Blog – Page 17 – Bottomless to Sober

Drowning in Shallow Water

Posted on June 5, 2022June 26, 2022 by Jessica Duenas in Recovery Stories, Written by Jessica

Chapter 1: Racing to the Bottom

Audio

“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 25, 2020, and I had just gained consciousness after wrecking my car on Bardstown Rd 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.

Stock image of a flipped car. Mine was flipped in the same manner.

“Wait, my dog….” I started to mumble when I looked out, and there he was, tail 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 is 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. Still, 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…” 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 “oomph” in me to work as hard as people do to 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? Welp, 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 28, 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 want to be hurting her like this. So I picked up the phone and called a 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 ’til then?” I sighed.

“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.

Intake picture from treatment. May 2020.

I came-to on a couch in an unfamiliar space. I looked around. There were people watching TV, others were playing 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 thread stuck out of my elbow like a porcupine’s needles. I got up only to feel the room start spinning, 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 the 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.

Medical Bracelet while in treatment in Louisville, KY where I was hospitalized May-June of 2020.

As she walked me around the facility to give me a sense of where I was, she ran down basic things like the schedule, 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, 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 sober time under her belt and proving me wrong.

“Oh, trust me, it was the worst experience of my life to date, and my heart is still broken. Eventually, 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 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:

Page from my journal where I pasted the printout. June 2020.

People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate 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 soul mate 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 soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.

A soul mate’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…

― Elizabeth Gilbert, 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.

Originally written by Jessica for Love & Literature Magazine.

Read chapter 2 here.

Coming Out to Myself Through Sobriety

Posted on May 22, 2022May 22, 2022 by Jessica Duenas in Guest Submissions, Recovery Stories

Audio Provided by the Author

Guest Submission by Adrian Silbernagel

Transgender. Recovering alcoholic. Both labels carry stigmas. Coming out as each would change the way people viewed me. Both developments were positive, even cause to celebrate, in their own ways. There were also key differences, like the fact that I understand alcoholism as a disease, which transness definitely isn’t. But reflecting on the similarities between these parts of my narrative has helped me better understand why I stayed in the closet—in both senses—for as long as I did.

The first stage of coming out—as anything—is coming out to yourself. For many people, this stage is the hardest, because it means facing your internalized biases, your denial, and grieving the loss of a life you thought you’d have, or the person you believed yourself to be. For me, one major obstacle I faced in coming out to myself as trans—namely my tendency to avoid dealing with my own problems by comparing myself to others—was also a major obstacle on my path to sobriety.

I have a journal that dates back to six years ago, when I was first trying to get my drinking under control. Every other entry contained a new resolution. For example:

I will only drink x number of drinks per day

I will not start drinking before x o’clock

I will not drink alone

I will not drink more than x days per week

Two or three times a week I’d invent a new rule, because I’d break the previous rule by day two or three. The fascinating thing about these journal entries, is how blatantly obvious it is, looking at them now, that I was incapable of drinking in moderation.

But even though my alcoholism was right under my nose—and I was the one documenting it—I couldn’t see it. Hence, I just kept writing new resolutions, none of which involved getting sober. That was something only alcoholics did, and I wasn’t an alcoholic. I mean yes, I’d been trying unsuccessfully to moderate my drinking for years. Yes, I became a monster when I drank, who did and said awful things, then blacked out and woke up sick with remorse, only to do it all over again. But I knew real alcoholics, who’d gone to jail and rehab multiple times, and whose organs were literally shutting down. I wasn’t like them. They had a problem. They needed help. I just needed to learn better self-control.

That same notebook also documents the period of time when I was first trying to make sense of my “gender issues”: the feelings of discomfort I experienced when I looked in the mirror and saw a woman’s face. Or when I took off my clothes and saw a woman’s body. Or when someone would refer to me as “ma’am” or “miss.” Or when anyone tried to touch my chest or genitals during sex. It didn’t occur to me in any of these journal entries that I might be a trans man—after all, the trans men I had read about had always known they were trans. My story was not like theirs. It was not as linear, or as stereotypical. Those were trans people, people who actually had a reason to transition. I was just troubled, weird about gender, and would have to find some way to live with that weirdness.

So rather than allowing myself to name my true desires—i.e., the desire to transition and to claim a male identity—I drowned them in booze and sought external validation by sleeping with straight women, adopting toxically masculine traits, and hurting myself and a number of other people along the way. Looking back I wonder how much of this damage would have been prevented had someone told me that you could be trans without having a textbook trans narrative, that transness, like alcoholism, looks different on everyone.

There are so many obstacles that stand in the way of our growth, self-acceptance, and healing as queer and trans people: fear, stigma, guilt, shame, and social pressure just to name a few. The same goes for us addicts, alcoholics, and folks who struggle with substance abuse. The last thing we need is to make the journey any harder, or prolong our suffering by comparing ourselves to others. There are infinite possible trans narratives, gay narratives, and recovery narratives. None is better or truer than another. They all just are. And the sooner we can claim ours, the sooner we can heal, and share our light and hope with others.

Originally published at QueerKentucky

Adrian Silbernagel (he/him) is a queer transgender man who lives in Louisville, KY. He will have 5 years of continuous sobriety on September 28, 2022. Adrian is a writer, speaker, activist, and founding co-op member at Old Louisville Coffee Co-op: a late-night sober coffee shop that is opening soon in Louisville, KY.

Is There A Right Way To Recover?

Posted on May 12, 2022May 12, 2022 by Jessica Duenas in Current Recovery Challenges, Guest Submissions, Recovery Stories, Uncategorized

Audio

Guest Submission by Merideth Booth

Merideth, before and after starting her recovery journey.

I found recovery when I was 19 years old. I experimented with many substances including alcohol, benzodiazepines, and pain killers for five years. My battle with drugs and alcohol landed me in jail, hospitals, and a long-term treatment facility. For the first couple of years of my sober journey, I believed there was one way to recover: Go to meetings, get a sponsor, and work the steps. While this works for many people, we must remember that Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, created these solutions before the plague of opioid addiction.

For example, I am sure that Bill W. could not foresee Purdue Pharma’s introduction of Oxycontin in 1995 as a “less-addictive opioid pill.” This lie has led us to a public health crisis with an estimated death toll of 100,306 people annually, as reported by the CDC. I have seen hundreds go into the same meetings as me who did not make it back because they died later that day. I have witnessed far more of my friends dying in the “solution” (a term often used in 12 Step groups) than I did in my days of getting high. That is when I became open to different pathways to recovery.

If you understand substance use disorder, you know that it is not a matter of willpower or poor decision-making. The American Medical Association classified substance use disorder as a chronic disease of the mind and body in 1987. While most recovery communities preach abstinence and encourage people to hop on the old-school recovery train, it isn’t realistic in 2022.

These problems aren’t just about opiates, either. According to Mental Health America, alcoholism and co-occurring disorders have increased significantly in the last five years, with 95,000 people dying from alcohol-related causes annually and 132 people committing suicide each day. These are real numbers that include our family, friends, coworkers, and neighbors. So, what do we do?

