Hi All. I have been getting some really good advice lately. The title of this blog is not advice I received but it really fits in with some stuff that I have been thinking about and considering--namely faith. My faith in something divine-like in divine order or in a power greater than myself is both strong and sort of cloudy and fluffy--like I cant quite get my head around what I think. Add to that this sort of background skepticism/ logical side that I have and things get muddy, quick. It has been hard for me to accept a higher power as an integral part of recovery and of life for a long time. I have always sort of felt that yes, I believed in something but no, I dont think I need to in order to be sober. I almost hate writing that because I dont want to mess anyone else up but it is my truth. I always have depended so much on my mind to think me out of things, come up with the words, figure it out.
The really funny thing is that my mind never helped me get better. My mind generally keeps me sick. The changes that I have made that have really helped me, that have changed me, are the ones that I made from my heart and my gut. The deep part of me that just said--do this or dont do this anymore. My head was too busy saying things to me like--dont worry about it, everyone else does it, and telling me to just relax and have a drink. Addiction is a mental illness, this is something I would never deny or could never. Once I quit drinking, I got to take a look at the obsessive nature of my mind (even away from my drinking) and to begin to attend to dealing with that--as the fundamental source of the problem.
You can see in this crazy blog that my mind just rattles on sometimes forward and often around and around over the same worries, anxieties, and insecurities. Round and round like a hamster on a wheel my mind goes. It takes so much work and time to do things differently, to think different. Sometimes I feel as though it is futile and I will never really change and then something happens and I realize I am actually thinking about things different, behaving differently, and I feel hopeful.
A few days ago someone told me that I should "invite god into the room" before an important meeting. That I should go early and just be in the space by myself and invite the presence of my higher power or divine spirit or whatever i believe into the room with me. That I should remember that no one has that much power in my life--unless I give it to them. what they didnt say but I thought was that I need to remember that I am being taken care of--because I do believe that I am--I do believe that there is a divine order and purpose to the events of our lives that we dont always know but that is real. I know there are a million reasons to shoot down this idea but as I sit here, I do smile. I do feel as though I am taken care of. I am ok. I am finding my voice and I am realizing who I am and what is really important to me. Maybe I am not who or what I thought I would be, but I am not disappointed in who I have found either. I am exactly as I am supposed to be and exactly where I am supposed to be--just like you are. xxK
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Saturday, January 28, 2012
nothing changes until we do
hi all. today is saturday. yesterday, i got my hair cut and my hair dresser gave me a manicure on the house. i now have dark dark green metallic looking short nails and an updated tousledish bob like hair cut. i am sitting here drinking my first coffee (ouch, it is 1:49p) and attempting to wake up from working my overnite shift--again. this job is one of those jobs that i have enjoyed but also seems to have taken as much has given in terms of my life and the lives of the people close to me. working residential is not family friendly. a few days ago i had the thought (again) that it might be ironic if i was neglecting my own children to help heal someone else's--that maybe one was cancelling the other out and that i might need to really look at who is important to me and needs me and who is important but also could be helped by other people too.
my kids need me. not all of the time, of course. they have great and amazing teachers at Discovery PreSchool, amazing friends there, and a nice set of parents who are always around too. we are so lucky there. my kids have their amazing father, their mima, their nana and grandpa, their aunt kristin and uncle marc, cousin cora, grandpa Bud and lots of other great people in their lives but none of those people can take the place of me, their mama and how they do need me--for real and not someone else. they say it takes a village and i am the first to agree but the village cannot replace the mommy. we all know it. it is true. kids need their parents. and this mommy needs a job that does not cause her to miss out on weekends and week nights with them while they still like me and want to be around me. i realize this is a situation that i cant take for granted. so when i am all grown up and ready to spend "quality time" with them and not distracted and impatient--that they will say ok good mom, we've been waiting for you, lets hang out and read and snuggle. kids dont wait for us that way. life doesnt wait for us that way.
if i have to work at this job because after looking--i cant find another then that is one thing. sometimes we have to make hard choices for our family. i am not saying all mothers, in all situations need to make changes, our choices are in many ways limited by many things outside of our control. but we do need to see what our choices really are...each of us. to look at our options and take responsibility for what we've chosen--for better and for worse.
i interviewed for a new job at (gulp) a health insurance giant a few weeks ago. this is after countless applications to other rehabs for day positions. i realized i need to work to make money and to (maybe) have benefits if we need them. right now, i need to work for my family not for me. i am passionate about helping people and about recovery, but there are more ways then one to do both of these things. and maybe the universe wants me somewhere else right now--like home with the kids who really need my help--my own.
it takes humility and a certain amount of self sacrifice to make a step away from what i think i want professionally but i also have some added insight that i am taking a step towards what i want personally--to have time with my kids. to have enough money to not spend the time i am with them, worried about how to pay for things they need or want. (i admit they need way less then i think btw.)
