Answer Addiction

Tag: geographical cure

  • Drinking in Japan

    Drinking in Japan

    Japan was never the problem: it had been me all along! That realization led to an important discovery about my relationship with alcohol.

    People’s alcoholism evolves in many ways: some folks know by the time they’re 13 that they have a problem with alcohol, some learn in college, others later in life. I happened to be one of the latter ones; my alcoholism reared its ugly head in my early thirties. 

    I’d gone to Japan to work as a dancer, and later became married to a Japanese man. He was never home and I became so abjectly lonely, I’d hit the ex-pat bars for company, partying with rock stars, movie stars, baseball stars, businessmen, students, teachers, models, people from many different countries. It was a good time. But I didn’t drink much. 

    Then, one day, this raucously drunk girl (who came from some posh ivy league university and was teaching English in some elitist student exchange program), ranted about how much she and her pals hated what they called Prison Japan, then began dumping on Californians, calling us flaky, shallow people. I was so mad, I was ready to walk out the door. When she saw my subtle rage, she tried to assuage me.

    “Oh, c’mon Margaret, we were just joking, here, sit down again.” Then she said: “Hey, how come you never get drunk? That’s probably why you seem depressed. Maybe if you got drunk with us, you’d have more fun.” 

    Why Not Drink?

    Since this was a novel idea, I thought, Why the hell not? I never get drunk, lose control. Maybe if I’m drunk, this whole convo won’t seem so bad.

    So I began drinking, shot after shot, about six in a 45-minute span. All of a sudden, a certain undeniable warmth and euphoria shot through my body; I felt so carefree, so happy! I got so lively I found myself on the bar doing an imitation of Mikael Baryshnikov’s drunken-albeit-perfect tap-dancing number in the film Casanova. Yes, I felt indestructible and over-confident, sure my performance was almost as good as Baryshnikov’s. And the crowd went wild! Suddenly, I was part of the group. And it felt so damn good.

    I had no idea until that night that drinking prodigious amounts of alcohol could turn me into a fun-loving party girl. I decided right then and there that I ought to get drunk anytime I went out. Nightclubbing while drinking moderately was fun, but nothing compared to the euphoria and freedom heavy drinking bought me.

    I also discovered alcohol was my conduit to bonding with the Japanese, to really forming a connection with them. Their stalwart façade, worn throughout the day, would melt and they‘d become lighthearted or sentimental, sometimes bellicose; pretty much behaving like anyone who has had a little too much to drink.

    I never saw Japanese men get in bar fights—with the exception of the Yakuza, Japanese mafia. When Yakuza drank, they could become fearlessly aggressive; shocking violence could be unleashed abruptly, anywhere, anytime. Once I witnessed a Yakuza break a bottle and cut his girlfriend’s face. A vermilion stripe ran down her cheek, yet no one got up to help her. I learned later that the public was afraid to do anything for fear of repercussions! The only help she got was from a waiter who brought her a towel to stop the bleeding. She continued to stay by her boyfriend’s side, towel to cheek, looking down. I tried to help her, but got pushed back by management, telling me “Damena, dekinani, No, no, no, danger; you can’t go over there.” 

    Progressive Disease

    After some time passed, I noticed my drinking was getting progressively worse. Now I was consuming about 20 beers when I drank. The hangovers were staggeringly hideous. And they made me deeply depressed; alcohol is a depressant and I had a predilection toward depression anyway. It bothered me so much, I knew I had to quit. The hangovers were interfering with my relationship with my husband, my Japanese language studies, and my interactions with others. I so wanted to moderate. I’d even pray to the big Buddha in the park before going out, “Please, please watch over me. Don’t let me get drunk.”

    It didn’t work. Hard as I tried, I just couldn’t stop drinking excessively.

    I convinced myself that it was the loneliness of living in Japan that was driving me to drink. I was positive that once I got back to America, my drinking problem would sort itself out. Wrong. It remained intractably intact, I was getting stupefyingly drunk at least three to four times a week; one day to nurse a hangover, and the following day right back at it. 