I am no expert, but I know that I can no longer sit back and watch your son, daughter, mother, or father die from another overdose. I share my story as much as I can, and I recover out loud in hopes that I may change the way America sees recovery. I hope that we can eliminate the stigma surrounding harm reduction, medically assisted treatment, and drug liberalization. We need to make resources accessible and affordable. People should receive quality treatment regardless of their age, gender, race, or economic status. I dream of a day when substance use disorder and its co-occurring conditions are no longer the leading cause of death in America.

Achieving this reality takes ACTION.

We can start by having conversations in our homes, communities, and workplaces to bring about awareness. I encourage everyone to always carry Narcan, utilize your local needle exchange, and never use substances alone; we are in the business of saving lives.

Then we can discuss decriminalization. The decriminalization of substance use disorder is imperative because the “war on drugs” has not worked and will not work. Almost 90% of our prison population has the chronic disease of addiction and should be participating in treatment or re-entry programs rather than being punished. We need funding for local communities to grow substance use disorder services rather than financing “locking them up.” We need to accept people where they are because nobody can attend a meeting if they are dead. This means welcoming people into the recovery community regardless of what stage of their recovery they are in or what pathway they have chosen.

There are many ways to tackle this public health crisis, but I believe it is essential to focus on our communities and the part we play. We need to go to the polls to vote, share our stories often, and speak out about drug policy. Your voice is more powerful than you think, and you can make an impact! An old-timer in a meeting once said, “What you can’t do alone, we can accomplish together.”

If you have any questions about what you can do in your community or want to learn more about any topics discussed, please feel free to reach out to me.

Meredith Booth is located in Louisville, Kentucky. She has been in recovery for over five years and currently works as a treatment advocate in a rehabilitation facility. To contact her directly or for any inquiries, please email her at merideth.booth714@gmail.com.

Looking at different recovery options? Check out Getting Help.

Recovery and Rebirth from Alcohol and Teaching

Posted on April 17, 2022April 17, 2022 by Jessica Duenas in Recovery Stories, Written by Jessica

Audio

Oxford defines recovery as “a return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength.” It also offers a second meaning, “the action or process of regaining possession or control of something stolen or lost.” For me, my recovery consists of moving to a functional state of good health and regaining control of myself. This has required complete abstinence from both drinking and teaching.

I’m Jessica. I was Kentucky’s State Teacher of the Year in 2019, and I’m also a recovering alcoholic. I’ve been sober since November 28th, 2020, and free from teaching since December 4th, 2020. I couldn’t tell you exactly when I lost myself. However, I can tell you my habit of avoiding feelings began when I was fat-shamed as a child. I learned to steal and hide the food I wanted to eat to avoid embarrassment. I ate like this for many years and dedicated myself to excelling as a student to feel better about being an overweight child and later a teen.

Eventually, my escapism transferred to alcohol and my career. After being called out at a happy hour for drinking too much, I decided to hide my alcohol consumption from others. “Whoa, you’re moving a little fast there, aren’t you?” I remember a fellow teacher said to me. My face was hot with shame, and from that day forward, unless I accidentally over-drank in front of others, I tried my best to not be caught drunker than the group I was with. I did well at work, so when I did slip and drink too much, no one could say I had a problem with alcohol because “look at how great Jessica is as an educator.”

I hid my love for alcohol in many ways. A classic example is that I monitored how others drank at events to make sure that I matched everyone else drink for drink. If others had one glass, I had one. If they had four, I had four. I always knew something was wrong with me, but I gaslit myself. I convinced myself that there couldn’t be anything wrong with me because I went to college and then graduate school, twice. Alcoholics don’t get graduate degrees. They don’t successfully build relationships with kids and win awards for their work. There is no way that you can be named the top teacher in a state and be an alcoholic. But I was.

I lived a painful double life where every day I suffered and every day I chose to not tell anyone and drank instead. I eventually was physically dependent on alcohol, so I felt even worse about myself. How did I cope? I threw myself into teaching. I couldn’t be a bad person if I was a good educator, right?

My days were a non-stop Groundhog Day. I came home from whichever school I worked at and breathed a sigh of relief because I could be unbothered. I could drink without fear of judgment. Over the years, the amount of liquor I needed to escape and avoid withdrawal symptoms increased. I consumed a bit more than a fifth of liquor a day at the end of my drinking career. I ignored a diagnosis of alcoholic liver disease in 2019 and continued to drink. I allowed my health to decline as I drank more. I always had to lie as to why I felt sick. My students asked, “Why are you always going to the bathroom? Why are you always going to throw up?” I told them my stomach was just sensitive. However, no matter what, Ms. Dueñas was always doing her best.

My persona had two sides, and neither one was truly me. My teacher self took turns with my addicted self for years until April 28th of 2020, when my then-boyfriend relapsed and died from an overdose. That day between alcohol and teaching, the alcohol took over and controlled me fully until my current sobriety date.

For months, I barely worked as I was in and out of hospitals, staying in treatment facilities, and putting together a few weeks of fragile sobriety at a time before violently crashing. The day I left a five-week-long treatment program, I ordered alcohol delivery and faded away by myself. I wrecked my car, blew nearly a .5 blood alcohol level, and tried to purchase a gun to shoot myself with. I was hospitalized for the last time in November of 2020, which is when this recovery process truly started.

A psychiatrist at the hospital asked to evaluate me, and upon digging into my history, he diagnosed me with bipolar 2. The Mayo Clinic defines bipolar disorder as “a mental health condition that causes extreme mood swings that include emotional highs and lows.” With bipolar 2, “you’ve had at least one major depressive episode and at least one hypomanic (somewhat energized/euphoric) episode, but you’ve never had a manic episode (which is more severe).” So, for individuals with bipolar 2, there is never a psychotic episode, for example.

The doctor informed me of how frequently substance abuse went hand in hand with mental health conditions. He recommended that I try medication with a recovery program and therapy as part of my wellness plan. I accepted the recommendation. By then, things had gone too far. I wanted to die, but I was not dying, and my everyday existence had become unbearable. Something had to change. I needed to gain control of myself. I needed to get healthy. I needed to recover.

When I decided to accept help, I also realized that alcohol was not the only external factor controlling my life. It was not the only thing keeping me from being healthy. I allowed my teaching career to be just as much of an escape from myself as alcohol. No matter what chaos happened in my personal life, I was an excellent actor, and the classroom was my stage. I could only feel better about who I was if I helped others, but I never once helped myself. The teaching had to go as much as the alcohol needed to. I was reborn.

Since November 2020, I’ve embarked on this lifelong journey of becoming authentically me. My medications allow me to feel enough stability to use my recovery program and therapy to address my mental and spiritual needs. I now can face past traumas that I avoided. I journal daily, pray, meditate, and lean on my support group. I don’t isolate myself. I connect with others both in person and through social media. I try new things. I care less about other people’s opinions of me, and when I do care, because I’m a human, I have ways to check myself and my fears. I don’t worry about constantly meeting others’ needs. I have identified MY needs, and I ask myself if people and situations meet them, and when they don’t, I remove myself.

