It’s spring in Michigan and I work in one of those old buildings that have trouble shifting from winter steam heat to AC. And it’s been so gorgeous outside, that natural air is what I’m after. So, I tried to open my office window.  But, I work in one of those old buildings that have storm windows weighing a ton, and another set of windows that push out on dicky, metal thingies that do not hold. In other words, it is not easy to tap natural air.

Mother of Invention

I got creative and used my Alcoholics Anonymous big book as a window brace. The AA big book I have in my office is “for show” – the new, Warholesque, Pop version that weighs at least a pound. It was a gift from my friend Laura at my one year sober anniversary and I usually have it artfully displayed on my credenza.

I was sharing my marketing pearls with my intern Monica. She was facing the window and at some point, she furled her brow and said, “I think something just fell out of your window.” I turned around and the BIG book was gone.

Oh Oh. What if there was someone walking under the window? A gardener, or a visitor to one of the other offices? Someone minding their own business when a book, falling from three floors and gaining velocity, clobbers them on the head? What if, now that my life is going so well (and I have almost finished writing the new, Sanford House website), I kill someone and have to go to jail and become someone’s’ “bitch”? Maybe I can pretend it’s not mine. But what about the inscription? And everyone knows I like Pop art…

All those thoughts ran through my head as I walked the three feet to the window, pushed it open and looked down. No dead body, thank God. The fall didn’t even break the book’s binding. So I scampered down the stairs and reclaimed my possession before someone saw it as manna from heaven and snatched it for their library.

Things Happen…

We were all laughing about it later and Jess said, ” What if it had just fallen in front of someone? Right at their feet –  and they were thinking about quitting drinking? Would they think it was a sign?” This was a scenario I hadn’t thought about, but what if? I can imagine, after one of those horrible nights when I was shaky, still drunk and queasy, walking along and having an Alcoholics Anonymous tome fall out of the sky like a sign from God. Collapsing to my knees and shouting, “TELL IT! I will get sober today!”

I don’t want to make too much of a book falling from an office window. It was, after all, a careless mistake and not a Godsend. But it reminded me that unanticipated things happen – good and bad. And I suppose it’s how you look at it. You can dodge a falling book and sue the perp, or pick it up and get sober. You can get hit by a truck or a book out of nowhere. You can live to tell the tale.

Things happen. And sometimes they’re funny and thought provoking. Keep your eyes and ears open, look up occasionally and surround yourself with folks who get it. 

Because what doesn’t kill you (or someone else) makes you stronger for great blog fodder…

The post It’s a Sign From Above to Quit Drinking (or Duck)! first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

Try, try again…

Get ready – I’m about to use climbing mountains as a metaphor for quitting drinking again. I can’t help myself, it’s too symbolic. Especially since the first time I tried to climb the “big hill” on my vacation in Puerto Rico last week, I failed. Let me explain. The road to get to the big hill is a few miles long, with three rather high, sloping hills and many smaller rises along the way. There is a long dry stretch, where the wind rarely blows and it gets hot. The surface is loose sand, littered with small, ankle turning rocks. And the hill itself is steep and long, curling up a narrow, rocky path.

It’s not that hard, really…

Kim says it’s not really that tough. It’s not like you need carabineers. You don’t have to dangle from cliffs. But the walk is challenging and for some reason, it’s  immensely difficult for me. But I want to do it every time I go to Puerto Rico. Right now, in my mind’s eye, I can see it – every rock and curve through the green… Going up, up forever…

And the fact is, I am not as proud of myself for getting up the hill – finally – as I am for wanting to get up the hill the next day, after my failure.

Even though I pretty much almost died the first time I tried. Seriously, the top of my head was exploding and my legs were soggy noodles with thigh weights and I would make it a foot or two up the hill (mountain) and I could actually see birdies flying around my head like the cartoons… So I would have to sit down. Eventually, I turned back shamefaced without getting close to the top. I met up with Kim and was able to talk myself out of collapsing inconveniently in the wilderness (stumbling along like some old plow horse ready to be made into Elmer’s), but as soon as we hit the paved road I gave up. This was a first, but I sat down in the grass and I said, “I cannot do it. I can’t make it back.”

