to leave behind.

    3. Give yourself a pep talk. You are one smart person. You know that FOMO is a concept that begins and ends in your mind. It’s a feeling just like any other that will come and then go. If you’re struggling with drinking, I can tell you there is nothing fun to go back to. Drinking again won’t make your NYE any more memorable or special. In reality, you’re unlikely to remember most (or all) of it. You live differently now and it’s time to accept that NYE will be different and that can be a blessing. If you’re staying sober and debating going to a NYE event where the alcohol might overwhelm you, I’m here to tell you that you will not die if you don’t go to this event. Missing one event won’t change your life or the world. You can always get the lowdown from your friends who do go. I promise there’s nothing at that party that’s so wonderful it will make up for how you’ll feel if you end up drinking.

    4. Imagine the future. In the scheme of the entire world, NYE is just one holiday on one day of the year. Of course, it marks the end of 365 days of your life and that’s special, but there are so many other beautiful ways to celebrate a transition of this magnitude. You could make lists and read books and write in your journal and perform a moon ritual! You could go to a yoga retreat or a sober meet-up. It’s not your fault that society has tricked us into believing New Year’s Eve is a drinking holiday where we need to have a champagne toast at midnight. But it is your responsibility to carve out a new path for yourself on NYEs to come. Imagine your future: would you be happy to give up all your hard-earned sobriety for one night? For one party? For one New Year?

    A new year should symbolize growth, bettering yourself, or beginning again. Don’t let FOMO take that away from you.

    FOMO took enough away from me in my addiction. I spent countless nights wishing I hadn’t gone out or drunk as much as I did. In sobriety, I’ve never regretted not going to the party. Every time I think I’m going to miss out on something, I never do. I end up doing something better or more satisfying with my time. I end up missing situations, people, and places that aren’t good for me anyway. I miss out on drama, gossip, and drinking.

    This NYE ditch the FOMO and make sure you aren’t missing out on sobriety.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • 7 Reasons Not to Bring Your 12-Step Program Home for the Holidays

    7 Reasons Not to Bring Your 12-Step Program Home for the Holidays

    Shouldn’t you help your sister address her character defects? Isn’t it time to take your father’s inventory? And wouldn’t it be perfect to make amends to your mom at a family dinner?

    Regardless of whether you are newly sober or have many years of sustainable sobriety under your belt in 12-step programs, what is true for practically everyone else in the world is true for you as well: Your family of origin holds the keys to your most primal emotional and behavioral triggers. Nothing compares to that cutting look from your sister or that sarcastic undertone in your father’s voice. Although they love us– or maybe because they love us–our families can get under our skin and into our bones like no one else.

    Since the prospect of being with family holds that much tension, many people in 12-step programs decide it makes sense to work the steps with their family members over the holidays. After all, only the first step is about drugs and alcohol. The other 11 are about changing behavioral patterns and rehabbing the disease of perception. If we apply them wisely and gently to the members of our family of origin, we think, we will be able to help them. Shouldn’t your sister be shown how character defects are defining her life? Isn’t it time to take your father’s inventory? And, given the importance of the holidays, wouldn’t it be perfect to make amends to your mom at a family gathering?

    Actually, it’s not such a good idea. Forcing stepwork on your family goes against the spiritual nature of the program by crossing boundaries at the wrong time and putting your own wants and needs ahead of everyone else’s. But instead of just looking at the big picture, let’s delve into seven specific reasons why it’s not the best plan to do your stepwork with your family over the holidays.

    1. Your Family Is Not Part of Your Program

    Yes, many people in 12-step programs have family members who are also in 12-step programs, but that’s beside the point. If you want to discuss step work with a family member who’s in the program, then either go to a meeting or do so privately. Your family as a unit is not in a program. More importantly, most family members know very little about 12-step programs. They don’t want to do “work”—emotional or otherwise– during the holidays, they simply want to enjoy the holiday season.

    Ultimately, this is a question of proper boundaries. If you are a newly sober person, maintaining boundaries might not be your strong suit. When I was newly sober, I took everything personally. I didn’t understand the difference between what was about me and what was not about me. In truth, I was inclined to think everything was about me and I had to prove how well I was working the steps to everyone; I often felt entitled and superior. I had to be reminded by my sponsor that working steps should be kept within the context of my 12-step program.

    2. A Program of Attraction and Not Promotion

    In many families over the holiday season, there is that one family member who drinks too much and doesn’t know when to stop. Often, we were that family member until we embraced the path of sobriety. When we return to our families of origin over the holidays, we do not have to point out that Uncle Jack is drinking too much. We don’t need to preach the program to family members because that is not our role.

    Tradition 11 of Alcoholics Anonymous reads: “Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.” The principle of attraction rather than promotion can be applied to the individual, as well. It is not my job to promote recovery and tell other people that they need to get sober. Instead, by being of service to my family over the holidays, I can attract others just by being a better person. It’s really not that hard. Take the family dog for a walk, pick up the milk from the corner grocery store, or play with your nieces and nephews so your sister and brother-in-law can have a break. See how they respond, you might be surprised.

