“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.
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.
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.”
Teacher of the Year Head Shot, 2019.
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.
Rehab, 2020.
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.
16 Months Sober, 2022.
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.
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.)
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 and Cathy Today. Provided by Gary.
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.
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.”
“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.
Please note that Bottomless to Sober does not endorse any specific recovery program or path to recovery. Neither does it endorse meeting or not meeting in person during the pandemic.
My story is your story, and your story is mine. I see the value in sharing them. Actually, that’s an understatement; telling our stories, that’s the lifeblood of the recovery community. When we share our stories, we are participating in mutuality. Kertz Ketcham once discussed how we give by getting and we get by giving. Not a single part of my story has NOT already been told by the women who have gone before me. Like them, I too felt insecure and uncomfortable in my skin and used my drinking and drug use to cope. Like them, I, too, have trauma and relied on perfectionism to feel some semblance of control and appear put together. Like them, I, too, ultimately engaged in behavior that is morally reprehensible.
On and on.
I regularly engaged in swaps, giving a piece of myself, of dignity, trust, or consent away to others when I was in no position to give these things away. I would give anything in exchange for whatever was going to give me that sweet, sweet buzz. People who don’t feel whole ought not to go about giving bits of themselves away. Alas, that is what we all do. What alcoholic/addict would know NOT to do this? We do not know what we do not know.
We can describe the myriad of chaos and endless examples of the insanity of the disease through our stories. Of all that we did to get that freeing feeling. Frankly, thank God for that relief. That reprieve is how I got to feel better, sometimes, back then. How could I progressively move through MYlife feeling the way Idid without the respite from the chaos and the insanity that being glazed provided?! Using became the only thing that provided me relief. And it did…until it didn’t.
That anyone gets and stays sober is an absolute miracle. People do it. I did it. I’ve been clean and sober as of writing this for twelve years. That is a miracle.
I needed drugs and alcohol to live. So when I stopped using them, I thought to myself, “I had better replace them with something that works, and it better feel good!” To both of these proposals, I say they do!
If sharing our stories is the lifeblood of recovery, then living recovery is spiritual oxygen. This oxygen can only be inhaled by the community.
Saint Francis, the 12th-century mystic, taught that the antidote to confusion and paralysis is always a return to simplicity, to what is right in front of us, to the nakedly obvious (Rohr, 2020).
It’s simple. We need to stop using, but we need others to help us. In turn, we need to help others so that we stay “stopped.” As trite as this sounds, we must go to meetings, get into the literature of recovery, and not drink or use in between meetings. Only then can we hear what we need to learn. We will hear what we need to do when we are ready for it. But we won’t if we are not at meetings or in recovery literature.
We live in an extraordinarily technologically advanced times. Options are infinite in terms of the recovery spaces and resources that exist today. I am not suggesting that the sheer magnitude of the amount of these offerings is a bad thing, hardly at all. Someone could get overwhelmed though looking for help.
Psychological theories and self-Help books abound. Have you noticed how large that section of the book store is? It’s huge. There are many talking heads and experts. Treatment centers are everywhere. Podcasts and Youtube channels. However, these offerings would not exist without what has been called “the most significant phenomenon in the history of ideas in the 20th century” (Kurtz & Ketcham, 1992). This, of course, is the Twelve Step recovery program outlined in The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Therefore, as St Francis encouraged, let us get back to simplicity and back to basics. Let’s get back to The Big Book.
While returning to simplicity sounds just as it is, simple, it is in no way easy. What The Big Book offers takes time and work. This is difficult to accept in this instant gratification world we inhabit. The Big Book unequivocally emphasizes the absolute importance of community. Within the community of recovery, we become acquainted with ourselves by getting acquainted with others.
Cosette, provided by author
Thank God we live in this technologically advanced age where we can connect with others online. That said, I would be remiss if I did not pointedly suggest that our online community must be supplemented with actual in-person connection and regular study of the literature. It is in this space where that spiritual oxygen can be exchanged. If the space is not physically shared by individuals, how then can this essence be transmitted? It can’t. It is not lost on me that as I write this, the global community has been rocked by an airborne pandemic. We have been prohibited, by law in some cases, to come together in our fellowship. All the more important that we come together again when we can as soon as we can.
