I went to a free concert at Meijer Gardens on the 4th of July with Cindy. She seems to be witnessing a few of my sober “firsts”. This time, it was at an outdoor, camp-chair, picnic basket kind of concert. I haven’t been to one of those sober before. In fact, an outdoor concert (once I recced the toilets) was always an opportunity for drunken disorderliness on my part. Where better to get pie-eyed, than a pot-holed, minefield of folding chairs, wrinkled blankets and loose detritus?

Concert Going Drunk…

In the past, I would have had a glass of wine or four as I packed the cheese and crackers. I’d happily pour the better part of a bottle of wine into a thermos “roadie” and find a clever way to hide more wine on my person. Once we got settled, I’d locate the open bar and buy three, bad wines at a time – spilling booze as I teetered over the lawn with three Dixie-cups smashed together.

I can remember the slightly desperate feeling of having to go to the bathroom (all that liquid), but feeling unsteady. How was I going to pull myself up out of the folding chair two inches from the ground? Eyeing a path through the blankets and Yetis and hoping I wouldn’t lose my tenuous balance – land on someone’s bucket o’ chicken. Or turn an ankle.

I’d leave the food untouched, flinch at the first sip of concert wine like I was taking medicine. And then it wouldn’t taste so bad. I’d get sleepy, grumpy and bored. Sounds like three of Snow White’s most unpleasant dwarfs, right? And at some point I’d hate the band or my hair or the person I was with. I’d pick a fight.

That was me, summer concert drunk…

Concert Going Sober…

So, on the 4th I entered the bandstand area, minding my own sober business, carrying our snacks in a big, blue insolated bag. And a very nice man wearing an apron and a sun hat said, “Would you like some drink coupons?”

I said, “No thanks.”

He said, “Are you sure? There’s wine and beer!”

I said, “No thank you.” I even smiled sweetly. Ask Cindy.

We walked past him and he tried again, like he was on commission, not a volunteer, “It’s delicious wine and beer and these are discount tickets!”

I said loudly over my shoulder, “I’m an alcoholic!”

He looked so crestfallen, I kind of felt badly for him. But then I thought of all the people who were new to recovery and struggling a bit, going to their first sober concert and this kindly idiot was forcing drink tickets on them. So I said to Cindy, “I wonder if I said enough? Should I have told him to take ‘no’ for an answer and to stop selling so hard?”

Cindy said, “I think you said enough… I think he got it.”

My first sober, outdoor concert was fantastic.

Free, so it wasn’t flawless, but I enjoyed every bit. I was able to make my way to the bathroom, teetering on a tiered step like a Flying Wallenda, awake and cheerful and grateful.

I got home and, coincidentally, a newly sober friend of mine wrote to say she was going to a concert and finding the prospect difficult. So difficult, she didn’t even think she wanted to go…  Concerts, particularly outdoor concerts, are triggers for everybody. And it’s a shame. I told her that she was in charge of the situation – to go and enjoy herself. I said, “At least you don’t have to worry about your balance on the way to the porta-potty. At least you’ll remember what you hear.”

See how this peer recovery support works?

She said she went to an Elton John concert sober once. And the first song he sang was, “The bitch is back – stone cold sober as a matter of fact.” She says she laughed out loud… And that’s it in a nutshell – feeling alive and unfettered and happy at an outdoor summer concert. Really hearing the music. Laughing out loud…

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Ellie told me a story last night. A vignette about her sister Evie, who was mentoring a group of three-year olds at their school. She said Evie asked one little girl, “What color is an apple?” The little girl said, “Red.” Evie said, “Good. What color is the grass?” “Green!” said the little girl.  Evie said, “Great. Now, what color is the sky?” The little girl said, “Gray.”

When you’re expecting the answer “blue”…

Ellie and Evie live farther north than me, so this is sort of an Up North joke. Ellie told it to make me laugh and cheer me up. But instead, it got me thinking about reality vs. perception. Apparently, the teacher stepped in and said, “Yes dear, our sky is gray right now, but the answer is ‘blue’. From now on you should answer ‘blue’”.

And that’s how it begins, right? You are little – you give the correct answer – and someone in authority tells you a “better” answer to the question. And against your A+ judgment, you file it away with a dollop of resentment. Hokay, I’ll say the sky is blue, but it’s GRAY.  And from that day forward you are insecure on multiple choice tests. I can still remember how I felt when my Kindergarten teacher (coincidentally named Mrs. Blue) told me all clouds were white. And made me paint them white. That is why I am an alcoholic, and not a famous painter…

When the blues makes you human…

Ellie went on to tell me that her dad, who was a great friend of mine, thought my blue periods made me seem more “real”. But the problem with depression is that you see gray skies, even when they are blue. And no one in authority can change your mind… Ellie says when her dad told her it was okay to be happy one moment and sad the next, it made her feel like she had been given permission to be “the entirety” of herself and still be loved.