    3. You Are Not Your Family’s New Guru

    When a newly-sober person finds a higher power that works for them and embraces a spiritual path, it can be a wonder to behold the light in their eyes. However, like any other powerful experience in this world, finding faith when you’re newly sober can be spiritually intoxicating. When combined with meditation and prayer, it can become a profound experience that you want to share with your family.

    It’s not your role over the holidays to become your family’s new guru and point out their lack of a higher power. When your father gets upset when carving the turkey, try not to tell him to let it go and turn his anger over to a higher power. Sometimes the best way to be spiritual is to be quiet and modest. Be spiritual by doing the dishes and carrying the grocery bags. Such an approach works much better than trying to be the head cheerleader for your totally amazing higher power.

    4. It’s Not Your Job to Take Your Family’s Inventory

    If you have successfully completed Steps 4 and 5 in a 12-step program, then you have first “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” Next, you “Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.” Congratulations! It takes courage to work these steps and you’re making good progress. However, completing these steps does not mean that you now must help your family by taking their inventories. It’s not kind and loving to point out others’ resentments or “issues.”

    Even if your family member is in the program, you are not their sponsor. And even if you were their sponsor, you wouldn’t be pointing out their resentments, they would be doing the inventory work themselves. Family gatherings over the holidays should be about fun and relaxation. Don’t spoil the vacation by pointing out lingering resentments.

    5. Holidays Are Not About Highlighting Character Defects

    If you have completed Step 6 and 7 in a 12-step program, then first you “Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.” Next, you “Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.” Again, just because you faced this difficult process yourself does not mean you have the right to point out character defects in other people. This kind of criticism of family members, even under the guise of help, is a recipe for disaster. It’s not your job to shine a light on negative traits. Your family members may be far from grateful.

    6. Amends Are Not About What You Want

    The holidays are not all about you, and family gatherings during this season are not the right time for you to make dramatic amends to family members. First, the process of making amends should not be selfish; while you will get relief from making them and may be eager to finish this step, the actual amends are not about you, they’re about the other person. Often, by trying to make amends for past wrongs during the holiday season, you are doing more harm than good. Reminders of your previous misdeeds may be the last thing your family wants to hear from you at this time.

    Amends should be private and on the other person’s timeline. You can bring up the idea of making amends to family members, but let them know that you want to do it at a time that makes sense for them. Amends are not about what you want, but rather about learning how to clean up your side of the street.

    7. How About Having a Little Fun?

    On page 132 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Wilson made it crystal clear when he wrote, “But we aren’t a glum lot.” The holidays are about having a little fun and enjoying yourself while being with loved ones. If you try to work your 12-step program with your family, you will not be adding to the good cheer.

    Why not be of service to the holiday season by adding smiles, laughter, and gratitude to your family gatherings? Doesn’t such a positive approach ultimately make a lot more sense? Make it your goal to enjoy this holiday season, and you will feel rejuvenated and ready to continue on your positive path of sobriety in the new year. Your family and your recovery will thank you.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • The Empty Chair Campaign Highlights Loss and Sorrow Caused by the Drug War

    The Empty Chair Campaign Highlights Loss and Sorrow Caused by the Drug War

    The families of people incarcerated, distanced, or deceased because of the drug war live year-round with the unique suffering of loving someone whose pain you do not have the power to heal. During the holidays, that loss rises to the surface.

    Whether you’re celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year’s Day, or something else this winter, the one element that probably shapes your holiday celebrations most is family. For most of us, that’s joyous, stressful, lovely, and anxiety-inducing all rolled into one. For those of us whose extended family will be present, we might even dread the holidays a little bit, fearing the awkward antics of Uncle Joey or the grotesque way our cousin brags about her perfect life. But for families affected by the war on drugs, winter holiday festivities don’t get to be about celebrating your family or nitpicking your sister’s new boyfriend. Instead, they are shaped by grief and loss.

    If you read the news at all, or even just scroll Twitter every once in a while, you probably know that drug overdose deaths have skyrocketed. Approximately 175 people die by drug overdose every day. That’s 72,000 each year, and the majority of those deaths — almost 50,000 — involve some type of opioid. Alcohol deaths, which are counted separately, account for approximately 88,000 deaths each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control. So the impact of death due to substance use is huge, all on its own. But losing a loved one to a drug-related death is not the only way families are affected by drug use and the stigma that surrounds it.

    The Impact of the War on Drugs at the Holidays

    There are currently 200,000 people locked up in state prisons for drug crimes, and 82,000 convicted of drug crimes in federal detention facilities. These people are fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, uncles, cousins, sons, daughters, and friends. Their loss is felt year-round by those who love them, but families affected by the drug war have an especially difficult time during the holidays. The pain of the season is why, each year since 2012, Moms United to End the War on Drugs runs their Empty Chair Campaign. It starts around Thanksgiving and extends through the December holidays. While families gather to celebrate love, unity, and forgiveness, the empty chair symbolizes those who cannot be present — either through death, incarceration, or the stigma that latches onto people who use drugs or struggle with addiction.

