Blog – Page 16 – Bottomless to Sober

I have a problem with #SoberOctober

Posted on October 8, 2022October 8, 2022 by Jessica Dueñas in Current Recovery Challenges, Guest Submissions

Audio if you prefer to listen.

I’m Ally, a London-based recovery and life coach. Is it uncharitable to say that I feel really conflicted about the popularity of thirty-day sober challenges like this one?

Is this the sober coach equivalent of kicking a puppy?

Who, after all, would come out against a charitable initiative designed to raise funds for McMillan Cancer Support?

Because jumping into a sober challenge might make you feel worse, not better, and I’m about to tell you why.

But perhaps first, to prove to you that I’m not a monster, let’s start with some of the undoubted positives of taking part.

Sober October is indeed a fantastic charity endeavour

The month-long challenge/fundraising campaign was started in 2014 by the UK-based charity, Macmillan Cancer Support, providing support to millions of people living with cancer. At the time of writing, this year’s Sober October has raised £468 949, and all you’ve got to do is forgo Friday Happy hour for a few weeks. For many, that seems like a small trade-off to help fight cancer.

What better way to support a cancer fundraiser than by reducing your own chances of developing it?

Alcohol is carcinogenic. Drinking it increases your risk of developing multiple types of cancer, including breast, bowel, mouth, and throat cancers. Any reduction in alcohol consumption would positively impact your chances of developing cancer.

As a recovery coach working in the field of addiction recovery, I have been trained to always move a client towards harm reduction. It isn’t only abstinence that is the measure of a successful client outcome. Any steps that an individual is prepared to take towards reducing their alcohol intake, including the use of challenges like Sober October, is classed as a win in my book.

#soberoctober is a trendy catch-all.

The hashtag is fun, punchy, and easy to understand…that’s what makes it powerful.

Trends are easy to jump onto. They create a buzz and an excitement around an issue. And being sober is not traditionally known as something fun or exciting! As a sober advocate, I’m thrilled to have more people flirting with sobriety and doing it in a way that feels fun, inclusive, and (for some) easy to do.

You’re getting sober by stealth

Another huge benefit of jumping on a sober challenge is that it could spark someone’s interest in sober living. Thirty days is certainly long enough for the fog of alcohol to lift from the system and to start to feel the benefits that often come with living hangover free.

30 days seems attainable and non-threatening. While not drinking forever stretches out ahead of us like an endlessly tall mountain, a month seems like a molehill in comparison. Forever is unattainable. A month is more manageable and reduces overwhelm.

And once you’ve done thirty days…well you might as well do another. And another and another…and before you know it you’ve tricked your brain into getting sober by stealth.

Not drinking for a month sounds easy…surely everyone can do that?

But the thing is, what if you can’t do that?

And here’s where I kick the #soberoctober puppy. Because what if you can’t stay stopped?

For many, abstaining from alcohol isn’t as easy-breezy as a catchy hashtag suggests. Perhaps you’re five days in, three days in, or one day in and you can’t do it. You’ve pushed the ‘F**k it! Button’ and have resumed your drinking behaviours. Perhaps you’re now feeling the guilt, shame and hopelessness rush in. Perhaps you feel like you’ve failed, further compounding the isolation and hopelessness that you already felt before you took part in the challenge.

This is where a hashtag can’t convey the kind of nuance and the large spectrum of individual needs associated with alcohol use disorder and the levels of difficulty involved in stopping drinking.

Anyone who engages with alcohol sits somewhere on a spectrum between use, misuse, abuse, and dependence. An individual who intermittently uses alcohol might find it relatively easy to forgo it for a month. At the other end of the spectrum, an individual who has become dependent on alcohol would experience a high level of difficulty in any attempt to quit. It would, in fact, be downright unwise for them to go ‘cold turkey’ without medical supervision.

You’re not in the club

Getting sober is hard, especially in the first few days, weeks, and months. It’s normal to feel emotionally raw, vulnerable, exhausted, and pretty s**t. But this reality often isn’t presented on social media’s highlight reel.

If you follow the #soberoctober hashtag, you might find your feed brimming with happy, shiny sober people telling you about how great they feel. And you don’t feel that way. It’s like you’re out in the cold with your face pressed up against the glass of a warm, cozy sober party that you’re not invited to.

Let’s normalise the reality that getting used to life without alcohol can be tough and emotionally confronting. Many of us were using alcohol to cope with life and these don’t go away when we stop drinking. There’s bound to be a lot of work to do on ourselves as we recalibrate to living life sober.

The process of healing from physical and emotional dependence on alcohol takes more than a month and a hashtag, so please don’t feel bad if you’re finding this hard. If alcohol has played a big part of your life for a long time, it’s normal to feel emotionally raw and exhausted when you remove it. You are not alone. And if following the #soberoctober hashtag makes you feel that way, then don’t follow it.

Cutting out alcohol isn’t the same as doing a juice cleanse

Alcohol is an addictive, compulsive substance, and the fact that its use has become so normalised in our world doesn’t change that. I feel like this ‘challenge’ mentality lumps sobriety in with the world of wellness fads and detox diets. There’s a whole diet industry built on quick fixes and instant results that don’t consider long-term impact.