    I eventually learned how to moderate, which gave me the proof I so desperately wanted: I was no longer an alcoholic. I was able to successfully drink casually and not to excess for about seven years. Then, out of nowhere, I got fired from a really boring dumb job. Inexplicably, I took it very hard. I decided it was high time to cut loose: drink away my disappointments and my feelings of inadequacy, and finally throw in the towel on this thing called life. I’d let it all hang out and drink as much as I wanted.

    Well, what I thought might be a two-day bender turned into a two-year bender. I spent most of my time on the couch passed out, at the liquor store, in rehabs, jails, or hospitals. I was up to two fifths a day, drinking more than ever. Hey, I’d given up on life, surrendered to King Alcohol . . . Why even try to moderate?

    I also was anti-AA. I’d convinced myself it was a cult and refused to go. But looking back now, I realize the real reason was that I was too prideful to have to admit to the group relapse after relapse. Finally, at my wit’s end, I went to an African American Christian rehab. I ended up staying there for six months. 

    This rehab didn’t mess around. It was lockdown and you weren’t allowed to go anywhere without staff present. And it did the trick: I lost my taste for alcohol and stayed sober for five years. But I still wouldn’t go to AA.

    Then, when I once again resumed my egregious drinking habits, my husband gave me an ultimatum: “Go to AA or I’m divorcing you.” I was shocked he’d say that because he was a normie and thought AA slightly freakish. But I got the message, and I believed him. So instead of going to the 7/11 at 5:59 to buy beer, I went to a meeting. 

    And this time AA worked for me. It’s amazing how my idea of AA as a cult evaporated the minute I really needed to stop drinking. I’m now sober three years, and with the help of AA I’ve become a better, happier person. 

    Everywhere I Go, There I Am

    I learned in the end that geographics don’t help—once you’ve become an alcoholic. Japan was never the problem: it had been me all along! That realization led to an important discovery: Alcoholism may be triggered by certain life events, but once you got it, you got it, and sometimes you need a lot more help than just moving away.

    Check out Maggie’s new Memoir Hangovers in Japan by Samari Shelby (pen name).

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • So You Want to Move to a New City in Recovery? First Ask Yourself These Five Questions

    So You Want to Move to a New City in Recovery? First Ask Yourself These Five Questions

    Moving might be the right choice, but examine your motives. When we were drinking and using, we were irrational, impulsive, and at the whim of our heartbreakingly horrible decisions. We get into recovery to be more than that.

    The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. – Lao Tzu
    Wherever you go, there you are. – Unknown

    We’ve all heard or tried the myth of the geographic cure: that we can change the unmanageability of our addictions simply by changing locations. The program suggests waiting a year to make major changes in our lives, such as moving to a new place or getting divorced. That suggestion directly contradicts another recovery recommendation: that we should change people, places, and things. And some of us, myself included, struggle for years or even decades to get to that one-year mark, and finally decide—maybe on our own, maybe after a psychic brings it up dozens of times—that the place we are living in isn’t working for us and it’s time to make a move. How do you know if it’s a viable idea? Here are five questions to ask yourself when considering a move.

    1. Do you have a safe, sustainable place to live?

    I cannot stress this enough, especially for the dream cities like New York and Los Angeles. Success in one does not necessarily translate to success in another. This may seem like common sense to some of you, but something about Los Angeles, where I currently live, makes people think they can show up with a dream, a few grand, and a month in an AirBnb in Koreatown.

    The feeling of home, sanctuary, and security is important for all humans, but it’s of paramount importance for those in recovery. The refrain I frequently hear is: “I never felt like I belonged anywhere.” Well, this feeling is exacerbated dramatically by a less than ideal living situation, so make absolutely sure you have a safe place. Is it as good as or better than where you currently live? And can you stay there for at least four to six months?

    1. Is this an impulse move?

    I’ve wanted to live in California my entire life, so much so that when I partied at the University of Hartford at the ages of 14 and 15, I told everyone I was a student at UCLA. I exposed myself when someone burst into the dorm asking where the Bruin was and I stared blankly ahead, not knowing the mascot of the school I pretended to attend. However, there were other moves I made or contemplated that were pure fantastical escapism; in fact, for a few years while I struggled in fauxbriety (marijuana and/or kratom and kava kava, Adderall, Xanax if you’re holding, mushrooms in the summer), I seriously contemplated moving to nearly every place I visited. I travel for my job as a stand-up, and for a few years I traveled desperately trying to “find myself.” Each and every time, I was sure the move would solve the problem of myself. I am now grateful I didn’t have the money and agency then.