    “Part of the goal of the Empty Chair Campaign is to also destigmatize the loss of a loved one through overdose,” says Diane Goldstein, a retired police officer who now chairs the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, a group of criminal justice officials working toward system reform. Goldstein says she was inspired to work on criminal justice reform after watching her own brother struggle with substance use and mental health issues. Eventually, he died of a poly-substance overdose.

    “My mother was horribly embarrassed by my brother’s death and couldn’t talk about it,” Goldstein recalls. “I think you see a lot of families who that occurs with, so we are inclusive, not just of the victims of the drug war — which isn’t really a war on drugs, it’s a war on people — but to family members as well. It’s intended to reduce the stigma of the criminalization of drug use, support drug users, and help change the criminal justice system from criminalization to a public health approach.”

    The Empty Chair Honors an Absent Loved One

    The Empty Chair Campaign uses the symbol of the empty chair at the family table to stand in for the missing family member and highlight their absence. To participate, you can change your Facebook avatar to the empty chair logo, or you can post a photo of an empty chair at your table with a photo of your loved one and a label explaining why they’re missing: incarceration, accidental overdose, stigma, drug war violence.

    Gretchen Bergman, the executive director of Moms United to End the War on Drugs as well as its parent organization A New PATH, spent decades living with the overwhelming fear and anxiety unique to parents of children with drug addictions. That anxiety grew as she watched two sons sink into the world of destructive shame, stigma, and involvement with the criminal justice system which is now inextricably linked with addiction, thanks to the drug war.

    “My sons both tended to be leaders,” Bergman recalls, “My younger son was always a risk taker. He was the guy who jumped off the roof and dove into the swimming pool…My older son was very thoughtful, more cerebral.”

    Perhaps it was that cerebral nature which helped Bergman’s elder son, Elon, survive the prison system as he cycled through during his active addiction. He spent a combined eight years in prison, and three years on parole — and it all began when he was just 20, with a marijuana charge. Elon first acquired a taste for IV heroin behind bars, says Bergman, an addiction which would rule his 20s.

    “Today, because of our change of laws, he wouldn’t even be arrested at all,” Bergman notes of her son’s initial marijuana arrest — touching on a bitter truth that the lack of drug law uniformity has created across the United States. Whether or not a person becomes caught in the destructive and self-perpetuating criminal justice system depends largely on when and where they were arrested. Marijuana arrests are also disproportionately weighted against people of color, with the American Civil Liberties Union reporting that black people have historically been 3.73 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana than their white counterparts despite equal rates of use.

    Family Celebrations Marred by Grief

    For the Bergman family, the war on drugs became a constant, uninvited guest at their holiday celebrations. Year after year, Gretchen Bergman found herself faced with the decision: should she spend the holidays with her son in prison or with the rest of her family? Even when she decided to attend the big family dinner — knowing she’d spend the night nursing her broken heart as she thought of her son cold and alone in his prison cell — she didn’t always have her youngest son Aaron with her, either. Though Aaron never got caught up in the cycle of release and re-incarceration that seems to follow people with felony convictions, he used IV drugs for decades. The shame that often accompanies this type of drug use, which is so heavily stigmatized that even other drug users feel superior to people who use needles, led Aaron to stay on the streets and miss family functions.

    “We really thought we were going to lose him because his health was compromised, and he seemed so lost, and he became a multi-drug user,” Bergman recalls. “But I always believed he was still there.”

    Today, both of Bergman’s sons are in recovery. Aaron, the younger son, managers a sober living home owned by his older brother Elon.

    Julia Negron, who runs the Suncoast Harm Reduction Project in Florida, grew up around drugs. She ended up in the foster care because of her mother’s drug use, and eventually battled her own heroin addiction. She has never known a life not touched by drug and alcohol misuse. And, not surprisingly, she has lost a number of friends and family members to drug-related complications, including overdose. But the experience that haunts her most was the total helplessness she felt as the mother of a drug-addicted child being forced through the criminal justice system instead of guided toward drug treatment that could have truly helped him.

    “It’s just terrible,” she says about the holiday celebrations when her son was absent. “It’s not just that they’re not there, you feel they’re unjustly being held somewhere. You feel like it’s a hostage situation.” She recalls packing her family, including young grandchildren, into the car one Thanksgiving and driving them four hours across the California desert to get to the facility where her son was being held. “By the time we went through security and they had to strip search him and do all their stuff on that end,” she says, “they managed to use the entire time allotted to visiting…We never did see him.”

    Parents and families of people incarcerated, distanced, or deceased because of the drug war live year-round with the unique suffering of loving someone whose pain you do not have the power to heal. During the holidays, that loss rises to the surface, almost as tangible as the missing person. The Empty Chair Campaign does not seek to cure this sorrow, which won’t abate until the drug war is finally given the ceasefire we all need. Instead, it hopes to bring it to the surface, in order to raise awareness and honor those very real people who deserve their seat at the family table.