One may very successfully stay dry or clean solely utilizing what is available at their fingertips and without crossing the threshold of their home. However, one might be denying themselves the opportunity of a type of quality of sobriety which creates the ultimate motivation to no longer use drugs and alcohol. That is the development of emotional sobriety. And it is thisemotional sobriety that feels good. It takes time to obtain, but it is possible, and it is there for the taking for anyone who has the capacity to be honest, and works for it.
**Please consult with a medical provider when seeking treatment for drug addiction.*
Audio
Life in active addiction is difficult. Getting sober can be nearly impossible for some, and a sober life does not necessarily equal an easy life. Ana’s story is full of countless challenges, lots of falls, and even more comebacks.
“Sobriety’s been a challenge, but I wouldn’t trade my life today for anything.”
Raised by her abusive mother. Ana’s childhood only increased in chaos as she grew. She described her mother as, “The older she got, the crazier she got. I mean, she caught herself on fire.” Yes, Ana meant this literally. “What about your dad, Ana?” Ana’s dad was primarily absent from her childhood. “My dad, I saw him a handful of times growing up. I always wanted to be with him, especially because my mother was constantly hurting us. She hurt us a lot. My dad had a wreck drinking and driving. He actually killed someone, so he went to prison.” Ana’s a fast talker and can get a lot out in a single breath, so she paused then continued, “There was always something that was causing me trauma, and I didn’t even know, I didn’t understand that it was happening to me. I didn’t understand any of it. I wasn’t allowed to kiss my mother, hug my mother, tell her I loved her. I just couldn’t find the love. I was a good kid. I wasn’t a bad kid.”
“When I was 16, that’s when I found alcohol and drugs. My first drink felt like I could breathe. I felt that people cared about me. The people that did drugs and alcohol didn’t judge me. They didn’t make fun of how I looked. I fit right in.” Ana described how drugs and alcohol brought her the peace and comfort she yearned for since early childhood. Her life was really chaotic and confusing, so for her to escape was bliss. I assumed that since her mother had been so abusive, that her doing drugs would have only brought on more chaos at home.
“How was your relationship with your mother now that you were older and she found out that you were doing drugs?” Ana chuckled, “At that time we started using together, it brought the relationship to a different level. I finally had something she wanted, she started to be nice to me, it was good. She started liking my friends, too. She just was easier to be around.”
This new bond didn’t last long. One day her mother had Ana drive up to her mother’s boyfriend’s house. As she got out of the car, she turned to Ana and said in a harsh yet hushed tone, “don’t get out of the car, don’t say anything, and shut your mouth,” Ana recalled. Her mother went into the house and rushed out shortly after, taking Ana straight home. Ana’s mom had just robbed her own boyfriend. As they heard a call pull up, the boyfriend’s car, they went and hid in the back. Ana recalled watching the car slowly pull into the driveway and pausing. They held still, watching him. Steadily, he put the car in reverse and backed away, driving off as he had come in. Had he gone a “hair further,” he would have seen them.
Once he was gone, her mother went through the house, ransacking it, searching for all the drugs in the home, including what she stole, making sure not to leave a fraction of an ounce of weed, and balancing the beer that remained in the fridge. She walked out. They didn’t see her again for about four months,
“So you must have been devastated, right?” I asked.
Wrong.
Ana and her sister, ages 16 and 14, respectively, were alone for a week. The “wicked witch was gone.” So they partied, had friends over, they were distracting themselves. Yes, they thought about their mother, they wondered where she went, but they also felt relief. No one was in the house who could hurt them. Shortly after her mother’s departure, the family got involved. It happened to be that her father was wrapping up his prison sentence. As soon as he got out, he pulled the girls out of school to live with him and his girlfriend, her two kids, plus the additional two kids who would come over every other weekend. Eight people in a one-bedroom apartment. It was tight, but her father eventually got them into a house where they had room to stretch. With her mother gone and her father back in the picture, Ana looked forward to having a dad around. The time lost while he was away now could be made up. Hope filled Ana’s heart as she started this new life with her father.