You’ve Done it Before – You Learned From the Experience…

But I’ve climbed that hill so many times before. I have memorized the route. So the next day, I was up and ready to try, try again.  And I made it – no sweat. And then I got an email from H who says she has been trying to quit drinking for two years now. She quits drinking for two weeks, a few days, a month, but always goes back to the bottle. H feels defeated. She said she “wants what I have – the freedom.”

And I thought, Holy crumb – let’s look at this positively – she’s quit a few times before, so H knows what it feels like to not drink. It’s like climbing a big, huge hill. And all is not lost with a relapse, or a failure. Especially if she learned something along the way. And what’s more, H is looking at quitting as freedom. Freedom, like standing at the top of a hill after a long climb with your arms in the air…

Mountains of Booze Bottles…

So, for H and everyone else out there who knows they have to quit drinking, but can’t seem to make it stick, let’s talk about the tools you need to quit for good. You don’t need carabineers – no hanging off the face of a cliff. But you do need gumption – the belief that you will not drink again. Ever. And you need friends who will tell you “it’s not that tough,” but who will walk down the hill with you (without judgment) when you are finding it way too hard to get to the top.

Yes, I am using that tired, mountain metaphor again. But it is so apt – taking the first step, knowing it’s going to be a challenge and going for it anyway. And if you’ve faltered before, if you didn’t make it, there is no crime in trying, trying , trying again until you get it right. You just keep thinking about the way it’s going to feel – the freedom of standing at the top – sweaty and tired and breathing hard, but there. With your arms in the air. Free.

The post What if Quitting Drinking Doesn’t Stick the First (Fifth, Tenth) Time You Try? first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

I woke up this morning feeling like myself. I’ve been tired the last few days. Feeling “like myself”means my eyes spring open at 4:30 AM with an idea like a LED projector light over my head. This morning it was, sit up zombie style (I can go flat to sitting, rolling up vertebrae by vertebrae – Pilates mate…). With the words, “The It’s Better Than Drinking Addictions” on my brain.

Filling a basic need…

I was thinking about how people allow themselves a bag of doughnuts or a toke of cannabis, because “it’s better than drinking.”  And yet those yens come from the same basic, addictive need. Hollow? It’s easy to fill the empty spaces with ill-advised food, sex, pot.  You might smell like cooking grease or mango Kush, but at least you’re not going to make a scene at the family Christmas feast, right? RIGHT?

Anyway, I was all fired up to get to work super-early and get my ideas down before everyone else came in. But when I went out to get in my car, I remembered two feet of snow had fallen.  I walked to work yesterday to experience the winter firmament. And the snow plow came through my parking lot while I was a’ wandering… My pretty car was buried, with a three foot wall of ice behind the bumper.

I got in and started the engine. Remembering that I read somewhere, if the exhaust pipe was filled with snow, I would be asphyxiated and die. And then I got out with my $8.99 scraper and began to unearth my car. I guess the plows come out at 6, because a cowboy with a truck, plow and spotlights arrived like it was a race with prizes. He tilled the parking lot at 60 MPH, spraying an additional foot of snow onto my bumper. (And tale pipe!)

When your snippiness goes unnoticed…

So I am the only person out there, with my hands raised in an “are you kidding me?” gesture. Knee deep in snow and unrequited brilliant ideas, and he ignores me. Back and forth three times at breakneck speed. Looking straight ahead like he’s not burying a woman alive… What was I supposed to do? Jump in front of the plow? Dressed in black? He’d cut me in two with a snippy look on my dead face…

When he spun a yo out of the drive and onto another unsuspecting parking lot, I used my boots, mittens and scraper to dig myself out.  I am glad I was not hung-over. When I got to work I poured myself the first of what will be ten cups of coffee. Maybe someone will bring in coffee cake or doughnuts. I had a tough morning. I’ve got an article to write.  And java and crullers, are better than drinking…

Seriously?

The post A Snowplow and the “It’s Better Than Drinking” Addictions… first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

Imagine That…

Imagine that. My daughter Lauren and her boyfriend John were visiting from Florida. I spent my downtime last week preparing for their coming.  Groceries were purchased and I filled the pantry with canned goods. I did not want them to think I live on Skinny Pop and blackberries. Or that I would not be prepared if there was a blizzard. I also made everything shine like the top of the Chrysler Building (to use a phrase that might be controversial this close to Motown…).