To me, challenges feel very surface-level and encourage cyclical restrict-then-rebound patterns that keep many people stuck. If we are not going deeper and questioning our habits and behaviours, then we can’t expect meaningful change or a sustainable recovery.

If you’re a gray-area drinker, a sober challenge could perpetuate the problem.

A gray area drinker is characterised as someone whose relationship to alcohol is problematic but who does not have severe alcohol use disorder. Individuals in this gray area may find themselves using alcohol in excess or in emotional ways but are still able to function in their lives. They may be able to go for long periods without drinking, but when they do engage with alcohol, their relationship with it is disordered.

For this type of individual, the ability to stop for periods like Sober October may further cement self-justification of damaging drinking behaviour. ‘I can stay off booze for a month therefore I don’t have problem.’ The abstinence challenge ends up perpetuating problem drinking because it is used it to prove to yourself and others that your drinking isn’t that bad.

My other issue with ‘challenge mentality’ is that I think I’m a bit of a rebel

I tend to have an aversion to ‘group think’ or jumping on bandwagons, and it’s not something I want to encourage.

As a coach, I often see clients who have lost trust and confidence in themselves and their own abilities. They look outwards for answers to their problems and are sometimes vulnerable to falling for quick-fix schemes or learn to look for solutions from experts rather than themselves.

It’s my job to encourage clients to develop their own inner resources rather than look to me or anyone else for answers. Empowering clients to trust their own intuition and make their own best decisions is an important part of my coaching process.

If you were working with me and wanted to take part in a challenge, my advice would always to be to approach these things with a critical eye before jumping in and ask yourself: why? As a participant in #soberoctober, what’s your motivation? What are you hoping to gain? Do you enjoy being part of groups and challenges as a whole, or do you find it overwhelming? Will participating in a challenge serve you and move you toward your goals? Are you doing it because you see everyone else is doing it and you feel like you should?

For me, the concept of challenges often has that whiff of something gimmicky or sales-y, and it makes me wrinkle up my nose and walk the other way.

So what’s the answer here?

Do I really think we shouldn’t be using sober challenges as a tool to support sobriety? Am I really a miserable curmudgeon who doesn’t want to raise money for charity?

In typical coaching fashion, I’m going to end this by saying that I don’t have the answers, only questions I would want to ask you if we were having this conversation face-to-face. I’m hoping that this post sparks a conversation with you about the positives and potential pitfalls of taking part in sober challenges like Sober October and draws attention to some of the downsides that aren’t really talked about.

If you are someone who struggles with sober challenges, then my sincere desire for you is that you explore other avenues of support. There are multiple paths available to you to help you get sober and stay sober. I offer one on one recovery coaching, where I will walk with you on the path toward a sustainable recovery.

If you’ve got any experiences to share about sober challenges and their impact on you, then let’s talk! I’d love to hear from you.

I can be reached at email ally@allymortoncoaching.com

Website www.allymortoncoaching.com

Instagram @allymortoncoaching

“Sober October” Looking Rough? You Might Need More Than a Hashtag

Posted on October 2, 2022October 2, 2022 by Jessica Duenas in Current Recovery Challenges, Written by Jessica

Video with audio if you prefer to listen.

This is for you if you are anything how I used to be.

Maybe you said you would stop drinking after September 30th for “Sober October,” except that it’s only October 2nd, and you are already drinking.

Maybe you woke up yesterday morning and eagerly wrote a note in an app or on your calendar marking October 1st as your “day one” because you got tired of saying, “one day I’ll stop drinking,” except that now you’re at day zero.

Maybe you’re looking at all the fun posts with the hashtag #SoberOctober, wishing you could post something just as festive and equally as inspiring. Still, you feel like you can’t because you’re the farthest thing from sober on this October day, and the most spooky thing you’re doing right now is feeling anxiety sink your stomach because you said you were going to stop drinking and haven’t. You lied to yourself, saying, “It’s just a month, right? Anyone can do that,” and now, you’re drunk on the internet.

I know because that was me.

I can’t tell you how often I would look at myself in the mirror, promising that I would stop, only to drink hours later. Alcohol was more than something I liked to do. By the end of my drinking career, it was something that I needed to do. It was the only way to avoid becoming violently ill with withdrawal symptoms such as shakes, seizures, vomiting, and so on.

Suppose you have genuinely tried your best to stop drinking these past few days, and you have this unbelievable compulsion to do so, to the point that you regret it and hate yourself just a little bit more with every gulp. You complicate your life, day in and out, just to drink even after you firmly promised yourself or others that you wouldn’t. You might have more than a problematic relationship with alcohol. If you are like me, you are fully addicted, and something as simple as putting the bottle down because everyone else is doing it on social media is not enough and, frankly, probably not safe for you to do on your own.

Everyone’s journey is different, and what worked for me may not work for you, but when I could not physically pull myself away from the bottle, going to treatment helped. It did not resolve all my problems, as my own story includes many relapses, though now I have been continuously sober since November 2020. However, treatment gave me a space to stop safely, which was impossible for me to do on my own in the privacy of my home. Medications that doctors administered allowed me to safely go through what can be a deadly withdrawal process.

