I knew that when we divorced I had abdicated my rights to the family. But I still loved him as I had since childhood.
In my darker moments I’d search the obituaries for his name.
Orlando Reyes Jimenez
Preparing to grieve my ex-husband’s death had become familiar; a routine performed in solitude. My procedure was always the same. I’d fill his favorite silver mug with chamomile tea and type his name into a search engine. I would scroll the death notices and inhale the steam; it smelled of sunlight and grass. I would wrap my hands around his mug until the tea grew cold. After four years I still hadn’t found an obituary but I knew he could be dead. I knew he had been homeless. I knew his health was spiraling downward. I suspected he still drank heavily. I was tired of the shame and silence that surrounded loving him. Alcoholism overshadowed his life. I did not want it to overshadow his death.
My Second Family
At the end of our ten-year marriage I had become terrified that he’d die. Almost daily I would help him to bed after whiskey binges led him to black out. He never remembered the way he crawled down the hallway and how I turned him on his side so he wouldn’t choke on his vomit. In the mornings I’d wipe his clammy forehead and smooth his black bangs. His thick hair still curled at the ends just as it had when we met. We were just kids then, only 12 years old.
During our teens I spent so much time at his house that his parents and brothers became my second family. His mom fed me bowls of molé with tortillas while his dad and I discussed books and music deep into the twilight. By the time we got married in our twenties, the wedding ceremony made formal what we had known all along: we were family. In our twenties we partied, but I assumed it was just a college thing. I grew out of it and into graduate school.
By the time I began teaching college and seeing music therapy clients his party binges had turned into daily drinking. He began punching holes in the walls of our apartment. When I confronted him, he began to hide his drinking. A drunk driving arrest led to rehab and a year of sobriety. But he relapsed and refused help. He began verbally abusing me. I contracted my world around him until the threat of physical violence became obvious. Eventually I got counseling and spiritual advising and we divorced. I no longer sat with his mom and dad at the kitchen table.
But Orlando and I stayed in touch. After all, we had been friends since seventh grade. He’d call and tell me about his homelessness, his ejection from a halfway house for being drunk. I remarried, moved, and built a healthy life. The gap between our lives widened. After a few years he stopped calling.
A Way to Feel Connected
I began my search for his obituary.
My search began as a way to feel connected to him. All typical social contact had been severed by both the divorce and his behavior. At first, acquaintances had fallen away after his violent outbursts in public. Then friends stopped calling after he borrowed money and didn’t pay it back. Even his siblings seemed to become disillusioned after he passed out during a backyard barbecue in front of his nieces. By the time we divorced his family had taken over his care and I dropped out of contact with them. United in our love for him, yet fearing for his life, we seemed to retreat from each other as if disconnecting would help us move forward.
When his phone calls stopped and he dropped off social media, I was shadowed by the sense of him wandering the world alone. I would picture him drunk and in constant danger of an accident or cumulation of uncontrolled diabetes keeping him a hair’s breadth from death. I could no longer turn him on his side and wipe his forehead. My search became the only way I could care for him.
Each time I didn’t find an obituary, it meant there was still a chance he was alive.
Six years after our divorce, his family sent me an email. Orlando had died from a pulmonary embolism, just four days from what would have been our eighteenth wedding anniversary. They did not invite me to the funeral or burial and I craved a way to externalize my grief. I sent a request to the Michigan coroner for his death certificate. When it arrived a few weeks later, I went into my garden and read it repeatedly as in ritual. The cause of death was listed as accidental. I tried not to imagine what had happened. I ran my fingers along the coroner’s signature as if the letters could connect me to everyone who loved Orlando.
I Needed a Place to Put My Pain
Most family written death notices are quite simple, and I’m not sure why his family didn’t write one. Perhaps their grief was too heavy to share publicly. Perhaps they were ashamed of him. Or maybe it just wasn’t a meaningful part of their grieving process. It wasn’t the length of the obituary I needed, nor its ability to express the complexity of his life. It was the simple and public recognition that he had existed. That his life warranted notice. The grieving process needs two things: solitude and community. An obituary would have allowed me the feeling of sharing my loss with others. I knew that when we divorced I had abdicated my rights to the family. But I still loved him as I had since childhood. I needed a place to put my pain.
So I once again returned to brewing chamomile tea in his favorite mug, a silver travel mug that was the only thing of his I’d kept after our divorce. I would cup my hands around its rotund shape and for a moment feel his warmth again. I opened my computer, but instead of typing his name into the search engine, I typed it across the top of a new document. I wrote all the words I had searched for. I gave him an obituary.
Jimenez, Orlando Reyes, 42, of Waukegan died on August 20, 2016 at a hospital in Detroit. His death was ruled accidental. Orlando will be remembered for the way he loved to make people laugh and for his engulfing hugs. He is survived by his parents, two brothers, and two nieces. He is also survived by his ex-wife, his childhood sweetheart. She continues to use his favorite silver mug in which she brews tea that smells of summer and hope. In lieu of flowers please forgive the addiction and remember the soul. On the other side of addiction only love remains.
Overdose survivors need more than a second (or third) chance: they need a parachute. When you’re in free fall, a little more time isn’t much help.
Perhaps everything that is terrible is, in the deepest sense, something that wants our love.
Rilke
The overdose epidemic in the U.S. has been called “the greatest public health crisis of our time.” It’s also our greatest opportunity.
The opioid crisis is an identity crisis: it’s a challenge to how we see ourselves. Do we truly believe that we are all in this together? One answer leads us deeper into despair. The other, into a hopeful future.
It’s been said that “doing more things faster is no substitute for doing the right things.” What are the “right things,” the measures that can resolve the crisis, not just postpone it? The right actions come from the right thoughts. Those thoughts come from feelings, and feelings are never right or wrong. But there are some feelings we are born with. They are our birthright. And one of them is love.
The Kindness of Strangers
Hatred never ceases by hatred, but by love alone is healed.
The Buddha
Behind the opioid epidemic is a prevailing lack of compassion, of caring about everyone equally. At the heart (or lack of it) of this societal disease is rampant inequality. The social determinants of health: stress, unemployment, lack of support, poor health care, etc. are major drivers of addiction. Many authors promote this view, including Gabor Mate, Bruce Alexander, Sam Quinones, Robert Putnam, and Harry Nelson.
Our increasing fragmentation affects everyone, poor or rich.
Drug overdose is the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of fifty…
Our material lives may be outwardly prosperous, but our psychological and spiritual lives are in freefall. What is driving us to self-destruction? There are many factors, all with one unifying theme: we are no longer living in community with one another and, consequently, we are lonely.
Francie Hart Broghammer
We all hunger for the same thing. The question is this: do we love our neighbor as ourselves? That’s not just a commandment; it’s a requirement. How do we rebuild community? First, by taking full responsibility for the fallout of not being one.
For Whom the Boom Tolls
Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.
Pema Chodron
I live in Asheville, a city that has recently, like the opioid crisis, exploded. Tourism is at an all-time high, and Asheville has appeared in dozens of destination top ten lists. It has also been ranked second in the country in gentrification.
Asheville sits in the heart of Appalachia, where the opioid crisis is at its worst. In 2017, North Carolina had the second highest increase in opioid deaths in the country. The Blue Ridge Parkway runs through town and I spend a lot of time there, mostly foraging. That’s where last summer, for the first time, I found not mushrooms, but needles.
Despite the crisis, the city just spent six months trying to shut down the local syringe exchange. The same thing is happening in other cities. In Asheville, the exchange had been operating without incident for over two years — until the houseless (a.k.a., homeless) in adjacent areas were kicked out to make way for new development.
Addiction depends on denial. What if development is the real addiction? Will we face up to the dark side of gentrification or just try to make it “go away?”
If a canary dies in a coal mine, you don’t blame the canary. Yet blaming the victim is exactly what we’ve been doing.
Blue Ridge Parkway, 8/20/18
License to Ill
A man came to the Rabbi and said, “Rebbe, my son has turned against me. What should I do?” The rabbi said, “love him even more.”
Hasidic story
Most people by now have heard that naloxone (Narcan) can prevent a deadly overdose. So many Americans are dying — often from a mix of drugs, but mainly due to opioids — that naloxone should be as ubiquitous as aspirin. Everyone using a drug that may contain opioids should carry it like an EPI pen. And with the increasing prevalence of fentanyl, a single dose may not be enough. Everyone should know how to tell how much naloxone to give someone in the midst of an overdose. This should be basic, universal knowledge.
But keeping someone alive is just the beginning. In fact, while naloxone may be physically safe, it does have one significant side effect: precipitated withdrawal. And not helping someone through it is like catching them from falling only to drop them from higher up.
A Devil’s Bargain
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
Ian Maclaren
As one response coordinator describes it, precipitated withdrawal is like “the worst flu you’ve had… times 100.” For some, the feeling is so bad that they find themselves dying, so to speak, to use again.
To the uninformed, it is inconceivable that someone who nearly died from a drug would run out that very same day and buy more of it. Narcan works by binding to opioid receptors, blocking the effect of narcotics like heroin. In drug users with a physical dependency, it also has the effect of causing severe withdrawal symptoms. This all but guarantees that the first thing a user will think of after their overdose is reversed is getting another fix…
Christopher Moraff
Naloxone is not just a “bandaid on a bullet hole.” It can feel like ripping open a wound. For “withdrawal is the very situation that [users] are seeking to avoid in the first place.”
“A dose of naloxone,” according to the Chief Medical Officer for a Connecticut health agency, “is a chance. But if it’s not coupled with immediate offers of treatment, it may be a slim chance that leaves the revived individual running back to the same dealer who sold them their last lethal dose.”
Overdose survivors need more than a second (or third) chance: they need a parachute. When you’re in free fall, a little more time isn’t much help.