They arrived at midnight on Thursday, and from that moment until I put them on a plane yesterday, I was 100% attentive to their needs. We experienced everything from a 70 degree hike on the Saugatuck Dunes (see photo above where I am upstaging my daughter), to a SRO Frankenmuth sojourn, to a home cooked banquet at friends’, to a bona fide snowstorm in the Up North, boonies.  And we ate a lot of meat. And fried stuff, like pickles and mushrooms and potatoes…

Drinking Mom vs. Sober Mom…

Both John and Lauren have experienced my behavior as a drinker. In fact, they woke me to remind me I used to be “kind of a mean drunk” when they got home (ironically, cheerfully drunk) from a Grand Rapids brewery tour. There was only one time I thought that a glass of red wine would be nice.  Oh, come on, we were hiking in snow and holed up in a rough hewn, log lodge…

But seriously, other than sitting in a waterside bar after a long walk with a yen for a warming glass of plonk, the main thing I felt was a resounding sense of peace. When I was drinking, everything was so urgent. Especially on a long weekend with actual, human beings. When could I start drinking? Would I have enough? And how long before we stop all this “fun nonsense” and get down to the business of getting drunk?

Lauren and John – fun nonsense in the Michigan woods…

What a Relief

I am so grateful for the long days I have now and the fact that I can drive at any time of day, with impunity.  To experience the first snowfall with a couple of Florida tourists and focus on nothing heavier than what to eat (heavier is right) and what to see next… The profound equanimity. The pure hilarity…

Oh, and speaking of tourists, we hiked in the woods during hunting season and climbed into someone’s deer blind. I don’t think you are supposed to do that. We were walking, tricked out in the orange gear we found in the lodge, and Lauren said, “Why is there yellow snow in our footprints? It looks like urine.”

I said, “OOOH, I think they spread deer pee to mask the smell of man in the forest…” As we went stomping, with our “man smell” all over the woods….

The post The Amazing Lack of URGENCY to My Sobriety… first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

I’m hung over. It was my birthday yesterday and the darling people I work with brought cupcakes. There were four left, in the baker’s box, for me to take home last night. I won’t disgust you with the details… The sugar settled in my joints and eyelids, and when I got up this morning, I felt puffy and achy.  And I was in a big hurry to get back on track. I made a pot of coffee and plugged my phone into the wall. I have an APP with some Pilates tapes I like to do to punish myself.

NOTHING I TELL YOU!

Don’t ask me why I used the plug  nearest a Chinese wedding box (made of hand painted rice paper) and a cream silk chair, but I did.  I scurried about tidying things while the phone charged. (The best way to negate a sugar relapse, is to vacuum at 5 AM.) Why can’t I eat a bloody cupcake? One cupcake like a normal human being?

I powerwalked over to the phone with a full coffee cup in my hand, ready to do the Pilates 100. When I yanked the chord, I teetered backwards and the entire cup of hot, brown, liquid spattered the chair. Catastrophically. I screamed an uninhibited, NO!!!” As if my toddler had crawled through a fence and fallen into a gorilla’s cage. But then I remembered I live in an apartment. And even though its pretty soundproof, I can hear my neighbor’s dog bark when I don’t have the TV on.

Poor Little Me

So I toned it down and whimpered, “I have so little.” Sniff, sniff. I upped the poignancy with, “I have nothing. Nothing…” I got out the Perrier and a white bath towel and did my best to fix the problem.  In the old days, I would have had my first glass of wine for the day and thrown a dish rag over the mess. In fact, “throwing a dishrag over the mess” is a great way of describing how I used to handle everything from relationships to car crashes…

Here’s the question: does the above photo look like the apartment of someone with nothing? There’s a live orchid for God’s sake. Artwork. Thirty foot ceilings and Perrier in the refrigerator. But what is the first thing I thought of when my pretty chair was besmirched? Poor little alcoholic me, with nothing. Now, even my chair is ruined…”

 It’s my DISEASE…

I think this is why I have a problem with the disease aspect of  alcoholism. On some level it seems like a cop out. I think about those people in AA meetings (come on, we’ve all seen them) who slump in chairs and talk about the fact they couldn’t help themselves – it was their disease. It makes me wonder where all the ex-alcoholic winners are keeping themselves. And why do I still fall back on woe-is-me-ism, when I should ease up and myself and remember how far I’ve come?