If you’re where I was, and you’re already struggling with “Sober October,” seek medical advice. If you do not have a physician who can assist you, SAMHSA, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, has a treatment referral line open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Call them at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

I recently read the poet Rumi’s words, “The wound is the place where the light enters you.” If your “Sober October” is turning out to be incredibly painful, then this is the opportunity for the breakthrough you need to make space for the life you deserve.

(Not) Drinking at the Airport Bar

Posted on August 25, 2022September 8, 2022 by Jessica Duenas in Current Recovery Challenges, Written by Jessica

Audio for people who prefer to listen.

“Can I have the uh, turkey bacon, egg whites…I mean that sandwich right there?” I slowly pointed at the sandwich I was eyeing. I couldn’t even clearly state what I wanted to eat at the Starbucks inside the airport. The woman behind the counter looked at me, smiled and nodded as she probably does to all the tired folks waiting on their flights, and grabbed my breakfast item. I shook my head and smiled. “Sorry, I guess I’m not fully awake yet this morning,” I said to her.

I have been up since 2:45 AM and went to sleep shortly after midnight. Not because I was drunk, but because I packed at the last minute and then stayed on the phone for hours. So yes, I am exhausted. But this type of tired is the good kind.

Airport selfie. TPA. 8.25.22. Sober on 2 hours of sleep.

Before quitting drinking, mornings on the day of travel often looked drastically different from how my morning today looks.

How many mornings have I stumbled into an airport still smelling like the liquor I was guzzling the night before, barely packed and praying I didn’t forget anything important? How many times have I anxiously gone through airport security, my hands shaking with early signs of withdrawal as I held my ID and boarding pass, searching the terminal for its airport bars? I wanted to see how many places there were to drink. I moved around and went to each one separately in an attempt to not make it blatantly obvious that I was trying to drink at least four before my flight that was departing in two hours. How often did I go to these bars as early as 7 AM, rapidly scanning the other patrons’ glasses to ensure that I was not the only one consuming alcohol first thing in the morning? To feel a sense of belonging? To feel a little less shameful?

I’ll be twenty-one months sober on the 28th of August, and I’m grateful that the fatigue I am experiencing at the airport is simply from lack of sleep and nothing else. I won’t arrive at my final destination, relieved and shocked that I successfully flew internationally during a black out. I won’t be throwing up on my flight. I won’t be spending over a hundred dollars on expensive drinks that will barely keep me satiated until I reach my destination. I won’t be holding the little plastic airline cup with two hands to avoid shaking and spilling the little airplane bottle of vodka I bought.

Before getting sober, no matter how far I would travel, I had no vacation from my drinking. I was trapped. This morning I’m tired, but more importantly, I’m grateful to be free from alcohol’s hold on me today.

Fighting Sober Imposter Syndrome

Posted on August 18, 2022September 8, 2022 by Jessica Duenas in Current Recovery Challenges, Written by Jessica

Audio for Those Who Prefer to Listen

“I don’t get how I actually got hired.” “I don’t know that I’m ready to get my kids back. It’ll just be a matter of time before I mess up.” “This relationship is drama free, and I don’t know how long that will last.” Thoughts like these disrupt many people’s sense of security when they experience imposter syndrome. The term, which has grown in popularity, basically means that when one experiences imposter syndrome, that individual doubts their worth, and they feel like a phony. Though they might be seeing positive outcomes for what they do, this person doesn’t truly accept that they are deserving of such results.

In sobriety, imposter syndrome goes to another level, which I call sober imposter syndrome. Sober imposter syndrome is when a person in recovery doubts their worth in receiving the gifts of their new alcohol and drug-free life. For some, it can be as big as questioning why a company hired them for a job they know they qualify for and can show up for. For others, it might be finding themselves in a healthy relationship and constantly expecting something to go wrong. In other cases, it might be someone who successfully removed themselves from an unsafe living situation and then questioning if they did the right thing.

Here’s the thing, we do deserve all the good things that happen to us in sobriety, from the greatest of favorable outcomes to the smallest ones, like waking up without a hangover or feeling sick. These things result from consistently making good choices after deciding to live one’s life for the better.

Sober imposter syndrome, however, is a force to be reckoned with, and these are three thoughts for fighting it off.

1. Your Addiction Doesn’t Negate Your Spirit

You have to believe that your addiction doesn’t define your spirit. Many have internalized that we are morally bankrupt because of our previous habits. According to the popular narrative, we must be “bad” people if we depend on any substance. However, the face of addiction that society paints is false. You don’t have to be a dangerous threat to be an addict or identify as an alcoholic. I was a successful educator who did a great job every day when I walked into my classroom. I was nurturing, caring, and encouraging, so much so that I was recognized as a state teacher of the year in Kentucky in 2019. I was all those great things and STILL drank a fifth of alcohol a day. You might be the mother who gets everything done in the home, and your kids feel loved and safe, and as soon as they fall asleep, you attach yourself to the bottle and drown yourself every night. These two things, being a person who contributes positively to this world and living with substance use disorder, are not mutually exclusive.