the health insurance place called last week and left a message that they were looking forward to talking to me. the interviews went well. i am interested to see what will happen next and where i will end up in a few weeks. i know that things that i was blogging abotu at work a few weeks ago really opened my eyes up to the simple truth that i was working hard for people who didnt appreciate it and who had no idea how to be professional. not to me and not to anyone else either. i had a choice to make about where i want to be and who i want to work with. i think i have made my choice. enough being the victim of my job. we all have choices. xxK
my kids need me. not all of the time, of course. they have great and amazing teachers at Discovery PreSchool, amazing friends there, and a nice set of parents who are always around too. we are so lucky there. my kids have their amazing father, their mima, their nana and grandpa, their aunt kristin and uncle marc, cousin cora, grandpa Bud and lots of other great people in their lives but none of those people can take the place of me, their mama and how they do need me--for real and not someone else. they say it takes a village and i am the first to agree but the village cannot replace the mommy. we all know it. it is true. kids need their parents. and this mommy needs a job that does not cause her to miss out on weekends and week nights with them while they still like me and want to be around me. i realize this is a situation that i cant take for granted. so when i am all grown up and ready to spend "quality time" with them and not distracted and impatient--that they will say ok good mom, we've been waiting for you, lets hang out and read and snuggle. kids dont wait for us that way. life doesnt wait for us that way.
if i have to work at this job because after looking--i cant find another then that is one thing. sometimes we have to make hard choices for our family. i am not saying all mothers, in all situations need to make changes, our choices are in many ways limited by many things outside of our control. but we do need to see what our choices really are...each of us. to look at our options and take responsibility for what we've chosen--for better and for worse.
i interviewed for a new job at (gulp) a health insurance giant a few weeks ago. this is after countless applications to other rehabs for day positions. i realized i need to work to make money and to (maybe) have benefits if we need them. right now, i need to work for my family not for me. i am passionate about helping people and about recovery, but there are more ways then one to do both of these things. and maybe the universe wants me somewhere else right now--like home with the kids who really need my help--my own.
it takes humility and a certain amount of self sacrifice to make a step away from what i think i want professionally but i also have some added insight that i am taking a step towards what i want personally--to have time with my kids. to have enough money to not spend the time i am with them, worried about how to pay for things they need or want. (i admit they need way less then i think btw.)
the health insurance place called last week and left a message that they were looking forward to talking to me. the interviews went well. i am interested to see what will happen next and where i will end up in a few weeks. i know that things that i was blogging abotu at work a few weeks ago really opened my eyes up to the simple truth that i was working hard for people who didnt appreciate it and who had no idea how to be professional. not to me and not to anyone else either. i had a choice to make about where i want to be and who i want to work with. i think i have made my choice. enough being the victim of my job. we all have choices. xxK
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
trusting in the process?
Hi Friends. Today is Wednesday. Usually I work on Wednesdays but things at work have been strange and I find myself with a different schedule--interestingly this schedule seems to work a little better for me--so this is a good thing. Anyway, today I start out over sleeping because I was so excited to sleep in and not get up before 6am and then dropping my kids off late at preschool (not a new thing for me) and then feeling bad about myself already and the day just started. I realize a few things that I need to work on for real...organization and time management. Both of these are areas that really dont interest me at all but I can see that my lack of interest in them leads me to be lacking in skills in both. If I want to be on time then I need to make that a priority and work on it--after 38 years I should know that just expecting things to be different w/o work is not so realistic. Ok, that said I will now try to let that go and move on with my day. I am going to organize my closet after this post and I am hopeful that this will give me a little extra help in my morning dash.
The work situation that I wrote about last is still lingering in my mind. I guess it was sort of resolved but what I learned was that I am not working at the right place for me. I can see that it might be the right place for someone else but I need a place that is more flexible and that invests more in their employees. This experience showed me that there is a fundamental disconnect between what I believe and my vision and what some people around (and above) me believe and their vision. I think it is easy to fall into the trap of working solely with the goal of avoiding making mistakes. While this may be a safe way to work it is not a great way to work nor is it the way that I want to work. I want to think big and bold and make a difference. I dont want to focus solely on avoiding errors. No, no thank you. Mistakes are inevitable. It is what we do with them and learn from them that I want to count in my work not how cleverly we avoided an error or covered it up.
Enough on that.
So, I find myself in flux again. Trying to have faith and see what the Universe has in store for me. Am I supposed to be where I am and if so, what am I supposed to be learning? Am I supposed to be somewhere else and if so, where? and doing what? I hate to think about not working with teenagers but I also hate to think about continuing to work in an environment that is not healthy for me. I am torn. I feel sort of lost and floudering and (to be honest) my ego is not really loving the idea of taking another entry level job in a new field. I feel like I have "paid my dues" in both advertising and social work and the addictions field. I am feeling a little done with dues paying. I know this attitude is not helpful though and I am trying to work on it. I need humility and faith to get me out of myself, my fears, and my projections.
I am feeling better emotionally though and this helps me be able to see things more clearly. To not personalize other people's issues and to not make my work environment about me. It is not. I also need to try to avoid the trap of making what I do for a job define who I am as a person. I need to peel this stuff apart and look at why it is so easy for me to make my career define me. I have some theories about why I do this or why anyone would but I'll save that for another time. For today I am just going to focus on being able to find my black leggings in my closet when I need them and not beating myself up about my tardiness.
Thanks for listening--again.
xx
K
The work situation that I wrote about last is still lingering in my mind. I guess it was sort of resolved but what I learned was that I am not working at the right place for me. I can see that it might be the right place for someone else but I need a place that is more flexible and that invests more in their employees. This experience showed me that there is a fundamental disconnect between what I believe and my vision and what some people around (and above) me believe and their vision. I think it is easy to fall into the trap of working solely with the goal of avoiding making mistakes. While this may be a safe way to work it is not a great way to work nor is it the way that I want to work. I want to think big and bold and make a difference. I dont want to focus solely on avoiding errors. No, no thank you. Mistakes are inevitable. It is what we do with them and learn from them that I want to count in my work not how cleverly we avoided an error or covered it up.