She said, “I wanted my dad my entire life. But when I finally got my dad, I didn’t have my dad at all. He was focused on his girlfriend and her sons. All the strangers were getting the affection. So one day, I came home high on weed. Then he called the police on me! They didn’t do anything, so I did it again. I was so angry. All these years, you abandoned me, and you hadn’t been around. And now I’m still not good enough.” Things weren’t any better at her new high school either. “I had been to ten schools, and that was the worst school I had ever been in.” As a teacher, I’ve seen my fair share of parents who would come to school and raise hell if they suspected their daughter was being bullied. Instead, her father pulled her out of school senior year. “I didn’t get to go to prom, walk at graduation, participate in any senior trips. Instead, I spent my senior year in a treatment facility.”
Like Sara, despite being the youngest in the facility, Ana adjusted fairly well, but she was furious and felt betrayed. “I didn’t need to be around strangers; I needed someone to show me that they cared, but he just sent me there. I didn’t get a yearbook when I was 17. I got a Big Book. I got a Big Book with everyone’s signatures.” When her time in treatment was up at age 18, Ana prepared to go back home only to find that her stepmother was sending her to another facility instead of letting her come back into the home. At this point, Ana’s mother had reappeared. She also had gone to treatment herself. When Ana was getting transferred to the new facility, she escaped and hid from the police dispatched to find her. “I walked in the snow, knocking door to door, hoping someone would let me in so I could avoid the cops.” No one let her in, but Ana did eventually get a hold of her mother. Her mom had a place to stay, so she let Ana stay with her. Though they each had just completed treatment programs, they didn’t stay clean. Ana didn’t live with her mother for long either.
The next years of her life were a blur. “I don’t remember what happened, I just know that shit happened, and it was all bad.” Her drug use got worse, crack, homelessness, moving around to different cities hoping to get her life together.
She lucked out when her aunt gave her a chance, and she moved into an apartment with her cousin in a new city. She was grateful. Her drug use slowed down as a result, which was positive, but her drinking continued and along with it, so did her depression. One day, on her birthday, she hit a low point.
Ana attempted suicide.
In the hours leading to the attempt, Ana went out drinking for her birthday, hoping to find someone to spend the night with. She had the apartment to herself as her cousin was away on a camping trip. When she didn’t connect with anyone, she came home drunk, upset, rejected. Two dozen bright red roses were sitting still, waiting for her when she arrived. They were a gift from her sister.
Ana snapped. She scrambled around the apartment, looking for anything with a sharp edge. Razors, knives, whatever she thought would cut her flesh. She laid in bed preparing to rip at her wrists when the doorknob rattled. She heard the door squeak and then a shriek. Her cousin had walked in. Seeing Ana lying with the blade against her wrist, her cousin leaped onto the bed. When she landed, her cousin felt a poke and ripped the sheet up off of Ana, revealing every sharp tool in the apartment laid around her. She called 911, and Ana went straight to the hospital again.
“I was pissed. I always wanted to D-I-E,” she spelled out the word die, being mindful of her son possibly being within earshot as she spoke. “I felt horrible, I wanted to die, and no one even let me try. I would pray to God, I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to be here anymore. I have always asked God since I was a kid. I never had any love, no kindness. I couldn’t take it. I just didn’t want to keep going through life. It was too overwhelming and hard.”
After her suicide attempt in the apartment, Ana’s aunt didn’t allow her to return. Ana eventually ended up back home and moved in with a friend. She did find her way back to drugs, but this time not for long.
When she moved in, she met John, “the boy next door.” He later became her husband. Ana had a habit of attracting younger men, so throughout our conversation, she occasionally referred to them as “boys.” Her connection with John filled a void for Ana, and she found herself willing to give up everything for him. The drugs, the alcohol, even cigarettes. “Those were the rules that I wanted him to live by, and I was willing to do the same. He was okay with it! He chose me! He gave up all of his comforts with his family for the sake of being with me; I felt loved.”
For the duration of her marriage, about six years, Ana didn’t touch alcohol or drugs. Toward the end of their relationship, she started stealing his grandmother’s prescriptions. Though the pill use appeared minor at the time, this was a slip that would lead to an eventual landslide. When they divorced, Ana was happy to move on. In her married years, she did well for herself and was ready to be an independent single woman. Outside of those few pills she was sneaking, everything was great.
