In this episode:
What’s going to treatment like? Listen as I read my story, Drowning in Shallow Water, written for Love and Literature Magazine, in this episode. My experience is my own, but it may help answer questions about what rehab is like if you’re curious. If you want support with your own storytelling, I invite you to sign up for my Free Writing Workshop, and if you enjoy that, register for my Six-Week Writing for Healing Program.
Content Warning: car accident, suicidal ideation, substance abuse, strong language
Resources:
Using Family Medical Leave for Substance Abuse Treatment
Free Writing for Healing Workshop
Transcript:
Jessica Dueñas:
Hey everyone! So today we’re gonna do some legit just storytelling. I am going to be running the third iteration of my writing program, Writing for Healing, with a free workshop on July 8th, followed by the six-week writing program that starts July 15th. Check that information out at bottomlesstosober.com. I’m always open for more folks if more folks want to join. So yeah, so today I just want to tell a story. So sit back, relax, get comfortable.
Content warning, there are parts that talk about car accidents, going to treatment, death, suicidal ideation, drug overdose, etc. So in general when we tell stories about our life in active addiction, there tends to be a lot of content that is really rough. So just giving you that heads up, some strong language as well. So you might need to skip this if you’re not into hearing any of those things. But otherwise…
Get comfortable. I hope that if you have never been to rehab and have been curious that this answers some questions for you. If you are going to rehab and you’re thinking, what can I expect? Obviously this is my personal situation, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you saw something similar. And then lastly, if you have a loved one in rehab, I hope this also answers some questions for you about what they may be going through. I went to rehab about eight times, I believe. Seven, eight hospitalizations.
So that gives you a sense of my experience in facilities, which is plentiful. So I’ll go ahead and I’ll get started. This story, I wrote it in 2021. It’s called Drowning in Shallow Water. It was originally published for Love and Literature Magazine. And now I get to read it to you here on the Bottomless to Sober podcast. So I hope you get comfy and enjoy. Excuse me while I clear my throat. Part one.
racing to the bottom. I’m fine, I’m fine, I said, narrowly opening my eyes, trying to make sense of what was happening while hanging upside down. It was the morning of May 25th, 2020, and I had just gained consciousness after wrecking my car on Bartstown Road in Louisville, Kentucky. I vaguely remembered that my dog, Cruz, and I were on our way to meet a friend for a walk. Instead, I found myself suspended in the air
by my seatbelt, realizing that everything was upside down and feeling the pressure of blood rushing to my head, awake and still alive, unfortunately. Wait, my dog. I started to mumble when I looked out and there he was. His tail was still as if he was holding his breath waiting for me. Relief. Then the waves hit my body, one after the other. Not pain, but first,
fear. What’s happening to me? Next, anger. I shouldn’t be okay. I don’t want this. Lastly, shame. I’m awful. How could I want to die with my dog in the car? What kind of sick person am I? I deserve to die. I’m fucking hopeless. I wanted to walk away from the scene to escape the best way I knew how. Racing to the bottom of a bottle of cheap bourbon.
first things first, these damn first responders weren’t letting me go if it wasn’t in an ambulance. I hadn’t even realized that I lacerated my elbow and had pieces of glass embedded throughout my skin like some sort of glittery decor. “‘I don’t want any goddamn help,’ I muttered under my breath as I got into the ambulance. I had to answer the same rote questions I’ve responded to many times in ambulance rides. Wait, how do you spell your last name? D for David.'”
U, E for Edward, and it went on until getting to the hospital. Though I was furious and incredibly resentful at going to the hospital, there was one positive, pain pills. My favorite mind-altering drug has always been alcohol, as I never had the umph in me to work as hard as people do to go get illicit drugs. However, I certainly wasn’t going to reject a nice prescription either. I could already feel the euphoria just before blacking out with
burning splashes of Evan Williams. I couldn’t wait to escape my misery and get away for a day or two. Here’s your prescription for ibuprofen 800s. Excuse me? Ibuprofen? I felt myself clutching my nonexistent pearls. Yes ma’am. But I just flipped my car over. I just got out of a terrible wreck. Sorry, you aren’t experiencing enough pain for anything stronger. Wow.
