Early Sobriety

Thanksgiving

~ Patti ~ Leave a comment

I know the holidays are rough for most of us.  But for me it’s the one time a year that I’ve been able to put aside my depression and anxiety and focus on hope. My husband tells me that Christmas lives at my house.  I have a small ranch but I decorate several trees.  There is Christmas in every corner.  That’s not to say that I didn’t have some rough years.

I remember the year I was so mad at my husband, now my ex, that I actually threw the Thanksgiving turkey as it was coming out of the oven.  I’m not proud of that.  There should never be any reason for such a violent reaction.  Alcohol brings to us a myriad of regrets and behaviors that we never thought we were capable of.

The year after that I was six weeks sober and found myself sitting in an aftercare meeting Thanksgiving night.  I remember thinking, “I’ve only got to be among the lowest people on the face of the earth.  How did, I, get here?”

Those were probably my most despondent holidays.  That was 14 years ago.  It’s amazing what a decade brings.  My home is a safe place today.  It’s safe from me.  The holidays are joyous occasions that I get to spend with my five children and their spouses and kids.  I get to bring good memories and set my own traditions.  My grandkids know that I will get them books and they look forward to that.  I paint special ornaments on wood for my kids that they can pass on to their kids after I’m gone.  My Christmases will live on generations after I’m gone.

This year I look forward to spending Thanksgiving with my ex-husband and his wife.  They are family.  We will laugh and share our troubles and dreams and things that we’ve learned.  We will share our gratitude.

Maybe the holidays are horrible for you.  I pray you will wrap yourself in the fellowship of a group of alcoholics and make them your family.  I know a man that has a Christmas breakfast for his alcoholic friends.  He stays in service and takes care of his adopted family of ex-drunks.  He gives the gift of hope.

There are good years and bad years.  But I know one thing for sure, “I’ve have touched the bottom and it is sound.” –John Bunyan

Just for today I will look for those things that I can be Thankful for and remember that there will never be a holiday that a drink won’t make worse.  Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Fighting Against the Tide

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One of my sons went to the doctor for depression.  The doctor had him fill out a questionnaire that asked things like, “Do you think that bad things will happen to you?  Do you think that you are going to die?”  Even when my son is depressed, he always seems to find the humor in things.  He’s telling me the story and we’re both laughing, “Of course bad things are going to happen to me and I’m going to die.”  Doesn’t everyone know that?  As an alcoholic, those thoughts come naturally for me and apparently they come naturally for him too.

It turns out that he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in which at first I took the news rather well and decided that it made sense with some of his dangerous behaviors and highs and lows.  I was relieved he at least had a name to it and that there is definite help for it.  But after a couple of hours I started catastrophizing it.  I thought about all the bad things that could happen with it and thought that maybe he could die from dangerous behaviors or suicide.  I also thought that I must have been a really bad mother and I asked myself if I was abusive and I don’t remember it or don’t recognize it.  The more I wondered if I was crazy the crazier I got.

I texted my sister for some support and she said what I expected her too.  She told me to raise my energy and think about all the things I love about my son and to think positive thoughts about his healing.  She told me to create wellness and love.  I totally agreed with her, but as always, the practice is far harder than the theory.

By the end of the day I was so exhausted with worry and projection and beating myself up that I came home from work and went to bed without fixing dinner for myself or my husband.  As I lay in bed I thought of the things my sister told me to do.  I knew she was right but I still wanted to sulk.  I knew my son needed positive support but I couldn’t lift myself up enough to send it to him through meditation, prayer or any other way.  I couldn’t shake the thought that it was my fault or that I could have prevented it.

So I did what I used to do when I first got sober.  It’s my personality to fear life and tough times and just go to bed in the fetal position for days or weeks and not come out of my room fearing what’s on the outside.  When I first got sober I was afraid of doing that because I knew that I wouldn’t come out of my room except to go to the liquor store.  So when I went through divorce, or broke up with my boyfriend or needed a fourth surgery on my hand, I’d go to bed in fetal position but I would limit it.  Just for today I’ll stay in bed.  Tomorrow morning I’ll resume my regular life and practice positive thinking.

By doing that, I’ve allowed myself to grieve but not wallow.  It takes the pressure off and I don’t have to beat myself up for not being positive in a tough situation or not practicing what I preach.  I went to bed at 6:00am and got up in the morning and things looked just a little lighter which made it easier for me to meditate on the positive and send my son positive energy.