Today, my success is not measured by academic standards, standardized test results, or a score on an administrator’s observation rubric. My success is measured by the intangible, my ability to create a life I no longer need to escape. Not everyone is allowed to do so and I am incredibly grateful for my daily gifts. Happy Resurrection Day.

Shattering the Lock: A Reflection on 365 Days of Continuous Sobriety

Posted on November 27, 2021November 27, 2021 by Jessica Dueñas in Recovery Stories, Written by Jessica

“We’re miracles. I mean, we’re the walking dead. None of us in this room should be alive, but here we are. So we’ve gotta show some gratitude,” Jennifer laughed. My eyebrows went up as I nodded slowly, side to side, in careful consideration of what I had just heard.

Jennifer is this woman in New York who gets on some Zoom meetings. I admire her. She’s blunt and always adds a perspective that I hadn’t considered before. She has this gift of sharing her gratitude in what some may consider a rough manner, but she always delivers her message with a smile. Grim as it sounds, she’s right. For people in recovery, just one day away from their poison of choice is a miracle.

So, all things considered, after 365 days of abstaining from MY vice, I definitely am a miracle.

Different photos from active drinking compared to me sober for a year.

Also, I am among the walking dead.

I am a year away from eight hospitalizations in treatment facilities after blurry ambulance rides or drop-offs I don’t remember. From having flipped my car over in a violent wreck. From lethal levels of poison that coursed through my veins (I blew nearly a .5 blood alcohol level a few times.) From almost having bought a gun to end what felt like a never-ending downward spiral of relapses. From living in shame, thinking I was an awful person because I was an alcoholic. From working SO hard to hide that all these frightening things were happening.

What can I say? I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I could not juggle my perfectionism, my career, and the secret of my addiction. I got tired of waiting to die and not dying. I was tired of holding everything in.

My sobriety date is November 28, 2020. My Op-Ed was released on December 3, 2020.

Something had to change, and I had a moment of inspired action. I thought, “F*ck it, I’m going to write an article, publish it somewhere and tell everybody. I don’t care anymore.”

So with only a few days sober, I published an Op-Ed in Louisville’s Courier-Journal and told everyone that I was an alcoholic. It was as if out from deep within, I summoned the courage to shatter the padlock that my alcoholism was to my recovery toolbox. Once I pulled that toolbox open, everything else came forth that I needed.

Was I nervous?

I was terrified.

That decision to step off a ledge of familiarity and dive into a world where I had to trust that I would not drown filled my stomach with knots even the deepest of breathing exercises was not loosening up. But I was determined to be done.

I can’t tell you how many times in the last twelve months I have stopped and thought, “oh, I was at a rehab facility this time last year.” Or, “I was laying in a puddle of my blood this time last year.” When I say that I never believed I could stop drinking, I mean it. I was waiting to die from alcohol poisoning or some other tragedy. Never did I envision myself being a sober woman writing this today.

This past year has been like walking on a tightrope coming out of a dark cave towards light. I’ve used faith and trust in my higher power and others to help me balance along the way. So far, so good. Sometimes hesitantly, sometimes excitedly, I’ve put one foot ahead of the other a day at a time for 365 days. I know there is no getting off this tightrope without severe consequences, so I’m grateful that I get to walk the line for another day.

She Never Thought of Herself as an Alcoholic, and Then She Was Placed on the Liver Transplant List as a 33-Year-Old Woman: Jacqueline’s Story

Posted on July 8, 2021July 8, 2021 by Jessica Dueñas in Current Recovery Challenges, Recovery Stories, Written by Jessica

Jacqueline’s first words that I ever read were, “I never thought of myself as an alcoholic. I never lost a job because of it, had no DUIs, my relationships were alright. I always had other excuses for why I would end up in the emergency department. It wasn’t until last year, when I spent 46 days in the hospital and almost died, that I was diagnosed with alcoholic liver disease. A few months later, I ended up on the liver transplant list. I am now sober, but I’m living my life waiting for a miracle recovery or for my MELD score to skyrocket and get a liver transplant.” Jacqueline wrote to me when she read the NPR article about the increase of alcoholic liver disease in women. Immediately, I had to connect with her. When we chatted, Jacqueline had recently had surgery, so she wasn’t ready at the moment to share, but it was enough to make an impact on me. I made sure to save her number.

Today, a text notification went off, and when I went to swipe up on my screen, the miracle had happened, Jacqueline reached out. She is feeling better and is off the transplant list! Now that we finally had the opportunity to talk, the question was, how did she get here?

Jacqueline was born in a suburb of Boulder, Colorado, and spent her childhood between Colorado and a college town in Minnesota. We didn’t chat too much about her early childhood. Still, like many other people with alcohol abuse disorder, Jacqueline started drinking and smoking cigarettes in middle school. Early on, Jacqueline was successful at managing both drinking and life’s responsibilities. Through middle school and high school, she went to school, worked as a nanny and part-time in restaurants, and practiced all kinds of dance at an art academy, and of course, partied.

Like many of the women I get the honor of speaking to, Jacqueline is a trauma survivor. Her voice shook as she recalled the experience of getting raped when she was 16. Her parents were out of town, and there were friends over for a party. The guy she had a crush on ripped peace from her that night.

In her own home.

In her own bed.

Her friends turned their backs on her, victim-blaming her because she happened to have a crush on him. So, what about her family? Jacqueline wanted to clarify that her mother always has had the best of intentions for her. Still, Jacqueline mentioned that her mother struggled to get Jacqueline the support for her mental health needs at that turning point in her life. Trapped by the stigma of mental health problems, Jacqueline’s mother allowed her to get therapy. However, a thorough diagnosis of the effects of the trauma on Jacqueline and difficulties she had with learning were never fully addressed at that time. In turn, Jacqueline’s coping mechanisms while becoming a young woman were anything but healthy.

After high school, Jacqueline’s parents sent her to Colorado on her own to escape an abusive boyfriend in Minnesota. He constantly tried to control her, kept her in spaces against her will, and threatened to injure her. Jacqueline suffered this ordeal in secret until she confided in her sister-in-law, who alerted her parents. It was a significant change to be in a different state suddenly, but it was incredibly liberating to be on her own. She had a car, followed her own schedule, and did what she wanted. She was independent. “I finally wasn’t grounded anymore!” She exclaimed. Jacqueline provided for herself, working multiple jobs, including medical secretary, emergency room registration, teaching dance, and bartending. Despite her many positions, she managed to party, drink, and do well.

Relationships typically didn’t help make Jacqueline’s life better. She was drawn to unavailable individuals who already in relationships, married, or simply emotionally unavailable. She was a hopeless romantic that never wanted to fall in love. Once, there was a doctor she was seeing who had seen her wit and intelligence. He encouraged her to enroll in college. She did well in her first year, but suddenly things “hit a wall” for her that summer and her drinking started to take a turn for the worse. Though Jacqueline did well in school, she accepted a job she was passionate about starting. Suddenly, the position was dissolved, and she felt lost. Lost, with student debt, and alone again.

Eventually, circumstances led Jacqueline to the live music scene. She met her current partner of five and a half years when she saw him at a concert. Ever since they connected, they’ve been inseparable. They have supported each other through all of life’s challenges, including Jacqueline needing to turn her life around.

