Tag: obsession

The Perilous Journey of a Tobacco Addict

Smoking was like kicking myself down the stairs every day: There she goes again. You’re nothing. Remember that.

I had no words to describe my obsession back then. I was 12 years old and I didn’t know what was happening. I would phone my friend across the street and abruptly ask her without apology, “how many did you get?” I wasn’t even that fond of her but her mother chain smoked cigarettes and didn’t keep track of them. That’s how we smoked.

Often there were a couple burning in the ashtray at the same time. We got butts off the ground, but mostly we liked them fresh out of the pack. I felt so sick after we smoked. I would stagger across the street, dizzy, barely making my way to the couch and flopping in front of the TV until the nausea and spinning wore off. It was normal to feel awful. I felt like I had the flu every day.

I’m not sure what came first, the tobacco or the addict; the addict or the tobacco. I was a preteen and tobacco had grabbed a hold of me and said “come on kid, you’re one of us now.” I couldn’t turn it around no matter how hard I tried. I wasted years and decades of my life doing the thing I hated the most in the world: smoking cigarettes.

I viewed smoking as a sign of weakness which plummeted my self-esteem. I used weed and alcohol because I always felt so sick and kept thinking something else might perk me up. Turns out my mother was right about tobacco being a gateway drug, not that I ever listened to her. To top it off there was a lot of dysfunction going on in my family and no one seemed to notice the compromised state of my well-being and morbid self-loathing. Smoking was like kicking myself down the stairs every day: There she goes again. You’re nothing. Remember that.

I wanted what I hated and hated what I wanted. I was down to 100 pounds and had to choke food down that I couldn’t taste. I could barely lift my head in the shower from all the poison and I was physically and mentally weak. I ruined my teenage years panicking and ruminating about how to get off them. Tobacco nearly destroyed my life.

The moment of clarity came to me about five years ago when I stepped out onto the deck in the middle of winter at 3 a.m. in my husband’s robe and slippers. The barometer read -28 with a wind chill factor of -38. It would’ve been dangerous if I had slipped. This was my third night in a row: I needed a fix.

How incredibly stupid it was for me to start smoking again after the 200^th time quitting. I had quit once for nine years. We were opening our cottage after a long winter, taking the weekend off and hanging out by the campfire, raking and burning leaves. I felt good to be up there again and my husband and I were really enjoying our day. Then the trigger came out of nowhere and sat on my shoulder:

“There you are. I’ve been waiting for you. It’s been a long time.”

I agreed. It had been. I needed a bit of crazy. I’ll just have a few. I knew full well I was playing with fire yet in that moment, I forgot I was an addict. I said to myself what every addict says just before a relapse.

“I got this.”

The next morning was the worst day of my life. Nine years down the drain. I’ll never forget that feeling of dread — I wanted to die and it scared me. It haunts me to this day; the nightmare of relapsing wasn’t a dream this time. I was paralyzed by defeat and self-loathing.

An hour later I was searching for keys and heading to the store. By the end of the weekend I had smoked two packs.

There I was on the deck in the middle of the night in my husband’s robe and slippers deeply inhaling the burning smoke into my lungs. As I stared down at the cigarette shivering between my gloved fingers, something hit me. What am I doing awake? I can’t even make it through the night. That need had never woken me up before. This insidious clutch was turning me into a robot and forcing me out of my warm bed. There was no rolling over and going back to sleep. I realized in that moment how much stronger and more potent they had become.

After I finished I would step back into the house, brush off all the snow and stagger to the fridge for a gulp of orange juice to equalize my body because the poison left me feeling like I was going to pass out.

I already felt like a cancer patient who was depleted and nauseated. Why did I go back? How am I going to get off them again? I would eventually drift off to sleep, not looking forward to ever waking up to face the failure in the mirror and the pair of hands around my neck saying “come with me.”

I’m not a neuroscientist but I believe nicotine dependency changes the chemistry in your brain. I’m not surprised that there’s a link between early tobacco addiction and cocaine use. I see tobacco slaves under umbrellas; smokers out shivering alone in smoking areas; panicked travelers in airports trying to remain calm, looking for a miracle exit. I see the monkey on smokers’ backs as they come in with their forced smiles to purchase their fix. I see families choosing tobacco over bread and milk. I see grubby corner stores and brightly lit 24-hour gas stations selling tobacco, lottery and gum. I see desperate people wanting to quit and not being able to. I see discrimination and lack of understanding or commitment to do anything but collect the cash off the train that’s ruining people’s health. I see addiction and struggle and a system profiting from poisoning people to death.