Immediately, I wondered what the fuck someone would have to do to get a pain pill around here. I mean, lose a limb? Well, there went any slight, on-the-bright-side feeling I was starting to have. My stomach started sinking again. I rolled my eyes and groaned. Getting home from the hospital, I knew I would have to tell my sister what happened. I had already been hospitalized several times since April 28th when I found my then-boyfriend dead from a drug overdose.
Ever since, I was trapped in what felt like a never-ending bender from hell. In less than a month, I had already gone twice to detox. I had several emergency room visits with dangerously high blood alcohol levels. So to prepare myself for this call, I got a few liquor bottles dropped off thanks to alcohol delivery and opened one of the bottles. No need to pour it in a glass. I drank it like water. Jess, you’re dying. You need help. Please go somewhere.
I can’t handle this. Every time the phone rings, I’m terrified,” Sophie cried. I sighed and thought to myself, damn, I don’t wanna be hurting her like this. So I picked up the phone and called the local treatment facility inquiring about their five-week program. Deep down, I was hoping they wouldn’t have a bed open. Deep down, I wanted to just keep drinking and shut down.
I was already dreading the feeling of detoxing and withdrawals. The woman on the phone said, yes, we can take you. How about we pick you up later today? I went to clutch my imaginary pearls again. Today? But I’m not packed. That’s okay. Someone can drop clothes off for you. I tried to deflect. I can’t come tomorrow? Well, sweetheart, you can come tomorrow. But will you make it till then?
I sighed and rolled my eyes. Fine, but can you come in the evening? Yes. Rubbing my hands together, I realized I had a few hours so that I could give myself one last hurrah before I went into this place. I couldn’t imagine five weeks without drinking. I dreaded the idea of having to feel everything, of only being unconscious to sleep. So I swallowed hard, I drank fast. I threw the ibuprofen 800s in the trash.
I vaguely remember a friend coming to get Cruz, and then everything went dark and silent. I couldn’t feel a thing. Things were exactly how I wanted them to be, always and forever. I came to on a couch in an unfamiliar space. I looked around. There were people watching TV, others were playing card games at a table, someone was writing in a notebook while reading out of what appeared to be a Bible.
I could tell I needed a drink. My head was starting to throb. My hands were beginning to shake. I looked down. As I examined the dried blood on my clothes, I suddenly felt like my elbow was being stabbed. There were some rough stitches in there. The thick, black surgical threads stuck out of my elbow like a porcupine’s needles. I got up only to feel the room starting to spin. And a woman, to this day I don’t remember who it was, grabbed my good arm and walked me to a room.
She pointed me to a plainly dressed bed. Immediately I got in, back to black, relief. I finally woke up with a clearer head in that same bed and walked out of the room. It looked like I was in a college dorm setup of some kind. I saw people sitting in a courtyard, cigarettes, and vape pens in hand, surrounded by a cloud of smoke to the left of me. In front of me, standing at a desk, a young woman looked at me and smiled.
Hi Jessica, how are you love? I’m Danielle. Danielle was a tech, so she was introducing herself to let me know that she, alongside the other techs, supervised the area to make sure that all was in order. She was also a few years in recovery from all kinds of drugs, and she just glowed. As she walked me around the facility to give me a sense of where I was, she ran down basic things like the schedule, the rules, and our responsibilities. Yes, we as the patients had chores.
Some people eagerly waved hello as we passed them. Others looked like they had just gotten there too and moved about like zombies. You know, Jessica, my boyfriend died two years ago from a drug overdose too. I was immediately caught off guard. First, I wondered how she knew. Then second, I felt a surge of relief. It had basically been a month since Ian died.
And I had yet to hear that there was another soul on this earth who also had a boyfriend who died from a drug overdose. She sat me down and shared her story with me. There was so much I related to, I had to ask. But how did you live through it? How are you still here? In my mind, I thought this life experience was supposed to come with some sort of death sentence. That I would just
bide my time until I killed myself or died of alcohol poisoning. But Danielle, here she was, joyful, glowing, and with some solid continuous silver time under her belt, and proving me wrong. Oh, trust me, she said. It was the worst experience of my life to date, and my heart is still broken. Eventually, though, you start to find your way in this world with grief. I promise you it gets better.
I’m a testament to that. Immediately, I felt a tiny shift in me, a butterfly in my stomach. Maybe it does, in fact, get better. I mean, if Danielle did it, perhaps I can too. She gave me a hug, which also surprised me, and she went off to finish her shift. Before leaving for the day, Danielle came back to find me and handed me a sheet she pulled from the tech desk printer.