The couple drank together, being often around musicians. They had a lot of fun, and though they sometimes had drunken arguments, they enjoyed each other, too. Despite their heavy drinking, the two were able to buy a home, keep employment. They functioned successfully, so though Jacqueline deep down inside she knew something was probably wrong, it was easy to ignore. “I wasn’t what you consider a typical alcoholic.”

Another incident struck Jacqueline’s life that brought her drinking to another level of escalation. She was injured at work and had to take time off. She also had to fight her then employer in court to get compensated. Suddenly being trapped at home, being in pain, and being stressed about her finances, Jacqueline needed to numb herself to escape the pain of everyday living in these circumstances. Alcohol relieved her stress and her anxiety. Between her and her partner, they drank about two-thirds to three-fourths of a handle of liquor a night. They drank like this from 2018 onward.

Jacqueline eventually started noticing that she was eating less. She wasn’t thirsty anymore, either. It would be like this for days. She was getting dizzy more regularly. She was run down and just felt sick. Her dizzy spells were so powerful that she went to the emergency room repeatedly in 2019 to address “low potassium levels” or “dehydration.” I asked, “Did your family notice?” She responded, “They were in Minnesota, so they had no clue. If they ever did discover she was in urgent care or the emergency department it was just ‘dehydration,’ or a ‘migraine.’ The only one who knew was my partner (because he drank, too),” she replied. “He admits now, that he was lying to himself, but he didn’t know the full truth. A lot of the times I ended up in the ED (emergency department) and told the medical staff how much I was struggling, and he would be frustrated because I had never voiced those complaints to him.”

Meanwhile, I thought the doctors MUST have noticed something was going on with her. I asked, “I mean, didn’t they run labs on you? You had to have liver disease already, and they didn’t check your liver enzymes? They never diagnosed you with ALD?” I was shocked at the fact that no one had pointed out the simple fact to Jacqueline that alcohol was killing her. Jacqueline, I could almost envision her shaking her head, stated, “No, just nausea, dehydration, and tell me to follow up with my doctor. So I’d quit for a few weeks to seem better, but then I would start to drink again. I avoided doing blood work. I was still functioning, so I didn’t think I needed to stop. I acted like I was fine. My bills were paid, no DUI, no trouble with the law, no relationship problems at the time, my relationship with my family was fine, my relationships with friends were good, too.” “So you never thought there was something wrong?” I asked. She replied, “Well, I always knew something was wrong with me, I knew it the whole time.” I understood exactly what she meant.

Finally, Jacqueline had her life-changing hospital visit. First, she had had an emergency room visit, and though she still felt sick after getting fluids, they released her to go home. She and her partner stopped to get groceries when suddenly everything started going black for Jacqueline. “I saw a tunnel closing in around me, I was going to faint. He grabbed me and took me right back to the hospital.”

At the hospital, things took a turn for the worse.

“I became yellow, my MELD score was 29, my bilirubin level was 30 (normal is under 1.2). I looked like I was eight months pregnant from ascites. I was dying. I had to stay in for 46 days.” For reference, a MELD (Model for End Stage Liver Disease) score is a number that qualifies a person for a liver transplant, so the higher the number, the worse shape the person’s liver is in. The highest MELD number is 40, so Jacqueline’s liver was in bad shape. Jacqueline needed to get on the liver transplant list, but she would not qualify without abstinence given her alcohol consumption history.

So what did that look like? Jacqueline had to take a PETH test every two weeks for six months to prove she could stay away from alcohol. Unlike a breathalyzer that only checks for a present blood-alcohol level, a PETH test can detect any alcohol consumption from up to two weeks before the exam. Jacqueline was able to stay sober and get on the list, and once she got on the list, she just had to take the PETH test once a month.

But Jacqueline’s NOT on the transplant list now, right? She’s not.

During our conversation, Jacqueline informed me that her numbers, though not ideal, have stabilized. Her bilirubin levels dropped from 30 to a 4, and her MELD has consistently been a 12, down from 29. Today, Jacqueline is healthy enough not to require a liver transplant. She’s back to looking normal; she happily said, “I’m not yellow anymore!”

“So you’re safe to live a full adult life now, right?” I asked. Jacqueline is only 33 years old, just three years younger than me. Jacqueline paused, “Well, because I’m so young, the chances of me still needing a transplant when I’m older is doubled because I’m so young. So I’m really not off the hook yet.”

Though she has stabilized, Jacqueline does have mild cirrhosis of the liver. The liver can sustain damage up until the point of cirrhosis. At that point, the scar tissue doesn’t go away, it’s irreversible. That means Jacqueline has to do a lot of work to protect her liver from any further damage. Work that she will have to do until the day she draws her last breath.

This new life with permanent alcoholic liver disease is not an easy one for Jacqueline. For the rest of her life, Jacqueline has to be on a low sodium diet, consuming fewer than 2000 mg a day. Her liver doesn’t filter her blood properly, so fluids that a healthier person may be able to pass through urine will accumulate in her body. These fluids could press on her abdomen and potentially fill her lungs with fluid, so Jacqueline has to monitor her fluid intake and take diuretics.

She has a stomach ulcer and varices on her esophagus. According to Mayo Clinic, “Esophageal varices are abnormal, enlarged veins in the tube that connects the throat and stomach (esophagus). This condition occurs most often in people with serious liver diseases.

The vessels can leak blood or even rupture, causing life-threatening bleeding.”

I had to ask, “ And most importantly, you can’t drink. How do you stay away from alcohol?” Jacqueline explained that she uses cannabis for physical and emotional ailments. She takes microdoses of cannabis in candy form in the morning. It helps to keep her anxiety down and bring her appetite up. She has tried psych meds but didn’t respond well to them. “I don’t smoke the actual cannabis flowers, just the oil concentrate or eat the candies. It helps me get through. My biggest thing to not drink is focusing on how much it would hurt my partner, family, and team of doctors. They worked so hard to help get me here. It’d be a kick in the face for me just to go back out and drink. I had a relapse a year ago, and it landed me in the hospital. It was stupid, I thought I would have one, but course it wasn’t just one. It almost killed me.”

“Do you participate in any support groups?” Jacqueline’s support is her partner, her therapist, and her garden. She explained her coping by saying, “I believe in Mother Nature. Gardening really helps me. My plants really help me. For me, drinking wasn’t so much about the physical addiction, and it was always emotional. I coped every day. It was for my anxiety, for social anxiety. Today, my garden helps me.”

“Every day is excruciatingly grueling, especially those days when nothing goes right and you just want to shut out the world. That is why I continue to surround myself with plants and my garden. They remind me that they work so hard to become their most wonderful selves. Most people only appreciate them when they bloom, but I love them from the second I plant them until I mourn them dying and use them as compost to grow the next generation.”

(Just for some added detail, medical problems Jacqueline was treated for in during her 46 day stay because of her alcohol consumption was severe sepsis, acute respiratory failure with hypoxia, ascites, alcoholic hepatitis, liver failure, multiple hernias due to the ascites, IBS, severe diarrhea, C Diff Infection, anemia, jaundice, potassium deficiency, vitamin D deficiency. Jacqueline had a paracentesis to remove fluid from the abdominal cavity and had to have a PICC line placed to receive medications and have labs drawn as all of her IV’s started to blow out and the lab couldn’t get a proper stick.)

