Day 1: I did a quick run to the drugstore a few mornings ago. My favorite corner Walgreens – I go there almost every day. It’s the place I buy my gassy water and Ice Cubes gum (and benignly yen for sweet-n’-cheap in the wine isle). The go-to where (at the worst of times these days) I skulk, purchase and devour candy alcoholically.

The Scene of the Wine Crime…

I opened my door in the parking lot and boy – did it take me back. An empty, squished Sutter Home wine shooter right at my feet. Is there any scenario under which this little bottle was there for a good reason? It blew off the windowsill of a neighboring house or tipped from a bag of recycling in some innocent’s back seat?

I don’t think so… Someone had gone into the store, bought a 4-pack and drank one sitting in the parking lot. They tossed the contraband out of the window, unscrewed another cap and drove onto a busy street with the familiar sensation of slackening nerve-endings and vinegar settling against the liver like a giant’s thumb.

Not the gutter, but sufficiently suggestive…

And while I’m at it, are those little 4-packs ever purchased for anything other than to be secreted in a winter boot, glove box or side pocket of a purse? A friend of mine says it seems like the packaging of wine is getting more and more “fun”. Encased in juice box sized. cardboard or packaged with complimentary plastic flute. Pocket sized, colorful and geared toward women – the biggest and fastest growing market for wine.

Looking at this ugly artifact didn’t make me want to drink. There was a flash of memory – all the times I’d stumbled into a drugstore or gas station to grab a pack of shooters for the dry gap between home and the real thing. Or something to hide in a backpack, glove box or purse for a rainy (sunny, foggy) day…

The little wine bottle made me feel sad. As if I were looking at someone else’s dirty secret…

But I went about my sober business, tucking the moment away for a blog post. Pausing to crouch down and take a picture with my phone.

Day 2: I’m at Walgreens with a hundred dollar bill. Have you noticed that a hundred dollar bill is like having no money at all? It’s what grifters should carry – sorry I just have a hundred – don’t think they take them here… And one of the clerks is going to the bowels of the store to get a manager to help him count out the change.

I DID NOT purchase candy…

Yeah, I’m like Nancy Drew…

So I am standing at the check out, 8:16 AM, when a woman steps up with a four pack of wine shooters. I’m like sober Nancy Drew – side-eyeing the perp with my brain shouting, “It’s her! The wine litterer! The shooter slammer! The parking lot possible suspect…” 

I was discrete. She was normal looking – a bit disheveled as if she’d waited for her significant other to get off to work and threw on a sweatshirt and pants. Her hair was uncombed, she was probably 40 something. She could not have been more nondescript. Just your average woman of a certain age buying booze first thing in the morning.

Confirming my suspicions…

I finished my transaction and took my time packing up. Stepping back from the counter, cool as a Russian spy. Then I slowly walked to my car. As luck would have it she was parked next to me. In a VW Bug. She got into the car and gave me one of those what-are-you-looking-at-bitch, looks. I acted busy. Then she turned her back and I could see she was unscrewing a bottle and turned toward her driver’s side window she was drinking. 

There was nothing more to do, right? I drove away and left her to her shameful little morning ritual. But I can’t stop thinking about it. And I did drive back to see if she’d tossed another bottle out the window. Jackpot:

E2E – I’m thinking of you…

The post Boy Did this Little Wine Bottle Take Me Back… first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

I was at a Families Against Narcotics (FAN) meeting several months ago. It was a cold, miserable night and the room was full of folks who had lost a loved one to addiction and overdose. The topic was processing grief. The room was bursting with the collective swell of tears and regret and rage…

Where is the Joy?

I’m not sure what prompted him, because it was kind of off topic. But, one of the men in the group said he had trouble “feeling joy” now that he was sober. He said it took a lot to make him laugh. In a resigned, Eeyore-ish sort of way he added, “That’s just the way we addicts are…”

I totally related to this. It was the kind of spontaneous moment to which I am drawn.  I wanted to talk to him after the meeting, but I was slow to make my move and by the time I had gathered my coat, scarf, gloves, he was gone. Per usual, a few key words made me think about the subject of “joy”, or lack thereof, on and off ever since. And now that the weather is more accommodating, I am less inclined to clap him on the back in chummy agreement. More inclined to argue that the concept of “joy” should not include throwing up, verbally attacking a loved one or crashing a golf cart into an unforgiving copse of mangroves…

Does a storm gathering over Tampa Bay bring me joy? Kinda’

I do say it all the time – there is a little something missing, now that I’m sober. I didn’t think I meant joy, but why else did this resonate with me when I first heard it?

Emotional Rescue…

I remember, in my drinking days, those crazy moments. Maybe sitting in my living room alone. Staring at a new painting, sloshing glasses of wine down my gullet, experiencing an out-of-body “joy”. For hours, until I passed out. Or dancing around, in my cups like Rumpelstiltskin and putting a foot through a canvas…. But, the point is – the excruciating, in-the-moment exhalation.