    “What kind of kills you is you know the person inside, you know who he is,” says Bergman, describing the experience of having a child who is incarcerated for having a substance use disorder. “Right at the time he needs treatment and healing, which would have involved introspection, he’s behind bars, where in order to survive you have to harden your heart. You watch him disappear into that shell that he needed to in order to survive in that cold, concrete, violent atmosphere. It’s terrible to watch.”

    Have you lost someone due to the drug war? Let us know in the comments.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • A Christmas Gift from the Dopeman

    A Christmas Gift from the Dopeman

    You know what sucks about being an addict? A ten mile walk in the freezing cold to get pills on Christmas morning because you have no other options.

    You know what sucks about telling your family you’re an addict right before the holidays? Everything.

    I come from a very large Puerto Rican family. So usually for the holidays, we pick a house and see how many people we can cram into it while we stuff our faces with some of the best cuisine known to man. There’s music of course, and lots of love and laughter.

    A few weeks before our annual Christmas party, I told my family I had been using drugs for a few years. My mom’s house was the lucky one picked to host the festivities that year and I was going to do my best to be a good little junkie and try not to ruin it like I had just ruined the last 10 years of my godforsaken life.

    In the days leading up to the party, I had successfully weaned off the crack and was only shooting up opioids. I didn’t want to be too fucked up once family started to arrive.

    You know what doesn’t suck about Christmas parties? All the purses, wallets, and car keys all over the house. I had only confessed to my mom and my brother about my substance abuse and I don’t think my mom had told anyone. I hadn’t yet graduated to fucking over every family member so the forecast to get over on a few aunts and cousins was looking really bright.

    But I had to be on my best behavior, so I put that thought out of my mind. Just for tonight, I will not steal from my family. I shot up the rest of my pills earlier that day and decided I would just drink all the holiday beverages my family would take part in. I can do that, right? A little controlled drinking? Sure I can.

    Keeping Up Appearances

    You know what’s worse than drinking with family members who know you’re a junkie? Not being able to drink the way you want to, like a drunk. It’s a special kind of hell. Even before they knew, get-togethers and dinners sucked. They could all have a sip here and there, maybe get a little buzzed. But me, I just want to finish everyone’s glasses. Can’t they see the alcohol stuck on that ice cube?

    Amateurs.

    I just want to feel good. I want to feel normal. Everyone is smiling and having a good time. I’m over here nursing this Bud Light about to freak the hell out. It’s amazing the torture we put ourselves through while trying to keep up with appearances. I’m talking way before we hit the fuck-it button and stop giving a damn about what they think. I was still trying to save face but oh god, the pain. The withdrawals from the opioids are sneaking up and my thought is: if I’m not going to get right the way I want, I can at least get shit-faced off of this free liquor being sipped on by my family.

    Fuck. There are too many people here and my brother is watching every move I make. I know he’s concerned. I can see my mom texting my brother to check up on me and it’s pissing me off. I go out front to have a smoke and bring two beers with me. I can kill these quickly and ditch the bottles before anyone comes to join me. That way they don’t ask me if I’ve had too many.

    This party sucks. I want to get high.

    I text the closest dealer to me, a guy who lives about four miles away. I ask him if he’s got any pills on him. It’s about 9:30 p.m. when I get a text back. He tells me he’s good and that this pill is on the house because it’s Christmas Eve. 

    How nice, my dealer is giving me a free pill for Christmas. What a guy! The only problem is, he’s not delivering. It’s Christmas Eve and he’s spending it with his family. What a devoted baby daddy.

    Now I gotta figure out a way to get to him. My car was repossessed when I was in jail back in November and I’m sure as hell not asking a family member to go on a drug run with me.

    It’s 9:45 and 50 degrees out, that’s not too bad. What a beautiful night to take a stroll. I mean, the temperature is dropping quickly but fuck it, let’s just walk out of this party with everybody you know and go for a quick little four-mile stroll. Who’s gonna notice?

    Scoring Dope on Christmas Eve

    I grab my hoodie and hit the block.

    I scroll to a playlist filled with the most gangster, hood, female-degrading, drug-referencing music I can find. It’s funny how music can move an individual. It’s interesting to track the music we listen to when we get sober and how it changes when we morally begin to transform. Music is powerful. I’m a firm believer of the saying “garbage in, garbage out” and sometimes when someone shares their music with me in recovery, it reminds me of using or brings me to a mindset of just wanting to do hoodrat shit. It’s not healthy.

    And what the fuck is up with everyone in early sobriety listening to Kevin Gates and these other mumble rappers?! But I digress.

    I find the playlist I want to walk to and get to steppin’. I make it about two miles down the road before I start trying to flag down cars. The clock is ticking and I’m afraid my dealer is going to be asleep by the time I get there.