Enough on that.
So, I find myself in flux again. Trying to have faith and see what the Universe has in store for me. Am I supposed to be where I am and if so, what am I supposed to be learning? Am I supposed to be somewhere else and if so, where? and doing what? I hate to think about not working with teenagers but I also hate to think about continuing to work in an environment that is not healthy for me. I am torn. I feel sort of lost and floudering and (to be honest) my ego is not really loving the idea of taking another entry level job in a new field. I feel like I have "paid my dues" in both advertising and social work and the addictions field. I am feeling a little done with dues paying. I know this attitude is not helpful though and I am trying to work on it. I need humility and faith to get me out of myself, my fears, and my projections.
I am feeling better emotionally though and this helps me be able to see things more clearly. To not personalize other people's issues and to not make my work environment about me. It is not. I also need to try to avoid the trap of making what I do for a job define who I am as a person. I need to peel this stuff apart and look at why it is so easy for me to make my career define me. I have some theories about why I do this or why anyone would but I'll save that for another time. For today I am just going to focus on being able to find my black leggings in my closet when I need them and not beating myself up about my tardiness.
Thanks for listening--again.
xx
K
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
turning it over and over and over
Hi All. Today is Tuesday--I am supposed to be at work now but my kids had a 3 hour delay at school. I cant tell you how hard it is for me to sometimes make these minor adjustments in my schedule. Even when I know the weather could be bad and school could be closed or cancelled--I still struggle to be flexible and to accept the day as it unfolds and not as I had planned. Also, despite my new Zoloft I am still anxious about some work drama that is going on and feel sort of twisted over what will happen. I sort of just wanted to go to work and get on with dealing with it. The delay could be torturous if I let it, so I thought I'd write instead of worry or at least do both.
My work situation is a strange thing since it involves me behaving in a pretty unusual way at work which is to be someone who becomes so angry that they have to leave a meeting or risk saying something inappropriate or unfixable. Having never really experienced this level of anger at work I am trying to sort out how I contributed to this situation and what I can do to fix up my part without taking over responsibility. Mostly I can see that what I did was engage with a sick person and expect them to respond to me like a healthy person. I was being ration with someone who was not in a rational space. I know better, usually. Upon further reflection and with some help from the 4th Step I can see that I had some resentments building with this person that I had left unaddressed--thinking it was better to just let them go--which might have been true if I had actually let them go but holding on to them and doing nothing about them is not a good plan for resolution or healthy and direct communication. I learned that in the future I need to address issues when they happen--even if that means being uncomfortable.
For today, my goal is to stay connected to my highest self. The part of me that is confident, safe, and spiritually centered. I cannot let myself go to the fear place because when I act from there--weird shit happens. I end up ANGRY or weak and scared. Someone very high level where I work accused me of being fragile--in a public forum when I was not present. I was so mad when I learned this that I was back in the situation that I had to leave all over again. I need to stay in my safe place or I react instead of act. I want to be in a place of quiet confidence, stable, humble, certain. I hope I can do that today and not fall into the trap of getting scared and then angry. I am smarter then that.
My fourth step showed me that I was giving people I work with too much power in my life. That I was not trusting in my higher power or really connected to it. Blah, what a mess I got into. Here it is though, I am committed to learning from it and to hopefully learning more about some of the areas in my life that still need work.
I hope you are all trying to see your "mistakes" as opportunities too. It is not easy, but it is rewarding and so much better then staying in the anger and carrying resentments around. xxK
My work situation is a strange thing since it involves me behaving in a pretty unusual way at work which is to be someone who becomes so angry that they have to leave a meeting or risk saying something inappropriate or unfixable. Having never really experienced this level of anger at work I am trying to sort out how I contributed to this situation and what I can do to fix up my part without taking over responsibility. Mostly I can see that what I did was engage with a sick person and expect them to respond to me like a healthy person. I was being ration with someone who was not in a rational space. I know better, usually. Upon further reflection and with some help from the 4th Step I can see that I had some resentments building with this person that I had left unaddressed--thinking it was better to just let them go--which might have been true if I had actually let them go but holding on to them and doing nothing about them is not a good plan for resolution or healthy and direct communication. I learned that in the future I need to address issues when they happen--even if that means being uncomfortable.
For today, my goal is to stay connected to my highest self. The part of me that is confident, safe, and spiritually centered. I cannot let myself go to the fear place because when I act from there--weird shit happens. I end up ANGRY or weak and scared. Someone very high level where I work accused me of being fragile--in a public forum when I was not present. I was so mad when I learned this that I was back in the situation that I had to leave all over again. I need to stay in my safe place or I react instead of act. I want to be in a place of quiet confidence, stable, humble, certain. I hope I can do that today and not fall into the trap of getting scared and then angry. I am smarter then that.
My fourth step showed me that I was giving people I work with too much power in my life. That I was not trusting in my higher power or really connected to it. Blah, what a mess I got into. Here it is though, I am committed to learning from it and to hopefully learning more about some of the areas in my life that still need work.
I hope you are all trying to see your "mistakes" as opportunities too. It is not easy, but it is rewarding and so much better then staying in the anger and carrying resentments around. xxK
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Mommy, You said to remind you if you start to yell at us...