Back on the Chain Gang
Without forgiveness, our lives are chained, forced to carry the sufferings of the past and repeat them with no release.
Jack Kornfield
“They’re usually very angry when we bring them around,” says one responder. “One kid yelled at me, ‘You think this will make me stop doing drugs?’” Indeed, one substance abuse specialist in Ohio says that 67% of people revived with naloxone in her area use again within 24 hours. NPR reports that “about 30 percent of those revived with Narcan at Boston Medical Center have been revived there more than once… and about 10 percent of patients more than three times. Those statistics are in line with what’s seen in ERs elsewhere, public health officials say.”
According to a former agent for the DEA, one woman in Ohio, within 24 hours of being revived for the the sixth time, was using again. In the first half of 2017, one man in North Carolina was revived fourteen times.
To be clear, I am not saying naloxone provides a safety net that encourages people to take bigger chances. Studies have shown that naloxone does not increase drug use any more than free condoms increase sex. Nor am I saying we should place limits on the number of times we revive people.
What I am saying is that naloxone is no miracle drug. When you “come to,” the problem remains. Overdose survivors are 24 times more likely than the general population to die in the following year. One study found that for those revived with naloxone, nearly one in ten are dead within a year, the majority within the first month. Follow up is critical. But even that is not enough.
Not by Locks Alone
Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him.
Booker T. Washington
In June of 2019, New Jersey became the first state to allow paramedics to administer buprenorphine along with naloxone to ease the pain of withdrawal. Buprenorphine is the drug that, like methadone, is used in opioid replacement therapy. But this measure will, according to one expert, “make a meaningful difference only if rescued individuals are linked immediately to ongoing treatment and agree to participate in that treatment.”
“Immediate” is key. And at least one hospital in New Jersey has been making that link, through state-paid recovery coaches, since 2017. A coach might work with someone “for weeks or months.” And the cost to taxpayers of helping people in this way is surely far less than the cost of leaving them on their own.
Unfortunately, however, getting people into treatment is not enough. Not all treatment is good treatment. In fact, much of it is worse than doing nothing at all.
Under the Rug
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
Thoreau
People usually go to rehab for 28 days, maybe a month and a half. In most cases, the treatment fails, if you regard failure as return to use. A study reported in the Irish Medical Journal found that 91% of people who go through rehab are using again within a year; 80% in the first month.
“Most honest program directors,” says veteran addiction expert Julia Ross, “will admit to 90% relapse rates, and I assume that if they admit to 90%, it’s probably worse.” Drug courts are no better. A national study of seventy-six drug courts found a reduction in the rate of rearrest of only 10 percent.
Moreover, when people come out of abstinence-based rehab, their tolerance has gone way down, so they are more likely to overdose. This is a common reason why fentanyl is killing people: it’s much stronger than they are expecting, especially in an opioid-naïve state. Making fentanyl test strips available can help prevent overdose, but that still doesn’t deal with the basic issue of why they’re using in the first place. What pain are they killing?
Zero Tolerance
Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.
Henry “Red” Sanders
I watched my grandmother die a very slow death. At 90 years old, after three cancers, open heart surgery, and several strokes, she still fought tooth and nail. Christopher Ryan, author of Civilized to Death, compares our approach to death to the final minutes of an NBA basketball game. We drag it out. We go for quantity instead of quality. Is that also our approach to addiction? As long as they don’t die, we’re OK. This is similar to abstinence-based approaches to addiction treatment: As long as you don’t use, you’re OK. This amounts to saying, “it’s more important to look good than to feel good.”
To be clear: I’m not saying we should just let our neighbors die. I’m saying we need to do more than just keep people alive; not less. We need to treat the cause, not just the symptom.
Spare the Prod
If you want to be heard, whisper.
Author Unknown
The overdose crisis is part of a larger epidemic of despair. The facade of America as the “land of opportunity” is failing. Asheville today is “booming.” For whom? Are we saving lives or just saving face?
Fortunately, Asheville has begun to address its weak spots, and we now have three needle exchanges. We all need to look in the mirror and face where we — as a community, as a country — are really at. Because not doing so is killing us. Whether we die quickly from overdose or slowly from alcoholism, cancer, or depression, we are ALL canaries in a coal mine. And you can’t just rake the canary over the coals.
It’s one thing to save lives. But throwing someone into withdrawal without providing detox support or throwing them out of treatment because they’ve relapsed is like hitting a child to make them stop hitting other children. Such heavy-handed measures only perpetuate a cycle of abuse. Even a magic bullet leaves a wound.
Sticks and Phones
Can you love people and lead them without imposing your will?
…leading and not trying to control: this is the supreme virtue.
The Tao Te Ching
There’s a reason our greatest leaders practice nonviolence. If all we do is arm people with naloxone, if we fight firearms with firearms, the conflict will only escalate. Stronger opioids are already requiring stronger antidotes.
With this approach, we may win a few battles, but we will lose the war. You can’t win when you see this as a war to begin with. Because you can’t force someone out of addiction any more than you can force them to stay alive. Force is what causes addiction.
In 2015, Victoria Siegel, 18, died of a methadone overdose precipitated by cyberbullying. We worry about bullying in schools. What about parental bullying — or governmental? Some of us are aware of the alarming incidence of domestic violence. How many of us recognize how our culture is inherently abusive, our very way of life?
Sometimes we forget that we are treating people, not diseases. We are bio-psycho-social beings. We have feelings. If addiction comes from pain, and pain comes from hurt, then we need to reduce hurt, not just harm.
A Dying Shame
You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with.
Wayne Dyer
We will not end drug abuse until we end human abuse. We will not end human abuse until we end abusive thinking, because violence starts with what you think. A saying often attributed to Martin Luther King Jr. is that “you can have no influence over those for whom you have underlying contempt.” As long as I think, “you’re not good enough; this is all your fault,” or I say that to myself, addiction has a foothold.
The blame game has no winners. “We’ve lost what it means to just be ourselves and for that to be ok and for that to be enough. So we find ways to self-medicate,” says Rev. Shannon Spencer. People will use painkillers as long as the pain is killing them, for there are few emotions more agonizing than shame.
We Are Faminy
I don’t remember now how many days we stayed—long enough to hear David sing often and tease us about white people’s music, which, according to him, is only about “love.” He observed that the Hopi have many songs about water, which they consider the rarest and most precious of resources, and then asked, with feigned innocence, if white people sang so often about love because it was equally rare in our world.
Peter Coyote
To many, opioids feel like the opposite of shame. One user describes the feeling as “like being hugged by Jesus.” Indeed, “the very essence of the opiate high,” according to Gabor Mate, is that it feels “like a warm soft hug.” This is the feeling of unconditional acceptance and support, or love.
We live in a culture where love is the one thing we sorely lack. Millions of people are starving for just a few drops of it. If only for a few moments, we desperately need to feel like we’re OK, that someone wants us to be here, as we truly are. Like they say, it is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.
Inside, we know we’re not just here to feed The System. We know it should be feeding us. We should not be starving. We should not have to be forced, or force ourselves, to do anything. People need to be supported to decide for themselves what healing looks like for them and to approach it in their own time.
The Emperor in the Room
Opioids are like guns handed out in a suicide ward; they have certainly made the total epidemic much worse, but they are not the cause of the underlying depression.
Anne Case and Angus Deaton
To solve the drug problem, we need to focus on more than drugs. Otherwise, we are shooting the messenger. Drugs are like the emperor’s clothes; it’s time to look at who’s wearing them.
Like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, opioids and their antagonists are two sides of the same coin. Focusing on either is like looking for your keys under the streetlamp when you know you dropped them further up the street. There is an “upstream” issue here. That issue is our domination-based, “have to” culture. If we stick to our guns, if we continue to be violent, inside and out, we will continue to die.
Whether we kill another person, the planet, or ourselves, we are a culture committing suicide. We are overdosing on “progress.” We are addicted to things far more insidious than opioids; you’re looking at one.
Progress isn’t progress when it’s in the wrong direction. The direction we’re going is apart. The direction we need to go is back together.
Only the Lonely
Humanity’s current crisis may not, at its root, be an economic crisis or an environmental crisis. It may well be a crisis of consciousness, a crisis in how see ourselves and the world around.
Peter Russell
If you’re in the right place at the right time, armed with enough naloxone, you can save a life. But what about an hour later, or the next day? You might get someone into treatment, but what about after that? A person that susceptible to overdose can scarcely be left alone. And that aloneness is the real problem. In fact, it’s how addiction starts.
The connection between social isolation and addiction shows up on many levels, from treatment to prevention. The most obvious is that you can get naloxone into the hands of every drug user, but it will do them no good if they overdose alone.
Human beings may be the most social animals on earth. Social isolation can drive us to despair, addiction, and even suicide. Loneliness is self-reinforcing and can lead to shame, for it can mean “I don’t deserve to be loved.” This can be the underlying emotional pain that comes back during withdrawal, whether from an opioid or from someone withholding their affection. And that lack of affection could be the primary cause of addiction.
Fatal Attraction
If one has a friend, what need has one of medicines?
Bhartrihari
There can be no healing without community. “This unique American moment asks not for a call to arms, but for a call to neighborliness.” (Francie Hart Broghammer)
No amount of “care” can substitute for the watchful eye of loving family, friends, or neighbors. No amount of “treatment” can make up for how we treat each other. It truly takes a village.
Ultimately, it’s not drugs that are killing us; they are just finishing us off. Whether or not we beat the horse, we’re already practically dead. Something has weakened us enough to succumb to drugs. It’s the same thing that allows dealers to intentionally make some of their merchandise deadly, or if it’s naloxone, to jack up their prices.
What our culture is most addicted to is exploitation. It’s what the system is set up for. It compels us not to care. As Ken Eisold says, “The loss of community is not a problem that can be dealt with through psychotherapy,” for what needs rehabilitation is our society. There’s something wrong “with the village.”