Does being in recovery negate our poor decisions while in active addiction? No. For many of us, we are still living with the consequences of our actions in the past. These might be ongoing court battles, debt, health problems, etc. That is the natural ebb and flow of life. All actions have consequences. Those past decisions we have already been dealt the consequences for don’t define our worth. We must accept the results of our previous choices, AND we also need to separate ourselves from those decisions. The only way forward is to cut that rope we have created in our minds that ties our sense of worth to our past.

2. What Is Possible For Others Is Possible For You

If other people have received blessings after changing their lives for the better, now that you’re in recovery, what makes you so different that you can’t accomplish the goals you have set for yourself?

Step outside of yourself for a moment and visualize the entire Earth’s population, which is 8 billion people. What do you think is so uniquely terrible about YOU that the other 7,999,999,999 people on this planet deserve more than you do? That type of thinking doesn’t make sense.

When anyone gains something in this world as a result of working towards an achievement, their gain is hard evidence for you to see that you too can get to where you want to be. If someone else’s past consists of hurtful or harmful decisions, but now they are living in alignment with higher living and attracting good things, it’s because they worked for those things and are deserving. Their past isn’t stopping their progress. Your past shouldn’t stop your progress, either.

Think about it this way, so many people with addictions do not survive their battles. They never live to be sober. So if you are reading this, you are ahead first because you’re alive. And if you are sober and alive, you’re winning because attaining your goals is actually possible.

Do you think that your being alive and sober is by accident? Your sobriety is NOT a mistake.

3. The Only Thing Stopping You From Your Desires, Is You

If you have decided to stay sober today, you already chose to level up. There is much power that lies in words. What you say carries a force. If you tell yourself you don’t deserve that new job, that you don’t deserve this new healthy relationship, that you don’t deserve your quiet and safe new apartment, then you know what, you eventually won’t.

Negative self-talk becomes a reality. We must shift to positive, higher-level language when good things happen because we’re sober. First, practice gratitude for anything positive so that you can attract more things to be grateful for. I’m not saying you have to do a whole song and dance routine to express gratitude, though you are welcome to it if you like, but acknowledging that something is there and that it is good goes a long way.

Second, accept that you have earned that blessing and deserve all of it. Remind yourself that it did not come out of nowhere because you worked for it. Look in the mirror and tell yourself that, write it in your journal, or say it to yourself while you’re in the shower. Do this for the big things, but even for the little ones. Suppose you decided not to drink or use drugs today. In that case, any detail about your day is worth being grateful for, like drinking your coffee in the morning without your hands shaking or waking up without feeling sick. Those are all natural consequences of not giving into your addiction that are well earned.

Your sobriety is not a mistake. Take advantage of the gifts of recovery and enjoy them because not everyone gets the same opportunity we have today.

Jessica Dueñas is the founder and certified life coach at Bottomless to Sober. For more information about life coaching services, click here.

Teachers, back to school is here. If your drinking got worse over the summer and you feel it’s too late to get help, it’s not.

Posted on July 27, 2022July 27, 2022 by Jessica Duenas in Current Recovery Challenges, Recovery Stories, Uncategorized, Written by Jessica

Audio for those who prefer to listen.

If you’re a teacher, you are working in a climate that has gotten exponentially more challenging with time. Summer was likely a great relief for many, but the lack of structure can lead to more unhealthy behaviors. If you already had a questionable relationship with alcohol, you might have been using your time off drinking even more than you did before. Now that it is time for many of you to start getting ready to return to your school buildings, you may be worrying if your drinking is a problem. Is your alcohol consumption at the point where you may need help but are scared that it’s too late to do anything about it because you can’t miss work?

It is not too late.

“But, I’m a professional. I do well at work and take care of all my responsibilities (finances, kids, family, pets, etc.).” None of that is relevant. When it comes to alcohol abuse, what you accomplish despite your drinking does not negate the fact that your relationship with alcohol is a problem.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) uses guidelines to determine if a person falls on the spectrum of alcohol use disorder. It is essential to highlight the word spectrum because one person’s problems with alcohol may look drastically different from another. Identifying alcohol abuse is not about comparing your drinking to someone else’s and being tempted to say, “Well, I am not as bad as her, so I must not have a problem.” This analysis is about your health and your life. This reflection needs to be about you solely. Examine what your thought process is and what your behavior is when it comes to drinking. Is it an issue?

Here are some questions the NIH provides to ask regarding drinking.

In the past year, have you:

Had times when you ended up drinking more, or longer, than you intended? More than once wanted to cut down or stop drinking, or tried to, but couldn’t?
Spent a lot of time drinking? Or being sick or getting over other aftereffects?
Wanted a drink so badly you couldn’t think of anything else?
Found that drinking—or being sick from drinking—often interfered with taking care of your home or family? Or caused job troubles? Or school problems?
Continued to drink even though it was causing trouble with your family or friends?
Given up or cut back on activities that were important or interesting to you, or gave you pleasure, in order to drink?
More than once gotten into situations while or after drinking that increased your chances of getting hurt (such as driving, swimming, using machinery, walking in a dangerous area, or having unprotected sex)?
Continued to drink even though it was making you feel depressed or anxious or adding to another health problem? Or after having had a memory blackout?
Had to drink much more than you once did to get the effect you want? Or found that your usual number of drinks had much less effect than before?
Found that when the effects of alcohol were wearing off, you had withdrawal symptoms, such as trouble sleeping, shakiness, restlessness, nausea, sweating, a racing heart, or a seizure? Or sensed things that were not there?