    A lot can be said for waiting in recovery. Waiting for the miracle to happen, waiting to date, waiting to speak (so guilty on this), waiting to move. Most things in life that are meant for you will be there when you are ready. Unless you relapse. Sobriety is the only thing that is imperative to grab onto NOW.

    1. Do you know what it’s like to actually live in this place rather than be a tourist?

    Visiting a place is often not a good indicator of whether you will like it as a resident. I really thought I would hate LA. When I got here, it hit me that what I really hated (other than myself and my fauxbriety) were all the costs and inconveniences of staying in a hotel, and not knowing anyone or where the good meetings were. In short, #touristprobs.

    If you’re a person who goes to recovery groups or does a community-based activity like yoga, this is the time to use those resources and talk to other people. If for some reason you aren’t able to spend time in a place before you move there, get creative in searching out Facebook groups, Insta hashtags (actually maybe not that one) and message boards (Miami has an excellent resource for this: MiamiBeach411.com).

    1. Are you motivated by people, places, and things or is this a geographic trap?

    This one is perhaps the trickiest question of all. For me, I don’t know if I would have been able to stay away if I hadn’t first moved away from my ex-husband. Moving away from a person can also lead you to the important but painful conclusion that the hate is coming from inside the house. Our external realities reflect our internal state of being. There are always more of that archetype waiting for you wherever you go. Even Thailand. Costs and benefits, baby.

    Miami, for me, was a people, a place, and a thing. I can go there now if I have a reason to, and even enjoy it. At one year out, I went to meet with my divorce lawyer and send some stuff home that I had left at a friend’s. I relapsed off the plane on mojitos, which led to cocaine, which led to spending days holed up with my ex-husband, missing my meeting and flight home, and trusting him to ship off my journals and personal effects. Soon I received an email that said, “You wrote in here I was BAD IN BED, here are detailed instructions on how to hang yourself, I threw out your shit.” I guess what I am saying is: usually you don’t have to make a dramatic move, like crossing state lines, to escape people, places, and things. However, if you have been in an abusive relationship where you were using together, moving across state lines or even across the country may be the best thing to do—that is, if you have a safe place to live. Which leads us to the final question…

    1. Work, work, work, work, work, work?

    It is a sometimes unfortunate fact of life that most of us must work, even in early sobriety. If you are lucky enough to not have to, I say hold off as long as you can. Your career isn’t going anywhere. Momentum is somewhat of a myth. It can be achieved later, from a more stable foundation. But if you can’t afford or don’t have time to scope out the job situation in advance of your move, you might not be able to make this move in a healthy and sustainable way.

    Imagine this scenario: You are a sober bartender in New York to great applause. However, you don’t have a great online presence, which seems to matter here in Los Angeles. Pride keeps you from raising your hand when suggested, but eventually sharing outside of meetings gets you an offer with a sober-owned cater waiter company. It isn’t bartending, and doesn’t fit in with your idea of yourself, so you decline, deciding the problem is that you keep getting asked about your Insta followers at interviews. Soon you will know what it’s like to follow your dreams across the country; you’re gonna sleep in your car. My point is this: manage your expectations on the job front, and research as much as you can. Visit and meet locals. Ask them questions. Listen… If you are working on recovery, less than stellar work opportunities are SO temporary. I promise you that. So take them. And try to appear grateful.

    I hope I’ve got you thinking seriously about your possible plan to move, or perhaps made you feel a little better about your lack of plan to move. Either way, amassing information and managing pride and expectations, otherwise known as willingness, stands at the forefront. It all comes down to love and fear. Examine your motives. Safety concerns are paramount. Talk to someone (you are welcome to email me: [email protected]) before you go. Get a second opinion. Nobody knows everything. Meditate on it. Make lists of pros and cons. Pray.