The paper read, “‘People think a soulmate is your perfect fit, “‘and that’s what everyone wants. “‘But a true soulmate is a mirror, “‘the person who shows you everything “‘that is holding you back, “‘the person who brings you to your own attention “‘so you can change your life. “‘A true soulmate is probably the most important person “‘you’ll ever meet, “‘because they tear down your walls and smack you awake.'”
But to live with a soulmate forever? Nah, too painful. Soulmates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you and then leave. A soulmate’s purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control.
that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master. This was an excerpt from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love. I knew then that although it was going to be a long five weeks, that maybe this was exactly what I needed. And now we’ve got chapter two, or part two, surrounded and alone.
Well, the funny thing is I didn’t tell him that I had the Holy Trinity. Natalie cackled while talking to some of the 20-somethings in the courtyard. Off to the side of everyone chatting, I was sitting in a beat up camping chair, trying to mind my business and enjoy the sun and its warmth on my skin. But Natalie’s voice carried over to my ears and I could feel my ears perk up. Holy Trinity, I wondered, what’s she talking about? Even though I initially wasn’t listening,
Her gleeful energy in between cigarette pulls caught everyone’s attention, including mine. “‘You know,’ she said as the smoke slowly floated up from the side of her mouth, “‘Hep A, Hep B, and Hep C.’ Immediately, my jaw dropped with a slight gasp and laugh. What? Then I had a flashback to the night before when I saw some of the younger ones, as I like to call them, scurrying around the facility.
They were trying to distract the techs from supervising so Natalie and some other kid could run off to have sex. What was another conquest for Natalie to brag about was about to become a really uncomfortable situation for that kid. Days later, he came back to us saying he tested positive. Originally, I thought it would be for hepatitis, given, you know, Mother Teresa and her Holy Trinity, but it turned out to be some other STI. So maybe the joke was on Natalie.
I don’t know. There were no condoms around because of course, no one was supposed to have sex, except they did, and clearly, it was not safe. I remember one morning coming back to my room after brushing my teeth. As I approached, I noticed that the lights were off. Hmm, did I do that? Our doors didn’t lock at the facility, so as I leaned on the door with my arms full of toiletries, I heard heavy breathing coming from the other side of the room.
and saw shuffling under the covers. It was my roommate with a particularly creepy man who made my skin crawl. I cringed when I heard him moan then loudly whisper in her ear. He definitely was not a 20-something. Do I interrupt, I wondered? Do I tell a tech what’s happening? I knew the rules, but I didn’t know what was considered right and what was wrong. I was quickly learning during my stay that it wasn’t about the rules.
It was about what I needed to get through those 35 days in peace. It hit me that my five weeks would quickly feel like 10 weeks if I had a conflict with anyone. So in that moment, I decided that I hadn’t seen or heard anything. Before they noticed that I had walked in, I stepped out and took a seat in the common area. I exhaled, putting my face in the palm of my hand to wait. It only took a few minutes for him to come out of the room. I was not surprised.
While the techs occasionally played whack-a-mole trying to control the 20-somethings, I found myself entertained in my own way thanks to another patient. No, I did not have sex with this man. I didn’t even touch him. But I still found myself distracted in his company. Our connection brought me comfort at a moment in my life when I was grieving the man I knew was permanently gone. He was no replacement, but he took me away from my pain. If I couldn’t have alcohol while in treatment,
at least I could have some male attention, and he was exactly what I needed for those five weeks. I always looked forward to early evening when we could work on crossword puzzles by the tech desk. We chatted with each other and the techs who, like Danielle, were all in recovery and helped remind us that getting better was possible. As it got close to 9 p.m., I began to dread my nightly trip to the nurse’s statement, nurse’s station. As soon as I took my night meds,
the clock started counting down. Slowly my eyelids got heavier and my head started to knot off, which annoyed me. It was a nice change for once to actually want to be awake, but those meds sapped my energy. I was finally laughing with others after not having done so in over a month. And even more surprising, I was smiling again. I didn’t want the meds to take that little bit of joy away from me every evening.