There is absolutely no way I’m ever going to see the 12 smokers in my life quit. I will see chronic health issues, lung and breathing problems, heart problems and cancer. It’s already starting. Oh, the excuses. I can’t blame them, really. I was there. I lived it.

I remain vigilant because you never know when nicotine will show up in disguise, pretending to be your best friend again; how it will use any opportunity when you’re exposed and vulnerable to hijack your life again. The nicotine immediately grabs hold of me and forces me into submission. I ruined a $10,000 family vacation because I relapsed on tobacco. Tobacco addiction makes you weak and it depletes your energy. That was an expensive lesson. I can’t let that happen again.

If you lined up every smoker and said: “Here’s a pill. If you take this pill, you’ll never want another cigarette,” 99% of all smokers would take the pill. But there is never going to be a pill to cure tobacco addiction, because illness is more lucrative.

Instead, cigarettes will continue to be accessible 24-7 on every street corner for your convenient demise. The tobacco industry is powerful and the government protects them. It’s a legacy this generation shouldn’t be too proud of: “This product keeps killing people, but we’ll continue to make it anyway.”

Smoking is hell. I was slowly poisoning myself to death and I couldn’t stop.

View the original article at thefix.com

6 November 2018
When the Obsession Isn’t Lifted

Before, when someone with 20 years would say “it’s still a day at a time,” I couldn’t really hear them. I do now.

I was a typical low-bottom case. I was drunk most days, and a car wreck, an arrest, and a liver enzyme problem couldn’t pry me from my favorite thing to do. What would be the point of a life without alcohol? Now over five years sober, though, one thing astounds me even more than my abstinence. I don’t miss drinking. I hardly think about it. How can this be? Drinking was at the center of my existence. Surely sobriety would be a lifetime of longing for what I couldn’t have anymore, of feeling terribly excluded from the magical things I associated with its effects: wildness, fun, escape, adventure. Now it’s like, drinking? Oh right, that…

In AA-speak, I had an “obsession” with alcohol, and that obsession has been “lifted.” The totality of this transformation was enough to make me, an atheist before this, feel a bit mystical indeed.

Over the years I have come to realize that unfortunately this freedom from obsession does not characterize everyone’s recovery experience. I first noticed this when I was out to dinner with a friend from the program. Both of us had over a year sober. Our server began listing drink specials, as servers do, and my friend cut him off and demanded that he remove the cocktail menu from our table immediately. I felt embarrassed and confused. These were not the vibes of someone “placed in a position of neutrality.” Instead she was coming across as anxious and aggressive and she seemed to be feeling unsafe. We talked, and she said, “Yeah, for me, the obsession has not been lifted.” I was stunned. I thought, really?

Keeping her anonymous, I brought this interaction up to other friends who had been sober for decades. They knew. They reminded me that Dr. Bob’s obsession lasted well into his third year. Bob wrote in the Big Book, “Unlike most of our crowd, I did not get over my craving for liquor much during the first two and one-half years of abstinence. It was almost always with me.” He notes in this passage that it used to make him “terribly upset” to see his friends drink when he “could not.”

I have become attuned to this. While there are as many experiences of recovery as there are people in recovery–it’s a deeply personal path after all–perhaps two broad types emerge, one in which the obsession all but disappears, and another in which it remains even while abstinence is achieved and maintained. How can these not be vastly different?

This seems like a big deal, yet the issue gets scant air time in shares. I suspect we don’t hear about this more in meetings owing to our strong unity, per the triangle of recovery, unity, and service. We are at our best when we are united, identifying with each other rather than comparing. On this matter of the obsession, perhaps we are divided. (Of course there may be many people in the middle, whose obsession has weakened but has not “been lifted” or “removed,” or whose obsession comes and goes. I don’t know.) Out of the thousands of meetings I’ve attended, this issue has emerged just a few times as a share theme. In those shares, people whose obsessions have remained have expressed gratitude for others’ honesty who shared this ahead of them, and relief at the permission they felt it granted them to share similarly. They shared not wanting to drag anyone down, not wanting to be an unattractive example to newcomers, and not wanting to be seen as a “bad AA.” They wondered if they were doing the program wrong.

I imagine that, on the contrary, it must take an especially strong program to maintain sobriety in the circumstance of an obsession that endures. When I share about its being lifted, including writing this now, I feel a sense of survivor’s guilt. I worked the same 12 steps as everyone else, and my active disease was plenty strong. Just for me, abstinence was a prerequisite for the freedom from obsession that followed, but after that, the freedom from obsession made ongoing abstinence feel easy. Life can be hard. Last spring, my sibling got a life-threatening illness, and that was very hard. But I don’t find not drinking to be hard anymore. When I use the slogan “getting sober is a lot harder than staying sober,” that is what I mean.