The greatest tool I know for rebuilding community is Nonviolent Communication (NVC). The best approach I’ve encountered for addressing the disconnection inherent in addiction is SeekHealing.
We are the Medicine
At the root of the opioid epidemic are deeper questions that we have to ask about society. What kind of society do we want to live in? Do we want to live in a society where we believe every life truly matters? Do we want to live in a society where we all chip in, recognizing that we are vulnerable in some way, whether it’s to addiction or loneliness or other conditions, and that we are stronger when we come together, when we recognize our interdependence, and when we help each other?
As tragic as the opioid epidemic is, if it can move us in a direction of shared understanding about our interdependence, if it can help us address these deeper social roots of disease, then I believe that we will have used it ultimately to improve ourselves to become stronger as a country.
Vivek Murthy
To make it out of this crisis, we need to look at the big picture. As writer David Dobbs puts it, “trying to understand mental illness without accounting for the power of social connection is like studying planetary motion without accounting for gravity.” If we only look at addiction on an individual level, we are missing the forest for the trees. If you don’t heal the forest, it gets harder and harder to heal each tree.
It’s especially hard to heal when you’re continually cut down. In this culture of mutual exploitation, we treat each other like truffula trees. We factory-farm humans and clear-cut them for fuel. We do it to each other and we do it to ourselves. All to feed the machine, the matrix. To race into space, we’re melting our wings.
Saving lives, then, is only the beginning. It’s the tip of the iceberg. Because it is we, not “they,” who have an addiction. This isn’t about how we use drugs; it’s about how we use each other. Because ultimately, there are no others. We are not just a bunch of individuals. We are one, interdependent whole. Our greatest public health crisis is that we’ve forgotten who we are.
The Opposite of Addiction
Sometimes out of really horrible things come really beautiful things.
Anthony Kiedis
This crisis is an opportunity, a wake-up call. If we take responsibility for it, there’s no limit to what we can do. It’s said that anything is possible if it doesn’t matter who gets credit for it. The same is true of blame.
We are all in this together. That’s the bottom line. There is but one answer to this crisis, and we each carry it at the bottom of our heart.
When your broken heart goes into cardiac arrest and your old “coping mechanisms” are more likely to lead you to flatline than recovery, try these 11 resuscitative tips and heal yourself.
Heartbreak. At 14 or 54, we’ve all been there, but today we push through the pain, one-day-at-a-time, cold brew sober. And here’s what’s helping me now, because, despite what still feels like an endless volley of water balloons hitting concrete beneath my breastbone, the fibrillation is in my mind, not my chest cavity, and that scrappy muscle thumps on, still propping me upright each morning to face my new reality.
1. Find that God of Your Understanding and Glom On
When I reached Step 3 with my sponsor, I got an assignment: flesh out your concept of a higher power, in writing. Lisa M. wanted detail, a God I could see and talk to, and grab by the elbow. And because I’m neither original nor progressive, I came up with a male God in human form — a cross between Santa Claus and Mr. T. to be exact. With a twinkle in his eye and a glint off his gold tooth, my HP is jolly and generous, strong and sexy, and funny as hell.
And at this moment, when I’m finding myself on the sucky side of one-sided love, it’s not bad to have a real hunk who loves me for an HP. After an especially vicious salvo, when the heartbreak balloons start to leak out the eye sockets, I can HALT, remember the in-breath, and picture HP (and yes, predictably, I’m looking heavenward). Funny, his response is always the same: with bronzed torso and silver beard, forearms flexed and crossed over a white undershirt, the big man in the sky stares down at me, then starts nodding reassuringly. Suddenly, he flashes that easy smile and I know I’m good.
2. Slam the Slogans
H.A.L.T., Easy Does It, Turn It Over, Just for Today, Live and Let Live, This Too Shall Pass, When One Door Shuts Another Opens, Fear Is the Absence of Faith, The Elevator Is Broken – You’ll Have to Use the Steps. I’ve become something of a short-order chef when it comes to using a few well-chosen words to support my sobriety. Day and night, I sling slogans, flip affirmations, and call out quotes from famous dead people. I’ve scotched them to the inside of my kitchen cabinets, along with the 3rd, 6th, 7th and 11th step prayers. They are the comfort food my soul craves now. “Success is moving from failure to failure with no lack of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill. “If you want to be loved, love and do loving things.” – Ben Franklin. Words that nourish, as I’m waiting for the kettle to boil. Having well-chosen words highly visible in the kitchen (or as a screensaver) can be a real lifesaver!
3. Phone Therapy
And here’s a slogan I’m slamming hard today: “We drank alone, but we don’t stay sober alone.” The old timers carried quarters, and I make sure I leave home with my phone fully-charged. I listen to a morning meditation walking to the train, text three newcomers on the platform, compose a longer text to my sponsor in transit, then dial my best sober gal pal as I push through the turnstile on the final leg to work. I send silly GIFs to lift spirits, including mine, and add a trail of emoji butterflies, praying hands, and peace signs. By 8:00 a.m., the lonely in me already feels not so alone.
4. Explore Podcasts
Recovery Radio Network, Joe and Charlie, and the Alcoholics Anonymous Radio Show are three in my queue. On my lunch hour or driving upstate, I take 30-60 minutes to laugh, cry, and identify…
5. Make a Gratitude List
My first sober Christmas, going through a divorce with two kids still believing in Santa, the above-mentioned sober gal pal suggested I find ten things for which I was grateful, save them to my phone, and recite them like a mantra through the Twelve Days of Christmas. I did:
1. My sobriety 2. My sons 3. AA program of recovery 4. AA fellowship 5. Food in my stomach 6. Roof over my head 7. Colombian coffee 8. My dog 9. My extended family 10. God (HP has since moved up to the #1 slot)
It worked. I said no to nog that first Yuletide, and made merry for my sons instead. And counting off my blessings still works today, when I’m a shallow-breathing shell just going through the motions.
6. Make an Extended Gratitude List
When the restless, irritable and discontent in me keeps spilling the glass half-full and this positive punch list isn’t getting me over the hump, I pour out ten more things to celebrate, like: my pre-war bathtub, which holds upwards of 60 gallons of bubble bath and the fact that I live within easy walking distance of two subway lines so I can always get into the city on weekends.
7. Make Meetings
“Meeting Makers Make It,” “Get Sober Feet,” “Carry the Body, the Mind Will Follow.” These three slogans in particular encouraged me as a newcomer, and I’m calling upon them now, in cardiac arrest, when my heart needs serious heartening. So I’m hitting my home group, and getting hugs from retirees with double-digit sobriety who pass fresh Kleenex and envelop in equanimous smiles. I’m also checking out other meetings across town, then going out for…
8. Fellowship Afterwards
I’ve started tucking my Boggle into my handbag when I head out to my Friday night meeting. At the secretary’s report, I pull out the box, shake it, and invite anyone interested to a nearby diner for passable pie a la mode and a few rounds of a three-minute word game. Sometimes it’s Yahtzee. We roll the dice and down bottomless cups of bad coffee. Last week someone brought cards, and I lost badly at hearts (ha!). It’s good, wholesome fun, and by the time I hit my pillow, I’ve significantly pared down the number of waking hours I could have spent obsessing over-ahem-HIM.
9. Self-Care
Self-care is somewhat self-defined. These days, after I’ve covered the basics—eat, sleep, bathe—I’m noodling what more I can do to support my mental, physical, and spiritual self. Prone to self-pity and self-indulgence just now, self-care is really urgent-care. So I ask: am I under-meditating and over-caffeinating? Am I speeding up at speed bumps? Am I four months behind in balancing my bank statement? Am I using money to buy what money can’t buy and damn the consequences? Am I treating every Monday like Cyber Monday and abusing the free delivery feature of Amazon Prime? Have I forgotten yoga and found red velvet cake in Costco’s freezer? Are my spot checks spotty lately because I just don’t want to cop to this alcoholic acting out, and instead keep blunting the full force of feeling??? Yes to all of the above. And this leads me back to Step 2: turn to top management for a takeover.
Working Steps 2 and 3 is probably the most caring thing I’m doing for myself today: seeing the unmanageable, then seeing the way out. And also forgiving myself for these self-indulgent splurges. So what that I’ve added three pounds to my midline and three pairs of silver sandals to my shoe rack? The rent is paid, and my latchkey kids still let themselves in after school and seem content to eat my crockpot soup and call this home.
10. Get on your Hobby Horse
When was the last time you read “Chapter 6: Getting Active” in Living Sober, that handy paperback that’s not just for newcomers? This month I’ve been making good use of subsection 6B: “Activity not related to A.A.”
The anonymous authors suggest “trying a new hobby” or “revisiting an old pastime, except you-know-what” (Yea, Amstel Light). Fat chance I’ll pick up cabinetmaking, leathercraft or macramé, but I am baking granola and simmering bone broths.
I’m also revisiting my adolescence with amateur YouTube ballet routines by hammy-thighed figure skaters and dancing to Heavy D. music videos late into a Saturday night. I’m choosing happy music over sad, and tuning in to The Messiah, not Blue Christmas.
I’m even considering “Starting on long neglected chores” like editing my nearly obsolete recipe binder, now that I’ve found Pinterest. And while I can’t claim to be going out of my way “Volunteering to do some useful service,” I am trying to be more useful on my job. And just as helping a newcomer find a meeting helps me, helping a kid graph algebraic equations makes me feel purposeful (when otherwise I feel like a mess).
11. Become a card-carrying member of the “No Matter What Club”
For God’s sake, whatever skillful or unskillful actions you end up taking during this time of triage, please don’t drink over him or her. They are not worth it. (And I’d put money down—money that I don’t have—on a bet that they’d agree with me.)