The Greatest Gift a Mother Can Have, The Return of Her Son: Gary and Cathy’s Story

Posted on July 5, 2021July 5, 2021 by Jessica Dueñas in About a Loved One, Recovery Stories, Written by Jessica

Gary’s mother, Cathy, reflects on her journey supporting Gary through his active alcoholism and addiction. She shares what it’s like seeing him in recovery today. Gary’s story is below.

“This is the longest I’ve been sober since when I was a baby until I was 12.” Gary laughed back in early March, chatting with me about his sobriety date in July.

“I get to share my life today in treatment facilities that I used to do everything to avoid, I love to share the solution. Life today is pretty amazing, I have a great job that I’m sure grateful for. I know I’m growing because if I miss a day of work, I actually feel bad about it. I used to love being off. The first 6 months of my recovery felt like a pink cloud, but depression has definitely been creeping up in the past two months. It’s crazy, people actually ask me for advice now because they see me doing well. It’s humbling. Of course, I do the work for myself but I love the motivation of others. Today is great. I have a safe living environment, I live with my former sponsor. It’s amazing that you don’t worry about anything when you try to do the next right thing. Sure I wish I could make a little more money, but there is a lot of peace at the end of the day. The best part is that my mom doesn’t worry, I actually answer the phone when she calls, and we have a great relationship today because I don’t terrorize her.”

Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, Gary had a great upbringing because of his mother, Cathy. When he was eight months old, Cathy divorced Gary’s father. He struggled with his own demons, and Gary’s mom didn’t want Gary in a toxic environment.As a single mother, Cathy worked hard to provide him opportunities to go to good schools, and any time he had a problem, Cathy was always there for him, without a doubt. Eventually, she married his stepfather, who was another positive addition to Gary’s life as a child. His stepfather supported Cathy in raising him as a single mother. “I’m really grateful for my step-dad. He did a lot in helping my mom with me. I know I was spoiled but he helped make sure I wasn’t too spoiled. My mom and I, we’ve always been so close.

Gary as a child with Cathy. Provided by Gary.

As a kid, Gary remembers having had all the “isms,” what some people in recovery groups refer to as childhood signs of future addiction. He felt he never had enough. There wasn’t anything that Gary was satisfied with where he didn’t want more. Though he did well in school, Gary was rebellious outside of it. He recalled being a young teen trying beer for the first time, “I didn’t even like the taste of it, it was more the excitement that I was doing something wrong. I should have noticed I had a problem from way early on, but it didn’t seem weird because everyone else was doing it, too. It wasn’t til I was alone years later shooting up heroin and I looked around and realized that I’m alone, then it hit me.”

When he was 18, Gary was hit head-on in a car wreck, and despite having severe injuries that required intense recovery, Gary still was able to start college with a roaring start to his academic career. With days consisting of cocaine and alcohol, he remembered one of his most embarrassing moments when his grandmother visited his dorm. She opened his closet door only to have bottles of Southern Comfort crash down on her. Did he acknowledge that he maybe had a problem then? No.

“I mean,” Gary reflected, “I should have realized when I was kicked out of school and had to go back to Louisville that I had fucked up. But alcoholic, addict that I was, I didn’t.” At the time Gary’s behaviors blended in well among his college peers. It wasn’t until after graduation that everything started to escalate in all areas of his life.

For example, Gary had a beautiful girlfriend who later turned into his wife. Though they were happy for a while, it wasn’t your traditional love story either.

“What was getting married like?” I asked. “ Well, when I got engaged, it was thrown together. I hadn’t gotten her a ring, I was jacked off coke, and I went down into the basement. So when she came down and turned the lights on, I was there on my knee. I originally imagined asking her to marry me on Mt. Fuji, but no. I did it in the basement. But she was happy. She had always wanted a wedding, and I adored her. She used (drugs) with me, and in the beginning, we were both functional, but eventually, things got bad with us.”

“So earlier you said you said alcohol, coke, and pills were your thing. How did you get into heroin?”

Gary responded, “I used to be the type who said, I’ll never do meth, I’ll never do heroin. If you say that today, just give it time.” He went on to explain his first exposure to heroin at his dealer’s house. “I got to his house and I walked in. There’s kids running around, drugs everywhere. I’m not even phased by seeing kids around drugs at that point. It’s kind of embarrassing. Anyway, I’ll never forget, I saw a brown line of stuff on his dresser. It caught my eye. ‘What’s that?’ ‘That’s H, that’s boy.’ Ya know, heroin. Then of course, my dealer joked and said, ‘Bet you can’t take that line and make it home.’’ So Gary did, he continued, “I hate romanticizing drugs and I try not to, but I’m not gonna lie, I never felt better. I spent the rest of my active addiction chasing that feeling,” he concluded.

So if you do the math, that means that for the next 6 years of his life, Gary had heroin almost every day. He estimates that he spent over $200,000 over the years.

Though his drug use escalated, Gary was functional. He did well at a successful company. Gary shook his head, reflecting on how he would crush pills in the middle of the workday. He would use, then suddenly his productivity would shoot up. His boss would always remark, “damn Gary how did you get all of that done?” Gary smiled at me mischievously through the Facetime screen and shrugged his shoulders.

Between him and his then-wife’s combined work income, they bought a lake house near Bowling Green, Kentucky. Things were okay for a while. They worked, used, worked, a pattern that is familiar for many functioning alcoholics and addicts.

At one point Gary was moved to finally meet his father. I asked, “So you randomly wanted to meet your dad?” Gary confirmed, “Yep, it was a genius idea I had while high on coke.”

All these years later, Gary’s dad was still in active addiction, while on the other hand, Cathy, Gary’s mom, feared for Gary’s life as she heard about his drug use from others who witnessed it. At the lakehouse, Gary started to lose control. He would drink over a handle of liquor in a day. His tolerance had gotten so high he was using fentanyl, too. Everything seemed manageable to him until it suddenly wasn’t. One of the most giant red flags Gary experienced was when he and his then-wife hosted a dinner party for some childhood friends. Though he didn’t overdose, Gary snuck out mid-meal to get high and nodded out at the dinner table upon his return. His friends, sure, they drank, but seeing Gary’s chin drop down to his chest and his eyelids droop was enough to confirm to his friends what they had been suspecting, Gary was definitely an alcoholic and addicted to drugs. He was in danger. Upon returning to Louisville, those same friends made sure to let Cathy know, who felt on a heart wrenching level how close she was to losing her son.

Gary in active addiction. Provided by Gary.

“It was out there. I had a problem. I lost my job because of a slip-up. I would ask drug dealers to ‘hold the heroin’ and just give me fentanyl, so I went to rehab in 2019.” Gary, however, explained that he really hadn’t suffered enough to want to truly get sober. He only went because he wanted people to get off his back, especially his mom at the time who was worried sick about him. So when Gary left the facility this first time, he got high in the parking lot on the way out, got drunk, and ended up back at that isolated lake house south of Louisville. Now he started using drugs intravenously. His mother, if she was lucky, maybe heard from him once a week, even when she tried calling him every day. “I just wanted to disappear,” Gary explained, “I wanted to be able to hide, get high and not have anyone who cared, know.”