If, after reading this list, you are uncomfortable with the fact that you may have a problem with alcohol, I first want to say that you’re not alone. I taught successfully for thirteen years and won numerous awards, and at the end of my drinking career, I drank a fifth of bourbon a night and excelled the next day at work. I’ve been sober since November 28, 2020, so I promise you that it gets better and that knowing you have an issue can only serve your higher good.

Maybe you have tried to stop drinking only to find that, for different reasons, you really could not control it on your own. You’ve heard of people going to treatment facilities, but now that school is around the corner, you feel like your opportunity to get assistance is gone. You think that you might have to wait for another break in the school year to come.

“Who is going to cover my classes?” “I don’t want to/don’t have the mental capacity to write these sub plans.” “I worry about my classroom.” “Will this go on file against me?” “I’ve never been to rehab. I’m scared to go.” “I don’t want to leave my kids at home.” “What if I lose my job?” “What if no one watches my children/pets at home?”

I, too, have said most of the above, but it is important to note that eventually if you don’t stop drinking, many of the fears listed will materialize anyway. You will decrease the likelihood of experiencing significant losses and consequences by going to treatment for a week or several weeks.

There are many resources and avenues for getting help outside of a treatment facility, and you can find those here. However, for those considering going into a facility, please be aware that if you have worked in the same district for over a year, you may be eligible to take advantage of the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) program with the U.S. Department of Labor. This program also applies to employees at agencies at the local, state, and federal levels. The specific line of the act that would apply to entering a treatment facility is “a serious health condition that makes the employee unable to perform the essential functions of his or her job.” Mental health IS health, so a problem with addiction IS a serious health issue. In my personal experience, I used FMLA as a public school teacher when I needed treatment.

So what is FMLA? It is a federal program that, upon approval, allows individuals to take up to twelve weeks (or twenty-six, it depends on the circumstances) off of work to take care of different medical needs. This time off is usually NOT paid time off (not ideal, I know). However, the employee keeps all their benefits, and their job is guaranteed for them when they return. You are also protected by confidentiality, so your employer cannot disclose the nature of your absence to others.

When I used it, my employer was only allowed to say that I was “on leave,” my accounts, such as my school email (your district may do something different), were put on pause until I returned. Also, when I say employer, I mean your human resources department. If you disclose your situation to your school principal, that is your choice, but the HR department cannot tell your principal why you are on leave. In my case, I did not write any lesson plans, either.

I share this information about FMLA because I was unaware I could use it when struggling with alcohol. I learned about it when I ended up in a hospital and the doctor on call recommended that I enter into treatment. My first reaction was, “No. I can’t. I’m a teacher.” He proceeded to explain FMLA to me, and when my family contacted my district’s human resources department, the HR staff confirmed that with the proper documentation, I was eligible for it.

Many teachers have lost their jobs due to drinking, and if they haven’t lost their jobs, they have suffered other consequences, too. When I taught, I built my schedule around alcohol so that I could teach, lesson plan, grade, drink, pass out and get up only to repeat the same cycle every day for years. Alcohol dictated everything for me, and it made me physically very sick, yet I still successfully put up appearances of doing well. I was quietly letting it kill me. You don’t have to spend another school year suffering if you are still teaching. I let my problem spiral to the point where I had to leave, but you don’t have to.

The content in this blog piece is not a replacement for advice from an individual’s human resources department, nor is it legal advice in any form.

Drowning in Shallow Water

Posted on July 16, 2022July 16, 2022 by Jessica Duenas in Current Recovery Challenges, Recovery Stories, Written by Jessica

Chapter 4: This House of Broken Promises

Audio

“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, Kathryn, stopped to ask us that question.

Jessica today. Despite the ending of the story, today, Jessica has been sober since November 28th, 2020.

Shit. I didn’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 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. Kathryn 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 twenty-something slumped over in the bathroom stall? He had snuck pain pills in and nodded 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 twenty 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 think about anything but that feeling. 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.” I remember her holding back tears as she apologized.

I wish I could go back to that moment and hold Melissa, then shake her and yell at her, “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 are not a bad mom. You are not a bad person. Be proud that you’re still here and willing to continue. Be proud that you accepted another chance. Be proud that you’re getting help!”

Really, these were all things I wish people would have said to me each time I relapsed last year. 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. Big smiles, glowing skin, big messy curls that looked like they just got tousled while they had a blast playing. I hope they’re all together. I left before she did and lost touch quickly after. Did she become that “different” person that Kathryn said she had to be? Was she able to ward off the dragons laying wait outside of rehab after the five weeks were up? What a long time for her … for anyone.

Thirty-five days.

I had thirty-five 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 beautiful butterfly. My days in rehab were coming to an end as I felt my discharge day getting closer every morning. I saw the new date on the board. June 27 … June 28 … and finally June 29, the night before my departure.