I’m ashamed to say my response was a tepid, “You don’t have to be strong all the time, I guess.” Hardly a rousing doctrine from a “role model” to a teenaged girl. The fact is, I hate weakness in myself.

So, for all the little kids Up North who can see the sky is GRAY. And for me. because I have weathered the storm… And for Ellie and Evie, because their dad told them to “look up”, but not to fool themselves into believing it’s always a cloudless blue up there…

http://https://youtu.be/sGZDwxnjG1g?list=RDsGZDwxnjG1g

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I think it’s universal that people who are in active addiction feel a sense of urgency. There is always the need for “more”. It’s why we hide wine bottles in winter boots. It’s why we look around sheepishly, and polish off the dregs of other people’s drinks while they are in the bathroom. There is an emptiness that needs filling. The necessity of finding the next fix is all.

Monkeys Don’t Make Great Pets…

The analogy of the monkey on your back is an apt one. Addiction is like a hungry, messy, unwieldy primate playing piggyback. And if you’ve ever known anyone with a pet monkey, you know they throw poop. They are not charming companions. They climb humans like trees and dig through their hair for bugs with sharp claws…

I had someone write to me yesterday who had just been on a sober vacation. She said it was the first time in years she had been to the beach without a giant sippy-cup filled with iced wine. And she didn’t stub her toes or act a fool or have that continuous, lowgrade worry she’d run out of liquor on a remote island.

That’s it in an oyster shell. She was not carrying the need for more like a portable cooler (or a hairy beast). How freeing!

Hiding, Lying and Monkey Business…

And it’s not just vacation. I hear from people all the time who take a sippy-cup roadie while they walk their baby in a stroller. Or hide liquor in a coffee cup so the “kids won’t know”. They leave bottles in the wheelwells of cars, or tuck shooters in the side pockets of purses. Stash a pint in the desk drawer, just in case. It’s exhausting to be this devious and dependent.

One of the greatest things about sobriety is the reduction of stress. There is no more need for lies, excuses or the hiding of vodka in golf bags in the basement. Gone are the machinations – I’d better make sure I stash an opened bottle in my closet, behind the heavy coats. I don’t want anyone at the party to know I fill my wine glass every time I take a pee, but I don’t want to have to wait till they all leave to get good and drunk.

You know the old saying, “No one is smart enough to lie”? Add drunk to the mix and you forget where you hid the booze, because you were in the bag when you hid it. It’s horrible – lie upon lie upon lie. Just like carrying something heavy on your back.

When we get sober, the bad monkey is gone. Everyone thinks they want a pet monkey.

Until they have a pet monkey…

The post Excuse Me Madam, There’s a Monkey on Your Back… first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

I was always a good four hour drinker. If I had a glass of wine or two getting ready and a roadie for liquid courage, I’d arrive at the party with a little buzz and about four hours until the witching hour, when I sneaked out the back door. I was famous for ghosting. I’d hit that benchmark where things were starting to get fuzzy and I’d think, “I had better get out of here now, or I am going to do something I’d regret if I could remember it in the morning…”

There were occasions I didn’t listen to my own good advice, but those were the times I blush to think about (it takes four guys to lift me off the floor when I’m in my cups). It was always better to get the phone call saying, “What happened to you last night? You disappeared.” The alternative usually involved ice packs or police lights…

Anyway, it occurred to me this weekend, that I am a good, four hour sober partier too. If the get-together does not involve sack races or watching back to back pirated movies in a viewing room, I am frankly bored. After four hours of teetotalling, I’m ready to politely thank my host and hightail it out of there or crawl out of my own skin.

Here’s Why:

Hour One: There is parity in the first hour. Even if your friends had a cocktail while perfecting their vogue looks, they are usually not tipsy in hour one. They might have a glass of wine or a beer to break the ice. Anyone who is doing keg stands or shots in hour one is not your friend anyway, so they are to be ignored. You grab a gassy water in a wine glass and mingle. For me, this is always awkward – one of the big reasons I used to drink as much a I did was because I felt uncomfortable in a social setting.

Hour Two: In the line up at the open bar, you notice people are getting a bit friendlier. Your second and third club soda (lemon in one, lime in the other!) goes down the hatch smooth as silk. You’ve talked to some folks you know and a few others, emboldened by their beer, come to talk to you. You’ve only looked at your watch once. You are still having fun, especially if there is a boat ride or antique cars or a performance. At this point, I begin to realize there is a bit of a disconnect. It might just be me.

