I bought a new pot of face cream. The package promised to “erase fine lines in a week,” which is great because it’s my birthday today and I wanted to have a wrinkle-free face by that milestone…

The Quick Fix…

I mean, I actually bought the cream – $37.99 – because the box said it would work its magic quickly. Isn’t that what we all look for? And it got me thinking. Getting sober is like standing in the Lotion and Creams isle in the drugstore. We are all looking past the seductive packaging for the quick fix.  And discounting the cause – years of self-sabotage. In my case, Bahamian sun, booze, and the inadvisable practice of not removing mascara before bed and scraping it from the tender skin below my eyes with a rough washcloth in the morning…

It got me thinking that getting sober is a lot easier than staying sober. Let’s face it –  the long-haul, drudgery of sobriety and the punch in the gut demands when the addicted brain wants what it wants, are about the least fast things one can think of. It takes a lifetime. Just ask the AA old-timers.

Imagine the packaging for the product “Sobriety in a Box” – a brightly colored parcel, a symmetrical, smiling model and the promise it’s going to “TAKE YOUR WHOLE LIFE” to get the desired results. Who’d buy that?

Getting Sober Fast…

For about half of what I paid for the face cream, I can order the book: How to Give Up Drinking Fast and Stay Sober: An Ex-Alcoholic’s Guide to Overcoming Alcohol Addiction. Or a dozen other books promising “speedy recovery.” I haven’t read any of them, but anyone who has done what we have done knows it’s not about fast. And a surefire guide? One size fits all? I don’t think so.

But no one is going to choose the book titled Staying Sober is HARD.  With the subtitle:  The chronic nature of the disease may include a relapse or two… 

We live in a world where we fix every ill, quickly, prettily, with a pill or an unguent or a Google search. No one should have to suffer unnecessarily. Or, God forbid, walk around with the ravages of a hard life etched on one’s face… We are all like Willy Wonka’s Veruca. I want it now!

Benchmarks, Wrinkles & Atta’ Girls…

It is at milestones like birthdays and sober anniversaries when a person should stop and give proper credit to themselves. For doing the hard stuff.  The things that take time and effort. And we should give ourselves a break for continuing to believe the packaging – even when we know better… although I think the face cream really did reduce my fine lines…

So, on this birthday I can say I feel pretty darned good about myself. Kim is visiting and I said to her last night, “I might be older, but I am really happy with my body.” I don’t think I have ever said that before. (Although Kim reminded me I used to vogue in the mirror and say it all the time…)

What I meant this time, was that I am happy with myself. The body that I possess is clear headed. I am wearing my size twos again because of a consistent, long-term program of rigorous exercise and healthy eating. This person I have become, after all I have been through, is present. I am here for the long haul. And stronger than ever for having eschewed easy.

And I am happy with my body and my countenance.

Wrinkles and all…

E2E – I know you are thinking of me today – I think of you every day…

The post “Buying” the Sober Life (With the Proper Packaging) 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 had a conversation last week, with a young woman who had fallen off the wagon. She said, “I feel so horrible. So guilty. I feel like I have to start all over.”

I tried to come up with the right words for her. I know that like other chronic diseases, addiction involves cycles of relapse and remission. In The Bahamas they say, “Shit happens,” and I certainly know that to be true (although it’s not great advice for a young woman who is feeling like the worse kind of shit happens to her alone). I did have the wherewithal to say, “You are not starting over. You have a wealth of knowledge about addiction and lots of tools to use to get yourself back on track. Take this seriously, but think of it as a bump in the road.”

I don’t know if my advice gave her comfort or not. The name of this blog is Waking Up the Ghost – another colloquial reference to my time in The Bahamas. It refers to the inability to stop once you start. It really applies to anything addictive (white wine, the ponies, a party pack of Lays, calling him again…). I say I never relapsed, but I stopped drinking at least 20 times in the years before I really stopped. And the way I started back each time was the definition of relapse. I “suffered deterioration after a period of improvement”.

I’d start with a glass of red wine at dinner, because I don’t like red wine and I thought it would serve as a moderator. Then I’d plug my nose and have two glasses of red wine at dinner. Then a bottle. Then I’d say to myself, “You don’t even like red wine and you’re drinking a bottle (duh). Why not drink white wine all day long?” And so it would begin again…

Unlike me in my fence-sitting days, this young woman has the mechanisms in place to go forward, sober and stronger than ever.

For anyone who worries about relapse (and we all do a little bit), there is an excellent, comprehensive check list by Debra Jay for Hazelden that I highly recommend: Warning Signs of Relapse.

And from the Addiction Counselor’s Perspective:

The post When You Wake the Ghost first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

That’s me on the left – I’m like, “I am NOT going to eat 4,000 calories of candy in one sitting – burn the head after I cut it off!!!” and the other guy is like, “Wait. Did you say 4,000 calories?” and I’m like “Don’t worry – I took Correctol” and he’s like, “Yuck…” (obviously the guy with the torch has never had an eating disorder….)

 

I just read an article from Recovery Connection that says 50% of those with eating disorders will go on to have some sort of addiction issues. The article also says the symptoms do not always present at the same time: one disorder may be under control, while another rears its ugly head; or one disorder may kick-start a dormant tendency long held at bay. It is something I can still relate to, two years sober, when a secret candy glut or binge eating setback rattles my overall recovery…

 

I am reminded of the Hydra – the mythical sea creature with nine heads and nine hungry mouths. The Hydra had a lair at the entrance to the underworld, and like most Greek monsters, it was greedy and gratuitously mean and symbolic. You will remember our hero Odysseus with his club and straight edge, going after the Hydra as one of his challenges before he could go home to Troy. That poor guy – the Hydra was so toxic, its breath was lethal (like the smell of the stale bourbon in the morning) and every time Odysseus lopped off one head, two more grew back.

 

I swear that is how I sometimes feel when fighting the disorders that have cropped up since I quit drinking. All my issues involve filling a void (I do not even want to know why at this point), so they could all be called eating disorders, I think. Or gluttony. Or sea creature-ishness if you are feeling inventive.

 

For most of my twenties I had bulimia. I would eat several bags of cheap candy or a loaf of white bread, cinnamon toast (the breakfast of champions) and then I’d take six laxative pills (when the directions said take two) and the rest of the afternoon you can imagine (if you have the gag-reflex for it)… I don’t talk about this much. It is not really appropriate dinner conversation, it’s repulsive and it is something a bit deeper than embarrassing to admit. Let’s not even talk about the subliminal naming of my product to choice – Correctol…

 

I have not spiraled to the purging part of my eating disorder again since I’ve been sober, but I do binge sometimes late at night when no one is looking. And I have thought about how much better I’d feel if I GOT RID of it all. It’s like cutting off the ugly, snapping head of the Hydra and watching while a few more grow back…

 

Today I’m not drinking because I’ve corrected it ALL…

 

How come you’re not drinking?

The post Eating Disorders + Addiction (How Do You Kill the Hydra?) first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.