    Have you ever tried to wake up a drug dealer in the middle of the night to score? It’s not a pleasant experience.

    It’s getting really cold out. I should’ve worn pants. Dumbass.

    Hey! I see a car slowing down. A half hour of waving my thumb out is finally paying off. I’m going to get a ride to my dealer’s house!

    As the car gets closer, I realize it’s my brother. Fuck. He pulls up next to me and very wearily and with a tone of disappointment asks: “What are you doing, man?” I tell him I needed some fresh air and I was just going for a quick stroll. I know he doesn’t buy my response but he tells me to get in. We drive back home.

    Damn. Two more miles, that was it. Just two more miles and I would’ve had my drugs.

    I am pissed.

    We get back to the house and the party has died down. Most of the family has left, the food has been put away, and the music has been turned down. I call my dealer to see if he’s still up. He tells me he’s about to go to bed but that he’ll leave the pill underneath the only green coffee cup in his cupboard. He tells me to call his baby momma when I get there and she’ll let me in. I tell him that I’ll probably be on foot so it’ll be an hour or two. It’s not a problem.

    Okay, so all I have to do is wait for my brother to leave, which shouldn’t be long. My mom is already in the shower, that means she’ll be in bed in fifteen minutes. Alright, I got this.

    Tomorrow we have to be up early to drive to my aunt’s house for breakfast and exchanging gifts with the rest of the family. It’s tradition. No worries. As long as I have my dope, I’m good.

    A half hour goes by and it’s time to hit the block again. My mom is sleeping and my brother is gone.

    I’m walking again and it’s cold. My dumbass didn’t think to throw pants on because I was too concerned about leaving as soon as I could.

    The whole time I’m walking to his house, I’m thinking about how utterly powerless I am. It’s Christmas fucking Eve and I’m walking a total of now six miles to acquire one fucking Dilaudid. One. I am a hopeless piece of shit that cannot go a few hours without a fix.

    It’s two in the morning when I get to his house and she’s not answering. I call her ten more times, still no answer. I start to blow his phone up, nothing.

    I’ll be damned. I am not leaving this house until I get my drugs. It’s Christmas, damn it.

    I start knocking on the front door which is a big no-no with this guy but I really need this pill. No answer. I walk to the end of his driveway and light a cigarette. I’ll smoke the whole thing, and try calling again. If no one picks up, I’ll try knocking one more time and if that doesn’t work, I’ll just call my mom and make up some sob story for her to come pick me up. No big deal, right?

    I take two long drags from the cigarette, throw it out, turn around, and begin banging on the door.

    A Gun to the Head

    His half-asleep girlfriend opens the door and points a gun to my head. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

    Without flinching I tell her my name, tell her about the arrangement with her man and walk right past her and the pistol and straight into the kitchen. I open up the cupboard and look for the green coffee cup. Found it! I lift it up and can’t believe my eyes.

    Either my dealer is super generous or he royally fucked up. There’s a bag with nine pills in it. I grab the bag and walk out the door. I turn around and tell his girlfriend that I’ll be by in the morning with the money.

    I’m sure he’s gonna freak the hell out when she wakes him up and tells him I was in his house at two in the morning and took the whole bag. He knows where I live and he has a bad temper. I used to ride around with him to help “collect” his debts and needless to say, you don’t want to be in debt to this guy.

    I begin to run as fast as I can. If I can at least get off his street, I know I’m good. It’s too late for him to do anything this early in the morning.

    Six miles, 40 degree weather, two in the morning on Christmas Day, and now I have to walk four more miles to get back to the house and get right.

    You know what sucks about being an addict? A ten mile walk in the freezing cold to get pills on Christmas morning because you have no other options.

    When I finally got home, I couldn’t feel my face and my legs literally felt like Jello. My mom was awake and freaking out because she didn’t know where I was. I told her I was just walking around the neighborhood smoking and that it wasn’t a big deal.

    I couldn’t even enjoy shooting up the pill because my body was so sore. I just fell asleep.

    But at least I had more dope when I woke up to take part in all the Christmas festivities the next day. I felt like such a loser being with my family that Christmas. I spent the whole day in and out of the bathroom, getting right every 45 minutes.

    A New Tradition

    I love being able to look back on that Christmas and know that I don’t have to live like that anymore. The best gift I can give my family today is to show up this year to their party completely present and sober. It’s what I did last year, it’s what I plan on doing this year. No one is hiding their purse or wondering where I am going when I step out to smoke. I’m just a son and a brother enjoying his family. I look forward to Christmas parties now. Dread and anxiety has turned into excitement and joy and gratitude.

    If nobody told you today that they love you, fuck it, there’s always tomorrow.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Everything's Fine: How I Recovered from Panic Attacks

    Everything's Fine: How I Recovered from Panic Attacks

    Even when I understand that what I am experiencing is a panic attack, I don’t dare say the words—not even to myself—for fear I will give it more power.

