In Recovery: Staying Away From "F-it!"

Warning: my language choices are not so polite in the rest of this article, BUT there are kittens and puppies at the end.  

Let’s face it: life can feel unbearable sometimes. The sudden death of my 11-year old daughter was, yes, unbearable. I truly believe that I could not survive if I had to face the reality of what had happened and the minutes, days, years that stretched ahead and warped into horrific darkness - not without something to put some distance between me and it, something to let my brain, my heart, my soul rest. 

Normal ways of resting weren’t rest for me because quiet and stillness just opened my mental floodgates, and every sound, sight, and feeling involved in the accident that took my daughter’s life came rushing back as if it was happening all over again. It subsumed me. I remember wanting to scratch the eyes out of people who showed up with pep talks like, “You can do hard things.” You have no fucking idea what this kind of hard feels like, I would think. I do not know of a word that can capture the Truth of this pain.

In times of crisis, we reach for the “help” we know. Drinking alcohol was a familiar escape vehicle for me. I didn’t realize just how significant that familiarity was until several months into my sobriety though. I had never considered that alcohol might be a problem for me before she died, but the truth was that I had used alcohol to manage the pain and discomfort inside as far back as my first drink, when I was a teenager trying, without any real help, to deal with the sexual abuse and abandonment I suffered as a child, and I had returned to it over and over again to help me cope with everything from learning about the gaggle of schoolmates who videotaped themselves taking advantage of my limp, blacked-out body during that first drink to the panic attacks that emerged bewilderingly during my early college years to the social situations I had to navigate in spite of the diffidence that seemed to swell my tongue and arrest my thoughts. 

In short, I reached for alcohol because I knew it would help in some way. It helped to blur the memories and dull the self-loathing any time I had to be alone with my thoughts, and it helped me to attempt to appear “normal” in social situations, so people would still want to be around me, I thought. I also discovered that alcohol worked as well as my prescription medication to treat my panic attacks whenever I couldn’t get to my medication quickly enough. 

It helped, of course, until it didn’t. A final straw led me to say, “Fuck it all!” - to leave my job, move all the way across the country, and begin drinking with abandon. I remember that, even on that drive across the country, I couldn’t drink enough to get to “better” anymore. In the month or so that followed, I became very, very sick, and I was ready to give up completely. The only thing clear in my mind at that time was my plan to end my life. 

In the wee hours of February 19, 2014 - in what I now believe to be Divine intervention - a friend who had gotten sober the year before called me. I told her what was happening with me, and she somehow convinced me there was hope and told me that I should go to the first AA meeting I could find in the morning and do whatever they told me to do. That is exactly what I did.

I can do hard things.

The last ten years have shown me that I absolutely can do hard things, like these (not in order and many of them overlapping):

• I faced and worked through my grief and PTSD, surviving desperate depression and high anxiety. 

• I made amends. 

• I learned to grow in discomfort. 

• I rose above my shyness to forge new, healthy friendships. 

• I built a business in a new place. 

• I led high conflict, gut-wrenching community projects. 

• I completely transformed my life, betting on myself and choosing to put what’s good for me first. 

• I wrestled with deeply rooted insecurity.

I don’t judge myself for the crutches I used to get me through the darkest times in my life, when it felt impossible any other way. Our systems get overloaded sometimes, and we do the best we can. I know that is true for me. I also think I needed to stumble through the darkness in order to get past it. As I said back then to one person who loved me and desperately wanted to help me, “I just need to fall down for a while.”

I am grateful every day that I made it to the other side of my alcoholism and to the other side of the even darker days I encountered in early sobriety. I now completely understand the AA old-timers who used to annoy me when they introduced themselves as “grateful alcoholics.”

How did I do it?

I do not recommend that others follow my path, at least not all of it. I was stubborn and head-strong, and my path was messy as a result. Of course, messiness is the only honest way forward sometimes, and I haven’t taken a drink in over 10 years. Whatever works, I say, and there are a few key things that I can pinpoint that worked for me.

First, I had to take the possibility of one more drink off the table completely. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Shit, my alcoholism was so severe that I had to detox in the hospital for three days or risk dying from the withdrawal symptoms like Amy Winehouse. I made a clear and definite decision to stop completely, no matter how difficult the road ahead would be. Another drink simply could not be an option. It was a Yoda moment for me: there is no try, only do or do not.

Next, start the day with gratitude. I lost sight of this for a while in the middle of my sobriety, but when I practice it, it does wonders. I take a moment to name three things for which I am grateful, whether just the fact that I am safe and sober and have a roof over my head or more deep, detailed, or glorious things. It doesn’t really matter. Leaning into gratitude can retrain our brains, calm our nervous systems, and help us make healthier choices. There’s science to back this up - check it out. 

Next, I leaned on my support systems: my new husband, our families, the soft comfort of my kitties, and most of all, Alcoholics Anonymous. I could’ve done a much better job of being engaged with AA and following its guidance beyond the first 6 months or so. Even so, it provided a strong foundation, and the work I have been doing over the past few years around three AA teachings in particular has been transformative for me in my recovery journey.

Here are those three AA teachings that have been transformative for me recently and how they evolved in my life:

1. Conscious contact with the God of my understanding: I fought the spiritual part of the program at first. This is a longer story in itself, and perhaps I will tell it sometime. For brevity here, I will say that I just couldn’t let myself believe in a higher power, so I did the next best thing at first - I relied on the group. Of course, that only worked until I stopped going to meetings regularly, which I will address next. Luckily, the coach I worked with a few years ago was able to help me access that part of me through an amazing meditation program, and just as he promised, it changed everything. I now have a rich personal relationship with the God of my understanding, and this is my most powerful tool to stay far away from fuck it. 

2. Keep coming back: I didn’t “keep coming back,” as we say in the program. This was in part because I had a hard time finding a meeting that was as good for me as the first one was. Against AA advice, I moved to a new state for a new job, and I made a lot of excuses that enabled me to be lazy about the program. If I could do it over again, I would tell myself, “Get over yourself. No matter what, you’ve gotta keep coming back.” If I had, I am sure I would’ve been able to find the support and comfort I so desperately needed when I hit the darkest days of sobriety that were ahead. I course-corrected when new, similarly painful challenges emerged over the past two years. Luckily, I had gained enough strength and clarity through my spiritual work that I got myself back to AA, and I am reaping the benefits of that now.

3. Sobriety first: Related to #2 above, I failed to put my sobriety first for most of the first eight years. I let my work and other responsibilities take up virtually all of my time, which left me fragile. It’s a miracle I didn’t drink. Again, my spiritual work opened my eyes to the importance of giving myself space and time to heal, so I reorganized my life. I now start every day taking care of myself, and I end every day reflecting on it and gently learning about how I can do better. I schedule around AA meetings, including meetings with my sponsor. Everything else that is important to do gets done better as a result too. 

I am no fool. 

I know that healing is a lifelong process, and new and old challenges will trigger anxiety and depression from time to time. It is also clear to me that these steps, taken one day at a time, help me to be more resilient every day and more and more capable of doing hard things. Better still, I now get to live life more fully and joyfully, to engage wonder and possibilities, and to see beauty in the most ordinary things. I am one grateful alcoholic.

One more thing…

Sheesh, I almost forgot. Now, when all else fails and I need a break from this sometimes overwhelming world: kittens! (Or puppies, if you prefer 😃)