As we worked on the crossword one time, I looked at him and wondered, why isn’t he sleepy? It was then that I learned from others how to cheek my meds. So that night, I went into the nurse’s station, I took the little paper cup with my medications, emptied it into my mouth, and said, ah, like a little kid, as I stuck my tongue out so the nurse could take a look. All the while,
I tasted the bitterness of the pills hidden between my gums and cheek as they started to break down. I rushed to the bathroom to spit them out before they disintegrated, wrapped them up in tissue, stuffed them into my bra, and saved them for when I actually wanted to go to bed. Back to the crosswords. I rapidly fell into the daily routine. I was so wrapped up with therapy, groups, and classes that I started to forget about the world outside.
the world that treatment was shielding me from. I was vaguely aware that it was a world that seemed to have fallen apart. Every now and then, someone would flip past the news channel while looking for another episode of Botched. I remember hearing snippets of COVID’s numbers going up as the TV abruptly switched to Naked and Afraid or some other reality show. I remember being allowed to watch TV briefly while the protests broke out around the country and just miles away from where we were. Then…
as soon as gunshots rang out live on TV, it suddenly became silent. TV off. A part of me was relieved to be away from it all, away from one unprecedented event after the other, as well as the alcohol that waited outside patiently for me. Every week, I got 30 minutes to speak to someone from the outside on video chat. I always chose my sister, Sophie. It had hurt her so much to see me struggling.
that I wanted to show her how good I looked the longer I was in treatment. You have no idea how much at peace I feel knowing you’re safe. I’ve been taking the family support classes and I’m learning a lot, she would say. That facility provided classes for both families and patients on addiction and how it is a disease and not a failure of character. I still felt like a failure, but I didn’t have to think about that in treatment. Instead,
I could just relax like I was at a summer camp for dysfunctional adults. I knew what was waiting for me on the other side of the fence. It was the people outside, those people and their opinions, and that ran chills down my spine. Mommy doesn’t know where I’m at, right? I asked. Each time I spoke to my sister, I asked if people had figured out where I was, fearful that my secret would be revealed.
I just wanted people to think I was taking time for myself and unplugging after the loss. I didn’t want a soul to know that I was locked away in a treatment facility, that I was institutionalized. The very idea of anyone knowing where I was made my heart race and my stomach sink fast, like a freefall with no end. I’d seen people get ripped apart publicly because of their secrets, and I didn’t want that to be me.
As I watched my sister chat on the screen about her days and what things have been like for her, my mind wandered to thoughts of how I would rather die than have others know where I was. I mean, how could I, this teacher loved by the community, be an alcoholic? How could I be such an extreme case that I couldn’t be trusted with my own life and had to be locked away? How could I be a good person but be hooked so badly? It just didn’t make…
sense. I didn’t tell my sister that those thoughts raced through my mind while we spoke. I didn’t tell my therapist when I looked her in the eyes across her desk. I didn’t tell anyone in my group sessions during those heavy pauses when I could have said something. I did not tell a single soul how torn I felt inside. Even in those moments surrounded by people just like me, I was alone.
That was part two. Now we’re at part three. If you’re still with me, thank you for listening. Part three, the truth they wanted. Jessica Vivian Duenas, beloved teacher, community member, friend, sister, daughter, and aunt passed away on May 25th, 2020 at the age of 35 in a tragic car accident. She had a great passion for education and community engagement.
and a great dedication to her family. Jessica leaves behind her mother, Amable, her siblings, Sandra, Lorena, Gretel, Victor, and Sofia, and her friends, colleagues, students, and her dog, Cruz.
We have a lot of assignments and treatment designed to teach us not to drink or use drugs, but writing my own obituary wasn’t an activity given to everyone. A tech, this older lady named Lisa, felt I should write it given my recklessness. The process of starting to draft it was awkward, but in fact painful. The thinking of those left behind nodded my stomach as I visualized each crying face. I can imagine my middle school student, James,
He was usually smiling, often with his hand over his mouth to stifle a laugh at something silly he just did or saw some other kid do. I pictured a woman, his mother, walking into the room he’s in and saying, I’m so sorry, baby, Ms. Duane has died yesterday. Suddenly, his almost shut from laughing squinted eyes would soften and his cheeks that stood high from smiling just dropped down.
and water wells up so much in his eyes that the single tear he was holding back slowly starts to roll down his face, past his nose and onto his lip. What you mean, mama? She sniffles. I’m sorry, baby. She leans over to embrace him, and at that moment, I’m so broken at the thought of another’s pain that I shake my head like a dog does to bring myself back into the present moment.