Hi All, I am back on the blogging. Now I cant stop. So this entry is a sort of parantheses to my last blog about my story and my drinking. I am writing this because I just reread my blog description and realized I very rarely write about motherhood. This is laughable since I seem to have so many different thoughts on the topic. You can see tonite's topic based on my title.
So a few posts ago I mentioned that I started taking Zoloft because I was tired of yelling at my kids. This is an over simplification but is also essentially the truth. I started a month ago when in my rushing to get my kids (already late) to PreSchool I yelled at my daughter. She wasnt listening and I was not in the mood to debate the finer points of getting in the car now or playing a few minutes longer in the first snow dusting we had on the ground. I yelled her name and then some other stuff and then her name etc. After this I picked her up and put her in the car and was pissed. I was pissed nearly the entire ride to her school. I was thinking: What the fuck do I have to do to get my child to listen to me? I thought: other moms do not yell at their children like psychos because they are running late to PreSchool. I thought this is just another area of my life where I am underachieving AND this is the most important area...shit.
Then we get to PreSchool and my baby girl draws me a picture of our fight and tells me to take it home. We make up. I drive home. I get home and sit and look at the picture. On red construction paper my stick figure self can be seen with mean eyebrows and a nice big thought bubble above my head yelling her name in all caps. Point taken. I pick up the telephone and call my Doctor. I make an appointment to see her in 45 minutes. I go.
I tell her about how I dont feel like myself and I am so irritable and it is terrible and I dont like myself and I just want to crawl into bed and I cant. I tell her that my husband is worried bc I am seem so frustrated (true) and that I really wouldnt even care except I just yelled at my daughter (who is actually really good) again and while I do not mind hurting myself--I will not hurth my kids. My pride is not that big. My ego is not that big. If that pill will help me be nice to them and sleep and not freak out--fuck it, I'll take it.
She writes a prescription for a new SSRI (having tried Lexapro last winter and having given up on it because of yucky side effects despite feeling better). I realize that it is all ego and pride and other people's opinions about meds but that none of it is important if it can help me. I take the meds. It has been about 3 weeks now. I will say that I began to feel less impulsive with my yelling and started to feel calm enough to play with kids and enjoy it. I have recently found myself feeling like me--the me that I was before I was not me. This is not a perfect person...I still feel frustrated, tired, pissed etc but I do not feel so irritated I cant think or so frustrated I want to scream. I feel ok. I will say it again. I feel ok.
Having felt not ok on and off for a long time, feeling ok is pretty fucking great. I am open to other opinions on this but let me say that if an anxiety problem fueld my drinking then taking meds for that anxiety problem is fueling my recovery. Please know that I always only speak for myself and dont assume to know what is right for anyone else. I also know that a month from now I might be writing abotu how I stopped taking this because I changed my mind but for now this is where I am at.
Being a working Mommy of small children (age 3 and 4.5) is not always easy. I often find myself having to make the sacrifices that all parents have to make between what is right for me and what is right for them. In a perfect world these are the same. In the real world they are not always. For today, I am trying to do both and make the time I am with them be time that is good for us all. Not perfect, but good. Someday I will tell my kids about my struggles and how I want to be the best parent and person that I can be. That I want to be honest about what I am good at and what I need to work on. I feel this is important. That is why I told my daughter to remind me if I start to yell because Mommy is working on not yelling but sometimes she forgets. It is a bad habit that Mommy started and now needs to stop. No worries though kids, Mommy has some experience with breaking bad habits. xxx K
So a few posts ago I mentioned that I started taking Zoloft because I was tired of yelling at my kids. This is an over simplification but is also essentially the truth. I started a month ago when in my rushing to get my kids (already late) to PreSchool I yelled at my daughter. She wasnt listening and I was not in the mood to debate the finer points of getting in the car now or playing a few minutes longer in the first snow dusting we had on the ground. I yelled her name and then some other stuff and then her name etc. After this I picked her up and put her in the car and was pissed. I was pissed nearly the entire ride to her school. I was thinking: What the fuck do I have to do to get my child to listen to me? I thought: other moms do not yell at their children like psychos because they are running late to PreSchool. I thought this is just another area of my life where I am underachieving AND this is the most important area...shit.
Then we get to PreSchool and my baby girl draws me a picture of our fight and tells me to take it home. We make up. I drive home. I get home and sit and look at the picture. On red construction paper my stick figure self can be seen with mean eyebrows and a nice big thought bubble above my head yelling her name in all caps. Point taken. I pick up the telephone and call my Doctor. I make an appointment to see her in 45 minutes. I go.
I tell her about how I dont feel like myself and I am so irritable and it is terrible and I dont like myself and I just want to crawl into bed and I cant. I tell her that my husband is worried bc I am seem so frustrated (true) and that I really wouldnt even care except I just yelled at my daughter (who is actually really good) again and while I do not mind hurting myself--I will not hurth my kids. My pride is not that big. My ego is not that big. If that pill will help me be nice to them and sleep and not freak out--fuck it, I'll take it.
She writes a prescription for a new SSRI (having tried Lexapro last winter and having given up on it because of yucky side effects despite feeling better). I realize that it is all ego and pride and other people's opinions about meds but that none of it is important if it can help me. I take the meds. It has been about 3 weeks now. I will say that I began to feel less impulsive with my yelling and started to feel calm enough to play with kids and enjoy it. I have recently found myself feeling like me--the me that I was before I was not me. This is not a perfect person...I still feel frustrated, tired, pissed etc but I do not feel so irritated I cant think or so frustrated I want to scream. I feel ok. I will say it again. I feel ok.