I don’t mean to be snide just because I ate five cupcakes. I actually feel very solid at this milestone. But for this birthday wish (minus any more cake), I want to train my brain to think the way I used to think when I was a prideful boozer (minus the hubris and white wine): Mistakes happen and people eat too much cake on their birthday.

And I have A LOT more of what counts now, than I did in the old, drinking days.

The post I Who Have Nothing (Oh, Get Over Yourself)… first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

I made it through Halloween without eating a single piece of candy. I did eat a fortune cookie, which hinted I was going to meet an “important stranger who would change my life”, but fortune cookies don’t count. They don’t have any more sugar in them than toothpaste… If I had eaten any real candy, it would have set off a chain reaction. MORE CANDY. One piece, or even six pieces are never enough when I am on a binge.

All or Nothing…

A friend of mine in recovery once said that even as a child, she was excessive about everything she did. She said, “If my family went to the beach I would have to collect shells. White shells. Or round shells. Or rocks. It would be getting dark and my mom would say it was time to go and I’d beg, ‘Wait. I NEED to get a few more.’ And I would have a stuffed bag, but it would never be enough.”

That beach story really hits home with me. I have long felt like a glutton. Don’t get me started, because I won’t ever stop. My best friend Kim tells me to “be consistent, keep a schedule and moderate.” So does Mari Winsor on one of my Pilates tapes. I don’t listen to either of them. I am the definition of inconsistent and immoderate.

Why Me?

I don’t mean to be resentful. I understand pique is a No-No in recovery, but WHY ME? Why can’t I be like Kim who exercises every day but Sunday? Someone who cuts bonbons in half, because she “just wants a taste of chocolate”. Someone who would never think of spending a day in bed, with a party bag of caramel corn and Netflix for company…

Instead, I go for a month exercising three hours a day and eating organic kale, only to have some horrible internal switch occur. I spend the next few weeks fasting on coffee and stopping at the Circle K on the way home for a dinner of Charleston Chews.

In my free time I like to walk for 12 miles or so on deserted beaches and collect SHELLS…

I AM Sober…

Since I got sober, I have given myself a break on some of my other bad habits. But, it is never a good thing to yoyo diet and seesaw exercise. The second pot of coffee is probably something to avoid… Somewhere deep inside, I think I tell myself that a bag of black licorice might make me gain weight or make my heart pound, but it won’t cause me to run over my neighbor’s mailbox and then yell at them for “leaving it so close to the street.” It seems like the lesser of two iniquities…

This is all a long way of saying that I am in long term recovery, but I still have a long way to go.

I joined the YMCA this weekend. And I was up at 4 AM doing Pilates this morning. My lunch is a hard boiled egg and an apple. I did not eat a single piece of Halloween candy (even though the little fellow who’s house I was visiting, sorted his candy temptingly around my feet and when he wasn’t looking I could have pocketed the Dum Dums)…

I am going to ride this health kick till the switch gets pulled…

The post All or Nothing: Alcohol, Sugar, Coffee, Exercise Addiction first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

There is a group in Jacksonville called the Saltwater Cowgirls who partner with my friends at Lakeview Health. They call it surf therapy: providing lessons in surfing and life for the residents in addiction treatment at Lakeview. I lived on the ocean in Jacksonville Beach, but I have never surfed. I am not a strong swimmer, and I am afraid of sharks. Surfing recently influenced my sobriety, however…

Work vs. Surfing

Think about it  – surfing is the perfect avocation for someone in recovery. It is physically taxing, involves lots of water and occupies both hands. I am thinking of surf therapy at the moment, because I met up with an old friend the other night. He was visiting his mother in Grand Rapids. Karl lives in California and gears his successful business life around the surfing swells. Every day, he checks the wave patterns and weather on his Surf App, goes down to the pier and determines when he will work and/or surf, based on his survey of the ocean. Something about storms in New Zealand and wind transferring its energy to water…

I admire that kind of passion. Talk about a health and wellness prioritized life.