He called me two days later and reported that he was already feeling better.  I contribute it to the creation of positive energy and technology of course.  I also contribute it to the fact that I wasn’t trying to fight against the tide.  I allowed myself just enough isolation and grief to let some very real feelings and fear out but not enough to stop my productivity.  It allowed me to be rational about his depression and it allowed me to accept it as being life on life’s terms.

Just for today, I give myself a break and allow myself the time to pull myself together.

Someone to Mimic

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I’ve been on vacation visiting my family two states away.  I come home feeling a little sad that I probably won’t see my family for another year and strangely at peace and ready to tackle whatever life decides to hand me, life on life’s terms.   I also feel empowered to create the life that I want.  Somehow, going back to my roots and catching up with those I love has grounded me.

It wasn’t always like that.  I used to hold a lot of resentment.  Working the 12 steps helped me to see what my part was in the disintegration of my family relationships.  It also helped me to see my family and parents as human beings with feelings and weaknesses and issues of their own as well as strengths and talents.  My little sister has always been a big part of that as well.  She is an old soul and somehow sees to the truth in all of us.  She’s the first person that really saw me and got who I really was.  I don’t think it was always that she approved of how I thought or my behaviors, but she understood where they were coming from and she approved of me.

I remember when I was drinking I had friends and family tell me that I was drinking too much, that I should grow up and that I was a spoiled brat.  All of that was true but it didn’t really bother me too much and at that point I didn’t care who said it.  I’d just lift up my glass and have another drink at them.  But one day my sister shot me a look that pierced through my heart and down to my soul.  She was standing in her kitchen and she didn’t say much but the look she gave me was half anger and half, “You’re so pathetic.”  I don’t know what she was really thinking but I know my sister well enough to guess.  Whatever it was, I got the message loud and clear even in my drunken fog.  I was clearly out of control.  It was bad enough to warrant the disapproving look from my sister.

When I first got sober, she was probably the only one who believed in me.  There was an acronym WWJD, what would Jesus do?  But I when I was struggling with a life issue or didn’t know what the next right thing to do was I’d say to myself, WWJD.  What would Jennifer do? (I changed the name to protect the innocent.)  Jesus was much too esoteric and unreachable for me in early sobriety and my sister just somehow understood life.  She got it and I didn’t.  Somehow I could figure it out if I put myself in her shoes, so that’s what I did.  Little by little I learned to think like her and after several years and a sponsor my feet were set firmly on the ground.  I go back home when my grip loosens to get re-grounded.

Although our personalities, tastes in cloths and décor and interests are totally different, we seem to share a common thread.  We have the same spiritual bent and similar philosophies of life that we have developed separately but in the same time frame.  We also developed interest in some health products separately but in the same time frame.  It seems that even though distance separates us, there is a matrix of some kind that keeps us connected even when we don’t talk for a while.

My sister tells me what I need to hear, not what I want to hear.  There is no greater friend.  I have a lot of gratitude for her and for the part she has played in my life and in my sobriety.  She’s my little sister but I look up to her.

I think one of the keys to my sobriety was to have someone that I could look up to and mimic.  I have tried to find people who were smarter, more spiritual, and richer than me to hang out with and to learn from.  I hang out with the winners and somehow that gives me success.

Just for today I will mimic someone I look up to.

Depression

~ Patti ~ Leave a comment

Early sobriety was difficult for me.  The promises of sobriety are said to materialize, sometimes quickly sometimes slowly.  For me it was this painful grueling process in which I hung on by my fingernails for almost three years.  I had worked the steps. I had a sponsor that I called everyday along with other sober friends.  I went to meetings whenever I could.  I prayed and tried my best to assemble some sort of spiritual life.  I read books.  I was really no better off than before I had started drinking.  Or at least that’s how I felt.  I only drank for three years to medicate my depression before ending up in a treatment center.   I was still miserable and self-destructive.  Although I didn’t drink, I picked up smoking.  At times, I was suicidal.  And finally after three years of this, I relapsed.  I had to get out of the fear and anxiety somehow.  I was desperate.  The frightening part is that it almost was an automatic response to life’s stress for me.  There wasn’t a lot of forethought and it was totally unplanned.  It was such a short relapse that I decided no one needed to know about it (another story), but I did decide that maybe it was time to see a doctor and get some outside help and some antidepressants.