Having felt not ok on and off for a long time, feeling ok is pretty fucking great. I am open to other opinions on this but let me say that if an anxiety problem fueld my drinking then taking meds for that anxiety problem is fueling my recovery. Please know that I always only speak for myself and dont assume to know what is right for anyone else. I also know that a month from now I might be writing abotu how I stopped taking this because I changed my mind but for now this is where I am at.
Being a working Mommy of small children (age 3 and 4.5) is not always easy. I often find myself having to make the sacrifices that all parents have to make between what is right for me and what is right for them. In a perfect world these are the same. In the real world they are not always. For today, I am trying to do both and make the time I am with them be time that is good for us all. Not perfect, but good. Someday I will tell my kids about my struggles and how I want to be the best parent and person that I can be. That I want to be honest about what I am good at and what I need to work on. I feel this is important. That is why I told my daughter to remind me if I start to yell because Mommy is working on not yelling but sometimes she forgets. It is a bad habit that Mommy started and now needs to stop. No worries though kids, Mommy has some experience with breaking bad habits. xxx K
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
My place called drinking (A First Step--sort of)
Hi All. I just started reading my blog from the beginning and all I can say is that my writing has really hit the skids lately. Sorry. Life gets busy and then my writing just falls apart--or so it seems. That said, this is my attempt to get back in the saddle. Be patient with me, please. So as I said in my last post, I am working with a new sponsor and doing the Steps just like in the Big Book. I actually did write a First Step a few times already but am up for the challenge of doing it again. I am not going to publish my actual First Step in its entirety but I am going to give a little snapshot for myself and for anyone else who might wonder just what it looks like to hit a bottom with your job, car, apartment, family, friends, and dog still around.
So my drinking--starting at age 15. Always and forever my favorite place to be was at a place I like to call drinking. It was a chatty, happy, and convivial place. It was a place that was full of intimacy, secrets, and laughing. My first time at my drinking place I felt funny, confident, and pretty. Who wouldn't want to frequent a place like that? I always had a tolerance that was pretty wild--able to drink many women and some men under a few tables. I found my niche in the drinking world. I might not be the smartest, prettiest, or nicest but put me in a bar and I would feel like all three plus some. I felt safe, happy, and comfortable anywhere that served alcohol. During this same period of time I also made some of the best real friends that anyone could ever want or ask for. Most of them I still am in touch with--and any of them I would be in touch with if I could find them or lived near them. I grew up with this crew of people and in many ways they became a family for me. Unlike many other stories--I do not consider these people as part of the problem. The problem was me and my drinking and the protective factor was that I was around people who looked out for me and loved me despite my excess and issues.
So there I was--after highschool and then 4 years of progessively harder drinking in college...I am lost. I dont know who I am. I dont know what I want. I envy anyone who does. I miss my favorite place called drinking. I keep trying to get back there but things are changing there. It is harder and harder to get there. I have this tolerance. I get these hangovers. I feel ashamed and tired. I am 21 and a black out binge drinker. I look like a regular person. I behave in some ways like a regular person. I am a 21 year old girl, who is a college graduate, and who on the inside already knows something is very wrong. I am scared.
I move to NYC. I get a job in advertising. I am 26. I discover Happy Hour. I am a black out binge drinker who is drinking nearly five nights a week. I am a regular at Happy Hour but I have a secret. I cant stop. My friends go home, wash their faces, brush their teeth, and go to bed. I do not go home and go to bed. I leave the bar and buy more alcohol. I go home and really drink. I drink just the way that I want when I am alone. I drink until I pass out. I wake up with bottles scattered around the room--often. I am ashamed, terrified, alone, and more then anything I am scared. I use Visine, I use insane amounts of Ibuprofen, I take NoDoz, I use cough drops, breath mints, perfume, lotion, I have all of the tricks. I use excuses--my job is stressful, my job is social, my job is superficial and I keep drinking.
I am 28, I am still not a daily drinker. I still do not drink in the morning. I still do not hide bottles of anything. I still am not being told by anyone close to me that I need to stop. I begin to tremble by 5pm without a drink. I refer to this as "stress." I drink pints so that no one notices my hands shaking before my first drink. I get flown to London for work and blackout and miss the meeting I am there for. I lie. I get on a plane and fly home and go to a bar. I am ashamed, and scared. I am a 28 year old binge blackout drinker who is an alcoholic. I have no idea what is happening to me. I begin to have increasing anxiety when I am sober. I get hot out of nowhere. I sweat and feel shaky in the afternoon. I cant sleep without alcohol. I take sleeping pills every night with our without alcohol. I cannot maintain an intimate relationship with someone I love because I cannot be trusted.
I am 29, I am in Vermont. I have been layed off. I am with my new/old boyfriend. I try to stop drinking as much and dont tell him or anyone else. I cry for two days straight, and dont know why. I cant sleep. I am irritable. I sweat. I take sleeping pills to feel less shaky. I start using pot to chill out. I tell myself that I am ok. I think I am not ok. I have a solution. I use pot instead of alcohol for a while. On the weekends and some weeknights I drink like I want which is until I pass out or throw up. I do both, often. My boyfriend gets sick of this and after one evening when I come home and kick him and tell him how useless he is and then pass out he tells me I should "cut down" on my drinking. I cry. I cry because i cannot imagine a life worth living without alcohol. I cry because I know that I need alcohol to have fun and to be myself. I cry because I see that my drinking is out of control and am unable to stop. I cry because I know that I will keep drinking.