“Alright Ms. 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 program) for nine weeks,” said Nancy. Nancy was the 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 was 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 twelve-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 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 made my stomach sink further.

I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself.

I remember going to bed, bags packed, outfit selected to go home in. In my head, I planned 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 fast asleep 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 the balanced eating habits I picked up in treatment.

Though I was dead sober, I don’t remember the ride back to my house. It was a blur. She 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?” Uhhhhh, 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 and 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.

The house I lived in in Louisville. Picture is from a realtor site.

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 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 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 let people know that all was “good” and I was going to “bed” because I was “tired.”

This was around 7:30 PM. I was not going to bed.

It 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 hit 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 were crumpled. I couldn’t fly, 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, 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.

Originally written by Jessica for Love and Literature magazine.

To read the previous chapter, chapter 3 click here.

The Danger of the Golden Rule

Posted on June 26, 2022July 10, 2022 by Jessica Duenas in Current Recovery Challenges, Guest Submissions, Recovery Stories

Guest Submission by Cathy Allen, veteran educator.

Audio

In my life, I have believed treat others as you would have them treat you. I spent my life loving others and treating others who I longed for to be there for me, to love me. Somewhere around 2007 2008, my coach said to ‘me, “They are not you.” I stepped back and realized I wanted my students to be those eager to please students that I was in school. I can now see that I was a little girl trying to earn my love. If I worked hard enough, did well enough, I would finally be loved the way I dreamed.

Photo by Recep Tayyip EROĞLU on Unsplash

In the past almost 2 years, I have never had someone love me the way I loved because no one I loved was trying to earn my love. They just loved me or they didn’t. It was not about tote boards and or keeping count. Not about reciprocation. I could never earn the love that I was given because love is a choice, not a reward. Read that again, love is not a reward.

You mean, the people in my life love because they want to and not because I support them to a fault, that I gave my body up to have their children, that I am such a great teacher and make math so easy. I can see the narcissism as I right. I can see how egocentric love is in this atmosphere and how abandoned I felt when others did not show up for me. I can see how this adult woman kept giving till she almost died trying to be the woman that would finally be loved or treasured by her children or by her students or by the men in her life.

Ouch- this is such a painful truth to realize. And exhausting! I drank to keep up with the demands of earning love. I drank to manage the anxiety and overwhelm. I drank to deal with the stress of 18 hours days filled with teaching, mothering and girl friending. I didn’t eat to maintain my physical beauty because if I didn’t watch my weight, then I would get fat. And if I got fat, I would not be loved. You mean I had to be a size 10 while I was saving the children of the future and rear my children to be more loved than I was ever loved as a child?

The inescapable truth is that I was always disappointed. My students were pre teen and teenage jerks trying to live their clumsy life and respecting me was not their priority. Doing math – not their priority. I made that about me as their teacher not acknowledging they are in charge of their own choices and they are going to do what they will without thinking about what I want even once. My children were clumsily trying to figure out their own lives and loving me was not their top priority. Read that again, my children’s number one priority is not loving me. It is loving themselves.

That one truth right there – their number one priority is loving themselves. No one ever taught me to do that. Or that loving myself was even a thing. The truth is – if I don’t love myself, I will always be looking to someone else to love me and it was never going to be enough.

My favorite part about my daughter is that she unapologetically will not do anything for others because she is supposed to. She decides each day what her priority is and who she chooses to love. She says no when she can’t show up and be herself and she often leaves places that are not ready to celebrate all of her, even it is my family of origin. She follows through on her commitments, but if you are not someone for whom she greatly loves, it probably won’t happen. And I absolutely love that about her. Yes, it stung as I was healing and there were many times I felt alone. But, I needed to heal myself in the last two years. I was going to heal my heart, not anyone else in my life. That was painful and incredibly lonely. The lonely parts were filled with tears, but I am no longer looking to others to meet my needs. I ask for help when I need it, but I climb into bed knowing I was there to take care of myself today and I will do it for myself tomorrow. I have climbed into bed so many nights wanting someone there to hold me. That is me now. I now treat myself the way I wanted others to. Turns out it was me all along. Sure as hell was never alcohol.

Originally written for Cathy’s blog: The Teacher Mom Alcohol Lie.

About the author:

I am a veteran teacher of 23 years and mother of two kids. One is grown and 24 years old, and the other is 14 years old. I got sober on August 11, 2020, after experiencing some scary blackout drunk moments during the pandemic. My anxiety at that point was through the roof, and increased anxiety medication was not helping. Out of desperation, I cut out alcohol. I did this seven days before school started and in August 2020. My first 100 days of sobriety were still filled with anxiety and insomnia. At that point, my body depended on alcohol to do either. It took till about Day 100 for that to begin to resolve. During, that time I got an addiction coach, I started therapy, and I joined the online sobriety community called The Luckiest Club started by Laura McKowen, author of We Are the Luckiest. I began my journey into acknowledging and healing the impact of my childhood trauma and my problematic drinking throughout adulthood. I began understanding the impact of generational trauma and began working to break the cycle. I started an online Facebook group supporting sober teachers because of the prevalence of alcohol offered as the only coping strategy to teachers. I started writing my recovery blog, The Teacher Mom Alcohol Lie in September 2020, and it became a vital tool in my recovery, processing all of my learning and healing. Through this work, I came to understand alcohol use disorder is a trauma response. I came to understand alcohol is an addictive substance and that using alcohol to cope is not a defect. It is a public health crisis in the United States and in the world. Many of the people I support in sobriety have a mother wound, and I’m still healing from mine. I am passionate about helping people shed the stigma of addiction and begin to understand their story of triumph in no longer using alcohol to manage their trauma and anxiety. As trauma and substance use disorder survivors, we are truly the bravest and strongest people I will ever know. I hope to become certified as a peer support person and shift to supporting people in recovery.