Hour Three: The volume has increased in hour three and you have switched to soda with “a splash of orange juice”. How much gassy water can one person consume? Dancing has begun, even if it isn’t a dance party. You check your watch surreptitiously – twice. People are cozier still. A friend who is also in recovery asks, “So, how far in would you be if you were still drinking?” and you laugh and say, “Oh God – eight wines?” You nod at each other, stand and watch the proceedings and it goes without saying that you are better guests now that you are sober…

Hour Four: The witching hour happens whether your friends are big drinkers or not. It is just not the same to be at a party without a glass of wine. At hour four, drinkers are repeating their stories and draping their arms over your shoulders. If there is going to be drama, it will happen now. You are beginning to think about your exit strategy and you are back to plain club soda – no bloody citrus wedge, okay? It crosses your mind just once that it would be nice to feel a glow and then you remind yourself that your “glow” was a conflagration…

Street Theater in My Mind

No one understands the little, street theater that goes on in the head of a person in recovery. Except another person in recovery. I do not want a drink. But the longer I am at this sober “thing” the more I realize the occasional challenge I face. As I sit at a party, I am bombarded with mental images. I see the face of a therapist, there is a flashback of a time I was drunk, a warning aphorism blinks like neon, I watch someone swallow, I play a drinking scenario through to its natural conclusion, I tell myself I am strong, I tell myself to get out there and make new friends …

You get the picture. It’s tiring. And I think it’s fair, that after a few hours of earnest, well behaving I can go home. I can protect myself. Out the front door – no ghosting. The perfect guest. A lovely party. But please – no more than four hours…

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My husband used to enumerate at cocktail parties, the number of years of “wedded bliss” we had endured. With his English accent and studied, straight face it was obvious he was being ironic. We had some great times, but it was not all familial rapture: no marriage is without its ups and downs.

I was never offended by his little, theatrical claim. Ever practical when it comes to the murky territory of “feelings”, and our relationship was difficult at times. This little vignette sprang to mind, because it is my 3 year sober anniversary today and for some reason, my ex’s witticism seemed apt.

Now that I have what can be legitimately described as “a few” sober years under my belt, I do not feel as keen on celebrating the milestone as I have in previous years. In fact my desire to laud myself seems to wane in relation to years gone past. I feel more like standing in someone’s kitchen with a glass of gassy water in a wine glass and saying, “Yup. Three years of sober bliss…” I think anyone who’s been on the wagon for a few years will get what I mean and smile knowingly.

The Dips and Flow of a Wave…

I often describe my recovery by using my hand to form the dips and flow of a wave. Sobriety has not been easy for me. I am still waiting patiently for the pink cloud to appear. There’s no craving for wine anymore, and do not want a drink, but I am occasionally surprised that after all I’ve been through, I am not wildly happy as a person in long term recovery.

Don’t get me wrong, I certainly have my moments of great joy. Quitting drinking saved my life. I am a recovery advocate! But I also feel angry sometimes, and sometimes defeated. I still find it difficult to be at parties where people drink – not because I am craving, but because I run out of things to say. There are days when my sobriety feels a bit like drudgery.The normalcy of it is even boring.

There used to be a guy in a dissipated pontoon boat, next to our slip on the dock at Beach Marina. He would get up on a beautiful Florida morning, step over his bow rail with a toiletries bag in his hand and pause for our benefit. He would look up at the sky and say with perfect irony, “Another day in hell.”

You’ve Got to Roll Up Your Sleeves

You can’t be properly sardonic without having rolled up your sleeves and experienced all aspects of a situation. There is no way I could have made light of sobriety in the first months. I do not think my husband would have had the same effect at neighborhood events had we been newlyweds. The guy on the boat was down on his luck, but he lived on a boat in Florida. In all these examples, it’s the long term commitment to living this crazy life that makes the sarcasm funny.

And that is what I want to get across to myself today. On this august anniversary. No life is without its ups and downs. That after all those years of anesthetizing – of softening the slings and arrows – I am living. This is living. In all its mundane glory.

And isn’t it grand? Isn’t it bliss?

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I didn’t realize it was the first time I had been on a boat since I’ve been sober, until I was on a boat looking at the big white cooler that, on most watercraft, holds cold beer and wine… It was the first time in three years I was going for a boat ride that wasn’t a booze cruise and I was totally unprepared. I was Up North this weekend with Carrie and Annie, staying at Ross’s cabin and he arranged a tour around Charlevoix Harbor and into Lake Michigan with John (a teenaged throwback who was always too cool for my hackneyed version of school…).