    I am lying back in a leather chair. The windows are open and I can smell the frangipani; its sweet scent drifting in from the garden. An occasional car passes by outside on the street, speeding down the road that intersects the cul-de-sac on which the house sits.

    My bare feet are resting on a soft leather ottoman and I curl my toes and squeeze the tissue in my hand, and look up at the face of the woman sitting in a chair next to me. Marielle is always brightly dressed, wearing large earrings that match a bracelet or necklace, her short blonde hair brushing against her long neck. She exudes kindness and empathy. From the first moment we spoke on the phone, when I called to ask if she could treat my panic disorder, I could feel that she had special gifts.

    Marielle was my last hope. I had been to therapists, talked to doctors, swallowed Xanax like they were vitamins–and still the panic persisted. We had recently moved to Singapore; my husband and two small children and I packed our house in Connecticut and crossed a continent and the vast Pacific to begin our life together in an exotic land. I wasn’t anxious about the move; I wanted to go, longed to break free of the confines of suburban life with its Sunday barbecues and evenings waiting at the train station for my husband to step off the 6:05 from Grand Central.

    Please Don’t Let Me Die Here

    My panic was not about the move; I knew that. Or, I thought that. I didn’t know anything really. For three nights in a row I awoke in a cold sweat, my body tingling as if I had been doused with eucalyptus. For the first few moments I was disoriented, and then the familiar wave of panic would crash against me. I’d reach for my husband; shake him awake.

    “It’s happening again. Help me.”

    The sound of my own voice startled me. Who was that person? The sound didn’t seem to originate from my body, but came drifting in from the corner of the room. The disassociation had begun. That was the worst part: seeing everything from above, watching the scene unfold as if watching a film of one’s life. My biggest fear, the thought that terrified me to my core, was that I would never emerge from this state; that I would never return to my body, that I would spend the rest of my life watching it from afar, startling at the sound of my own voice calling out for help.

    “Please wake up,” I pleaded. “Talk to me, please start talking.”

    I needed to hear his voice. He had been talking me through these episodes for five years, ever since the first time I awoke to the deafening sound of bells and a certainty that I was having a heart attack. Our daughter was a few months old and we had left our home in Johannesburg to enjoy a weekend in the African bush. We had spent the day in the pool, cradling our young girl in the cool water.

    “We have to go back to Joburg. We have to go back to Joburg. Don’t let me die here in the bush. Please don’t let me die here,” I implored over and over, as my husband kneeled on the floor in front of me. He rubbed my knees and tried to smooth my hair. I flinched at his touch, jumped up and paced, sat back down again and rocked, begging to be driven home to Johannesburg.

    Just 24 hours earlier I sat in our doctor’s office and explained that there was something off. My skin was tingling, I was especially nervous. He listened empathetically and said it was natural for new mothers to feel anxious. My husband sat next to me, trying to hide his own concern through a practiced look of confident authority.

    In the house in the bush my husband called our doctor, nodding his head while I rocked on the bed.

    “It’s not a heart attack, you’re having a panic attack,” he said when he hung up.

    “No, I can tell,” I argued. “It’s a heart attack, I’m going to die. Oh, God, I’m going to die and leave Elizabeth and I’m in the bush and we have to go back to Johannesburg.”

    “Everything’s going to be okay. I promise.”

    “You promise? Is everything really okay?”

    “Yes, it’s really okay.”

    “And everything will be okay?”

    “Yes.”

    Our conversation repeated like that until the tingling began to subside and I felt myself begin to drift back into my body. I curled up in the big bed and my husband sat next to me, repeating that everything was going to be okay until darkness closed in on me and I drifted off to sleep.

    ***

    In our temporary flat in Singapore my husband reaches through the night for my hand. He doesn’t open his eyes.

    “Everything’s going to be okay. You are fine. The kids are fine. I’m fine.”

    “You’re sure? The kids are fine?”

    “Yes, they are sleeping. Everything’s fine.”

    “I need to take a Xanax. Where are my Xanax?”

    My husband lets go of my hand, climbs out of bed and walks to the bathroom. He comes back with my pills and a bottle of water.

    “It will take 20 minutes for this to work,” I say before swallowing the pill. “Will you watch TV with me? Can we see if Friends is on? Do they have Friends here?”

    He reaches for the remote control and I sit on the edge of the bed praying that the Xanax takes effect quickly, willing my skin to stop tingling and my brain to reconnect with my body. Nothing on TV is familiar. We wait. Every few minutes I ask again if everything is fine and my husband rubs his eyes and says yes.

    And then the second wave hits, this one stronger than the first. My skin is on fire and my brain floats above. I can’t breathe. It’s not going away. The Xanax isn’t working. I’m going to be like this forever. Who will take care of my children? What if they see me this way? They will be so afraid.

    The thoughts crash against each other and I say them out loud. I listen to this strange sound that is my own voice. My husband tells me to take another Xanax and I do. We wait. I make him repeat over and over that the children are fine, that I am fine, that he is fine. The relief I long for, that I focus on in my mind’s eye eludes me. It is only after the third Xanax, hours and thousands of “everything is fines” later, that my skin softens and I drift back down to my body as I lie on the bed curled up in a fetal position.