Drowning in Shallow Water

Posted on June 26, 2022December 24, 2022 by Jessica Duenas in Uncategorized

Chapter 3: The Truth They Wanted

Audio

Jessica Vivian Dueñas, 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, Grettel, Victor, and Sofia, and her friends, colleagues, students, and her dog, Cruz …

We have a lot of assignments in treatment designed to teach us to not 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 and in fact painful. The thinking of those “left behind” knotted my stomach as I visualized each crying face. I could 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. Dueñas died yesterday.”

Suddenly, his almost-shut-from-laughing squinted eyes soften, his cheeks that stood high from smiling drop 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.

“Whatchu mean, Momma?”

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. Phew.

Photo from WDRB news, Louisville. With a student

I was in the fireplace room. 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 who knew how 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 thirties 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 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. 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?!” Oh no, no, no no no! My secret! I panicked. Then that same night at our evening meeting when we did our prayer circle to wrap up, Shanika grabbed my friend’s ass in the middle of the prayer with no hesitation. She just latched on. 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 interrupt your connection with God here, but Shanika’s grabbing my ass?” 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 “ants.” The scuffle caused security to run to the room and quickly snatch her up. Shanika was gone for a few days to complete her detox in 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 so you can’t hang yourself. It’s the type of place where techs have to lay eyes on you once every ten 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, settled, 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 either. 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 ten 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 to drink, I’m not going to say, ‘Hmm, where is 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 were 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 those last few items. I didn’t want to keep them there and 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 go home list. Poor behavior keeps you around longer.

Removing my makeup to reveal a hidden black eye. I was always good at masking myself.

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 salt-less 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.

Originally written by Jessica for Love & Literature Magazine.

Read the previous chapter, chapter 2 here.

Read the next chapter, chapter 4 here.

How Narcan Saved My Life

Posted on June 14, 2022June 14, 2022 by Jessica Dueñas in Guest Submissions, Recovery Stories

Guest Submission by Bethany Baumann

Listen here.

Learn about Narcan here.

My name is Bethany. I am a heroin addict. I have been clean for almost four years now. I can’t say that I will ever not be an addict because when it comes to opiates, I cannot stop. Before I found opiates, I was an angsty teen who loved trouble. As a kid, I moved around, so I never went to a school for two years in a row. My mom and dad were poor and had no idea what they were doing. My stepdad adopted me because my biological father was an alcoholic and addicted to cocaine. My birth father was abusive, and my mom did everything she could to get me away from him. So I had this new family and moved to Oregon. It was good for a little while. Mom and dad were always fighting, so my home was like a war zone. So many of these things shaped me into the woman I am today.

@trademom0606
You can recover. Here’s how I know you can #abuseawaerness #recoveroutloud #fouryears #youcantoo
♬ original sound – trademom0606

Bethany shares about her four year anniversary on TikTok.

I started using drugs when I was 14. I had been smoking weed and drinking with my friends, went to juvenile hall twice before the age of 16, and started running away from home. I never fit in, and I was always different. I had always had a fascination with drugs since I was a kid. I didn’t like how I felt and wanted to change it. I didn’t do much before I found heroin. I never did pills. I did ecstasy a couple of times. Mushrooms were horrific for me, and I dropped acid once. Then one night, I was in Portland, Oregon. I was hanging out with men in their thirties, and I was seventeen. They asked if I wanted to get high; I thought they meant weed. I followed them, and suddenly they had needles and cookers out. They were putting belts on their arms, and I asked, “what are you doing?” They said, “heroin.” I shook and said, “I had never done it before.” They said they would show me. So, I let some guy inject me with heroin with a dirty needle at seventeen. I didn’t even know that you could do heroin any other way. They teach you in drug prevention classes in school that you use needles to do heroin. I remember I kept asking him if it was going to kill me over and over. He finally looked at me and said in a very gnarly voice, “Do you want to do it, or do you want to be a pussy?” So I let him do it.

I had never felt a feeling like it in my life. It’s what I had been searching for all these years. It was my one true love. From that moment forward, all I ever wanted to do was heroin. For the next nine years, I went to treatment fourteen times. I knew how to be sober, and I also knew how to stay clean; I just chose not to. I went to my first AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) meeting at seventeen. My biological dad took me. He told me it would save my life someday, and he was right. It eventually did.

I’ll save time by saying I moved around a lot. The faces were different, and the places were different. But the situation was always the same, I was the same, and the drugs were the same. The turning point was a whole year later. I found out I was pregnant in July or August of 2017. I was living in a recovery house, and I was working. I was honestly doing the damn thing and was getting my life together. Still, I made the dumb decision to hang out with that guy at the meetings people warned me about, and I ended up pregnant.