I feel totally helpless. So, I point my finger at him. I bring up his substance use. I tell him he has a problem. I put all of my energy into noticing his substance use and blaming him. I telly myself that I hate what he has done to me. I feel that everything is his fault and I will be fine once I am without him. I leave him. He tells me he doesnt drink that much anymore now that I am gone. He seems happy and ok.
I am 29 and heartbroken and an alcoholic living alone with my dog. I do what any good alcoholic would do. I get drunk and meet someone new. I meet a new really nice guy. I start drinking less during the week. I am tight but I am doing better. I feel vindicated. My new boyfriend is the solution. My old boyfriend was the problem and my life is just fine--pass the wine. The one problem is that nothing is fine. I miss drinking during the week. When I do drink it is to excess worse then before. I am lonely and sad and broken and cant feel really happy or really relaxed without a drink in my hand. I have blamed my drinking on someone else and woke up without them and still hungover. I have used other people to try to fill the holes in myself only to wake up guilty and still empty. I want to be a different person and do not know how. I know something is wrong with me.
I am 30 and visting my old roomate in NYC. I go out drinking without eating (as usual) around 4pm on a Friday night in April of 2004. I am in the bathroom of a bar in the East Village with a man I do now know who is a cocaine dealer. I look in the mirror and see someone else. I am detached from myself. I think: I dont care what happens to her. I wake up from a black out on Saturday morning. I dont know where I am. I am with the cocaine dealer somewhere in the East Village. I am ashamed. I think of the various things I must do, the first of which is lie about this. I hate myself more then ever before. I think: I could have been killed. I think: I do care what happens to me. I think: my drinking is going to kill me and is dangerous. I know I am in trouble. I think: I need help. I think: I am going to stop drinking--and I do.
So that is my mini story. How I stopped drinking and stay stopped is a longer and maybe more relevant story. What is interesting to me is that throughout my drinking there were times when I did consider quitting and certainly times where I was not drinking that frequently. Some people may have the mistaken belief that my ability to not drink for periods of time indicates that I was really in control. I was not. The simple truth is that for my entire drinking life--any time that I picked up an alcoholic beverage and began to drink it--I wanted more. I always wanted more. The wanting more was deep inside me. I could not think my way out of my wanting more. I tried to. I tried so hard. I would tell myself that I would only have one, no two, no three--and then I would tell myself that tomorrow I would do that and keep going. I could see that other people were not like this but I felt powerless to do anything about it. That feeling of powerlessness fueled my fear and propelled my drinking. Drinking took away my fear, my feelings of powerlessness, my feelings of being less than--temporarily. Of course though the next day, sober, the feelings were back only worse.
I know that my drinking story is no longer a completely uncommon story. I hope that it is helpful for someone. I wish I could reach out to every woman in college or working who is already drinking like this and show them that there is a different way but I know that I cant. The only thing I can do is keep on my path and hope that along the way I can help someone else too. Thanks for listening. xxK
So my drinking--starting at age 15. Always and forever my favorite place to be was at a place I like to call drinking. It was a chatty, happy, and convivial place. It was a place that was full of intimacy, secrets, and laughing. My first time at my drinking place I felt funny, confident, and pretty. Who wouldn't want to frequent a place like that? I always had a tolerance that was pretty wild--able to drink many women and some men under a few tables. I found my niche in the drinking world. I might not be the smartest, prettiest, or nicest but put me in a bar and I would feel like all three plus some. I felt safe, happy, and comfortable anywhere that served alcohol. During this same period of time I also made some of the best real friends that anyone could ever want or ask for. Most of them I still am in touch with--and any of them I would be in touch with if I could find them or lived near them. I grew up with this crew of people and in many ways they became a family for me. Unlike many other stories--I do not consider these people as part of the problem. The problem was me and my drinking and the protective factor was that I was around people who looked out for me and loved me despite my excess and issues.
So there I was--after highschool and then 4 years of progessively harder drinking in college...I am lost. I dont know who I am. I dont know what I want. I envy anyone who does. I miss my favorite place called drinking. I keep trying to get back there but things are changing there. It is harder and harder to get there. I have this tolerance. I get these hangovers. I feel ashamed and tired. I am 21 and a black out binge drinker. I look like a regular person. I behave in some ways like a regular person. I am a 21 year old girl, who is a college graduate, and who on the inside already knows something is very wrong. I am scared.
I move to NYC. I get a job in advertising. I am 26. I discover Happy Hour. I am a black out binge drinker who is drinking nearly five nights a week. I am a regular at Happy Hour but I have a secret. I cant stop. My friends go home, wash their faces, brush their teeth, and go to bed. I do not go home and go to bed. I leave the bar and buy more alcohol. I go home and really drink. I drink just the way that I want when I am alone. I drink until I pass out. I wake up with bottles scattered around the room--often. I am ashamed, terrified, alone, and more then anything I am scared. I use Visine, I use insane amounts of Ibuprofen, I take NoDoz, I use cough drops, breath mints, perfume, lotion, I have all of the tricks. I use excuses--my job is stressful, my job is social, my job is superficial and I keep drinking.