Hole in the Wall

Anyway, I haven’t seen this guy in years and my point of reference (ironically) is our drug and alcohol fueled college days at NMU. Also, we worked together at a drug and alcohol fueled dude ranch one summer. My only request for our meeting was that it be in “a hole in the wall with a booth”. It seemed fitting to reconnect in a bar.

Four hours later, we had polished off about a gallon of water each and I had downed three club sodas and cranberry. We forgot to eat with all the lobbing, back and forth, of stories with endings we already knew.

The time he stepped over a friend passed out in the doorway of Lee Hall with a blithe, “He’s fine. Leave him there.” The time I made fun of a fellow Creative Writing classmate who had used the words, “dark” and “dank” in the same sentence. The time he walked to the Campus Clinic with the flu when the wind chill was 80 below zero. The time the dude ranch staged a faux, nighttime “robbery” and he played the bandit. Cantering through the woods in the dark (drunk) to surprise the guests on a moonlight ride, he took a low hanging limb to the forehead. A temporary setback as he crawled back onto the horse and resumed the playact. The fact we were alive to tell the tales after all the tripping, toking and chugging we did in the crazy, hazy days of our youth.

While his yen for the ocean and the seeds of my alcoholism were germinated.

When You Don’t Even Think About Drinking…

Sigh…

Okay – I am getting back to the surfing thing now. There is something gratifying about reconnecting with someone who has remained essentially the same. I don’t mean stagnated. I mean fundamentally the same as they were at 18. Curious, funny, fit, smart – the same parlance, the same catch in the voice… And now, living a life that is dictated by health and wellness and surfing…

There was no question of drinking. I didn’t have to explain (although he knows my story) or excuse myself. Karl says none of his friends drink. He might have a beer every once in a while. And it brings me back to the things I have said before about recovery. If you find a passion, find something to occupy your hands and your mind, you have a better chance of success. Karl says when he’s surfing he doesn’t think of anything else. He says it is, “So damn fun, it’s addicting…”

It is gratifying to  reconnect with someone who seems happy. To learn recovery lessons from someone who has never had a drinking problem. And when I ventured to speak of regret. About what I should have done, back before my drinking became deadly, Karl said, “Yes. But if you did that, you wouldn’t be here now.”

How very surfer dude, California.

It’s funny, the choices we make; the paths we cannot alter. The ebb and flow of experiences that define us. And the fact that a storm, thousands of miles away can impact the surface of the ocean as a surfer rides a wave…

.

The post How a Storm in New Zealand Impacts My Sobriety in Michigan… first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

Have you ever had a person say something to you jokingly, and it’s kind of mean, but funny? And you let it slide like a boss, because you know how to laugh at yourself? But years later you still think about it every once in a while?

I remember a long time ago, I was wearing a black bathing suit with a ruffled bikini bottom, thinking I looked kind of French and edgy. My friend Val said (in a British accent which always makes it more cutting), “Oh, Mazza, you look like one of the dancing hippos in Fantasia.” I think of it every time I consider wearing something with a ruff…

Yesterday, someone told me I was “touchy” and that talking to me was like navigating verbal eggshells.  It’s been quite a week for pealing the onion of my behavior… I did what I always do in response to criticism. I took it in. “This is a first. No one has ever accused me of being thin skinned before,” I said.

The exchange above is a blip on the screen, but the fact is I AM NOT TOUCHY.

Pealing the Onion…

I do not think you can be thin skinned in recovery. We all face our past, in ways those who are not addicted to Toasted Head,  never have to do. We make fearless moral inventories and atone, for God’s sake.

I have been contacted by old lovers, nannies and the mothers of my children’s friends in the process of writing this blog.. Some of these long-lost reminiscers have told me straight-up, they “hated me” in my drinking days. Reminding me of previous slights and “the time I didn’t seem sad when their cat was run over by a town car…”

I have had internet trolls call me a “stupid cunt” in reference to my yearning prose. They tell me my writing is banal and my ideas the worse kind of tripe. I have braved Reddit. I swear to you, I carry my mistakes in my pocket like a doctor’s excuse…

And most days I just get up and go about my business like a pachyderm.