Olivia Pennelle’s recent article in The Fix, “Is there Life after AA?” caught my attention. She wrote about wanting to leave AA and being tired of the “fear-based conditioning” that if she left, she wouldn’t stay sober. I identified with her experience, not because I wanted to leave AA (I didn’t), but because I too faced dire predictions when I wanted to reduce my time commitment to the fellowship. In my first four years sober I had been attending meetings almost every other day; making daily calls to sponsors (something like 1,500 total to my two consecutive sponsors); hundreds more calls to friends, acquaintances, and newcomers; taking around half a dozen sponsees through some stepwork (not all at the same time!); and fulfilling service commitments ranging from greeter to meeting chair to speaking in prisons and psych wards and what seemed like half the groups in my large metro area. My recovery felt solid, and I’d learned the difference between the program, which I could apply in my daily life, and the fellowship.

I’d returned to grad school to become a psychotherapist. (Incidentally, while there I discovered that mental health professionals have studies and theories about why the obsession leaves some people more easily than others, having to do with particular co-occurring mental health issues. In the future, I hope to write about this too.) With more focus and energy, I felt ready to pursue the new career and other life goals including getting non-alcoholic friends and dating outside the fellowship. I found myself needing more time. Trust me, I did ask myself and a higher power within: Am I “drifting?” Am I “resting on my laurels?” Then as now, I relied heavily on meditation. In my depths, I knew this was not the case.

Pennelle quoted someone who wrote to her, “I know lots of people who have left 12-step recovery. They are all drunk or dead.” When I reduced my involvement, some people made it clear how extremely dangerous they thought this was, and how worried they were. When I told a friend I was down to 1 to 2 meetings per week, she looked at me like I was out of my mind. My sponsor was distraught to be working with me in my new approach, and she couldn’t seem to talk about anything other than how my disease must be “tricking” me. I had affectionate feelings and a lot of gratitude towards her, but we couldn’t seem to see eye to eye on this. Eventually I referenced my obsession’s being lifted as part of my rationale for feeling safe cutting down on the time commitment. She then used almost the same words my friend used years before and said that for her “the obsession has not been lifted.” She added, “for some people, it never does.”

Many considerations likely play into people’s decisions regarding how much or how little time they spend in the fellowship, but it stands to reason that the persistence or disappearance of the obsession factors into it. I have no wish to take chances. Sobriety is the most precious, important thing in my life. It is my life. This disease has killed at least five members of my extended family, and it’s got one immediate family member in prison. I have never once questioned that if I take so much as a sip, I take my life into my own hands, and I don’t want to die. I try never to take my recovery for granted. AA is still a part of my life, but it is “a bridge back to life,” and life was pulling me in another direction. I couldn’t be true to myself and continue at the same level of time commitment I had in my first few years. I didn’t want to let anything get between me and my recovery, including my program.

“A day at a time” has become a spiritual way of life for me, a reminder to live in the present. In early sobriety it was “a day-at-a-time” quite literally. I struggled hard not to drink through the first 90 days and then some, thinking about drinking almost nonstop. As I remember it, the obsession only began to falter for brief spans in months four and five, when I would have these amazing moments of realizing, hey wait! It’s been a whole afternoon and I haven’t been missing it. What freedom! Though I was desperate, exhausted from sleeplessness, grieving the loss of the only coping mechanism I’d ever known and coming to see the wreckage and trauma for the devastation that it was, these gaps in the obsession spurred me on. Even beyond my first anniversary I was still a little shaky (figuratively that is, my actual shakes were long gone). Now there are just moments when a liquor ad will catch my eye, or I’ll have a twinge of nostalgia for my old life. I’m still an alcoholic, but these come very rarely and never amount to a craving. Not even close.

Before, when someone with 20 years would say “it’s still a day at a time,” I couldn’t really hear them. I do now. Taking sobriety “a day at a time” can remain literal, for life. For some cutting back on involvement in the AA fellowship may indeed be a death wish. We share a common problem and a common solution, but we are different people with different lives and recoveries. However well-intentioned, using fear or guilt to coerce people into a level of time commitment that for them is no longer authentic or wanted may only alienate them and take them away from a level of commitment that is working well, or inhibit them from re-engaging should a need arise in the future. Accepting this doesn’t require being dismissive or doubtful of other people’s need for continuous, intensive involvement. Compassion, as always, is best. We must do what is right for our own selves, and, unto our own selves, be true.

View the original article at thefix.com

25 September 2018
Men… I’ve Always Been Obsessed With Them

It’s not him, it’s the version of him I’d chosen to focus on, ignoring all the bad behavior which followed, as I have way too many times.