Voila! My top eleven tips to help you over the hump of heartbreak! Take what you like and leave the rest.
Have you had your heart broken in recovery? How did you heal? Let us know in the comments.
He has seen me, his addicted mother, disappear into the night on wobbly ankles, drunken feet; he has seen me being calmed down by the police; he has seen me fall. “I love you” is my answer, my promise that I will not die.
Our love for each other is overwhelming, addicting and addictive. The love starts as early as 5 a.m., when I sometimes wake up in pain from my body getting twisted into accommodating his— his long, impossibly thick, long hair and strong knees, and feet that keep on growing. He likes to sleep in my bed and I don’t mind—I know we’ve only a couple more years left before he stops coming to nest himself into that small space, with his dinosaur-printed pillow, and his dinosaur feet wrapping around my legs.
Some mornings he’s holding me so tightly, I don’t move and lie there with my bladder full, smelling his head—I can still get a whiff of the baby that he was only a short time ago. Hello: We will now open our eyes—he always opens his eyes right after I open mine; we’re like a wound-up toy.
The first thing we say when we wake up is “I love you.”
We repeat it a dozen times before we get to school: at breakfast, walking to the bus, on the bus, getting off the bus.
When I drop him off at school, he shouts it—“I love you”—so unabashedly, again, above the heads of boys his age—the cruel age that’s right on the brink of childhood and snarkiness.
He repeats his declarations whenever we are together and he texts me like a stalker boyfriend when I drop him off at his dad’s: I love you. Why don’t you text back. Where are you. I love you mummy. What are you doing. I love you.
In person, he is angry and superior if I don’t reply right away or just volley it back too blatantly absentminded, with my fingers dipped into my iPhone and its drama.
“Mummy. I said I love you.”
“I love you too. I love you so much,” I will often add if I realize that I need to make up for the iPhone.
Does this strike you as excessive and crazy? It is not. It is necessary, it is life-saving, life-affirming. Our words to each other are a spell we cast. So often, when we confirm that we love each other, it feels as if we’ve staved off darkness for another few hours. It seems we are safe: not from having our love unconfirmed and spent, but from losing each other.
We need this assurance.
“I love you” is a question.
“I love you” is my answer, my promise. I promise him me when I say I love him. I promise him a mom. I promise him that I will pick him up from school; that I will feed him; that I will not die.
He has seen me stumbling arm-in-arm with death too many times and I have let him go as if I didn’t love him at all, and I’ve left him for a terrible thing—a monster that closes my heart and opens my mouth, and drinks.
What he has seen was not actual death—I have never overdosed in front of him—but its possibilities: death proxies. He has seen me disappear into the night on wobbly ankles, drunken feet; he has seen me being calmed down by the police; he has seen me fall into the street. An ambulance has been called.
And lately, every time he looks at my right shoulder, he sees the pink burn scar from the road rash. I wish I could just bite off that shoulder—instead, I say “I love you” when I catch him staring at it.
“I will tattoo roses over it once it heals,” I say. Those are the only type of apology flowers I can offer my boy.
Big Feelings and Addiction
I look at my son for signs of addiction: his neediness and his possessiveness—I don’t know if those are signs but I recognize them from my childhood. I think of my old dog that I used to dress in doll clothing and squeeze and kiss and kiss (and kiss) while she’d try to squirm out, her golden-blonde body like too much sunshine trapped and exploding out of my girl arms. She hated being confined. She wanted to run. She was a dog, not a doll. She didn’t feel the same way about me. (They design dogs for people like me now—seemingly catatonic creatures that resemble small purposeless and curious furniture—that you can carry in your purse, dogs that have anxiety bred out of them when it comes to their owners’ affections but that react with fury to small things—small leaves.)
I know that addiction is not about the substance—it is about feelings. It is about the inability to regulate emotions properly. My love song with my son is loud and intense; we are consumed by the bond between us and although it’s a beautiful bond, I know that maybe we should dial it down. But we can’t. What am I supposed to do? Tell him to feel less strongly, less urgently? When I myself cannot model that, when I cannot repress the beauty of that?
My son has always had Big Feelings the way I did as a child. He has always been intense with his friends; he can play in groups but he is possessive of his closest friends, he is a little desperate. He creates deep bonds with his buddies the way I did, and as it was with me, his friendship is a gift of complete loyalty and an invitation to a mind that is creative and capable of creating universes that go beyond any video game. His friends follow him, his games and his rules and he dominates them, and he has a hard time letting them go—he is heartbroken when the play dates are over. I worry that once my son gets to the age when hormones take over, he too, will find the maladaptive kind of coping mechanism that almost destroyed me.
As a first-generation immigrant who had to leave her country behind, unasked, I’m unfortunately familiar with having to let go when I don’t want to.
I’m familiar with the internal destruction of an unexpected event, a strike my feelings go on, demanding explanation.
But what is the point of explanation? There should only be adaptation. But I did not adapt easily. I drank easily.
Any major change in my feelings still always sends a seismic shock through my sobriety—I might not react right away but by the time the shock registers, I’d better be ready to stabilize. In the past I have relapsed instead so I know how precarious the addict’s sanity is. Is my son as sane or as insane as me? Will my son be able to withstand the shocks?
Maybe I shouldn’t be so negative. Exercise helps. Exercise is good way to release your anxiety and he loves soccer. He is obsessive about it. He plays it all the time and he knows all the stats. He has found an outlet for now.
God, let him have his soccer, let him remain passionate about it, about the stats, the games, the intricacies of transfers of Neymar Jr or Ronaldo between different soccer clubs.
Don’t let a girl or a boy break his heart in the way that he will have to reach for a drink or a drug. Don’t let the memory of the horror divorce, my horror drinking, or moving away make him want to numb his sadness in a way that’s not soccer, that’s not innocent.
Don’t let him become like me.
For now we deal the best we can. There is still so much sadness but we have come up with a new strategy: When our “I-love-yous’” are not enough and he feels a bad feeling coming on, he squeezes my hand tight. He reaches for my hand and he clasps it till it hurts both of us. Most of the squeezing has to do with flashbacks of my drinking. Some of it has to do with the divorce.
I hold his hand and feel his grip, feel him not letting go. I squeeze back, unable to let go either.
Sobriety doesn’t come with a handbook. If it did, you’d have to be sober first to read it.
People with addiction issues are not used to setting boundaries, especially when those boundaries involve behaviors we have reinforced for years.
I spent years violating boundaries as a drunk. Particularly when it came to relationships. Piss me off and I’d become belligerent. Let me drink all night and I’d throw up on your carpet. Invite me to a party and I’ll embarrass you in front of your friends. Weddings? Absolutely! Sign me up as the drunkest attendee. For drunks, the people who let us violate their boundaries are the ones we come back to over and over again.
I chose to become sober and dry after drinking made my life unbearable. My fiancé Jill didn’t make that choice. She didn’t have to; she wasn’t experiencing the same struggle with alcohol abuse I was. Drinking was ruining my personal and professional relationships. I spent my days trying to make up for what I destroyed at night. She had a glass or two of wine when she felt like it and functioned fine the next day.
***
Sobriety doesn’t come with a handbook. If it did, you’d have to be sober first to read it. Perhaps I would have learned about being a decent sober person if I had gone to an in-house treatment program. I did my sobering up in the wild, so to speak. My changes, positive and negative, took place in front of everyone around me.
Jill and I were blindsided by boundary-setting issues early in my sobriety. Our relationship was one of the few things from my drinking days I wanted to save. At best, it was hanging by a thread. We agreed to stay together while I tried to get a firm grasp on sobriety. She gave me support and encouragement as I experienced little successes: one day sober, one week sober.
I appreciated Jill’s support. We never discussed the specifics of what I’d need from her. I wouldn’t have known what to ask for anyway. I intended to go to AA every day for the first 90 days and I was seeing an individual counselor and going to a weekly all-male support group. I was bursting at the seams with support; I was exhausted from so much support.
Jill drank wine. Not my drink of choice. I was the typical Philadelphia-living, bearded, tattoo-covered, craft beer drinker. The higher the ABV the better. The more ounces the better. Wine? No thanks. I hadn’t asked Jill to stop drinking or to keep alcohol out of the house but she had naturally done so, initially. I assumed we had an unspoken agreement.
A couple weeks into my sobriety, we had plans to spend a relaxing afternoon and evening together. I was leaving work early to watch a Team USA World Cup soccer match, an event I would have typically used as an excuse to overconsume alcohol on a weekday. Just like football games, tennis matches, holidays, and days ending in a y.
However, my newly-sober-person plan consisted of spending time watching soccer and eating takeout Thai food with Jill.
Jill sent me a text asking if I would pick her up a bottle of wine on my way home from work. It was a reasonable request on the surface; she didn’t have a car, so it was easier for me to pick up the wine on my way home. Pennsylvania has interesting liquor laws: you can’t walk into any random gas station or grocery store and grab an alcoholic beverage; there are special stores for buying wine and spirits and separate bottle shops where you can purchase beer.
Jill’s request didn’t offend me at first. She knew I didn’t drink wine and she was supportive of my sobriety and told me she was proud of me. I knew her request for a bottle of wine meant we were likely going to have sex that evening. I had no issue with that – of course I could bring her a bottle of wine.
On the way home, I picked up the finest bottle of $10 red wine I could find. I guess we weren’t going to watch soccer after all.
We had the kind of evening you can only have when you are in a relationship that’s starting to heal after a long period of damage. You know, sexual healing? Jill had a glass of wine or two over the course of the night. I found out later Team USA had won their game.
Everything was perfect.
Until it wasn’t.
There were a couple things I hadn’t told Jill about my trip to the wine store. First, I had broken out into a panic while I was in the store. I’m no stranger to anxiety attacks, but this one hit me hard.