Ana was recently divorced and 30 when she met up with some friends at a festival. She hadn’t had a drink in seven years, and her friends were excited to taste wine. Ana said, “I thought to myself, I’m grown, I’m a woman now. I know right from wrong. I mean, I drive a Mercedes. Certainly, I’m not going to drink and drive in a Mercedes! I had become sophisticated!”
On day one of drinking after seven dry years, she went straight from tasting wine to pounding drinks at a bar past 2 in the morning. Shortly after, drugs came right back into the picture.
So much of what Ana gained in those seven years that she was sober, vanished, or was at risk of being ruined. Nothing in Ana’s life was steady except for the hold of drugs and alcohol on her.
During an attempt to get sober in 2015, Ana moved into a halfway house and met a “boy.” He was eleven years younger than her and was barely a few months sober. Things moved quickly. It was August, they met. October came, and they moved in together. Come November Ana’s pregnant. By the end of the year, Eddie relapsed and left town after he robbed a local heroin dealer.
Ana was alone briefly, but she followed after Eddie because “I wanted my baby hell or high water to have a mom AND a dad there.” Eddie couldn’t stay out of jail, nor could he stay sober. Once Bryson was born, Ana couldn’t stay sober either. In the years that followed, there were attempts at getting clean. They tried to get it together. They moved cities, looked for different environments, but no matter where they went, they couldn’t escape their addiction.
The following years consisted of breakups, attempts to get sober, broken promises, and increasingly worse drug use. Then things took a turn for the worse.
They pulled in from having bought some spice. They looked at their money. In front of them were only five one-dollar bills. They looked at each other. They knew what to do. Sure they had just come from buying the drugs, but why not be efficient and get the five dollars’ worth NOW so that they wouldn’t have to turn around and worry about it later?
The last thing that Ana remembered was putting the car in reverse.
She opened her eyes to find herself surrounded by white smoke. It was choking her. Her entire body was throbbing. She didn’t realize where she was until she looked up, and as she focused her eyes, a tree came into view as the smoke cleared. Ana had swerved into oncoming traffic, crossed four lanes, and crashed into a tree on the side of the road. Eddie was in the car with her.
So was their son.
I figured this is the part of the story where the arrest happens. “So, did you get arrested there?” I asked. “No, I woke up real quick. I made up this whole story about how I had to swerve to avoid someone who looked like they were on the phone, and so to avoid hitting that driver, I said that I lost control of my car. They believed me: no ticket, no arrest, nothing. I didn’t even have insurance or any papers for the car. Nobody was even hurt, but I took that as a sign, and I left Eddie again.”
Though she was briefly clean, Ana connected with another “boy” with who she had gone to elementary school, Jason. She obsessed over him for a year, and after much anticipation, upon meeting, she immediately felt something. She said, “Something was not right, I thought, ‘Jason’s probably not sober.’” She continued to describe the moment, “It was something about the way his head was cocked to the side, oh, and he asked me for money, too. I knew I shouldn’t have talked to him, Jessica. The problem with me is that it never matters. If I want something, I’m gonna get something. I just don’t care.”
“He was a heroin user, and at this point, I was no longer scared of the high. I wanted to know exactly what everyone was talking about. He didn’t want me to try it, so I told him that either he get me heroin and would help me use it, or I was going to go out there, find it myself and probably die trying because I wouldn’t do it right. I told him, ‘I’ll die, and it’ll be on your conscience.’ That was enough to have him get me the heroin.” From then on, they used heroin together, always in secret. It was fun at first, she said. “I was high all the time. I pretended to be a mom, I pretended to be present, but I was high all the time.” The one thing she didn’t do was put a needle in her arm. She only snorted it. “I was almost at the point of shooting up, but then my mom died, and that changed everything.”
Ana was going to her mother’s house one day with her son, she was heading to work, and her mother was going to babysit. “I don’t know what happened to her, I walked in with my kid, and she was dead on the floor. I think when my momma went to Heaven, she found out what I was doing and shifted things, so I had to stop heroin.”