When Gary did choose to reach out to his mom, it was usually in a drunken stupor after drinking 1-2 handles of liquor. “I’d call my mom bawling my eyes out, then I’d end up in rehab, and suddenly I’d be like, ‘How did I end up here?’ I was in a really dark place. I was trying to get sober and I was failing.”

As Gary continued to struggle, his mother Cathy also needed to find guidance of her own. After leaving rehab, Gary’s tolerance dropped significantly, so what he used to use and drink without a problem was now enough to kill him. He overdosed well over 10 times until he got sober, the number may have been as high as 15 times or more. His mother herself had found him blue and possibly dead a few times.

How were you supposed to love your only son who could at any moment kill himself? Cathy found a support group for herself and resolved to love and support Gary, but not financially. Gary laughed as he shared how he was resentful when his mom was encouraged to not enable him with money. “I mean, I get it now, I didn’t then,” he chuckled.

As Gary’s life got more complex, his hopes vanished, too. He and his wife’s relationship had gotten so toxic that they separated. He had limited access to money. He was losing his house. He couldn’t stop drinking, and his thinking was incredibly distorted. He believed he had no way out, and knowing that his body could no longer handle drugs how it used to, he resolved within himself to get high one final time. He knew it would kill him and he was ready. “I had had enough. The fun was gone. The partying was over. I was killing my mom. In my mind I was like, ‘I’m doing this to make sure I NEVER ever wake up.’ So I took it. Then, I started to feel a warm, weighted blanket coming over me instantly. I knew then that I would die, and something in me panicked, ‘Oh my God I’m killing myself!’ So the last thing I remember is texting my friends and my mom. I sent my location from my phone. Later, I woke up in an ambulance.”

I asked, “So, who got you?” He responded, “My mom. Usually, if she had been at home or at work, she would have been 30 minutes away from where I was, but she was eating lunch two minutes away. She knew what was up, called an ambulance, and she came and found me. I was in the car. I was blue.”

Gary said a friend of his in recovery often says, “I hope you reach a level of desperation you never want to go back to.” After Cathy saved him from his suicide attempt, something changed in Gary. He can’t quite explain it, but the change led him to completely let go. He was ready for his stay in a psychiatric hospital after he was revived. He was ready to engage in rehab and take all the suggestions. He was prepared to participate in his twelve-step program and become a contributing member of his recovery community.

Today, Gary’s relationship is restored with Cathy. The greatest gift a son could give his mother is the gift of peace of mind. Today, Cathy has that.

Gary has been sober since July 16, 2020.

If interested in contacting Gary or Cathy, please send a contact request to Jessica.

Shouldn’t I Feel Better? It’s Been Seven Months.

Posted on June 26, 2021June 26, 2021 by Jessica Duenas in Current Recovery Challenges, Recovery Stories, Written by Jessica

Audio

I’m seven months sober, and it doesn’t feel good.

I’ve been doing the “right” things, engaging in support groups, therapy, exercise, eating healthier, using medication, and yet I’ve still been waking up this week with the sensation of a weight on my diaphragm. I spoke to my therapist about it, crying as I pleaded for an answer, for some guidance.

“What’s still wrong with me? Shouldn’t I be feeling better by now?”

He said, “Well, Jessica, you’re someone who has always lived in a state of chaos. Even when you were incredibly successful in your career and looked good to others, something was always happening in secret that was bringing you down. Now that you’ve been sober for almost seven months and things are calm, you’re feeling everything you never felt before because you were numb. You’re doubting things. Maybe you feel you don’t deserve the good in your life, so you’re waiting for it to disappear. Trauma has been the norm for your mind, and now that it is peaceful, your brain is going to look for other ways to stir the pot.”

My therapist was precisely right. Everything IS going well in my life. I’m living in a safe space with my family, I have been able to stay sober, I have healthy relationships with people who love and support me, I have solid employment, I’m healthy, and I have no drama in my life. I have everything to be grateful for, and my mind still finds things to worry about. My irrational thoughts become real to me. They feel valid. They make me feel a sick, sinking feeling at the bottom of my rib cage that I used to try to escape.

A few days ago, someone who took the time to travel for hundreds of miles to see me accidentally said something that was triggering. I didn’t need to, but I brought so much pain onto myself with my reaction because I jumped to interpreting it as a personal attack on me; I assumed that this person had an agenda when they had none. My brain literally created a whole scenario in my head where I was suddenly a victim again, except today, I’m NOT a victim. I don’t have to fear this relationship; this connection is not my past.

I hyper-focused on this trigger and blinded myself to the bigger picture. I didn’t stop to consider facts, to look at reality. I didn’t try to clear any assumptions I was making by asking questions. I took the whole statement personally. The truth was that there was no ill intention, only a word in a conversation.

Had I stopped to consider the facts, I would have stressed myself a lot less.

The fears that rise up don’t limit themselves just to relationships. For instance, a recent thing is when my mind takes stock of my appearance and tells me what I don’t have, it tells me what others have better than me.

I looked in the mirror today, and it hit me that I have become ungrateful for the temple I have. I lost sight of facts about my body. This is the same body that has sustained deadly alcohol levels, car wrecks, and assaults. These are the same bones that have never broken, the legs that carry me, and work hard despite multiple surgeries. My face still radiates my father’s smile. I could have completely destroyed it in numerous accidents and falls that I don’t remember, but instead, it carries only fading scars. In seven months of sobriety, this is the same body with a healed liver that no longer has alcoholic liver disease. My body is an amazing one. These are the actual facts.

This body carries the resilient spirit I have, and yet I still turn around and can be ungrateful for it. I can still falsely trick myself into thinking that others don’t appreciate me either. I can continue to believe one irrational thought after another until everything spirals down to eventually me drinking.

But. I. Can’t. Drink.

So what AM I doing about this to not stay stuck in these recent fears that are coming at me full force?

I know healing isn’t a “me” project, so I spoke to my therapist and to my mentor. My therapist suggested that every time I write about my painful thoughts that may be irrational, I need to write down the facts. For example, if I made a mistake at work and believe that I’m going to get fired, sure I can write that, “I have fear that I’ll get fired,” but I ALSO need to acknowledge, “I regularly do well, so I won’t actually get fired.” Is it an extra step in journaling? Yes, is it worth it to pause and “zoom-out” to see the facts? Also, yes.

I asked my mentor (sober 14 years) about her experience, and she let me know that even at HER length of sobriety, she still gets fears and has to work daily to not succumb to the negative voices in her head. Understanding that reminds me why I need to speak with her more often and share the fears that come up in my head. She’s been where I am at, makes me feel less isolated, and if she’s been sober for 14 years, I can get long-term sobriety, too. If I can get it, anyone reading this can get it, too.