I am 28, I am still not a daily drinker. I still do not drink in the morning. I still do not hide bottles of anything. I still am not being told by anyone close to me that I need to stop. I begin to tremble by 5pm without a drink. I refer to this as "stress." I drink pints so that no one notices my hands shaking before my first drink. I get flown to London for work and blackout and miss the meeting I am there for. I lie. I get on a plane and fly home and go to a bar. I am ashamed, and scared. I am a 28 year old binge blackout drinker who is an alcoholic. I have no idea what is happening to me. I begin to have increasing anxiety when I am sober. I get hot out of nowhere. I sweat and feel shaky in the afternoon. I cant sleep without alcohol. I take sleeping pills every night with our without alcohol. I cannot maintain an intimate relationship with someone I love because I cannot be trusted.
I am 29, I am in Vermont. I have been layed off. I am with my new/old boyfriend. I try to stop drinking as much and dont tell him or anyone else. I cry for two days straight, and dont know why. I cant sleep. I am irritable. I sweat. I take sleeping pills to feel less shaky. I start using pot to chill out. I tell myself that I am ok. I think I am not ok. I have a solution. I use pot instead of alcohol for a while. On the weekends and some weeknights I drink like I want which is until I pass out or throw up. I do both, often. My boyfriend gets sick of this and after one evening when I come home and kick him and tell him how useless he is and then pass out he tells me I should "cut down" on my drinking. I cry. I cry because i cannot imagine a life worth living without alcohol. I cry because I know that I need alcohol to have fun and to be myself. I cry because I see that my drinking is out of control and am unable to stop. I cry because I know that I will keep drinking.
I feel totally helpless. So, I point my finger at him. I bring up his substance use. I tell him he has a problem. I put all of my energy into noticing his substance use and blaming him. I telly myself that I hate what he has done to me. I feel that everything is his fault and I will be fine once I am without him. I leave him. He tells me he doesnt drink that much anymore now that I am gone. He seems happy and ok.
I am 29 and heartbroken and an alcoholic living alone with my dog. I do what any good alcoholic would do. I get drunk and meet someone new. I meet a new really nice guy. I start drinking less during the week. I am tight but I am doing better. I feel vindicated. My new boyfriend is the solution. My old boyfriend was the problem and my life is just fine--pass the wine. The one problem is that nothing is fine. I miss drinking during the week. When I do drink it is to excess worse then before. I am lonely and sad and broken and cant feel really happy or really relaxed without a drink in my hand. I have blamed my drinking on someone else and woke up without them and still hungover. I have used other people to try to fill the holes in myself only to wake up guilty and still empty. I want to be a different person and do not know how. I know something is wrong with me.
I am 30 and visting my old roomate in NYC. I go out drinking without eating (as usual) around 4pm on a Friday night in April of 2004. I am in the bathroom of a bar in the East Village with a man I do now know who is a cocaine dealer. I look in the mirror and see someone else. I am detached from myself. I think: I dont care what happens to her. I wake up from a black out on Saturday morning. I dont know where I am. I am with the cocaine dealer somewhere in the East Village. I am ashamed. I think of the various things I must do, the first of which is lie about this. I hate myself more then ever before. I think: I could have been killed. I think: I do care what happens to me. I think: my drinking is going to kill me and is dangerous. I know I am in trouble. I think: I need help. I think: I am going to stop drinking--and I do.
So that is my mini story. How I stopped drinking and stay stopped is a longer and maybe more relevant story. What is interesting to me is that throughout my drinking there were times when I did consider quitting and certainly times where I was not drinking that frequently. Some people may have the mistaken belief that my ability to not drink for periods of time indicates that I was really in control. I was not. The simple truth is that for my entire drinking life--any time that I picked up an alcoholic beverage and began to drink it--I wanted more. I always wanted more. The wanting more was deep inside me. I could not think my way out of my wanting more. I tried to. I tried so hard. I would tell myself that I would only have one, no two, no three--and then I would tell myself that tomorrow I would do that and keep going. I could see that other people were not like this but I felt powerless to do anything about it. That feeling of powerlessness fueled my fear and propelled my drinking. Drinking took away my fear, my feelings of powerlessness, my feelings of being less than--temporarily. Of course though the next day, sober, the feelings were back only worse.
I know that my drinking story is no longer a completely uncommon story. I hope that it is helpful for someone. I wish I could reach out to every woman in college or working who is already drinking like this and show them that there is a different way but I know that I cant. The only thing I can do is keep on my path and hope that along the way I can help someone else too. Thanks for listening. xxK
Thursday, January 5, 2012
still recovering...
hi all. i keep beginning my posts with the surprise at how long it has been since i last wrote. i am going to try to post more regularly this year. we'll see how that goes. today i was thinking about the process of recovery. so often i am reminded that recovery is a process. it is a process that has a definite beginning but no ending. recovery is ongoing. a journey much more then a destination. in early recovery this awareness was disheartening but recently i have begun to see the journey as encouraging--as in, i have lots of time to work on growing and learning all different things. i dont have to rush. i dont have to be perfect or know everything today. i can just do my best for today and learn as much as i can from whatever happens to me and the people around me.