Ana had not experienced “dope sickness” because she never ran out of heroin. Then one day, the “jump out boys” got her and Jason. She started to explain, “The police officer came to my car.” At that moment, I thought, “Oh, okay, so THIS is the part of her story where she gets arrested.”
I was still wrong. She got off with a warning, but she had to give all of the drugs she had over to the police officer. She described the moment saying, “I said, ‘Here you go sir, I’m sorry.’ And he let me go. Then, as soon as he walked away, it hit me that not once in my life did I ever have to go get drugs.” Finding heroin was practically impossible, it seemed. People would sell her fake drugs. It got bad enough that she had to find a former sponsee who had also relapsed to get her drugs. Eventually, Ana grew tired of the struggle. She decided that she needed to get off of heroin, and she left Jason.
“Did you go to treatment to get off heroin?” I asked.
“No, I smoked meth for four days.” She responded.
For four days, she stayed in the bathroom, using meth to help her get through the dope sickness that heroin withdrawal brought on. All the while, her son was home. “I made sure to check on him, feed him, leave him, and go retreat into the bathroom to stay high in there. I made sure he ate, he had a toy, the TV on, anything to keep him entertained while I hid in the bathroom.”
When she learned what long-term meth use does, she freaked out and got sober. Again.
Then Eddie called.
Just like before, he came with promises, waving the white flag of so-called sobriety, that he was “just” using CBD. Curious, Ana tried some when he offered. As soon as she hit the pipe, she felt the smoke flow into her lungs, and suddenly her heart sank. It wasn’t CBD. It was THC.
They were driving, and when Eddie saw her face overcome with worry, laughing, he said, “Let’s make a stopover at this house. We need to pick up something.” Angrily, she cried as they picked up drugs. She cried as she watched him go mad in her house, taking things apart, being obsessive, being compulsive. He had to leave.
Eddie finally left, and Ana felt she needed to take the edge off and drink, so she picked up two wine bottles. She uncorked one, sipped some, and as she felt the buzz start, she realized, “I don’t want to do this.” She opened the other wine bottle, and she poured all she had left down the sink. This was on July 18, 2019. “I pray to God that was the last time I picked up a white chip.”
So, how has Ana stayed sober ever since?
“I have stayed away from men. My thinker doesn’t work when I’m around them. I only have made bad decisions. I decided to focus only on my recovery.” Then she paused. “But things changed recently,” she said.
“Mark, a family friend who was going through a divorce, started reaching out. For months I refused each invite to dinner, to a movie, to a walk.” Then one day, after a long work week, she agreed to go to a movie. “From there, it was perfect. We connected on a deeper level than any I felt before. He told me he would take care of me, of my son, that he wanted to have a baby with me. He even told my father. I thought to myself, ‘I’ve been patient, I’m finally gonna get something good!’” As Ana spoke, her voice picked up an enthusiastic note. I even got excited for her. I thought, “Yes! She’s been so patient, now she’s getting the love she’s been waiting for!”
Her tone changed. “Then one day, I get a call at work.” I cringed and immediately braced myself, “Oh God,” I thought.
“He told me to come and get my things, that his wife was coming back. That he didn’t love me anymore, that he loves his wife. I didn’t have anywhere safe to go, my roommate had relapsed, and I couldn’t go back there with my son. So I stayed with a friend in the program.”
This all happened three weeks before we met. Thankfully Ana did just find a home recently, so she now has a safe space for her son. “It’s the most beautiful home I’ve ever lived in. It’s unlike anything I’ve seen before.”
Despite this heartbreak, Ana stayed sober. She maintained optimism and was ready to move on and not let this set her back. Yes, she was hurt and reeling from the shock, but she was grateful to have a home and be safe.
Then she started to feel sick.
She felt different, so she took a pregnancy test.
It was positive. She took more. Each one was positive.
“Mark called me, telling me to meet him at the clinic to get rid of it. I’ve done too much in my life to go get an abortion. I told him to get fucked and hung up.” For days he persisted, calling her phone, calling her at work. “I told him not to worry, I don’t want him. This isn’t a trap. I’m a grown woman. I made my bed, I’m going to lie in it and take care of my kid. So that’s where I’m at.” Ana spoke firmly with strong resolve.