So I don’t feel “good” right now, but I know that there are solutions to my mental health concerns. I know that these painful feelings I have are temporary. I don’t have to go through these feelings alone, and I can do things to process them. I’m not going to let my mental health get the best of me and get me to drink today, but I’m learning this really is a daily fight. Daily.

So I veered away from sharing another person’s story for this entry simply because I feel that it’s essential to highlight the hard times. I believe that when we share stories, we connect, and as I’ve heard many say before, connection is the opposite of addiction.

Whatever It Takes To Save My Daughter: Alissa’s Story

Posted on June 5, 2021June 5, 2021 by Jessica Dueñas in Current Recovery Challenges, Recovery Stories, Written by Jessica

Alissa is a mother, a professional, a practicing attorney, and a wife. Alissa is also a recovering alcoholic who was in and out of facilities throughout New Jersey. Alissa could tell you anything about any facility in Jersey, “I could’ve written a ton of Yelp reviews,” she laughed.

Alissa, the oldest of four children, moved to New Jersey when she was six. She was raised in a middle-income home by parents who made sure to keep up appearances. Alissa attended a Catholic grade school, a Catholic High School, had good grades, volunteered, church, sports, and even got a college scholarship. Law school. Like many, Alissa’s successful outward appearance did not reflect how Alissa spent her life feeling unaccepted, stifled, and controlled by her parents.

“My parents had an innate need to control me and everything that was going on. Especially through money. In college, I saw that the less they provided for me financially, the more control I had over my life.” For Alissa, attending school was a typical experience. Parties from Thursday through Sunday, then recovering during the week to get work done. Then, come Thursday, it was time to fade to black again. After graduating, Alissa’s peers were able to stop, and that’s where Alissa’s relationship with drinking began to spiral.

Rather than moving back in with her parents, she got an apartment. Although it wasn’t easy, she worked three jobs to make ends meet. “I knew that if I could be financially independent, I wouldn’t have to listen to what they say. So even to attend law school, I took out loans, and I didn’t accept their help.”

I’ve come to learn that the more I speak with women with addictions, no matter how different our lives can be, the more our stories remain the same. I had to stop and ask, “Did you ever have anything traumatic happen while in school?” Unfortunately, the answer was yes.

Alissa went on to describe a common nightmare that sadly comes true for many women. “Yea, so I once went out with my professor and some classmates to see a show. Afterward, I went back with one of the guys in my class to have a drink and decide what we would do for the rest of the night. We were having drinks…and he put something in mine. He sexually assaulted me…I woke up at his house the next morning. Rule follower that I am, I reported the incident. I thought that I would get justice and went through this entire legal process, even had a jury trial over it. And he was found not guilty. I had to wait three years for the jury trial to happen just for him to walk free.” The lack of justice, the isolation, and the lack of support all left Alissa diving, turning more to alcohol to provide comfort.

“So, how did your drinking change once you were practicing law full time?” I asked. “Oh, that was an every night situation, but EVERYBODY did it. Everybody drank, and that’s just how it was. If I had a jury trial, that was the only time I tried to take a break. But we all showed up to district court hungover. If you saw a lawyer with a blue Gatorade, you knew someone was having a rough morning.” “So, did you know you had a problem yet?” I asked her. “I mean, sure, there were consequences I was experiencing with my friends. But if something embarrassing happened one weekend, by the next one, someone else had already done something worse that took the attention away from me,” she responded.

What about getting married? Alissa vaguely remembered her boyfriend proposing to her. In describing her wedding, Alissa smirked as she shared, “Oh, I barely remember my wedding; it was nice, it was pretty, but I was so wasted,” she retorted. “I mean, in hindsight, we got married, but we had nothing in common.” Completely relatable. When I married my ex, I tried hard to drink just enough to get drunk but not blackout. I really wanted to remember my wedding. I remember some of it.

It didn’t take long for Alissa to find what she didn’t see in her husband with someone else. The summer following her wedding, Alissa’s boss sent her along with her colleagues to a week-long conference for attorneys. She recalled the team working diligently throughout the days and drinking copious amounts of liquor every night, the daily venture to the store. The sharpest memory in her mind from that week, however, was Peter.

Peter was another lawyer on staff, and though she never thought twice about him at work, they connected romantically on this trip. Their affair was quiet, exciting, and a secret to start, but it grew into more than just an affair; they fell in love. Yes, she was married, and yes, he was engaged. Eventually, time and emotions forced them out of the dark, and they decided to each leave their respective partners in pursuit of a life together.

At this point, I was predicting this as the classic affair gone wrong—the type where the woman leaves her husband for another, only to be abandoned by both. Nevertheless, Alissa interrupted my wandering thoughts and exclaimed, “I mean, I never would have done this crazy shit had I been sober! And guess what, Peter is my actual husband now, and we had a child.” She continued, “What is difficult for me is the fact that I do love Peter very much, and I am so happy for my daughter. So when I romanticize alcohol, it’s easy for me to want to credit my relationship with it for giving me the love of my life and my family,” Alissa continued.

Alissa’s train of thought reminded me of someone who recently emphasized that it is okay to have conflicting emotions. Both can exist simultaneously. In Alissa’s case, yes, alcohol did nearly ruin her life, AND alcohol also gave her the things in her life that she loves. Both are her realities.

“And don’t get me wrong, getting with Peter was so hard, especially on my career. We worked together, and though he never experienced consequences, the other women at work hated me. I mean, I represented a woman’s worst nightmare…Imagine being engaged. Your fiance comes home and is like, ‘I’m leaving you. There is someone else, so we’re not getting married.’ That’s devastating, and not to mention women are already terrible to each other. I had to find somewhere else to work. My job was becoming a dead end. And by then, I was drinking so much on the weekends that my body wasn’t back to normal til mid-week. I needed a change. I was pacing, shaking, anxious. I was telling people that I was ‘just’ suffering from ‘anxiety.’ Peter drank a lot, too.”

“So Alissa, being an attorney, how were you able to balance your drinking with all your responsibilities, like your paperwork?” Her answer was simple and a common one for many women. Alissa was a performer. She was incredibly talented at getting people out of jail. She had strong relationships with prosecutors, was highly respected, and had what she called “jail cred.” If someone was in police custody, Alissa was THE lawyer to represent them. While everything inside was disintegrating, and Alissa often slapped her paperwork together, she always hit the mark in court.

“I would get my hand slapped about not having someone’s documents done completely, and I’d respond, ‘Well, tell that to Joe, who I just got off of a 35-year sentence, and you let me know if he gives two shits about his paperwork being right.’ That was enough to keep everyone’s mouth shut.” And so she carried on, arranging her drinking around her work.

Eventually, Alissa’s body started to show signs of alcohol abuse. An emergency room doctor noticed during an urgent visit visible damage to her esophagus. In her mind, Alissa knew that it was due to her drinking and was expecting to be chastised by the doctor only to hear, “well, you have a stressful job. Make sure to take care of yourself.” How many doctors notice a patient is drinking too much and avoid confronting them? I wondered.

Though the ER doctor didn’t mention Alissa’s drinking, as soon as she described her visit to the hospital to her parents, her mother cautioned her of her grandfather’s drinking and how it led to esophageal problems. “I felt caught! But still, I told her she was out of line,” Alissa laughed. But, all jokes aside, the emergency room visit was enough to get her to stop drinking, for two months.