also, i should say that some big things have happened in my recovery lately. the first is that i finally got a sponsor. if i was into using caps i would put finally in all caps. finally, after about 7 plus years of either not having one, or having one but not using them, i have a sponsor and i am talking to her. i am doing the steps with the big book (AA's basic text) and have committed myself to speaking with her twice a week for about fifteen or twenty minutes a call to read two pages of the book at a time together. we do this and then we talk about the readings and she explains historical information to me and gives me her own interpretation of reading. this is useful for a number of different reasons but mainly because it really has helped me feel more grounded in the actual program of AA. since AA is a fundamental or really the fundamental tool of my recovery--it helps to really understand it. i used to think this sort of thing was annoying but i dont anymore. i guess i have grown in a way and am willing to be open minded about AA not just the people (who i have always loved and been open minded about) but the writing, the literature, the steps---ie the real work.
for a long time i believed that therapy was more effective for me then AA. i have not totally changed my opinion about this but i have started to think that i can do both and they are not mutually exclusive. there are things about alcoholism that i forget. traits in myself i guess that i forget to tie back into addiction. it is useful to remember that many other people suffer from some of these things (a tendency to isolate, a proclivity to obsessive thinking, and a few other self-defeating characteristics like procrastination that can be frustrating and make me feel bad about myself). when i am reminded that i share these characteristics with millions of other people i sort of instantly feel better. i am not alone. a fact that i intellectually know but dont always really feel. when i do the work of AA--i feel it. i feel how much i have in common with other people and how lucky i am to know it and to be able to do something about it.
the other things i am doing are trying to exercise regularly, taking (sigh) new medicine (zoloft for anyone who cares about these things), and going to more meetings. the meds can be a dicey topic for some in AA but i think i have said before here that i REALLY dont think this is an AA topic. my mental health struggles with anxiety and depression have at times felt more terrible then my drinking. i have only been taking the zoloft for a few weeks but i am hopeful that (along w/ my therapy and the other stuff) my irritability and fatigue will slowly begin to lift. there are many people close to me who do not share my views about antidepressants and that is just fine. i am talking only about how i feel about myself and what works for me. i get that for some people the use of such medicine is not only unnecessary but potentially threatening to their recovery (ie the idea of taking a pill to feel better may seem too familiar to some...)--for me, i feel way less likely to pick up a drink now that i dont want to rage at my kids a hundred times a day but this is personal and something we all need to look at for ourselves.
my next blog is going to be my first step written out. i am going to do this bc 1) it will force me to begin writing and 2) i think it might be interesting for people to read what the steps are all about. i am going to try to keep my steps that i publish sort of general and not too specific (to protect the guilty and innocent...). i hope someone out there finds them useful. i thank you for reading and i hope you'll come back again soon. i promise to do more of my sober writing. hope you all are healthy and happy this 2012. xxk
also, i should say that some big things have happened in my recovery lately. the first is that i finally got a sponsor. if i was into using caps i would put finally in all caps. finally, after about 7 plus years of either not having one, or having one but not using them, i have a sponsor and i am talking to her. i am doing the steps with the big book (AA's basic text) and have committed myself to speaking with her twice a week for about fifteen or twenty minutes a call to read two pages of the book at a time together. we do this and then we talk about the readings and she explains historical information to me and gives me her own interpretation of reading. this is useful for a number of different reasons but mainly because it really has helped me feel more grounded in the actual program of AA. since AA is a fundamental or really the fundamental tool of my recovery--it helps to really understand it. i used to think this sort of thing was annoying but i dont anymore. i guess i have grown in a way and am willing to be open minded about AA not just the people (who i have always loved and been open minded about) but the writing, the literature, the steps---ie the real work.
for a long time i believed that therapy was more effective for me then AA. i have not totally changed my opinion about this but i have started to think that i can do both and they are not mutually exclusive. there are things about alcoholism that i forget. traits in myself i guess that i forget to tie back into addiction. it is useful to remember that many other people suffer from some of these things (a tendency to isolate, a proclivity to obsessive thinking, and a few other self-defeating characteristics like procrastination that can be frustrating and make me feel bad about myself). when i am reminded that i share these characteristics with millions of other people i sort of instantly feel better. i am not alone. a fact that i intellectually know but dont always really feel. when i do the work of AA--i feel it. i feel how much i have in common with other people and how lucky i am to know it and to be able to do something about it.
the other things i am doing are trying to exercise regularly, taking (sigh) new medicine (zoloft for anyone who cares about these things), and going to more meetings. the meds can be a dicey topic for some in AA but i think i have said before here that i REALLY dont think this is an AA topic. my mental health struggles with anxiety and depression have at times felt more terrible then my drinking. i have only been taking the zoloft for a few weeks but i am hopeful that (along w/ my therapy and the other stuff) my irritability and fatigue will slowly begin to lift. there are many people close to me who do not share my views about antidepressants and that is just fine. i am talking only about how i feel about myself and what works for me. i get that for some people the use of such medicine is not only unnecessary but potentially threatening to their recovery (ie the idea of taking a pill to feel better may seem too familiar to some...)--for me, i feel way less likely to pick up a drink now that i dont want to rage at my kids a hundred times a day but this is personal and something we all need to look at for ourselves.
my next blog is going to be my first step written out. i am going to do this bc 1) it will force me to begin writing and 2) i think it might be interesting for people to read what the steps are all about. i am going to try to keep my steps that i publish sort of general and not too specific (to protect the guilty and innocent...). i hope someone out there finds them useful. i thank you for reading and i hope you'll come back again soon. i promise to do more of my sober writing. hope you all are healthy and happy this 2012. xxk
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