    When we were drinking and using, we were irrational, impulsive, and at the whim of our heartbreakingly horrible decisions. We get into recovery to be more than that. Perhaps you are thinking, well, that just isn’t how I operate! Try it. I spent years wanting to move to California. Now that I am finally here, I am so grateful I didn’t move one moment earlier—had I done so, I’d be smoking meth in a tent in DTLA right now. I’m really glad I don’t have to do that. And that you don’t either.

    Did you make a move in early recovery? Give us the details: was it a good or bad experience? 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • In Praise of the Geographical Cure

    In Praise of the Geographical Cure

    For me, leaving was about survival and going back to supportive friends and family who had known me my whole life and who would give me a temporary place to stay.

    When I moved to the city of my dreams, I drove my Navy Subaru Impreza stuffed so full that I couldn’t see out of the rearview mirror the entire 1300-mile trek. My backseat was packed with my white cat Toby, my maple-bass guitar Helga, a vintage amp, a typewriter, a case of angsty journals, and a ridiculous amount of polka-dot and striped clothes. All things that I deemed too valuable for the moving truck. A month later, my serious boyfriend finished welding school back home and joined me. After finally leaving our sleepy home state of North Dakota, we were excited to start our new life together.

    Fast forward a few chaotic years to a plot that is achingly familiar for those of us who struggle with addiction; a plot almost sad and pathetic enough to make me a country song — if only I drove a pick-up truck and was a dog person rather than a cat lady. When the city of my dreams became the city of my nightmares, I decided to leave. My addiction counselor warned me that running away from my problems wouldn’t fix me, but I didn’t care. My drug hook-ups practically lived outside the Whole Foods across the street from my apartment, the same store that I had been kicked out of for stealing. My rent check bounced so I was on the verge of eviction. I needed to get the hell out.

    When I left the nightmare city, my cat Toby had died, my car had died, my identity had been stolen, and worst of all, I had broken up with that boyfriend who was supposed to be my forever mate. Then I fell in love again and that passionate, drug-fueled love also didn’t work out. Since I had sold or given away most of my possessions, pawned my bass and amp, there was no need for a moving truck this time around. I left, feeling broken.

    I sobbed as I said goodbye to the stunning Pacific Northwest wonderland with its gleaming snow-topped mountains and volcanoes, waterfalls, rainforest. As I drove east, I felt as flattened and empty as the prairies of my home state.

    I knew that just because I was moving home, it didn’t mean that I’d be magically fixed. I tried not to fall under the spell of what folks in the program call the “geographical cure.” Kerry Neville recently wrote a beautiful, lyrical, and illuminating piece on the geographical cure in which she says: “a change in external position on the map doesn’t reset the compass and point us to true north, because we always meet up with the self we are, no matter where we are.”

    I agree with some of Neville’s points, namely that taking vacations to topical locales will not get rid of our problems and provide us with a healthy, extended recovery. Yes, I knew that changing my zip code wouldn’t necessarily change my soul. I knew that I’d have to really dig down and do the hard, gritty work of recovery. But for me, leaving wasn’t about a vacation. I couldn’t afford vacation, I couldn’t even afford my rent. For me, leaving was about survival and going back to supportive friends and family who had known me my whole life and who would give me a temporary place to stay.

    Now that I mention it, the geographical cure warning is ironic because it contradicts other 12-step platitudes. These platitudes are like currency in the rooms, exchanged as freely as the collection basket for money and meeting lists: If you go to the barbershop enough times, eventually you’re going to get a cut, and: The only thing you have to change is everything. Change people, places, and things.

    Why are those of us who do decide to change our location criticized? Why do certain meetings and rehabs keep using their one-size-fits-all mottos rather than listen and embrace the many winding paths that lead us to recovery? In the few meetings I attended and the online recovery groups I participated in, people reacted negatively when I told them what I was doing. The consensus was that I was making a mistake. Even my counselor was quick to remind me that I wasn’t “special and unique,” and if this plan didn’t work for others, then why should it work for me? But I chose to do the thing that I knew would help me and my recovery. It wasn’t a mistake; it saved my life.