Making matters worse, I chose to get her wine from a store directly across the street from the meetinghouse for the AA group I was attending. I felt like I was sneaking behind enemy lines as I came and went from the wine shop. I expected to see someone I knew from meetings standing outside smoking. I bent my head down and rushed back to my car.
To hell with them, I thought at the time. If someone sees me, I’ll tell the truth. I flashed back to the time my middle school friend told his parents the open beer he was holding was for a friend. Not a believable story then, still not a believable story as an adult.
No one from the group had seen me, but mentally the damage was done. I tend to ruminate on things until they drive me crazy and I spent the next few days stewing on what Jill had asked me to do. How rude. How disrespectful. Didn’t she understand my position? How absurd I should have to say that I don’t want to go into a wine shop as an alcoholic.
I decided I needed to tell Jill about my boundary issue when I picked her up from work that Friday. Every Friday I’d pick her up from the University of Pennsylvania campus where she worked, we’d get Indian takeout and go home to Netflix.
“You really screwed me over the other day,” I started the second she sat in the car.
“What are you talking about?” She asked.
“Why did you think it was OK to ask me to pick you up a bottle of wine?”
“You didn’t have to say yes. I could have gotten it myself.”
Our conversation spiraled into an argument.
“I don’t want that poison around me right now. What would I have done if someone from AA saw me?”
“I won’t ever ask you to pick me up wine again. That’s easy.”
“Oh, I’m beyond that,” I told her.
“Are you asking me not to keep alcohol at home? That’s easy too.”
“That’s the least you can do.”
“You can’t ask me never to drink. That’s too controlling for me. I’m a grownup.”
“Fine. I’d appreciate you not doing it around me for a while.”
We drove home without getting our food.
***
I told the story of the bottle of wine and our argument at my next men’s group meeting.
“I’d say I did a good job setting my boundaries,” I proudly told Counselor Gary and the group.
“You did a piss poor job setting boundaries,” Gary replied. “You willingly crossed your own unstated boundary. And then you got mad about it.”
“At least she knows now what I won’t stand for,” I shot back
“You don’t have a right to tell her what you won’t stand for. I’d say you have a lot of work to do on yourself before you get to that point. Especially with Jill.”
“Why should she get to drink still if I can’t? How will we get along?” I asked.
“You can remember she’s an adult and she can do what she wants. That includes choosing to stay with you. You should focus on that, and not nit-picking behaviors she has no idea rub you wrong.”
“I have boundaries, damn it!” I said.
“Right. That’s new for you. That’s new for the people around you. People can’t read your mind. You’re responsible for setting your boundaries. You’re responsible for maintaining them. Not Jill.” Gary shut me down.
I sat, arms crossed and unreceptive the rest of the session. Gary’s words stung. I was responsible for setting my boundaries? How could I do that? I drove home wondering how I could verbalize the things I was feeling.
***
I worked hard as my weeks of sobriety turned into months; hard at my work, hard at my relationships. Jill and I turned a corner. We found a way to work with each other and communicate our needs.
We set some basic boundaries, ones that would have made sense to a sober outsider. I would never be asked to handle alcohol in any way. No purchasing, no opening a bottle, no carrying a drink to her across the room. The tradeoff, although Jill didn’t ask for it, was that wine could exist in our house without upsetting me. She could have a glass of wine at a dinner out and I wouldn’t feel affronted.
Other boundaries were a little less perceptible. We had to negotiate the boundaries needed for a healthy relationship. I communicated my needs to Jill more often. She began to open up more to me about her needs. We found ourselves more in periods of harmony as we strengthened our bond.
Gary was instrumental on my end. He provided an unbiased view of my unacceptable behavior. He gave me feedback on how I could approach situations without sabotaging them. He coached me on identifying situations I wasn’t comfortable with, and how to better communicate them to my friends and family before things got out of hand.
Today, Jill and I are married with a three-year-old daughter. I recently passed the fourth anniversary of my sobriety. Parenting and being a husband are rewarding and challenging roles that require setting and respecting boundaries. It’s something I’ve gotten better at in my sobriety and something I’m thankful for the opportunity to continue improving.
So many people rush into relationships in early recovery. This may be related to neurochemistry: we’re suddenly deprived of the substances that made us feel good and we need to find a substitute.
I’ve spent the last six and a half years of recovery wondering why I have been so emotionally immature when it comes to romantic relationships. Why have I sulked over communicating my needs? Why have I formed such insecure attachments that I wonder when I’ll see the person again before they have even left? Why have I felt so crazed and simultaneously flummoxed at my behavior? Reflecting on my relationships during my recovery, I can describe them in one word: disaster. But they’ve also been a blessing.
When I found recovery, relationships were the last thing on my mind; I could barely function. I spent most days struggling to sufficiently caffeinate myself to get out of my apartment and to a meeting. For the first few months, I lugged my 300-pound body around wondering where this elusive pink fluffy cloud was, because it certainly wasn’t on my radar.
As time progressed, my body began to recover: my liver regenerated—which is quite remarkable considering the quantity of cocaine I snorted and the four bottles of wine I drank each day—my depression lifted enough that I was able to function, and I lost weight. I was hardly experiencing the promises, but I could see that my life had improved. The fact I no longer felt compelled to drink was a miracle in itself.
Sufficiently recovered—or so I naively thought—I looked for romantic distraction in the rooms. A smile from someone at the break would elicit a rush of feel-good hormones. I wonder if they like me? would play through my mind (well, that’s the PG version I’m willing to share, but you get the picture). Needless to say, this didn’t end well.
I ignored the guidance to stay single for a year after finding recovery, because in my mind I was thinking: I’m a 32-year-old woman. Why shouldn’t I date? I’m an adult! Off I went and dated, just like every other person in the room because—let’s face it—few people actually adhere to that rule!
And so I chose some lovely chaps from that swimming pool of dysfunction, Narcotics Anonymous. Promises that they’d treat me right, and that they really liked me, were exactly that: just promises. Even though I expressed my desire for a relationship over just messing around, my experience was that once these guys got what they wanted, they were off. Wondering what was wrong with me—and playing the victim role really well—I’d move on to the next dude.
I couldn’t see until much later in my recovery why I was so terrible at picking a suitable partner. I was blind to my part in these encounters and all of the emotional baggage I brought to them. I’d often act like a teenager: sulking, gaslighting, and holding the person emotionally hostage. I was incapable of adequately and maturely communicating my needs, or of listening and hearing theirs.
It took several years of recovery to unpack my insecurities around attachment and the trauma I had suffered that made forming a healthy attachment nearly impossible. I can’t imagine many people would want a relationship with a needy, insecure, obsessive woman. And that wasn’t helped by my choices: people who were completely avoidant. It was never going to work.
Keen to explore why we act this way in early recovery, I asked recovery scientist Austin Brown about it. He explained that we have to look at our inclination to use external objects, or people, to provide instant changes in mood—just like we experienced with drugs. Also, Austin says, many of the social developmental benchmarks we pass from childhood to adulthood are slowed by active use.
“The early stages of romance offer a thrill and an escape,” he goes on. “In fact, they operate on many of the same pleasure pathways as our substances used to. One interesting phenomenon I have noted in clinical work is the almost overwhelming desire to get into a relationship that occurs when people initially get into recovery. To me, this is likely a neurochemistry issue; a starvation of the stuff that makes us feel good. So, we act on it, having neither the maturity or the self-awareness that is required for a complex adult human relationship.”
Explaining why we act so immaturely in relationships, Austin says, “If we started using as teens, emotionally we are still there those first few months. This is a well-known facet of the disorder. But we want—and therefore think we are ready for—a relationship, often before we even get out of treatment, have a stable job, or even have a place to live. Entering into any relationship under those conditions is statistically unlikely to succeed.”
About our inability to communicate, Austin says, “At a more scientific level we are talking about the ability to identify AND verbalize our emotional states. Often all we know are ‘want’ and ‘relief’ when we come into recovery. Those are woefully short-sighted emotional states when it comes to equitable human relationships and partnerships. It’s like bringing a juice box to a gunfight.”
The upside is that if we work hard to grow in recovery, we can mature fairly quickly. “I usually calculate about a year to six months of growth per every month of recovery. If we started using 12 years ago, it takes us at least a year to emotionally resemble our peers. Might even take two, depending on how hard we work at it,” he says.
Even though we think we might be ready for a relationship after we’ve achieved a few weeks of recovery, Austin says, we might want to be cautious. “Unfortunately, early recovery relationships slow our emotional maturation as well, just like substances,” he says. “If someone else can give us a sense of relief, why do all the hard work to achieve emotional growth? Early-recovery relationships prolong our process of healing and can often throw our recovery off disastrously, sometimes even to the point of a return to use and even death. So, it is quite serious business, and yet no one really talks about it in any tangible or helpful way.”
“Personally,” he goes on to say, “I have seen relationships in early recovery ruin more lives than substances themselves. Why relational health isn’t the central focus of early recovery support is frankly beyond me.”
Was I really at an AA meeting as I claimed, or was this the night that I—and all hope for our marriage—would vanish anew?
For my wife Patricia and me, it’s been a long road to even. Ish.
My wife said “I do” in April 2007 to a man who, despite depression and anxiety issues, did not suffer from addiction. The honeymoon period didn’t last long: By 2009, I was a full-blown alcoholic. A year later I became unemployed and, as substances other than alcohol steepened my spiral, unemployable.
After a semi-successful rehab stint in early 2011, I began stringing together sober weeks instead of days, disappearing once a fortnight while my wife waited hopelessly. Finally, with one of Patty’s feet firmly out the door, I started my current and only stretch of significant sobriety in October 2011.
We’d been wed just 4½ years, and the rollercoaster marriage dynamic was about to take its third sharp turn. Patty had gone from a warm wife to a cold caretaker – from a blushing bride to blushing with anger and embarrassment as her husband descended into addiction and all its indignities. She was fed up and worn down.