“So, how are you feeling now?” I asked her. “Well, I’ve never made it to two years while trying to be in recovery on my own. The fact that I have a baby inside me makes me feel hopeful that I will make it. So far, I have a good history of not doing drugs while pregnant, so I think I’ll make it.” She laughed. “This baby is a blessing. This baby has saved my life.”
The baby is due in October of 2021. “Mark’s tried to deny that it’s his, but he’s just in denial. He begged for this baby for two months, and now he’s trying to deny it. I can’t WAIT to meet my baby. I have all the love to give this baby that I didn’t get.”
So a few wrap-up questions. “Where’s Eddie?” I asked. He’s in prison. Though Ana knows they won’t have the family she once dreamed of, she prays for him. She wants her son to have his father. “I’m scared for Eddie. He’s not using when he’s in there. When people sober up for a while, and then they go shooting up, it’s too strong for them, and they’re dying. I want my son to have his father. I don’t want Eddie to die when he gets out.” Ana’s right. That is too often a common story in recent years.
What’s next for Ana? “Well, I never got to finish music school when I was younger, but one thing that I will be doing is offering voice lessons. I can’t wait. I’m really excited to do that here in the next few months. I’m working on a book. I have a lot of goals. I’m really taking care of myself this time. I’m not letting my sorrow, my emotions, or my pain get the best of me. I cope differently today. I don’t cope with a bottle, a pill, or heroin. I cope with serenity, with God, with my support group, with music, with walking. Anything and everything, without putting some shit in my body. I refuse it. I’m definitely not above it though, when this break-up first happened, I was really close to getting myself a bottle, but thank God. Today, I think everything through. I think, think, think. I think about my life and how I will go right back to where I was if I put anything in my body. I just can’t. I’ve got two kids to think about now. I’ve got a future that I want to have.”
What about work? Actually, Ana’s been a nurse for 12 years. She completed college and nursing school during those different periods of sobriety she’s had throughout the years. Did I intentionally leave out the fact that she’s a nurse? Maybe, but to be honest, her line of work never came up in the conversation until the end. Ana is and has always been a professional. A mother. Addiction doesn’t target any specific group of people. A disease is a disease, and it manifests in the same way regardless of the host. So be mindful in your daily interactions with others because you don’t know what you don’t see.
I’m now two months sober. But I’ve been through this too many times to say with even a shred of believable confidence that I won’t slip up again. Don’t get me wrong. I want this sobriety. I wanted it with equal sincerity every time in the past, too.
What did my last day of drinking look like? It was January 6, the day of the insurrection in the US. My quitting on that date was merely a coincidence. Rather handy, though, as I’ve never previously taken note of my last day.
My quitting didn’t come on the heels of a big epiphany. You see, I couldn’t go cold turkey. I was so interminably dependent upon alcohol that even after I knew to my bones that I could no longer drink, I had to continue to do so to prevent myself from dying from the withdrawal. I had to agonizingly cut back for weeks before I could cease entirely, which felt like sharing a bed with someone I knew wanted to kill me.
What My Alcoholism Looked Like Before I Quit
In a nutshell, I drank around the clock. I no longer drank for pleasure. I drank for relief from the agony of withdrawal, which would rear its head after barely more than an hour or two without alcohol.
I’d wake up in the middle of the night with what felt every bit like a panic attack – heart racing, an inability to catch my breath, sweating so much that my sheets adhered to my skin. I’d reach for the bottle I kept next to my bed and swallow and swallow until I’d get pulled under.
Middle of the night drinking would only last until 6am at best, when it was time to take another drag. If I didn’t drink in the wee hours, by the time the morning was to start, I’d be shaking so hard that I could no longer hold a glass at all, not even be able to use a straw, could barely walk for the shaking. Even after a drink, when the liquid heat would steady my tremor, I still needed two hands to hold a drink to my mouth. And so, when most people are listening for the first birds of the day, I was filling up on liquor.
Repeat at around 9am, before noon, middle of the afternoon, before dinnertime, after dinnertime, around 11pm, again closer to 1am until one day bleeds into the next.