    Counting Backwards from Five

    A few days later, I read about Marielle in a magazine. I am beyond exhausted: afraid to sleep, fearful of being alone, terrified that I will have another episode in front of my children. I dial her number and explain the situation. She gives me her address and tells me to come that afternoon.

    “Have you ever been hypnotized before,” she asks as she pours me tea.

    “No, never.” I’ve never really believed in hypnosis, but at this point I’ll try anything.

    We talk for over an hour, and I tell her about my life as I would a new therapist. She listens actively, she looks me directly in the eye; she shakes her head and furls her brow when I describe my most painful memories.

    Then she explains that she is going to try to hypnotize me, but that not everyone can be hypnotized. She tells me that I will always be in control, I will be aware of everything that is happening, and I can stop at any time. She is going to put me under and induce a panic attack, she says. I feel my body tense.

    “I’m afraid,” I say quietly.

    “I know you are afraid, but I’m going to be right here with you, and I’m going to walk you through the panic. And if it becomes too much, you can say stop. If I think it’s too much for you, I will bring you out. Are you ready?”

    I close my eyes and settle in the chair and listen to the sound of her voice]. Marielle speaks slowly and calmly. She tells me to reach back, back into my own mind. I can feel my body relaxing as she starts to count backwards from five. When she gets to one I am in another state. I am completely aware of my surroundings; I can still hear Marielle speaking to me in her tranquil voice. But I am somewhere else.

    She starts to describe my panic. She says very little, but within minutes my skin is tingling and I can feel myself disassociate. The fear rushes in. I call out that I am afraid, that I don’t like the way I feel.

    “You are safe, I am here,” Marielle says soothingly. “Keep going, let yourself feel it. Don’t turn away from what you are feeling. You are in control.”

    I focus on her voice and try to withstand my own discomfort, but after a few minutes I say I want to stop, I need to leave that place. She calmly tells me she is going to count again, and as she moves from one to five, I can feel the panic lifting, feel myself rising back to the surface; to the chair and the frangipani and the sounds of cars outside.

    We sit and talk for another 30 minutes. Marielle tells me I did very well for my first time, but that it may take a few more sessions until I learn to control my panic completely. I drive home feeling as if I’ve had a long, restful nap, and by the end of the day I feel better. Not cured, but better. I return for another session a few days later. This time I am eager to be put under, to experience the panic while wrapped in the warmth and safety of Marielle’s voice. I understand that the more I do this, the less power the panic will have over me.

    The worst part of the attacks is the feeling of helplessness. When I awake in the middle of the night with tingling skin, the panic holds me in its grip and rules with terror. Even when I understand that what I am experiencing is a panic attack, I don’t dare say the words—not even to myself—for fear I will give it more power. Marielle teaches me not to run away and hide, as I want to do, but to turn and face the panic and call it out by name.

    Within weeks I am beginning to feel like my own self again. The overwhelming fear and trepidation is replaced with assuredness and joy. I continue to go for my sessions, until one day Marielle puts me under and the panic tries to find me, but I am bored with it and shoo it away.

    ***

    That was 13 years ago and I’ve not had a full-on panic attack since. Over the years I’ve woken a few times to the familiar tingling and my heart racing. For a split-second I am disoriented, and then I realize that I am awake and panic has come calling. I name it in my head and then quietly chant to myself that I am fine, that everything is fine, until I can feel my body relax and I fall back into slumber.

    At times, the panic tried valiantly to return: through six more moves and a painful divorce it found me in the darkness and tried to grab hold. But it had lost its power, and the terror and feeling of helplessness were replaced with mild annoyance and a sense of control.

    Eventually it gave up and slunk away, defeated.

    Have you ever had a panic attack? How did you get through it?

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • When Treatment Professionals Relapse: Shattering the Stigma

    When Treatment Professionals Relapse: Shattering the Stigma

    We are treatment professionals: we are trained to help our clients navigate addiction and mental health crises. We aren’t supposed to relapse and have crises ourselves.

    In my last article about helping professionals who struggle with addiction and relapse, I wrote about how 37 to 57% of addiction treatment professionals are in recovery and 14.7% relapse over their career lifespan. After readers inquired about my story, I decided to write a follow-up.

    “The Blind Leading the Blind”

    It was a sunny July day when I started dual diagnosis inpatient treatment for alcoholism and mental health issues at a psychiatric hospital in Fargo, North Dakota. If there was a What Not to Wear: Rehab Edition, I would’ve been a damn good makeover candidate. I was clad in yellow scrubs and those dreaded teal slipper socks, the glass slippers of the mad. My chin-length blonde hair was matted, my wrists bandaged, my face puffy from drinking and binge eating. Shuffling to the pop machine, I ran into a colleague.

