"I like a good beer buzz early in the morning...." Sheryl Crow

Yesterday at mid morning, a patient from the medical clinic above my day spa drove his car through the front of our building. He was drunk. Super drunk. As in drove-off-without-realizing-he-hit-a-building drunk. Our spa manager chased his car down and made him stop. He says to her "I hit something?"

WTF?

So the medical clinic manager and our spa manager attempt to deal with this mid morning train wreck and upon realizing that he's drunk, call the police. He, however, decides that he doesn't want a mid morning DUI and gets in his car and swerves off. The police catch him barrelling up the road and arrest him. The cop, while walking into our spa, says to us "I like to drink, but not at noon on Tuesday."

Funny, that's exactly when I used to drink.

There but for the grace of God....

harsh reality

This is the post where I pull my own covers. The one where I let you know just how shallow and self absorbed I used to be and try like hell not to be any more. The post where I tell on myself and even keep the comments open so that all of you dear souls in Bloggerland can comment on how much of a shit I used to be.

When I finally sat in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous long enough to actually get a clue, I thought someone had shook the Lame Tree and you all had fallen out. I was absolutely certain that not a single one of you could relate to me on any level and that the rooms were filled with a bunch of sober freaks who had lost their coolness capacity immediately upon getting sober.

What changed that perception?


A couple of things...


I began attending Speaker Meetings and gave myself an opportunity to really listen to a person's story. A couple of minutes worth of sharing in my discussion meetings were not enough for me to relate to you. I needed more. Even though you were many years sober and had cleaned up so much, I needed to hear about where you came from and what it was like. What your bottom was. How many times you relapsed. How bad it used to be. As a newcomer, all I could relate to was how bad my life was. I didn't want to sit in meetings and listen to you wax poetic about how fucking amazing your life has become. I wanted to hear about the hell you had lived through and what got you to the place you are in now. Some people call this a drunkalog. I call it meeting me on my level.


I began accepting invitations to sober events outside of AA sponsored activities. Birthday parties for members at their homes. Dinner invitations outside of the normal "after-meeting meeting." One particular event still resonates with me after 15 years. I was brought to a birthday party for a member of AA/NA. It was held at his home on the other side of town and was attended by many members of our recovery community that I had never met. I knew immediately upon entering that I had found home. He and his friends were people I personally identified with but have never seen at my particular meetings. Tattooed, pierced, and riding Harleys, these were the people I drank and used with but was absolutely certain did not exist within the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. Not only was this group sober for many years, but they possessed everything that I wanted: careers, families, homes, self confidence, peace of mind, sobriety. Up until that point I had not met anyone like me in a meeting and within one evening I found an entire group of people I could relate to. I left the party that evening with a sense of peace and hopefulness that I had yet to feel in my few measly months in recovery. I no longer felt like a monkey in a fish bowl.


Ironically, after finding "my people" in recovery, I began to make the effort to identify with those who weren't like me at that time. I made it a point to really listen to the married housewives and middle aged CPAs. Even though my life up until that point consisted of barrooms, back alleys and a conveyor belt of failed relationships, I wanted to know how to change all that. I wanted to know how to make a relationship last longer than 2 months and without the aid of a social lubricant. I wanted to know how to be rigorously honest and not just with others but with myself as well. I wanted to know how to weather the storms of my day to day challenges without picking up or acting out. Because the truth was that there came a point in my recovery where I no longer felt the need to pick up a drink but would act out in other ways that were clearly "addict" behavior. These behaviors ran the gamut of social posturing in an attempt to make myself look more desirable, to hurting others in the name of making my life easier.


Imagine my dismay when it became abundantly clear that those in recovery saw right through my behavior and were more than willing to call me on it. I had a sponsor at the time who suggested to me that if I continued to do what I had been doing, then I would continue to get what I had been getting. She never once hesitated to call me on my actions and point out exactly where I was in danger of picking up.


However, at about 2.5 years of sobriety I stopped attending meetings and began dating an individual who was not sober. While he wasn't an alcoholic, he wasn't a person that was supportive of my recovery in any way. As I began to identify with his way of living and slowly lost touch with those whom I could best relate to, I found myself in a sober No Man's Land. Clean, but not serene. Restless, irritable, and discontent. It didn't matter that I wasn't using; every fiber of my being was beginning to scream out for a release from my madness. My sponsor saw this coming and told me where it would lead. I was unwilling to take her counsel and she ultimately fired me. Six months later I was drunk.


And that is how it happens. I stopped listening to those who had traveled down this road and who knew more than me. Even though I was beginning to see the shimmers of a sober, God-filled horizon and had begun to incorporate all that I was learning into my life, I was still filled with an ego large enough to get me drunk. I went looking for validation of myself in the eyes and arms of someone who had zero concept of my reality and I bought into the mirage. I turned away from the promise of all that Alcoholics Anonymous had to offer me and I threw away all that I had gained simply so that I could fit in to a reality that had never worked for me to begin with. I wasn't normal. I was never going to be normal.