“Addicted to Love” is a great song––it’s also a not-so-great running theme in my life. Last week, at 62 ½, it dawned on me that there’s never been a time––nary a day of my life––when I haven’t had, first a boy, then a man, front and center in my brain. Attempting to add up the hours––the real estate––and what I might’ve done with both had I been more focused on me––rather than them––is depressing as hell.

I can remember being a little girl of not quite 8, chasing 10-year-old Andy Helfman––all day, all summer long––for at least three years running. I eventually caught him and got the chaste kiss I sought, and the satisfaction of discovering he liked me, too. Returning to the city from the Catskills, there was Roy. I picked him on the first day of school; in June he asked me out. I fell for Paul when I was barely 12. I harbored that love for years until he returned it, in his fashion––breaking my heart and hymen. There was Lenny––unrequited; with Randy, I came to wish it was unrequited; Vinny #1, and then Vinny # 2––both mine for the having, and both exceedingly inappropriate.

I sound insanely fickle. And yet, I was fairly easy on the fickle, heavy on the insane. These were not short impetuous crushes. I harbored all of them well past their expiration dates, either until I got them or until the next one took hold, oft with some heart-breaking overlap.

Looking back––how much of my quest was about the conquest? The chase. Winning. Ownership. Not to amass bounty, but to capture––love. To fill a hole, to prove my worth––which I could never seem to do with the people I deemed most important, including my rarely-considered self. I never thought of it in those terms––yet now––it’s impossible for me not to see the pattern.

How many times have I given my time, attention, and power to a guy who either didn’t ask for it, didn’t appreciate it, or used it more as a means to control rather than love.

I followed one boyfriend to the college of his choice, and another, post-degree, to the city of his––in both cases putting aside my own desires. I married the second one, knowing he was a volatile alcoholic. But, he was my volatile alcoholic. I waitressed, putting my career on hold, so he could… sleep. So what if there were holes in the walls behind every picture? You couldn’t see them, so I could pretend they weren’t there. I spent the majority of our years together obsessing… about how to get away from him.

It took falling in love with someone else to manage it.

My second marriage grew from a years-long professional friendship. The romance was built on mutual respect, affection, and ultimately, love. In my mid-thirties, almost immediately, I shifted my focus from my career to managing his and to starting a family. It was my choice, my great privilege and pleasure. For a decade, as his star ascended, our kids blossomed and thrived. When his up came crashing down, it took our love with it. We spent the next 10 years struggling over what once was, trying like hell to get it back––unsuccessfully. Graciously, the kids continued to bloom––magnificently.

As a middle-aged single mom, without a career or a man, I obsessively struggled to find both. My long-starved creative passions swiftly found their voice and vision, and have met with some success. The money and the manhunt have been an exhausting, heartbreaking, ego-crushing exercise in futility. In spite of all the years, and lessons learned, I’m struggling to find my way with both. I’m still giving men who don’t deserve it––and sometimes don’t even know it––my time, energy, and my power. And, there’s always a man––and a way to stalk him.

Back in the day, I did it with the phone: I’d call the object of my desire, hear his voice, or,sometimes hell-forbid, his parent’s voice, and hang up. I graduated to the walk-by––finding any excuse to pass his house, or where he hung out, in hopes of catching a glimpse––a smile––or a moment of his time. What a waste of mine.

Facebook, Twitter and, Instagram took my occasional insanity and turned it into an ongoing opportunity to “check-in” on the latest object of my obsession affection.

Dating apps are an even bigger nightmare, with distance offered at any given moment. Twenty-three miles? Hey! Where the hell are you?

Finally, two weeks ago, I freed myself from the now daily insanity. Julian, my latest (mind) fuck, doesn’t utilize social media (talk about insanity). I had no way to monitor him other than to glimpse What’s App to see when he’d last been on. Why exactly? What did I gain by such behavior? Heartache. I knew when he was communicating, I also knew it wasn’t with me.

I tried weaning myself from looking, but just as it was with pot 17 years ago, I had to quit cold turkey. I’ve stuck to it for 14 days, and it’s working. As each day passes with zero connection, he fades from my mind, and perhaps more importantly, from my heart. With distance, the rose lenses are clearing their hue––less obstructing my view. I’ve come to appreciate that I’d been romanticizing him, focusing on the alchemy of the connection, whilst ignoring the harsh cruelty of the abrupt disconnection. It’s not him, it’s the version of him I’d chosen to focus on, ignoring all the bad behavior which followed, as I have way too many times.

For the first time in memory, there’s no man in my head. I’ve stepped away from the swipe. That leaves a lot of time and space to think about worthy people, ambitions, and causes––and maybe, at last, to include myself as one of them.

View the original article at thefix.com

27 June 2018