And now she would be asked to transition yet again, to cede the necessary high ground she’d claimed so that someday, hopefully, we could once again stand on even footing.
Our journey together has been imperfect, but has taught us both about how addiction warps the dynamics of a marriage – and how that damage can be repaired in recovery. For couples committed to staying together in addiction’s aftermath, let’s explore likely marital dynamics at three stages of single-spouse alcoholism: active addiction, fledgling sobriety and long-term recovery.
Active Addiction
Ironically, perhaps the least complicated dynamic any marriage can have is when one partner is mired in active addiction. One spouse has lost all credibility and the capability to make mutually beneficial contributions, while the other has, onerously, had the scales of responsibility tilt completely into her lap – or, more accurately, fall on her head. The addict has been stripped of all rightful respect and authority; he is a nuptial nonentity, because adulthood is a prerequisite for marital influence.
Simply put, my wife signed up for a husband and got a child instead.
The logistical stress my wife shouldered—scraping by on one income, coming home to a drunk husband in a smoke-filled apartment, the transparent excuses and laughable lies—should be familiar to most spouses of alcoholics.
Throughout this stage, the marital power dynamic is non-negotiated and unsustainable. It is also deeply scarring, for both parties. My guilt and shame, her resentment and disappointment. My elaborate schemes and emphatic denials, her eroding ability to give me the benefit of the doubt. For us both, a creeping sense of confusion, hopelessness and doom.
All of this creates a silo effect. The deeper my bottom fell, the higher the wall between us rose. For the marriage to once again become… well, a marriage—a union of two equal halves—the walls would need to crumble. But they had to crack first.
And then, after one last humiliation comprised of a drunken hit-and-run and handcuffs, I was finally done.
A marriage stumbling on a high wire now had a chance to regain some balance. But for couples, one spouse’s early recovery can shake like an earthquake, causing seismic shifts to a power dynamic that, though broken, proves nonetheless stubborn.
Fledgling Sobriety
However simple (albeit awful) the marital dynamic during active alcoholism, the relationship during nascent sobriety becomes, conversely, exceedingly complex. This timeframe is crucial to the marriage’s long-term survival, as both parties simultaneously try to heal fresh wounds, regain some semblance of normalcy and find a workable path forward together.
For Patty and me, my fledgling sobriety was, at the same time, emergency and opportunity. This might not have been my last chance at recovery, but it was likely our marriage’s last chance at enduring.
In those vital first months, the power dynamic shifted dramatically, despite my wife’s understandable reluctance to budge an inch lest I take several yards. After being on the receiving end of years of lying about our actions and whereabouts, our spouses struggle to believe we’ll come home at all, let alone come home sober. Was I really at an AA meeting as I claimed, or was this the night that I—and all hope for our marriage—would vanish anew? The PTSD of a waiting wife, burned too many times to trust, is an excruciatingly slow-mending injury.
That injury is soon joined by insult. Because my wife watched as perfect strangers did something her most fervent efforts could not: get and keep her husband sober.
She felt suspicious, and scornful… and guilty for feeling either. Her downsized role in my recovery seemed unfair given the years wasted playing lead actor in a conjugal tragedy.
For alcoholics, swallowing pride is a life-and-death prospect pounded into our heads by program literature, AA meetings and sponsors. For their spouses, though, this ego deflation is just as necessary to the survival of their marriage, and generally comes without guidance or reassurances. Considering this, my wife’s humility-driven leap of faith was far more impressive than my own.
And throughout this, she was forced to cede more and more marital power to a man who, mere months ago, deserved all the trust afforded an asylum patient. I was gaining friends, gaining confidence and, sometimes, even gaining the moral high ground.
When your spouse has been so wrong for so long, the first time he’s right is jarring. Somewhere in my wife’s psyche was the understandable yet unhealthy notion that the one-sided wreckage of our past absolved her of all future wrongdoing. Fights ensued as I argued for the respect I was earning while she clung to a righteousness never requested but reluctantly relinquished. Unilateral disarmament—intramarital or otherwise—is counterintuitive and, given my history, potentially unwise.
The harsh truth was that the marriage had to become big enough for two adults again, and the only way that could happen was for one partner to make room. This is patently unfair and, I believe, a key reason many marriages end in early recovery. That my wife and I navigated this turbulent period is among the most gratifying achievements in each of our lives.
Long-term Recovery
Our road became considerably less rocky when my wife, for the first time, became more certain than not that her husband’s sober foundation was solid enough to support a future. For us, that unspoken sigh of relief came about 18 months into my recovery, though this timeframe can vary widely.
For couples, an invaluable asset ushered in by long-term recovery is the ability to openly address not only each individual’s feelings, but the likely influencers behind those feelings – especially those concerning the disparate, often difficult-to-pinpoint damage one spouse’s alcoholism inflicted upon both partners’ psyches. My wife and I each have our own semi-healed, often subconscious wounds that, still frequently, reopen in the form of a visceral repulsion, reflexive resentment or other knee-jerk reaction.
At times, then, there remains residual weirdness between us. But the reassurance of my reliable recovery provides safe harbor to explore these issues as our marriage’s power dynamic draws ever closer to even.
Many of these mini-problems are a blend of individual personalities and lingering, addiction-related trauma. My wife and I both have foibles that, we agree, are part intrinsic and part PTSD; fully parsing the two is impossible, even when examining ourselves rather than each other.
An example: My wife is markedly introverted, and I certainly know her better than anyone. But even for her closest comrade—me—praise and positive acknowledgement come sporadically at best. At least some of this, she admits, is not simply her quiet nature but rather a prolonged hangover from years of my alcoholic drinking. Perhaps seven years is too little time for proactive cheerleading; check back with us in another seven.
There are also times when my 12-step recovery delivers on its promise of making me, as the saying goes, “weller than well.” For my wife, who’s been consistently well enough her whole life—insomuch as she’s never sideswiped a taxi blind drunk and then tried to outrun a cop car—sometimes this growth is mildly threatening, especially in terms of our still-tightening power dynamic. Her character defects were never so dangerous that they required emergency repair. Still, as my demeanor has become less volatile, there has been a softening of her own character. Whether this is her absorbing some of my progress or simply letting her guard down another notch is anyone’s guess – including hers.
No matter the progress, we will both always be damaged, however minimally, by my addiction – a permanent weight that makes truly equal marital balance unlikely, if not impossible. We will always be better at forgiving than forgetting, and the inability to accomplish the latter carries a weight that tips scales, slightly but surely.
We have, we believe, as much balance as possible considering where we were and where we are now. For couples with a spouse in long-term recovery, appreciation for that tremendous leap forward in fortune can more than make up for the inherent inequality addiction inflicts on a marriage – a gap that shrinks substantially but never completely closes.
What are the things you can’t live without in a relationship? Those are your needs. And what are the things you’d like but could live without? Those are wants.
Romance and Finance. Two of the toughest things to manage in recovery—and the most likely to lead to a relapse. While someone with addiction can stay abstinent from drugs and alcohol, we must learn to moderate when it comes to love and money. This is a tall order for a group of “all or nothing” people. So what do we need to know to make sex, money and power work out more Hollywood ending and less tabloid headline? I spoke with three experts who offer their wisdom and tools for understanding and solving the riddle.
Psychotherapist, Sex Addiction, and Financial Disorders Expert Debra Kaplan points out that underlying attachment issues surface a few years into sobriety from drugs and/or alcohol, and when they do, romance and finance become all the more difficult. ”Attachment is the process by which we gain our knowledge of self— we know who we are because it has been reflected back to us by a co-regulating other,” she explains. Most people with substance use disorders suffer from some ruptures in attachment— a bond that may not have been consistent throughout our developmental process. When this process goes awry, we may become insecure about our self-worth. Kaplan says we must understand that sex and money are “stand-ins for self-esteem and self-worth.” This is why so many people who start in one 12-step program like NA or AA also end up in DA (Debtors Anonymous) and SLAA (Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous)—many times when they’ve been brought to their knees by these issues. So this this is a question of both living sober and relapse prevention.
According to a 2016 Ameriprise study, “Approximately 31% of all couples clash over their finances at least once a month.” We all know this is a leading cause of divorce. Sex and money are tied like Christian Gray’s shoelaces: tightly. As Kaplan says, “When there are financial troubles, the bedroom is the canary in the mine.” Her years as a successful Wall Street trader and her work as a psychotherapist make her uniquely qualified to acknowledge the connections and disconnections between sex, money and power.
All of the experts I spoke to agree: the first key to success in love and money is negotiation. There is no question that a power differential exists in romantic relationships. Just as we create contracts in business, we create contracts with one another. Would you sign a business contract without knowing what was important to you? And yet so many of us in sobriety will rush into relationships because of our insecurities. One pitfall Kaplan warns against is the tendency to blend money early in a relationship by buying or leasing property together too soon. Kaplan says, “Ask yourself, do I know how my partner operates when it comes to money and work?”
These conversations are scary but in order to have successful relationships, we need to develop some negotiation skills. The truth is we are communicating all the time every day whether we speak or not. Kaplan says: “There are two levels of negotiation; spoken agreements and silent arrangements.” From the outset, even in the early stages of dating, we must acknowledge what Kaplan calls “relational currency.” She defines this as “My worth, what I’m bringing to the table, what we expect from each other.” It can be anything from youth or beauty to social access or financial wealth. This currency plays into the negotiations we are making silently, even with ourselves. For example: Well, he’s not making as much money as me, but he’s ten years younger and considerably better looking.
