I think I won’t drink today, I thought to myself as I stared at the empty bottle of cheap bourbon that sloppily sat exactly where I dropped it at some point the previous night on my bedroom floor. As the fog started to clear from the night before, as it did every single morning of my life, my heart froze in a panic. My phone! I reached for my phone in a frenzy, saying some nonsensical prayer as I unlocked it to scan my notifications rapidly.
Had I messaged someone I had no business talking to? No.
Did I make any wild phone calls? No.
Did I post anything on social media that I would later regret? No, not last night.
It was my lucky day. Other mornings were not so fortunate, and I would have answered “yes” to one of the above-listed questions. On mornings like those, I would find myself wishing I could skip the functional part of my addiction where I was a successful teacher, disappear under the covers, and dive right back into my bottle.
My greatest professional failure was never taking advantage of the resources available to me as an employee to get help because I was scared of being my own advocate. It was my failure to address my worsening problems with alcohol, which the more shame I felt about, the harder I worked at my job, and the more powerful my silence became about my growing addiction.
It was as if I would tell myself, I can’t be a terrible person if I do a great job teaching, right?! I had a teaching career for thirteen years. Each of these years, I had health benefits that I did NOT touch. See a therapist? NO way. I even had access to things like short-term disability and the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) if I needed to seek treatment for my alcohol use disorder. But me, go to treatment? Nah, I’m good. So I thought, but I wasn’t good. I was dying.
I developed alcoholic liver disease and decided to stop drinking in September 2019, but getting sober is no small feat, and I didn’t successfully stop drinking until November 28, 2020. Side note, my liver has fully healed, and the only treatment necessary was to stop drinking.
But here are a few things I learned:
- USE YOUR HEALTH BENEFITS AND GO TO THERAPY. I had to place this in all caps because, yes, I am screaming this to you. My long-term recovery has benefitted from opportunities to dig into my WHY and work on addressing and healing my WHY. If you have health benefits, you already give your employer so much, take a little and get yourself an in-network provider! Some workplaces even offer free counseling up to a certain number of visits. USE IT.
- If you need to, use your benefits and go to treatment! Talk to HR about it. According to the US Department of Labor, “FMLA leave may only be taken for substance abuse treatment provided by a health care provider or by a provider of health care services on referral by a health care provider.The employer may not take action against the employee because the employee has exercised his or her right to take FMLA leave for substance abuse treatment.” See the full text here.
- The stigma of addiction is a killer. Connect with someone, anyone, about what you’re going through!
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