    Surely I wasn’t the only one who felt that perhaps the geographical cure may have been successful, so I decided to research the power of environmental cues, aka triggers, for addiction, relapse, and recovery. It’s likely you’re familiar with Pavlov’s classic dog study and the mechanics of classical conditioning, but I want to review it because it’s the foundation of every study that I read on this topic. Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov was studying salivation in dogs when he noticed that the dogs salivated every time a door was opened, even when researchers didn’t have food. This was because the dogs began associating a neutral stimulus like opening a door (or, later, ringing a bell or flashing a light), with food. Researchers later used this model to study people with addictions.

    Studies found that people who develop alcoholism and addictions develop strong associations with drug-associated cues and environmental stimuli like Pavlov’s dogs. In other words, after repeated experiences, drug users relate the rewarding effects of a drug (like euphoria and relaxation) with the people, places, and things that are present when we are using. For example, one study found that smokers who received IV nicotine still reported cravings, whereas smokers who received IV nicotine and nicotine-free cigarettes didn’t. Why? Because of the power of environmental cues, including the feeling of holding a cigarette in one’s hand, the smell of smoke, and even packaging of a cigarette box.

    I mention these study results not just because they confirm what I already knew in my heart to be true and I love being right, but because they are vital for understanding recovery and relapse prevention. We must acknowledge the power of our environment and triggers. Although most of us won’t take the extreme step of moving across the country, we all can minimize our exposure to triggers until we feel strong enough to deal with them. We can also bring a friend or family member to face triggers and create new associations, as the studies I read suggested.

    Above all, we should all learn to embrace our own unique path to find what works best for us, even if it goes against the current of AA axioms. I will always be grateful that I listened to the fluttering in my chest. Wisdom means knowing when to keep your feet firmly planted in place or when to take flight. Sometimes leaving is the thing that saves you after all.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • True North and the Geographical Cure

    True North and the Geographical Cure

    What it was like then: misery that had me researching the methods and means of suicide in the middle of the night on my cell phone, back turned to my husband, who was fast asleep, and to my children, asleep between us.

    The geographical cure: false hope that a change in circumstance might transform us. Always seductive, isn’t it? But as I have learned from Alcoholics Anonymous, a change in external position on the map doesn’t reset the compass and point us to true north because we always meet up with the self we are, no matter where we are, by chance, by collision, by invitation. Bill Wilson writes in AA’s Big Book, “We meet these conditions every day. An alcoholic who cannot meet them, still has an alcoholic mind: there is something the matter with his spiritual status. His only chance for sobriety would be some place like the Greenland Ice Cap, and even there an Eskimo might turn up with a bottle of scotch and ruin everything! Ask any woman who has sent her husband to distant places on the theory he would escape the alcohol problem.”

    Each time I believed a vacation, a temporary reprieve from present conditions, would be the cure, the fix I needed: Jamaica, Mexico, Greece, Romania, Italy, France, Wisconsin, California, etc., etc.? Each time I was sent off to “recover” from my eating disorder, self-injury, alcoholism, and bipolar depression, to distant, inpatient programs: Arizona, Maryland, Texas, and Pittsburgh? I’d get on a plane, 30 pounds underweight, spend a month or two bullshitting my way to well, not starving, eating thousands of calories (but only because I was forced), not drinking (but only because no access to booze), not cutting (but only because no access to sharps), and claiming to feel mostly content (Ha!) with my restored (Too BIG!) body, but not too content because such rapid reversal of position would seem disingenuous to doctors and therapists (I know I still have so much work to do but gosh, I am optimistic this time!).

    Each time, I returned home and within weeks was back to restricting, purging, over-exercising, drinking, cutting, and lying. Nothing had changed at home (that is, within myself), so I kept traveling an insane circular route though a dark, abandoned, haunted house.

    Samuel Johnson, in his 1750 essay, “The Rambler,” might as well have been giving the lead for a 12-step meeting when he wrote, “The general remedy of those, who are uneasy without knowing the cause, is change of place; they are willing to imagine that their pain is the consequence of some local inconvenience, and endeavor to fly from it, as children from their shadows; always hoping for more satisfactory delight from every new scene, and always returning home with disappointments and complaints.” 