Dr. Pat Allen, a Certified Addiction Specialist and Transactional Analyst and author of the recovery tome Getting To I Do, agrees: “Ninety percent of all communication is nonverbal,” she says. One of her five tools for negotiation is a marvelous way to bring that nonverbal communication into conversation. The script she suggests is: “I sense by the look on your face you’re upset, yes or no? What can I do?” Or, for a man: “I think by the look on your face you’re upset, yes or no? What can I do?” The languaging, Allen says, varies from gender to gender. Generally, the feminine “feels” and the masculine “thinks.” This tool brings the issue to the floor and allows it to be dealt with rather than festering in a dark corner and becoming a resentment.
Allen explains her point of view: “Einstein said ‘everything is energy’ and we are both yin and yang, this is physics. Men have yang bodies but yin souls, women have yin bodies but a yang soul.” So there is a built-in duality in all of us to consider in relationships and in negotiating. People—even pansexual people— play different roles in relationships, not necessarily based on gender, but on the choice between masculine and feminine principles. They may not be static, but we usually have one that is more prevalent. So, Allen says, “Before you even go on a date, know which role you want to play.”
Kaplan echoed the importance of self-examination, saying that the key in early stages is, “Know thyself.” Know what your needs and wants are and the difference between the two. What are the things you can’t live without in a relationship? Those are your needs. And what are the things you’d like but could live without? Those are wants.
According to Allen, a quick way to determine which role you are playing is to ask yourself— “Do you want to get laid or paid?” The masculine wants to get “laid” and picks with his eyes. The feminine wants to get “paid” and picks with her ears.
Once you know what role you want to play, the trick is negotiating the contract of the relationship. “Ask for help!” Kaplan says. Her work with couples involves uncovering some of the underlying beliefs about self, sex, and money in order to make conscious decisions. This is important considering the underlying attachment disturbances that may be triggered. Her book, For Love and Money: Exploring Sexual and Financial Betrayal in Relationships also has an inventory that can be helpful in identifying patterns. Allen says that couples should negotiate every three months for the first year, then once a year, or whenever any large issue arises.
Dawn Cartwright is a renowned Tantra teacher who received her degree in psychology from the University of California, Davis, and has had extensive training in Tantra, Yoga, Sexuality, Bioenergetics, Meditation, and Expressionistic Movement & Art. When it comes to negotiating, she too brings it back to self-responsibility. “When I can keep myself regulated and stay in an emotionally available state even when I need to say no, that gives the person I’m involved with a lot more freedom to be my ally, rather than my therapist. I have to make sure that I’ve had enough sleep, eaten well, I’ve got some friends. I need to look at how many hours I’m working and make sure that I develop a well-rounded life so that when my partner and I come together it’s about being partners and it’s not about being rescued.”
Cartwright suggests setting aside a specific time to solve problems and talk budget, “Create a chart of all the things that need to get done but only talk about that once a week during a family meeting— even if it’s just the two of you, so those things don’t bleed over into your romantic sexual connection.”
It’s easy to get complacent at any stage of a relationship. Cartwright suggests: “We can continue to let every date be the first date.” She recommends a process she calls pleasure mapping. “Maybe we take some nights where we don’t actually have intercourse but we explore and experiment, what are some places on your body that you’d really love to be touched? Do we like massage there or feather kisses here? Do we want to hear sweet words? What is our pleasure map? When we do that we’re actually creating a greater bond with our partner and releasing more neurochemicals and we’re not falling into habits that are just highlighting certain parts of the brain over and over again. Each person has their needs and we negotiate. But we stay in the game. We stay in the yes and.”
With tools like these, you are on your way to that happy ending! I know what you’re thinking, but I didn’t mean it like that. Or did I?
If anyone could relate to loneliness, abandonment, depression, it was Phil. We got each other.
If my cat could talk, he’d say “You’re so fucking crazy.” Also, feed me, asshole. And not that gluten and grain-free slimy shit. Meow Mix from the corner bodega, where you’ll often spend seven dollars on an activated charcoal latte paired with a fifty cent Camel Light loosie, which I judge your embarrassing fat ass for. You’re actually insane. I’ll kill you.
Phil, that’s his name, has tried to kill me before. He’s a very dramatic attention-seeker. Anxious, needy, moody. Damaged goods. I’ve got similar symptoms because, according to several psychiatrists, I’m bipolar II and, according to me, crazy. Phil’s been through a lot, and admittedly, I am partially to blame.
Oh, and Phil is a pyromaniac. Though I can be and have been terrible, I’m pretty sure I’ve never deserved to die via apartment fire—puking under the bed would’ve been more reasonable— but Phil takes his feline frustrations to the extreme.
The first time Phil turned the gas stove on, I thought, maybe his back paw had innocently hit the knob on his way up. But that was my brain on drugs. Despite being perpetually overweight, he’s not clumsy. He’s light on his feet; a decent ballerina in a past life. This was intentional. This happened more than once. This was really testing what my problematic as-a-result-of-anxiety-and-amphetamines pulse could handle.
Redundant scenario: Phil would just LOVE greeting me when I entered my apartment at 7-ish AM by standing perfectly still over a flaming stove burner in taxidermy pose, staring right into my bewildered AKA tweaked-out eyes, and then maniacally meowing with the subtext: I’m seconds from plopping my fat ass on this flame if you don’t get your shit together. I dare you to abandon me for a day or two once more to get as high as Mount Everest and fuck everything at an open 24-hours bathhouse in Chelsea.
Phil’s penchant for pyromania emerged circa 2013, when I was at my most mentally ill and near-ish-death-ness. But I was growing tired of perspiring out regret, poppers and lube, anyway. And Phil was just offering me tough, traumatic love! Okay, maybe he was just miserable living with mentally fucked, miserable me, and into the idea of both of us dying in a local news-making manner. Maybe Phil was doing us both a favor. End us.
“Suicide kitty.” That’s what my ex-roommate, Messy Mark*, called him because of Phil’s impressive rabid flying squirrel-like antics. I inherited Phil from messy Mark. Pre-Phil, I hated cats and the only cat I tolerated was the dead one I had to dissect in Anatomy class in high school. But when the formaldehyde wore off and his thighs developed mold, my teacher discarded him and I received a D+ on my report card, which made my hating-on-cats restart. It was a short-lived although intimate relationship. I never even knew his name.
Phil was already named Phil when Mark brought him home to our janky South Williamsburg apartment in the summer of 2009. Mark had been sober for like, a month, and he told me, with his enchanting albeit decaying-inside eyes, that a cat would keep him sober. I told him I hate cats, they scratch everything, and I knew I’d end up having to take care of the cat, so please God, no. Taking care of Mark was already my pro-bono job. I did my best! Well, the best that I, a party animal (spirit animal: a cat in perma-heat) who proudly has never blacked out, could at the time. (Note: We were in our early twenties and fresh out of college, living it up in a pre-Starbucks/Wholefoods Williamsburg and convincingly adopting the PBR-chugging, Patti Smith-worshipping hipster ways. You know, when kombucha was still a thing.)
Mark, on the other hand, was the drink-to-blackout type. He was an all American twink-next-door type. Charming, cute, book smart. His book cover was colorful and playful, concealing the tattered pages and its painful Comic Sans font. He’d invite himself to my friends’ house parties, because he had no friends of his own, which should have been a WARNING: DON’T BE ROOMMATES sign, and I’d warn/beg my friends to not fall for this troubled trick, because he wouldn’t remember anything in the morning and then I’d have to clean up his mess, including the sometimes charcoal-latte-colored puke. But alas, Mark’s blue eyes and bubble butt was a fuckable force. He’d also sleep with guys I thought I was dating, but I’d forgive him. I was a battered tabby cat to his primped-and-polished persian. We, oops, hooked up a few times too. This wasn’t something I initiated… initially. I knew there’d be trouble post-orgasms. But when your never-not-wasted roomie wakes you up via aggressive seduction, well, I was too tired to object.
Anyway, despite my cat concerns, I came home one day to find Phil crazily rolling around on the Ikea carpet in catnip. My fury segued into an “Aw, it’s fine” when Mark looked up at me with a genuine, heart-tugging smile. I was touched! Perhaps that purring Swamp Thing-y thing on the rug would cure Mark, because 12-step meetings sure as shit weren’t enough. And I’d be free and maybe even happy. Ha!
I was a spineless, clueless enabler. I didn’t understand why Mark couldn’t hold his liquor like a normal early twenty-something millennial. And I didn’t want Mark to die, so I’d do whatever to help. I didn’t want him to ever punch me in the face again when I forced his inebriated ass to look into the mirror at his sadness. I didn’t want to have to drag him through glass after he collapsed into our Ikea cabinet post-bar, as Phil screeched and judged from atop of the fridge. I didn’t want to wake up to a sea of is-this-real-life texts like the time he was in Dunkin’ Donuts and had just pissed his pants after escaping from the ER—apparently he had passed out at the bar the night before and someone normal called 911. This someone also called Mark’s mom, which I realized because of a devastating voicemail, in which she wondered if her son was alive. Not fun. Heartbreaking.
Phil was damaged goods himself, and, as expected, it’d be me, the professional plant killer, responsible for getting him back on track. He was an army brat, and had two unstable homes before being dropped off at a ASPCA in Virginia, where he lived in a cage for a year. Apparently no one wanted a middle-aged, jittery, ordinary tabby cat. I guess the bloody bald spots from Phil’s habit of biting out his fur and furiously scratching himself like a meth addict weren’t so appealing. (Meanwhile, Mark cruelly took Phil off of his anxiety meds because he’d rather save money for happy hour.) Phil’s coat of fur looked like my shredded, smelly Harley Davidson (reminder: I lived in Williamsburg) thrift t-shirts. He was so death-door-y thin, like me at the time (because, drugs), his meow was/still is so grating and loud. It’s nearly as demonic as the iPhone default alarm. And his moniker at the shelter was “alien kitty” because of his macadamia nut head paired with green, extraterrestrial eyes. Anyway, Mark and his manipulative victim ways convinced his Virginia-based friend—his only other friend—to drive Phil to Brooklyn; a non-refundable gift.