I was in the fireplace room in the facility. Our women’s group usually did most of our sessions in that space. Today we had to meditate, but instead we were all doing different things. No one actually meditated because no one you had to sit still unless you were drunk or high and basically knocked out of consciousness. Some women, like Denise, decided to take a nap because she was still detoxing. She ended up here after her husband found her on the floor next to a shattered bottle of wine.
She had just shared in a group that she was a full-time mom in her 30s who loved Mommy Needs Wine jokes until she realized that in fact, Mommy needed wine. I’m not a mom, but I nodded my head as soon as she spoke because I knew that needing feeling really well. Shanika walked over to the bookshelf, pulled a book at random, sat down and cracked it open. It was nice seeing her back from the other psych hospital. She was more calm and settled.
On her first day here, she was under the influence of God knows what. She had the wildest eyes, looked at me, and immediately said, I know you! Where do I know you from? I panicked. Oh no
Jessica Dueñas (24:43.634)
I saw his eyes open wide and then we made eye contact. Clearly he didn’t know what to do. Shit, I didn’t know what to do. So I just looked at him, raised my eyebrows and shrugged my shoulders. It was funny to be honest. We were trapped in a circle of prayer. So what were we supposed to do? I’m sorry to connect your connection with God here, but Shanika’s grabbing my ass? Like, no. Thankfully the circle eventually ended.
and off she went. He and I looked at each other and laughed, perhaps a bit uncomfortably. It turned out Shanika was hallucinating and having a psychotic break. Her breaking point with our facility occurred when she climbed onto her roommate’s bed in the middle of the night and picked at her because she was covered in supposedly ants. That scuffle caused security to run into the room and quickly snatch her up. So Shanika was gone for a few days to complete her detox at a higher security psychiatric facility.
Those are the type of hospitals that take your bra from you so you don’t stab someone with your underwire. You can’t have shoelaces there so that you can’t hang yourself. It’s the type of place where techs have to lay eyes on you once every 10 minutes, even when you’re asleep, to make sure you haven’t suddenly died. You’d be in a deeply medicated sleep and abruptly wake up to a flashlight in your face. I’ve been in those places too. So to see her back with us in the fireplace room,
calm and quietly reading was a testament to how we can slowly come back from the dead after a few days of being in rehab. She didn’t recognize me anymore. That was a relief. My secret was still safe. Once we finished meditating, a social worker came to work with us to discuss relapse prevention planning. Essentially, we were going to sit there and outline everything that triggered us to get drunk or high and then a list of 10 things to do instead.
As I listened to her, I tilted my head to the side and scratched my scalp a little bit. I raised my hand. Yes, Jessica. She turned to me. This isn’t my first time writing a relapse prevention plan, but I just don’t get how it’s supposed to work. I mean, I’ll be honest. If I want a drink, I’m not going to say, hmm, where’s my prevention plan? That just doesn’t make sense, I said. She paused.
Sure, that’s a great point. So you put it on sticky notes and you place them all over your home. Alrighty, I thought to myself, shaking my head. Inside, I wanted to scream. Don’t you get it? I’m addicted to alcohol. So my default setting is drinking. If not drinking, we’re as easy as opening up some sort of almanac reference guide, filling out a handout or looking at a sticky note.
We wouldn’t be sitting here filling in the blanks on this paper in this treatment facility right now, would we? Instead, I just went ahead and started to fill it out. Triggers. Grief, sadness, loneliness, anger, darkness, joy, light, anything? Better scratch off those last few items. I didn’t want to keep them there and then be accused of being cynical. I knew how these places operated.
The social workers keep notes on patients, their behavior, their participation. Good behavior gets sent to the discharge team and puts folks on a list to go home. Poor behavior keeps you around longer. You can’t just leave treatment one day because you think you’re good to go. The only ways out are to either hop the fence and run, break the rules badly enough to get kicked out, run out of insurance, or wait until they let you go.
and that is contingent on you finishing the program to their satisfaction. I didn’t have the energy to run or rebel, and as a state employee, I had good health insurance, so my only way out was to comply. I was down to my last couple of weeks, and it was nice to be on a little sober vacation. I had actually made friends with some people, but I wanted to go home. However, I didn’t know if I was in fact ready to leave.