    Eventually, with honesty and a commitment to working my program, I found my way home. I did not disappear nor die, though for many years I tried to do just that. Difficult to remember that life from here: my now eight years stable life, my now divorced and independent life with a teaching job in Georgia; my own home with HoneyBea, my rescue dog; and purpose restored.

    But also from exactly here: on an artist’s residency in Ireland, where I have just had morning tea with writers and painters and composers around a kitchen table — warm scones with butter and blackcurrant jam; where the night before, we gathered around a long, candle-lit dining table for fish, roasted potatoes, carrots, broccoli, and coconut custard topped with a purple-black pansy, and afterwards, in the drawing room where we shared our paintings, writing, and music; where Bernadette, at 93, stood before us in her long red dress, her cane left by her chair, and recited, from memory, poems from her latest, and sixth book—“think of when/ the end will come/and then”; where I believe that I, too, might live to 93, still creating more and forward; where, prefacing my reading, draft pages from a book-in-progress, I told my new friends, “I am not supposed to be here. I was given up for dead. And yet.”

    At dinner, on the very first night of my stay, I noticed a fellow artist who had declined the kind offers of wine, and then the raspberry trifle spiked with sherry. So I said to him, as we were cleaning up dishes in the kitchen, “I don’t drink either,” because I am always searching for my tribe when I am not at home.

    “Are you a friend of Bill W.?” he asked.

    The next night he took me to the local 12-step meeting in the town of Cootehill and I was asked, for the next meeting, to give the “Lead,” which, in 12-step terms, means recounting in ten minutes’ time the story of what my life was like when I was drinking, what happened—the transformation to sobriety—and what my life was like now that I was free.

    “It’s easy to get lost,” I said. “Easier to stay lost so far from home. This meeting is an anchor—while you might be strangers, you know me and I know you.” As I was talking about my desperate drinking days, giving the drunkalog, it was as if I was telling the story of another Kerry—that is, the story of a fear-full woman, intent on wrecking herself in despair’s ditch, and who would be dead by 40 by active or passive suicide.

    What was my life like then? Locked in a room under 24/7 video surveillance with a thin mattress on the floor, eating bland spaghetti with a plastic spoon, though not really eating since I’d stopped that, too (a spoon and in isolation because I kept sawing my wrists with the tines of a fork in the hospital cafeteria). I kept trying to disappear and doctors kept locking me away. “We need to stop you from killing yourself,” they said. What it was like then: misery that had me researching the methods and means of suicide in the middle of the night on my cell phone, back turned to my husband, who was fast asleep, and to my children, who were curled up and asleep between us both. Plans, plans, plans. Misery that dogged me. What it was like then: impossible to ever be inside joy, to be part of the living, the loving, the longing for now and tomorrow and more of this life, and so I ruminated over the plans, plans, plans.

    And so, my recounting of that Kerry at the meeting in Cootehill? She seemed a remote wraith, no longer dogging me, with her doomsday threats: “Just wait. You’ll fall again.” What she now says? “Thank you for saving me.” I honor her and have compassion for her: she didn’t know how to love herself, how to use her voice, how to take risks in this world.

    But, too, what it is like now: years after my last dive into bipolar’s dark well and seven years sober, my thoughts can still wander off path and I can get momentarily lost, particularly when traveling away from home, alone, in distant places where I might not know anyone, might wonder if the geographical cure could work: maybe I can have a Guinness in Ireland? So I look for my tribe and go to meetings when far from home. In recovery, you seek fellowship no matter where you are. Because you are always HERE, NOW: one day at a time, even in the Irish countryside.

    But, too, what it is like now: I am in right alignment to myself, which means often at an odd angle to the universe, which means sometimes wobbly on that off-kilter axis, but mostly truly good. Such a simple word: good. An alleged root of “good” is the Indo-Eurpoean “ghedh”—to unite, to fit. I am united with myself and fit into my own part of this world. That is, with my ragtag tribe of survivors who know what it was like, what happened, and what it is like now—but a “Now” that only is possible if I remained committed to honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness to find fellowship at home and abroad.

    View the original article at thefix.com