But I never, ever wear anything with ruffles…

http://https://youtu.be/nEjPDS8Jp1E

The post There is no Place for Thin Skin in Recovery! first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

I’m not talking about Equine Therapy, folks. A few weeks ago, I was at an old-fashioned country fair in Ellsworth, Michigan and they had what was billed as a “horse pull” in a park on the outskirts of town. If you have never seen a horse pull before, it involves teams of enormous, draft horses; a stone sleigh; blocks of cement; and farmer-type horse handlers who look like they could pull the sled themselves with a little encouragement.

It was hot. I was sitting in a camp chair and watching the action. Here’s the way a horse pull works: the handlers bring out their team of two horses (tricked out in fancy yokes and head gear) and hook them to a flat slab of concrete. A pay-loader grinds up and drops a block of weighted stone onto the “sled” and the horses pull it for a short distance. The teams take turns doing this, with additional blocks of stone added at each trial. The winners are the team that pulls the most weight.

Built for Strength…

I have to tell you, it’s kind of hard to watch. I know these horses are built for strength and have been bred to drag plows around an untilled field, but the blocks of concrete start at 1,500 pounds and go up from there. And we had one of those small town barkers who narrated the obvious action with a microphone from a highchair, and I swear the horses looked at him with a rolled eyed drollness that seemed to say, “Could you please shut up? We’re trying to pull concrete blocks here…”

Anyway, back to the therapy part. When I sit for very long, no matter what I’m watching, my mind wanders. Or more like trudges purposefully in one direction until I get bored and then it turns and trudges in another, picking up ideas along the way. The interesting thing about a horse pull, is that the teams have different techniques. Some work together, some just dig in and do their own thing – dragging their burden in spite of themselves… my mind started working…

The team that won worked together with a kind of determined resign. No baubles, or fancy irons (my ‘favorite team” had red pompoms bobbing) – they were muscled and mean.  When the going got tough, they just looked forward, used their back legs as catapults until they got going and then they ran, pulling together as if the job was difficult, but doable. No big deal.

Sober Plow Horses…

And that’s when I thought about all the people I know who have gotten sober. There’s a kind of doggedness to sobriety when you think about it – each new challenge is like a block of stone on a concrete sleigh. I don’t want to get too metaphorical here, just to say that my favorite people are those who never give up. Those folks who are determined and resigned and basic as plow horses.

There was a time when I would have watched the belabored animals with a snootful of wine and a bad attitude. I would not have made any analogies to myself, because there were none to be made. It takes pulling the heavy load a time or two yourself, to appreciate the stamina it requires – to admire what was considered “plodding” in a former life…

The post Plow Horse Therapy first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

Last night on the phone (after we dealt with yet another unintelligible crisis in her young life) Ellie asked me, “Miss Marilyn, are you happy?” I think that may be my new favorite interview question.

It stopped me in my tracks. Recently, I have gotten comments from people who tell me my life in recovery finally seems to be coming together. And they are right. I’ve accomplished a lot in a short time. I’ve completed my CCAR Recovery Coach training, learned to kayak, led successful group sessions , built a website and a blog and a crackerjack marketing team, qualified to drive a van, rekindled dormant relationships, discovered hiking in Michigan’s Up North and even navigated difficult social situations without craving a tumbler of La Crema ..

But am I happy?

And is it a fair question to ask a person in recovery?

I paused when Ellie asked me. I registered that I miss Lauren and Jon Jon and Kim. I miss a couple of friends and the state of Florida (but Lauren tells me to wait to miss it until winter), and the familiarity of places I have lived for a long time. Sometimes I wish I had a bigger, rollicking family, but I love my job and I am (for once) happy with the state of my body…

I guess I am happy. It makes me feel a bit awkward – like I’m bragging or prideful. But I’m not either of those things anymore (way too scared to wake up that ghost…). I answered Ellie’s question with, “I’m getting there.” but I think I might be there.

Are you happy?

And in case you didn’t see it – puppies make me happy:

The post Recovery Question Number 1: Are You Happy? first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.