I could maintain short bouts of consciousness when work needed my attention, cooking for my family, most of all for my trips to resupply. Other than that, my eyes would slide shut with the force of iron doors. I was horizontal for most hours of most days.
I was going through 3 handles of hard alcohol about every 4-4.5 days, no fewer than 24 units of alcohol per day, sometimes as much as 30.
Physical Symptoms that Were New During This Period of Extreme Dependence
Not only did I no longer have any quality of life, I could absolutely feel my body shutting down. Even when fully dosed, I still shook enough that it was hard to conceal. If I started to withdraw, the shaking was so out of control that you couldn’t put a drink in my hands without the entirety of its contents flying out of the glass like a volcano erupting. My hands weren’t the only thing shaking. I shook from my core, my whole body, out of control. The feeling was miserable and felt like it arose from a place of anxious compulsion, not like the neutral shivers of being too cold. My tremors were tinged with a metallic unease.
Both malnutrition and problems within my brain led to terrible problems with balance and walking, a problem much deeper and more complex than the drunken stumbling depicted in movies. The shaking met with muscle weakness and brain distortions to make me completely unsure on my own legs. I could no longer safely manage stairs. I couldn’t walk for any distance without support. Additionally, my depth perception was impaired, and my eyesight was blurred.
Standing for more than a few minutes at a time was impossible. Before long, I’d grow so tired that I’d have to lean over for support, gasping for breath. More times than I could count, I ended up sinking to the floor in a puddle of tears, unable to stand. Even sitting was out of the question, for the most part.
I’d started having tingling in my hands leading partway up to my elbows. My lips were also fuzzy with the prickles of tingling. My tongue was so raw from the alcohol that it burned 24 hours every day.
The drinking stole away my eyesight quickly. I could no longer see or read at all without my glasses, and words were often out of reach even with them. Between my eyes and my shaking, it was hard to communicate with anyone via messages. Even the simplest sentence would take a ridiculous effort to type.
The alcohol had left my nervous system too tightly wound. Even the smallest movement or sound, from the ding of a new message to a reflection in my glasses, would make me jump.
The swelling above my beltline had become painfully obvious as even my elastic-banded pants became too tight. When standing, I could feel my liver pressing up on my lungs, making it hard to breathe.
My sense of smell became perverted. Most everything smelled horrible. Especially food, but my clothing and bed sheets were not excluded. I also experienced phantom smells. The trouble with my sense of smell combined with a lack of appetite meant that I’d go days at a time without eating. Even when I tried, my throat would reject food. It would also reject water. My desire to drink enough alcohol to keep the withdrawal symptoms at bay and my constantly passing out meant that there were some days when I’d not even drink a whole glass of water.
It was entirely and abundantly clear that I’d succeeded in poisoning myself, and my body was disintegrating.
How I Quit On My Own
Both because of my mother’s alcoholism and my own experience, I knew that a person dependent upon alcohol cannot safely go cold turkey (and I know of no professional who would advise doing this without medical supervision). Withdrawing from alcohol is incredibly dangerous, and potentially deadly.
Even though I knew it was explicitly killing me, I was equally well aware that I couldn’t just pour my supply down the drain and count my first day. I had to taper slowly and gently, all while enduring the grinding symptoms of withdrawal.
At first, I drank on the same schedule, as often as needed, but I’d only allow myself enough to ease the withdrawal symptoms. Instead of gulping until I’d pass out, I’d take deliberate drinks, then observe, drink and observe. This meant experiencing more shakes than I was comfortable with, and also more time awake with symptoms. This period lasted about a week.
The next step was to start to increase the length of the intervals between drinks. At first, only a little bit. Then, I’d stretch it an hour beyond comfort before allowing myself enough alcohol to relieve my symptoms.
I can remember how it felt like I’d made a big step when I “only” drank six times per day, and still in the middle of the night and first thing in the morning. Eventually, I moved down to four times per day.
The first time I went a whole overnight without drinking was another milestone.
Nearer to the end, I’d only drink after 5pm. And finally, only at bedtime. The last night, January 6th, I had just one drink before bed.
I felt no joy. I felt no pride. There were no balloons. I may have starved it of energy and attention, but my alcoholism, my monster, is still waiting quietly for me in the shadows. It is as patient as time.