Alissa picked up a drink once again, and things quickly spiraled. She hit a low she thought she couldn’t escape from and tried to find a solution in a bottle of Klonopin. Hoping to not wake up, she found herself in a haze in a psychiatric ward to discover she was on a 72-hour hold for her suicide attempt. Alissa smirked as she looked back on that incident, describing how she thought she could “lawyer” her way out of it. She felt confident she would leave until the physician on call informed her that the courts would be involved if she tried to go home. Immediately Alissa knew that meant one of her judge friends would see the case. She paused, “Nevermind, I’m good!” She sulked back to her room and stayed quiet for the remainder of the psychiatric hold. At this time, though her parents pretended to ignore the fact that she had a failed suicide attempt,they insisted that she needed to stop drinking. Peter was also concerned, so Alissa joined Alcoholics Anonymous.

“I was working the steps, and things were going well, getting sober was great. Peter proposed. But then, I started doing Step 9. I went to make amends to my mom, and when I asked her what I could do to make things right, she said to me, ‘Now that you’re sober, what you can do for me is promise me that you won’t have kids.’”

My mouth dropped open, and I muttered, “wait, what?” Alissa responded, “Right, so as I’m sitting there devastated looking at my mother wide-eyed, I’m doing what my sponsor said to do and take notes of all the shit she said. So when I left her house, crushed, I called my sponsor. Her response was, ‘pray about it.’

“What the fuck was I supposed to pray about? ‘This is bullshit,’ I said, ‘this program sucks.’ So I quit AA. I used it as an excuse and went back and forth drinking. Then I got pregnant so I stopped for my pregnancy.” The birth of her daughter brought the family together for a brief time to celebrate this new life.

But by her first Mother’s Day, Alissa relapsed.

Her relationship with AA was on and off for a while. She would go back and attend meetings regularly for a time, baby in tow. Still, having a child and drinking that was not yet under control also gave Alissa’s parents the ammo to exert the power they lost when Alissa gained financial independence. Her fight against her parents’ control and the program’s suggestions for managing that conflict both motivated Alissa to drink and to stop drinking. She drank to escape and didn’t drink to outwardly prove she was acceptable in her parents’ eyes. Alissa did have a short span of sobriety, and as things started to calm down, she was up for a significant promotion at work. But then she drank, along with Peter, complicating her life once again.

During this binge, they drank for about four days. Alissa threatened to leave during a drunken argument, and when Peter took her phone to prevent her from going out, she, in her words, “hurt him badly.” I didn’t ask what that meant. Nonetheless, it was enough for her parents to come and take their daughter away. Alissa was immediately hospitalized for 28 days.

Alissa’s parents’ involvement became overwhelming, and this time because of her daughter, she felt pressured to yield to every request. Everything they asked for, she did in fear of them calling child protective services. She tried everything, but she still couldn’t stay consistently sober. When her parents caught Alissa drinking, they would take her daughter for a few days until she appeared steady. “I mean, I wasn’t really sober, but I didn’t want to lose my daughter. At this time, she was showing some delays with speaking and walking, and my parents proceeded to blame me for her developmental concerns,” Alissa said. “How is she now?” I asked. She responded, “Oh, she runs around and talks a ton now.” So glad to hear that.

Subsequently, Alissa relapsed for the last time. Her and her husband’s arguing escalated to the point that she ran to the neighbors’ house. Alissa claimed that Peter was abusing her, so the police came and arrested Peter. They sent Alissa to a nearby hospital for alcohol intoxication, where she blew almost a .4. After which, the hospital transferred her to a residential facility for 35 days. She barely spoke to her husband then. From jail, Peter also went to a different treatment center. The little communication time she had was for FaceTime with her daughter.

“I mean, I didn’t love rehab, but I was starting to feel better and looked forward to getting out. Then one day, one of the therapists took me to her office. She opens the door, and there is a representative from child protection services there. I couldn’t’ believe it! My parents actually decided to try to take my daughter from me, and on top of that, my court date was the day I left treatment.” At the hearing, Alissa did agree to give her parents temporary custody. However, since then, her parents have fought with her regarding visitations and intentionally planning events to create scheduling conflicts. They purposely organized social activities with her siblings and daughter when Alissa couldn’t attend. As a result, Alissa’s parents alienated her from the family.

Despite this ongoing battle for her daughter and freedom from her parents that Alissa is in, she has stayed sober. She’s back in AA, and she’s accepted working with a sponsor. She doesn’t love the program, but it’s helping to keep her sober.

Alissa’s been sober since November of 2020, and her sobriety since has been anything but easy. “A lot is riding on me staying sober,” Alissa reflected. Peter got sober, too. Today, Alissa works her recovery program and works with a therapist. She exercises and stays busy.

Alissa remarked as we wrapped up, “I feel like I was always trying so hard to get the approval and praise of my family. I got it from everywhere else but them. Now, look where we’re at. Now I realize and understand where my parents’ behaviors came from. It doesn’t make it easy, but it helps to understand.” It’s an uncomfortable truth to accept, but Alissa knows that moving forward, it’s going to take a lot of work, including staying sober.

“I’m doing whatever it takes. I can’t lose my daughter.”

Where I Was

Posted on May 16, 2021May 16, 2021 by Jessica Duenas in Recovery Stories, Written by Jessica

Audio

“I can’t post about my dating life! My dating life has nothing to do with my recovery,” I said.

My friend Chris very quickly responded, “But your recovery is more than just you recovering from being an alcoholic. Your message of recovery is the life that you live now, so even if that includes a boyfriend, or whatever that is, that is your message of recovery. You’ve recovered from where you were. From the heartache, from the death of Ian…and you’re moving on with your life. That’s the testimony and that’s the recovery that you’re in. So you’re still portraying the same message. The message of wholeness, the message of happiness, the message of joy, the message of love, like all that’s prevalent. Everything that you post as far as your recovery does not have to be directly about alcohol or the stuff that you’ve dealt with. Having a new relationship is just as much recovery as well.”

I never thought about it that way.

I got anxious thinking about my fear of judgment because I’m “breaking” yet another one of the invisible “rules” of early sobriety. You know, “don’t do this…,” and, “don’t do that…,” and everything in between. esp

Suddenly it dawned on me that when I tried to follow invisible rules, attempting to didn’t get me sober. Accepting help from above and those around me, cutting myself loose from my secret, THAT is what helped me get and stay sober a day at a time to this point.

My mentor often says, “you can do ANYTHING you want, as long as you’re sober. ANYTHING.” She’s definitely an admirable “rule-breaker” who has been sober for many years, so what she says is always something to really process.

Anything, right?

Well to that list of doing “anything” I want, I’ve added allowing my heart to mend.

My heart has been touched by someone, actually. My hope is restored and crazy enough, I’m feeling again. I don’t know where this journey will take me, or what it may mean for my future, but what it does mean is that today I’m healing.

We do recover from alcohol. We do recover from drugs.

And…we do recover from broken hearts.