My last boat ride was in in The Bahamas on a sweet Rybo-Runner that was so loaded with contraband, jalapeño stuffed olives and wheels of exotic cheeses we should have broken in the middle and sunk like an overweight freighter on the Great Lakes (see how I did that – with a reference to the Edmund Fitzgerald?). My captain, Wayde, was an unapologetic boat drinker and I was always three sheets to the Bahamian breeze by 10 AM. It is really my only reference to boating – drink and fish; drink and watch the regatta; drink and island hop; drink and snorkel; drink and pass out on the deck in the sun…

Back on Lake Michigan, we were listening to Frank Sinatra do “Summer Wind” and when “That’s Life” came on, we all bellowed (Annie actually crooned) into the wind, “I just pick myself up and get – back in the ray-ace…That’s life…” I have picked myself up and I am back in the boat race, my friends. And surprisingly, John’s cooler was full of bottled water. More surprisingly still, I did not miss the wine.

Sober boating is like drunk boating, but better.

Here’s Why Sober Boating Is Better Than Drunk Boating

1. It’s Illegal to Operate a Boat Under the Influence: Hello? You are allowed to have open containers of alcohol in a boat and the captain can have a drink or two, but just like driving under the influence (DUI), it’s illegal to operate a boat under the influence (BUI) in all 50 states.
2. Drinking and Boating Causes Accidents! The U.S. Coast Guard says more than half of all boating accidents involve alcohol or drugs.
3. Do you Really Want to Do a Field Sobriety Test in the Middle of Open Water? I hate to think of walking a straight line on a pitching deck – the fact is if you are driving a boat erratically, you may find yourself with law enforcement officials pulling you over, boarding your boat and asking you to recite the alphabet backwards…
4. You MISS All the Beauty When You Are Drunk: Even with the absolute gorgeousness of a day on the water, drinking telescopes your world down to the size of a wine glass. You forget to look up and around at the beauty that surrounds you.
5. Drinking Makes You Sleepy: Alcohol is categorized as a depressant – add the roll of the waves, sunshine and a warm summer wind and you have the perfect cocktail for missing most of the action, because you need to “rest your eyes”. 
6. You Lose Your Sea Legs When You’re Wasted: You might fall down. You could step on a fishhook. You may slip on suntan oil and fall overboard. You could drop the glass of wine you insisted had to be in a glass-glass and break it in a million pieces and then step on it and bleed all over the deck…
7. You Might Have to “Pee in the Bucket”: John told us, “Not to be afraid of the bucket,” but you had to go to the bow and close a small half door and ask everyone to look the other way and pee into a bucket… all things to fear, or at least avoid. If you don’t have a head on the boat, drinking inhibits ADH – the body’s natural way to conserve water by reducing loss of urine – so you may have to pee in the bucket more than once (perish the thought)…
8. Being Drunk Makes the Clean-Up Hard to Do When You Get Back to the Dock: My least favorite part about boating has always been at the end, when you get back to the dock. You have to swab decks and carry wet towels and hoist garbage bags full of empties and snap T-top canvas and stow life jackets. By the end of a boozy day on the water, the captain and crew are so tired and grumpy it is torture to make things shipshape for the next go-round.

The post 8 Reasons to Give a Wide Berth to the Summer Booze Cruise… first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

The old “Cheers” theme song, set in the neighborhood bar, crooned, “Sometimes you wanna go where everyone knows your name…” I guess that is what most people want, but I had an interesting experience this weekend. I went to a family party for the high school graduation of my cousin’s son. The lovely town of Grand Blanc, teenagers with requisites like golf courses in the back yard, catered “comfort food” and party tents. Boys in preppie pink madras playing corn-hole on the lawn and girls in tight white jeans looking occasionally sullen…

I should be closer to my first cousins (and they should know all about me I suppose), but I’ve been afar and they have all been in Michigan, plugging away at important jobs  and amassing lake houses and pontoon boats.

Anyway, my first cousins are a huge, rollicking group who always invite the meager remains of my dad’s next of kin to their milestone parties. It is fun to sit on a lawn chair with a lap full of carbohydrates and watch for the face of my father, planted on a woman or a child walking by. I will ask my mother, “Who is that?” and it’s always something like, “That’s Colleen’s youngest.” The family resemblance topped with ink black hair, shorter, or a plumper version.

There has been alcoholism in this family. They are a hard drinking bunch. But when I arrived and was greeted with the usual long-lost haleness, Maureen pointed to a massive Yeti and said blandly, “The wine’s in there. And there’s water and some lemonade on the table. Beer’s over there in the tent.”