I just knew that if I kept the social workers checking off the boxes on my discharge list, I’d be getting the green light to leave soon enough. I needed to get out and be on my own, away from everyone, away from the cigarette smoke in the courtyard, the saltless meals throughout the day, from the lack of privacy. That was my goal. I wanted to be in complete solitude whether I was really ready or not. That was, uh.
Part three, and now we’re up to the last part, part four. Thanks for listening with me. And part four is called, This House of Broken Promises.
Jessica Dueñas (29:47.498)
Rehab is like a fortress. When you come in, we protect you from your demons, but when you leave, those demons are right where you left them, waiting. So how are you going to be different when you walk out those doors? We were in a women’s session and the counselor, Catherine, stopped to ask us that question. Shit, I don’t know. Was I different?
My eyes shifted from side to side to see if anyone showed signs of having morphed. Then, as I processed more of what she said, I also realized that this so-called fortress didn’t do that good of a job of protecting us from our demons, or even ourselves while inside. The counselors always sat around in meetings each morning before coming in to work with us. Catherine was always in the know about all the patient gossip and drama. But how could she ignore?
that the day before one of my friends found a 20 something slumped over in the bathroom stall. He had snuck pain pills in and knotted off after using them in the restroom. He had to go to the ER. Did she not get filled in by management on how the week before Melissa, a mom in treatment on a judge’s order, was caught high on meth? This was her last chance to get her kids back from foster care and she ended up high after almost 20 days sober.
I just didn’t expect to see it right in my face. When Connor snuck meth in and showed it to me, I didn’t know about anything but that feeling right then. I just want to apologize to the group for using drugs here. Now I don’t know what the judge will do with my kids.” Melissa cried. I remember her trying to hold back the tears as she apologized to us.
I wish I could go back to that moment and hold Melissa and then shake her and yell at her and say, don’t apologize to us. You thought you were safe and some idiot used what he knew would be a weakness against you. Don’t be ashamed because you relapsed. You’re not a bad mom. You’re not a bad person. Be proud that you’re still here and willing to continue to try. Be proud that you accepted another chance. Be proud that you’re getting help. That’s what I wanted to say to her. Really.
These were all things I wish people would have said to me each time I relapsed last year in 2020. I say these things now to others when they relapse. I can’t help but wonder how Melissa is today and where her kids are. She always carried these slightly crinkled pictures of them in her folder and liked to pull them out in meetings and sessions. They had big smiles, glowing skin, big messy curls that looked just like they got tussled while they had a blast playing.
I hope they’re all together. I left the facility before she did and lost touch quickly after. Did she become that different person that Catherine, the social worker said we had to become? Was she able to ward off the dragons laying awake outside of rehab after the five weeks were up? Five weeks, what a long time for her, for anyone. 35 days.
I have 35 days of peace away from everything. These five weeks in rehab were meant for me to cocoon myself before I emerged and flew away like some big beautiful butterfly. My days in rehab were coming to an end, and as I felt my discharge day getting closer every morning, I saw the new date on the board. June 27th, June 28th, and finally June 29th, the night before my departure. All right, Miss Jessica.
Let’s review and sign off on your aftercare plan. We are confirming that you are in fact going back to your house where you live by yourself and you will be attending IOP, intensive outpatient, for nine weeks,” said Nancy. Nancy was a social worker in charge of our transitional plans. “‘Are you sure you don’t want to go into sober living?’ she asked. I shook my head. Hell no, I thought. There is absolutely no way that I was going to move into sober living.”
I was ready to be in my own space by myself and back with my puppy, Cruz. I’ll be honest, I had the fleeting thought that maybe going straight home wasn’t the best idea. Then I had another thought that if I wanted to drink, my location wasn’t going to stop me from doing so, so I might as well go home. These back and forth conversations in my head were draining me of any morale I had left.
After weeks of classes and group sessions, I could teach someone else the ins and outs of treatment. I could tell you exactly what triggers are and the science behind addiction and why we were all after dopamine, whether you drank cheap liquor or shot heroin. I could tell you all about 12-Step and other recovery programs that we were introduced to. I was the valedictorian of rehab, a perfect mirror. Anything that I was taught, I reflected back to everyone else well enough to make them think Jessica’s got it, when in fact, I did not.