Yet in the back of my drunkard mind I held on to the hope that one day I would fit in again. I wanted everyone to love me. Normies and alcoholics alike. I wanted to straddle the boundaries between two worlds that weren't entirely compatible and I wanted it all to work to my advantage. I wanted the adrenaline rush that came with hanging out in bars and hanging out with those that were using, but I wasn't entirely prepared to dive off the cliff into active addiction. Instead, I started using in my mind before I picked up the first drink. Because that is where it all starts. In the mind.


What I found out promptly after relapsing is that nobody gives a damn about you in the world of addictive addiction. I immediately segued from a world of sponsors to a world of bartenders and dealers; neither of whom gave a shit about my serenity. What I also found is that when I jumped the cliff head first into active addiction, not a single soul from the rooms of AA was jumping with me. I jumped alone.

added to my top 10

random musings

Today at work:

Client: "Do you know if Kroger carries Bloody Mary mix?"

Me: "I'm the wrong person to ask. Um, probably?"

Client: "I'm having a brunch tomorrow and need Bloody Mary mix."

Me: (good luck with that) "Yeah, I don't know. I don't drink."

Client: silence

A week ago at work:

Client asking me about nursing school: "Well, you're still young, if it doesn't work out, you still have time."

Me: "I'll be 40 in January. I need to move on this now."

Client: (leans up from table and looks at me) "WHAT? You're almost 40??? I thought you were in your late 20's."

Me: (OMG I love you) "Um, thanks? But I'm SO not in my 20's. I just act juvenile."

14 years ago next month:

My kick ass heavy metal loving sponsor bought us tickets to Ozzy Osbourne for my one year sobriety birthday. She kicked my ass through the Steps and had great taste in hard rock. I miss playing air drums in her living room while she played air guitar. Good times.

your definition of sobriety

God willing, on October 1, I will have nine years of continuous sobriety. Sobriety. Not "no drinking but marijuana maintenance." Not "no drinking but a few Percocet from time to time." Not "no drinking but I will continue to treat those in my life like shit."

Sobriety.

No drinking.

No drugs

No gambling

No acting out sexually

No compulsive shopping

No co-dependent relationships

Sobriety.

Its taken a lot of work to get to this point and its a path that requires daily maintenance. There are many days that I miss the high of adrenaline that comes with active addiction. But my awareness of what is real and what is not has been sharpened over the last few years and I strive to maintain that clarity.

As I wrap up another year of continuous sobriety, I would love to receive comments from readers regarding their personal definition of sobriety. One need not be sober in Alcoholics Anonymous in order to respond. This is an equal opportunity blog.

Help a girl out?

you're invited

I've been asked to host Sunday's Sober Chat at TSR (8 PM Eastern). Topic for Sunday: Transference of Addictions. In layman's terms: did you kick the drinking and drugs only to pick up something else to fill the hole?

See you there.

start dreaming now....

Where I have every intention of going for my birthday next year. Just to be clear, my intention is Machu Picchu, not Peruvian cocaine. So please refrain from any snide comments.

that drunk girl in the meeting

Did I ever mention in post that I was drunk when I attended my first AA meeting? No? I was.

It was 1989 and I was stalking a kind-of-sort-of boyfriend at his apartment in Sunset Beach, California. I had been drinking for the better part of the afternoon and drove my drunk self over to his place in the early evening in an attempt to appear even more appealing than I already wasn't. He either wasn't home or wasn't answering and I found myself weaving about aimlessly in the alley outside his apartment.

Several guys were hanging out next to a fence, smoking, and watching my circus act with pity. Through half closed boozey eyes, I noticed they had come from the building across the alley and were preparing to head back in. Turns out they were on a smoke break (common in many California AA meetings at the time) and they were preparing to reenter the building. They began talking to me and I would love to tell you that I recollect that conversation as though it happened yesterday, but I can't do that. I was getting ready to sail into one of my infamous blackouts and the memory of those minutes will forever remain clouded.

What I do know is that they somehow got me into the room, sat me down, and handed me a meeting schedule. I do remember looking up and seeing the 12 Steps written on the wall. I remembered a variation of them from an OA meeting I had attended when I was in treatment for anorexia and bulimia. They felt familiar. I also remember that I shared in the meeting that night, although I couldn't tell you what I said. No doubt it was pathetic and slurred.

My memories of that night end right there. I don't know what happened after that but I do know that I kept going back. I was to remain sober for six months before going back out, but the seed had been planted and my relationship with AA would forever alter my drinking.

Cat will appreciate this

It's Twilight season. Forgive me my obsession for teenage melodrama. I can't help myself.