While Mark did calm down and get sober for a bit post-cat adoption, he didn’t miraculously develop thoughtfulness or anything. He’d attend evening 12-step meetings after his 9-5 job and then go to sober people Chipotle hangouts. HE WAS SO HAPPY! And I’d never ever see him. I’d been replaced. And I think I was subconsciously jealous of his healing. As a freelance writer, I worked from home, so it was just me and Phil. I took care of him. Not like it’s difficult—food, litter, cuddles, oh my!—but this wasn’t my goddamn cat! Mark would lock his bedroom door at night, so I’d allow Phil’s manic ass to sleep with me and claw at my scalp.
And so, I fell in love with Phil; Mark fell in love with a recovering meth addict. Two months later, Mark casually told me he was moving in with this boyfriend and that I had to find another roommate within two weeks. NBD. But I could keep Phil, because his boyfriend was allegedly allergic to cats. I don’t know why, but I started to ugly cry. (Well, my ex-therapist told me I was, yawn, in love with Mark and I’m scared of intimacy and abandonment etc etc fuck off etc.) It wasn’t until Mark finally “got better” and didn’t need me anymore that I acknowledged and confronted my own issues.
Just kidding. I’d little-by-little distract the pain with sex, drugs and rock bottoms.
Another roommate moved in for a year or two, but then we were bought out of the rent stabilized decrepit apartment for 40k. So, Phil and I moved to a shit but rent stabilized studio apartment on the other side of the Williamsburg bridge in Lower East Side—I signed the lease during what I now understand to have been a manic high, believing that I clearly needed to live alone; to take care of just myself, Phil and my plants. I was so psychotically positive! (I blame my psychiatrist for adding another mood stabilizer.) Living alone would inspire me to get a fantastic full time job, and then I’d be able to afford the studio on my own once the 40k ran out!
Didn’t happen. What did happen was Phil putting up with my unraveling as a result of eternal loneliness with no future, except funerals, in sight. I’m very dark. Phil forgave me, probably, when I’d lock him in the bathroom during a Grindr quickie. He plopped on my chest when I was coming down; he dived off my chest when I convulsed and howled in fetal position because of anxiety/panic attacks. If anyone could relate to loneliness, abandonment, depression, it was Phil. We got each other. Phil’s still with me.
I haven’t seen my ex-BFF since he left me, but he’ll text me like, every five months, informing me of things like how he now lives in a forest or that his boyfriend he ditched me for died of a drug overdose. Mostly, he brings up memories. “Remember that time when ___?” I never remember. I don’t want to remember. My responses are mostly an emoji or two. I’ve intentionally disconnected. His most recent text to me wasn’t a ‘sup. It was a handful of sexually explicit photos, featuring his dick. Ew. If he was ever my real friend, he would’ve remembered that I’m an ass guy. “Are you high?” was my response. He wrote no. I didn’t even care if he was lying, his top talent. I blocked him. I mourned him years ago. I’m all about protection these days. I’ve got some friends, a long-term boyfriend, and a drug-free, inconsistent zest for life.
Today, I’m sometimes very happy. I’m sometimes going under those dark, depression waves. The bipolar isn’t going anywhere. Unless I’m traveling outside of America, I barely leave my house.
And I still have major anxiety. So does Phil, but we’re in this thing together. We’re a lot better, we’ve grown up. He gets me out of bed and gives me a purpose. Feeding him his healthy grain and gluten-free food reminds me to take my meds. We take care of each other! We need each other!
Meanwhile, this triggers my morbid mind. He’s 73 in cat years. Phil’s cremated remains will be in a jar on my Buddhist altar soon enough. It was ME who was supposed to be rotting in a coffin by now, not Phil! But at least it’s been years since I last truly worried about Phil killing me… killing us. (Just kidding—I remove the stove knobs when I’m not in the apartment because, anxiety.)
Just a month ago, I was convinced Phil was dying. It’s a gnarly image that involved scattered around my apartment puddles of puke, heavy breathing, and him hiding from me in the litter box. I didn’t want to remember him like this: lethargic and not wanting anything to do with me for two full days. This wasn’t like him. He’s a cuddle monster in the mornings. And here I was, imagining a life without him. My first pet. Would I replace him? Could I? He’s the only one who, through it all, never left me. He’s tried, but only a handful of times. (He attempted to jump out of the window after sitting on a flame, but it wasn’t open wide enough for his fat ass.)
He’s back to normal-ish for now. I’m trying to appreciate our time together. So many memories. I try to think of only the best memories, but sometimes I’ll look at Phil and I’ll remember Mark, but only for a moment, then I shut that shit down. I’ve let Mark go.
I couldn’t save Mark. Neither could Phil. But we saved each other.
If Phil could read this, he’d eject a hairball because of my cheesiness. He’d roll his alien kitty eyes. And if Phil could talk, he’d say “You’re welcome for saving your life, bitch.” And then go back to sleep.
When my sponsor told me about the suggestion to not date for a year, that I should just concentrate on getting sober, I said: “I’m a really good multi-tasker.”
I thought that when I got sober, I’d get into the best shape of my life, start going to the gym all the time, train for a triathlon, become super successful and meet the man of my dreams. Basically, my version of what advertising says is the perfect life. I wasn’t thinking along the lines of what some people say: the gift of sobriety IS sobriety. Boring. I mean, I was and I wasn’t; I mostly just wanted to stop being miserable. I did a 90 and 90, got a sponsor, joined a gym, took a class in my career of choice, slept a lot, and met a guy.
When my sponsor told me about the suggestion to not date for a year, that I should just concentrate on getting sober, I said: “I’m a really good multi-tasker,” and “I can get sober and date at the same time.” Luckily for me, she didn’t say it was a rule, because there are no rules in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Nowhere in the Big Book does it say: “no dating allowed in the first year.” It just talked about some people prefer a little more pepper in their sex life or whatever (page 69) and who are we to tell people what spices to proverbially cook with?
So thank god for that because in my first 90 days, I met a guy. He was a friend of a friend and when we met, he told me that he was going through a big transition in his life.
“What kind of a transition?” I asked, while thinking Oh my God! We have so much in common! We’re both going through transitions! As if a relationship could be built on that alone. Or even a marriage, because I thought that now that I had opened the book of sobriety, everything would change in the blink of an eye. It would be like I just woke up to a new life. That’s how it happens, right? I mean, don’t you kinda hear that all the time? The person’s life was shit and then they got sober and now they’re in this awesome marriage/job/house/car/babies and it all like happened in a year or maybe two? I’m smart and attractive. That shit should happen for me too! I can make that happen. I. CAN. MAKE. THAT. HAPPEN. Higher power who?
So, when I asked the guy what kind of transition, he said poetically, “It’s like my house was taken away so now I have no house, but at least I can see the moon.” And I was like “Wow, coooooool. I totally love the moon.”
For our first date, we went on a bike ride along the river, had lunch where I did not order a glass of wine (the first time that has ever happened) and ordered a coffee instead. I didn’t tell him that I was newly sober. I just told him I didn’t drink, and he said that was cool and he’s thought that maybe he should quite drinking too (uh oh); that he meditates and when he meditates, he feels super clear and drinking gets in the way of that (uh yeah). Then he walked me home and I remember feeling very sensitive and insecure. It was like I was eight years old again with a crush on a boy at school and I forgot how to walk my bike. Or talk. I felt awkward. Which is why, at 16, drinking and boys went hand in hand. Less feeling. More yay.
When I got home, I realized there was no way I could date right now. I knew that if I was rejected or even felt rejected, it would probably cause me to drink. I didn’t have the emotional tools. I talked to my sponsor about it and then called him up and said, “I really like you, but I’m going through something right now where I need to take a year off of dating. I hope you understand.” And he said, “Wow. I should probably do that, too.” Turns out he was going through a divorce and was in no place to be in a relationship or be the man of my dreams/dysfunction right now.
For the rest of the year, I concentrated on going to meetings, fellowship, making new AA friends, eating cookies and milk, binge watching Netflix at night, and it was the most awesome/horrible year of my life. I highly recommend it. I gained 10 or 20 pounds which was weird. Dudes can go through a rough time and get fat and grow a beard and still be considered likeable — but as a woman, it’s harder to hide behind a beard and 50 pounds and be cool. But a girl can dream.
So, a year later, guess who I ran into? No-house-moon dude. And yay! I was like a year sober so totally awesome and fixed, right? It. Was. On. We went on a few dates, and I honestly can’t remember if we had sex. It was only seven years ago and I know we did sexy things but I cannot for the life of me remember. I don’t think we did, because we would have needed to have the talk and well, let’s just say that the time I chose to have the talk was not a good time to have it. Take it from me when I say DO NOT ATTEMPT TO HAVE THE TALK WHEN HIS HEAD IS BETWEEN YOUR LEGS. That should be in the Big Book. It’s a real buzz kill for one and all. And our relationship (if you can call it that) ended shortly thereafter which was okay because he was seriously still mourning the loss of his ten-year marriage.
So that’s my take on dating in the first year. I do know a couple people who hooked up in their first year of sobriety and 30 years later are still married. That might happen to you. I knew that wasn’t going to happen for me. It wasn’t until year two that I met the man of my dreams AKA qualifier who really brought me to my knees (not in a good way) and into Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous which is like the nicest thing a guy can do. Kidding. But not in a way because Girrrrrrrl, I needed some of that SLAA in my life. Since then, I’ve moved to a place that I am happy to call home, am “healthy” dating and more will be revealed. But the best thing is that I like myself – dare I say love myself? I love my friends, my career, and my life and I don’t expect a man or any person or thing to save me. Because I don’t need saving any more. Thank god. Thank HP. Thank program. And thank you.