I know there are those in 12 step programs that disagree with having prescribed antidepressants.  I am not one of them as long as they are of the non-addictive variety.  What I know for sure is that I am bodily and mentally different from my fellows.  I have studied chemistry and biology and what I know today is that I sometimes suffer from not having the right amount of neurotransmitters in my brain to prevent depression no matter how hard I work my program.  I also know that my sobriety is contingent upon my spiritual condition.  I think sometimes I’m led by my higher power to seek medical help when necessary.  It’s not a character weakness.  For me it’s more like a bronchial infection that needs medical attention every so often when I have some unusual stress.

After three months of medication, I was a new person.  My life changed dramatically.  However, I don’t believe it was all in the medication.  My work with the 12 steps was preparation and the medicine was the catalyst that helped increase the activation energy of the work I had done, putting me in a far better place mentally in a shorter amount of time.

I do not recommend this for everyone. It’s just part of my story.  I do understand that my disease stands waiting for me.  I understand that there is also only so much stress, anxiety and fear that I can take before taking a drink is automatic.  I have a quality life and I work a solid program, but sometimes it’s not enough.  I need medical help.  I practice all kinds of alternative medicine and believe in living as drug free as possible which includes antidepressants and antibiotics, asprin, etc.  There is a time and a place for my program.  There is a time and a place for alternative medicine.  There is a time and a place for medical intervention.  The trick is putting aside my ego that tells me I can do it on my own and knowing how much is enough. Living life on life’s terms tells me that I will get a bronchial infection from time to time.  It tells me I will have depression from time to time.  I’m ok with that today and I’m ok with getting the help I need.

Just for today I will live life on life’s terms and accept it.

Things We Trip On

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The day I walked into my first 12 step meeting, I had barely finished detoxing.  I was still in treatment, still shaky and terrified, full of a million forms of fear.  I knew my life was ending as I knew it.  My marriage had ended a long time before I started drinking.  I thought if I had a few drinks and relaxed maybe things would improve.  It worked until it didn’t.  I knew divorce was imminent.  I had no education and no skills.  I knew I’d have to provide for myself after 20 years of being a stay at home mom. 

We are told, “There are those that suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them recover if they have the capacity to be honest.”

“I knew I couldn’t stay sober,” was probably the first honest thing I said to myself in a long time.

Over the years when I look back on that time, I still feel this pain inside my chest.  I still feel the fear.  I still feel the heartbreak and I still feel the pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization of my disease.  I still feel the physical weakness and the nausea after detoxing for 3 days. I still feel the tremors.  I feel that feeling of being utterly alone in an abyss of darkness where there is not one single person that believes in you or even cares, not even yourself.  I don’t think it’s hard to figure out why someone would commit suicide.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was walking into the light.  There in the middle of the city in a mental hospital, I found a room of hope. I found a group of people who loved me sober and they would love me drunk.  My higher power is a funny thing.  As my life was ending, he met me at the door with the beginning of a new life.

My current husband was the chairman of that very meeting.  It was 11 months before we dated and 6 years before we married from that time.  I’m married to a man that knows who I am at my sickest and knows who I am at my healthiest and loves me anyway.  Maybe even because of it.

I don’t suggest looking for a soul mate at a 12 step meeting.  We are not sane people.  I’m just saying that when our old life ends, our higher power has already made arrangements for the new.  We probably trip over it.  Sometimes it just takes standing still and doing the next right thing one day at a time.  I decided that it wasn’t important that I was happy.  It was important that I did what was suggested for me to do.  When I had thoughts of suicide, I said to myself that I would stay here just for today.  I went to meetings, found a sponsor, and worked 12 steps.

What I’ve found is that it’s the things I do a little every day that make up my life.  If I work on my sobriety a little every day I’ll stay sober.  If I work on my education a little every day, I end up with a degree.  If I work on not having to control my loved ones a little every day, I end up with good relationships.  If I work on thinking good thoughts a little every day, I end up happy.

The opposite it true also.  The small amount of negativity I subject myself to every day, can corrode my career, my relationships and my sobriety. It’s a choice.

Just for today I think I’ll focus on one good thought.