That was it. And I realized that I am usually with people who know about my struggle with alcohol: who know to tiptoe and be watchful, or to make a joke to clear the air (“Don’t open that Pandora’s box Mare – there’s wine in there!”).

Everyone Knows My Name AND My Addiction

It was incredibly freeing to have my cousin treat me like someone who could be trusted around a four-foot long cooler filled with hooch. I never thought about it before, but I usually go where everyone knows my name and my addiction. It was so normal to feel like someone who had just decided not to drink that night – but if I wanted to have a glass of wine to sip on, I could.

Oh stop – I know I can’t, but they didn’t know that. And it was fun to pretend. Sing it with me, “Sometimes you wanna go where no one knows you’re an alcoholic…”

The post Sometimes You Wanna Go Where Nobody Knows You’re An Alcoholic… first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

I have two stories about going left, and one conclusion:

Story One

I was in a therapy group one time, and a woman said that if she was driving down the street toward her house and the light was green on a certain street, she’d “go left” and drive past the ABC Liquor store. Of course she wouldn’t go past, she’d pull in and start drinking again.

I think it’s interesting the way people fool themselves into drinking, or leave their sobriety to chance or superstition. I wonder what the woman was hoping for? That the light was “red” so she could pull into the right-hand lane and head home another way? Or that the light was “green,” giving her a sort of dispensation from on high, “Go ye left and drinketh till pie-eyed-eth.”

Story Two

I spent this past weekend with Carrie, a friend from high school and beyond, who has also had some issues with overdrinking. After sharing stories of drunkenness and cruelty (I was not someone you wanted to fall in love with, when I was in my twenties), we decided that we may have been each other’s alcoholic fountainhead. We remembered one evening in Virginia Beach when we hit a local bar with a name that had Harbor in it, although it wasn’t on a harbor. We started drinking Harbor Lights: a concoction of several types of liquor in a decorative, lighthouse shaped glass that was set on fire. Festive and dangerous – just what we seemed to be looking for at the time.

Anyway, we got seriously drunk, but I was less drunk than she was. As I tried to drive us back to her house in her car (I was new to Virginia Beach and living with her at the time), I asked, “Carrie, which way to your house?”  She just kept responding (as she thrashed around the back seat like a trapped badger), “Go LEFT!” Even I knew that turning left, over and over, would get us nowhere fast.

Conclusion

I’ve been reading a lot about habits recently. How a bad habit is made up of three things: cue, response and reward. How the only way to break a bad habit is to change the response. In Story One above (if you will grant me that pulling into an ABC Liquor store at opening time, salivating like Pavlov’s pups is a bad habit), the cue is the green light. If the woman could make herself drive straight through the green light to the ice-cream parlor or to a friend’s house for coffee and conversation – she would begin to rewire her brain. There is pleasure in going straight (pun intended).

Maybe the title should have been: Tricking Yourself Sober – GO STRAIGHT! But that’s kind of corny…

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I finally hooked up with a women’s walking group this weekend in Riverside Park (“thanks” Jan, for setting it up). Riverside Park has a wide sidewalk and it runs along a pastoral riverscape that looks a bit like the Thames, complete with rowers a-rowing and swans a-swimming. The river and pond were overstuffed with runoff and the trunks of the weeping willows were underwater. There was a troop of Marines running with flags, all manner of dogs on leashes and little girls with kitty-cat, pink helmets on trikes. That wonderful expectancy clung to the air that only happens in the first few days after a long, cold winter. It reminded me of the time I was living in London, when Kim came to visit.

We went running in Hyde Park and Kim was like a crazy person, going in circles around me on the mall because it was “chilly” in early summer and “flat”. I think I was suffering from a hangover. The night before we had hit Nobu. As was my wont in those days, I had drunk several bottles of wine with our overpriced sashimi. I have always been a halfhearted runner, even in the best of days, and I was shuffling along – attempting to look athletic.  I remember Kim saying to me, “You are running so slowly, it feels like we are marching or running in place…” Cheek. Maybe I was patterning after the Horse Guard with their steeds that pranced without moving forward.

What I am trying to say, is that walking or running in a city park is a great way to get exercise without suffering, because there are distractions (see “Marines running” above). I remember in Hyde Park, I used to pass everything from people making out in rose gardens; to runaway, rider-less horses; to Bishops with full cassock and mitre.

And company. It’s nice to have company when you walk in a sober city park.

Today I’m not drinking because I am ATHLETIC (when distracted…)

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