    I tried to avoid eye contact, but he saw me. I was mortified, ashamed. I had just resigned from my social work job at a drop-in center for at-risk youth. Later, I kept replaying the incident in my head like a ticker tape and longed for Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak. Unfortunately, I encountered something even more awkward two days later.

    The scene of this awkwardness was “nursing group,” which sounded to me like a class for breastfeeding mothers. Instead, we learned about the health consequences of drinking, using, and addiction. During the group, I spotted a former client from the YWCA domestic violence shelter. As soon as the group ended, I rushed off to the bathroom, hoping she wouldn’t see me.

    I smelled her before I saw her: a familiar alchemy of Estée Lauder perfume and menthol cigarettes. We met while washing our hands.

    “I’m surprised to see you here,” she said, applying a coat of peach lipstick.

    I wanted to tell her that I was also surprised I landed here, that at only 24 years old I hadn’t yet worked through my trauma and struggle with mental illness. Instead, I said: “I know, it’s probably weird for you, too. I won’t tell anyone how I know you. I ask that you do the same, please.”

    They don’t teach you how to handle this sort of situation in social work school. We are helping professionals: we are trained to help our clients navigate addiction and mental health crises. We aren’t supposed to have crises ourselves.

    When I told my last supervisor that I was struggling with alcoholism and needed time off to go to treatment, he said, “I support you, but I really need my social workers stable, or else it’s like the blind leading the blind, right?”

    After feeling ashamed for days, I imagined a role reversal to have more compassion for myself. What if I saw my former therapists in rehab? Would I really think they were less qualified to do their jobs because they were getting help? After all, I’d rather run into a therapist in rehab or 12-step meetings than drunk at a bar.

    Second Chances

    Even though I resigned from my social work position, I didn’t want to completely leave the profession. I was still deeply committed to helping others and working towards a more compassionate, equitable society. I was also idealistic, thinking that I would be an even better social worker once I worked through my demons. I imagined myself returning to the profession with renewed passion and vigor.

    As a licensed social worker, it was my ethical duty to report my substance abuse and time in rehab to the Board of Social Work. I admit, I was tempted to hide it; I didn’t want to send my addiction and psychological evaluations to complete strangers on the Board of Social Work. After an anxious month of awaiting their consensus, I eagerly ripped open the letter with the state seal. Since I had completed treatment and had an addiction counselor vouch for my sobriety, I was approved to continue practicing as a social worker, so long as I maintain my sobriety and attend 12-step meetings.

    While I was grateful for getting a second chance at the profession, I still felt humiliated that I had to turn in all of my psychological records, not just my successful completion certificate. I also wished for some sort of formal support system for people in my situation. I felt so alone in this battle, although I knew there had to be other professionals who had experienced relapse.

    You’re Not Alone

    A 2013 New York Times article called “Addiction Treatment with a Dark Side” featured the stories of social worker Melissa Iverson and addiction counselor Travis Norton. Both professionals relapsed while working in the addiction field.

    According to the article, “Iverson first requested anonymity, like most other professionals interviewed, some of whom have never acknowledged their problem to their families, primary care physicians or even insurers.” Later Iverson contacted the New York Times to “come out of the closet,” saying, “The stigma needs to be tackled by real people with real names, or else it will haunt us forever.”

    Back in 2014, I interviewed Norton, who was open about recovering from heroin addiction and owned his own practice adjacent to a Suboxone clinic in a suburb of Minneapolis-St. Paul.

    Norton said, “I was on methadone successfully for many years, then switched to buprenorphine (Suboxone). I’ve been on it for almost three years now. For ten years off and on, I have worked in a variety of settings that incorporate harm-reduction and have used the resources personally as a using addict. Because of relapses while working in the field, I am being monitored by my licensing board and am subject to random drug screens.”

    Sadly, three months after I interviewed Norton, he died of a heroin overdose. His mother Michelle Norton gave me permission to share his story because she knows that her son wanted to fight the stigma of addiction. He also deserves to be honored for the all the people he helped and inspired. Norton’s death is part of the national opioid crisis. At least two-thirds of the 72,000 overdose deaths in 2016 and 2017 were linked to opioids.

    Hope after Relapse

    There is hope for those of us who are helping professionals who also struggle with addiction and recovery. Norton and others who wrote to me shared that social work and counseling licensing boards are typically supportive of those who relapse, so long as they follow through with treatment, counseling, or medication assisted treatment like Suboxone or Naltrexone (a medication used for opioid addiction and alcoholism). An increasing number of treatment centers are offering specialized tracks for medical and helping professionals.

    Each one of us can work to support this societal shift from stigma to acceptance of our friends, colleagues, and loved ones who work in the addiction field. If you have relapsed, you are not alone. We are not the blind leading the blind, we are strong people who have a special understanding of our clients because we know what it’s like to go through hell and come out the other side. We’ve had a more valuable education than what can be taught in textbooks. We can help clients precisely because we have done the hard work of tunneling from the trenches of addiction to the light of recovery.

    View the original article at thefix.com