At first, I took Plan B and prayed, but I saw God had other plans when the test was positive. My soon-to-be daughter was my miracle. I had lost a previous pregnancy to my drug use, and I used again while pregnant this time. I was scared, and I wished I wouldn’t have the baby. I never wanted kids, to be honest. I called my mom, told her the situation, and she told me to live with her in Kentucky. I was in Oregon, struggling to get off heroin, ten weeks pregnant, and homeless with no one to help me. So I came back to Kentucky and got clean. I stayed clean the rest of my pregnancy and gave birth to a beautiful, HEALTHY, perfect little girl. Despite my turnaround, I decided to get high again when I was nine weeks postpartum.

Narcan. *Naloxone* is a medicine that rapidly reverses an opioid overdose. Photo by NEXT Distro on Unsplash

I used a $20 bag of what I thought was heroin. It turned out to be fentanyl. I overdosed in my car with my then-boyfriend, and my 9-week-old daughter was in the back seat. The first people to get to me used Narcan, which saved my life. Eventually, I came to with an air mask on my face and the cops holding my baby. Terror doesn’t begin to explain how I felt. I remember the cops asking me questions and believing that for sure I was going to jail. They kept telling me they weren’t arresting me; instead, I would get a fine and a court date. I asked the EMT who helped get ready to go in the back of the ambulance, “Could I kiss my baby goodbye?” He said, “If she mattered to you, you wouldn’t have done this.” My heart shattered, partially because he was right.

From the hospital, I went straight to The Healing Place, a long-term recovery facility in Louisville. While there, I found out some guy recorded my entire overdose, and it was a Facebook live post. It went viral. My whole family in Oregon saw it. The local news did a story on me, and I was disgusted with myself. I used that as motivation to stay in treatment and made it through the entire program. After all was said and done, I went to court and wasn’t a felon—no jail time. I gave custody of my daughter to my aunt while I worked on myself. I completed the program at The Healing Place in nine months, got a job, and moved into a halfway house. I met my husband and continued to work my ass off. I got an apartment and a newer car. At two years sober, I got custody of my daughter back. It was a long road, but it was so worth it though.

The reason why Narcan is so important because I am someone to someone. My mother would have buried her daughter. My dad would have buried his daughter. Most importantly, my daughter would have never known the wonderful person I am. She only would have known that I was a heroin addict and died a heroin addict. Today she knows me as a human being who is deserving of life an love just like anyone else. Had I died that day, the world would have lost a beautiful and talented soul.

My overdose was on June 13th, 2018, and my first day of sobriety was on June 14th, 2018. I have four years of sobriety.

My children have never seen me high or drunk. My kids have a good and loving mother. I have a job that values me. Now I’m back in college, chasing a degree in social work. I help others as much as possible and have a beautiful life today. I thank all those people who were there the day I almost died. I even thank that man who took that video because I couldn’t be at the top without hitting my rock bottom. If you think you can’t do it, you can. If you think you can figure out a different way to stop doing drugs or drinking, keep trying. I did, and eventually, I ended up in meetings with like-minded people, and it saved my life—one day at a time.

I’m so grateful I didn’t die an alcoholic death as my biological grandpa and dad did. That I didn’t die alone, it doesn’t have to be your story or mine. Narcan saved my life. Narcan saved my daughter’s mommy. Narcan saved my mom and dad’s daughter. Narcan saved my husband’s wife. Narcan saved my friend’s friend. Carry it. Use it. Who cares if they’ve been Narcanned a million times. One of those times could be the last, and they could stay sober. A life is always worth fighting for, no matter how horrifying it looks. My daughter’s guardian al litem, an attorney assigned to children, told me I was a monster. She hoped I never got custody of my daughter. Today I have had my daughter back for two years, and I have a baby, and neither of them knows me as a monster and never will.

Drowning In Shallow Water

Posted on June 12, 2022June 26, 2022 by Jessica Dueñas in Recovery Stories, Written by Jessica

Chapter 2: Surrounded and Alone

Listen Here

“Well, the funny thing is I didn’t tell him that I have the Holy Trinity.” Natalie cackled while talking to some of the twenty-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. Natalie’s voice carried over to my ears and I could feel them perk up. Holy Trinity? I wondered. 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, B, and 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 “young 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 that he tested “positive.” Originally I thought it would be for hepatitis given 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, so as I leaned on the door with my arms full of toiletries, I heard heavy breathing 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 twenty-something.

Do I interrupt? 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 ten 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 twenty-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. 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 PM, I began to dread my nightly trip to the 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 nod 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 early 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 the others how to “cheek” my meds. So that night I went into the nurse’s station, took the little paper cup with my medications, emptied it into my mouth and said “ahhh” 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 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 a 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 patiently for me.

Every week I got thirty 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’d say. The 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, that ran chills down my spine.

“Mami doesn’t know where I am, 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 free fall 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 her 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.

Originally written by Jessica for Love & Literature Magazine.

Read the previous chapter, chapter 1 here.

Read the next chapter, chapter 3 here.