My last night in our group meeting, we went around the room and everyone had something nice to say about their time knowing me and their confidence in my ability to do well. I smiled at everyone and gave big hugs and promises of staying friends and keeping in touch. Internally, I cringed as each kind word make my stomach sink further. I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself. I remember going to bed, bags packed, outfits selected to go home in.
In my head, I plan to go back to normal and just not drink. But deep down, there was that damn sinking feeling. I felt it every time I tried to convince myself that I was going back to normal. I tried to replay everyone’s kind words, but I couldn’t find ease or comfort in them. I pulled my hidden sleep meds from my bra and swallowed them quickly so I could fall asleep fast and escape the sense of impending doom I hated so much.
The morning came and my friend, who had been taking care of Cruz since the day I went into treatment, was waiting there to pick me up. I walked out into the sun and into her arms. It was so good to hug a friend from the outside world. We went straight to the grocery store where the smell of cilantro in the produce aisle made my mouth water. I remember filling my basket full of bright fruits and other healthy snacks. I was planning to keep up with the balanced eating habits I had picked up in treatment.
Though I was dead sober, I don’t remember the ride back to my house. It was a blur. My friend came into the house with me, did a quick safety check to make sure there weren’t any bottles remaining, embraced me and asked, Alright girl, you gonna be good? Uh, I thought, but I said, Yeah, it’ll be tough, but I’ll be good. As I shut the door behind her,
I turned around and looked into my house. It was an empty, painful sight to take in. So it’s just you and me, I thought. Just me in this house of broken dreams. I went to turn the TV on, but nothing happened. I forgot that I had fallen onto it while drunk at some point and broke some cables. I opened my laptop to get online, but
There was a picture of my dead boyfriend, handsome and joyful, so I slammed the computer shut. I sat at the table, but the seat felt too hard. I went to the couch, but the seat was covered in dog hair. I moved to another chair, but it felt empty. Then, like a small drop of water that will eventually overflow a bucket, the thought of having a drink made its way into my head.
From this one thought, the desire immediately rushed throughout my body. I was overcome by the fiendish sensation. I know I shouldn’t. I told myself. This thought was immediately followed by rationalizations. Well, I can order a bottle and I don’t have to drink it, I said to myself as I got on my phone to get on the alcohol delivery app. Yeah, I said to myself.
I can pour it down the drain after a few drinks,” I told myself when I closed out my cart and completed my purchase. I repeated these same thoughts over the next hour as I waited for the delivery. I reawakened my old routine of pretending everything was fine. I called my sister, Hey, just letting you know I’m finally home. Yeah, it’s definitely weird. Yeah, I promise I’ll call if anything.
Yeah, I’m so sleepy. I’m going to go to bed early. I also sent a few texts to other people to let them know that all was good and that I was going to quote unquote bed because I was quote unquote tired. Um, this was around 7 30 PM though. I was not going to bed.
The alcohol was in my hands and then my mouth. It burned in my throat. I gagged at first because I had forgotten what it was like and had chugged it straight from the bottle like I had been in a desert and hid in an oasis. I was finally out of this protective space that treatment was intended to be for me, this so-called fortress, this cocoon. I was in fact a beautiful butterfly. But my wings…
My wings were crumpled. I couldn’t fly. And so I crashed hard. As I lay there flat on my back on the floor, a song played on repeat that I fell in love with while I was gone. It’s called Nights in White Satin by the Moody Blues.
Never reaching the end, letters I’ve written, never meaning to send, beauty I’d always missed with these eyes before, just what the truth is I can’t say anymore. I took one last breath, closed my eyes, and everything faded to black as I went back under the water of my addiction.
And that is Drowning in Shallow Water, originally written for Love and Literature magazine back in 2021. Obviously I have now been sober since November 28th of 2020, so I have over two and a half years of recovery at the time of this recording. If you want help with writing your own story, join me on my free writing workshop on July 8th, and I have another one coming up in September. That is at bottomlesstosober.com.
You’re also more than welcome to join me in my full six-week writing program where I help you do what I just did. Thanks so much for listening. Feel free to send me a message if you listened on what resonated with you from that story. Thanks again so much. Have a great one.
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