If I sat in front of a new painting now, with a glass of gassy water I might last ten minutes. Even twenty. But, no euphoria. No weird, fire lit rapture… Dancing like no one is watching? Not once in the five years since I have been sober.

The object of the first drunken highland jig… Jacob’s Girl by Oleg Korchagan

Other things I no longer feel/do?

• I no longer feel like I command a room. I think I’m almost too humble. Positively pride-less. But I’m not as rich either and wealth makes people douchier, more entitled to attention.
• I no longer enjoy “flirting”. At all. But certainly not with much younger men. Or those deemed “inappropriate” (my go-to in the years of living dangerously).
• I don’t spend as much time in bathrooms at parties reapplying lip liner.
• Speaking of parties, I do not “party” anymore. I can last about three hours before I begin to look at my watch. It’s boring to talk, talk, talk if you don’t drink, drink, drink, right?
• I am not as funny. Kim, don;t say it – I can still find humor in almost everything. BUT I AM NOT AS FUNNY.
• I am not a spendthrift. Even putting something back on the shelf after considering its worth… I do not have a slew of recurring, unwanted charges on my credit card (I am too hamstrung to deal with) for things like Crepe Erase, Trifexis Chewables and HBO.
• There’s more, but you get my drift…

But do I experience joy? Defined as, “A feeling of great pleasure and happiness.”

This is where I must beg to differ with Eeyore and the man who spoke at the FAN meeting. My first impulse to agree was born of old fashioned negative thinking and long overgrown neuro pathways. Almost as if I thought I was still supposed to be miserable. The fact is, I find joy in the smallest things now. And recognize the important moments – they do not pass in a blur, because I operate in the present.

And when you operate in the present (as a card carrying adult) there is still exultation . Still hilarity.  But it comes from what is real – nature, family, community and a solid foundation. Do I still LOVE art? Sure. Do I wish the inhibitions that started me drinking in the first place would bend it like Beckham? Yup. And do I still laugh? Of course…

But that’s the deal we make when we get sober. We have to redefine what our brains have been telling us. That “happiness” is the warm buzz from that third bottle of plonk. There will always be something missing. It’s like the shadow you see out of the corner of your eye from the dead family cat. You may not have liked the thing, but it did live in the house for twenty years…

If I ever see that fellow again, I’m going to tell him he inspired me to start writing in my blog again. Albeit four months after the fact. I may even tell him, in this brave new world in which I live, he brought me joy…

E2E – Kim and I have not forgotten you… I just took a break from writing, not thinking of you and your dad. LOVE to you.

The post Where is the JOY? Does Addiction Sap Feelings Forever? first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could have a divining rod that foreshadowed alcoholism? It would start shaking when a person was about to hit the point of no return – that moment when over-drinking morphs into reliance. I can picture some modern day Carrie Nation entering a pub, water-witching her way along the bar. Pointing her stick at those folks who are about to ruin their perfectly good lives…

What is the point of no return?

This is a subject that fascinates me.  I try not to indulge in “what could have been.” But, the one thing I do ruminate about, is when exactly did I become an alcoholic? Was there a time when I could have stopped the runaway progression of the disease? And is there a crystal ball to help others stop before it is too late?

There are stages.of alcohol dependence. And looking back, I can see that for almost ten years my drinking was risky. There was a reason I kept a repair kit (nail polish, sand paper, small hammer) to fix the scratches and dents in my car before my husband saw them. The stages are:

High Risk Stage

Characterized by drinking enough and behaving badly enough that people begin to talk. In my case, I was too scary to confront. But, this is the time to confront. Especially when the person is making dangerous choices under the influence. This was the time when I began to drive tipsy. It was the stage when I missed the installation for my own gallery opening (I was drunk in a hotel room across the street). And I began to make lame excuses for my inappropriate conduct.

Somewhere in between these two phases is where the crystal ball belongs – this is the point where things might be able to be reversed…

Early Dependency Stage

Friends and family are concerned and very aware there is a problem. Health, legal and personal issues occur. This was the phase where I got stopped by the police all the time for “driving erratically.” I got into screaming fights (I haven’t screamed at anyone in four years – ain’t recovery grand?). I watered the wine, so my husband wouldn’t know I was drinking a bottle a day. I was hungover most mornings, but it didn’t stop me from drinking at lunchtime.

Middle Stage

During the middle stage of alcohol addiction, problems mount. For me, the kicker was my divorce. You will note above that I was accountable to my husband. I was like a defiant teenager, covering my tracks, but I was watched. After the divorce, I was left to my own dubious devices, and the consequences. The middle stage is marked by ignoring the negative consequences of drinking.

And in the middle stage of my alcoholism, I bought a house in The Bahamas. A place where drinking in the morning is called “Bahamian breakfast.” Can you say, “Double whammy?”

Late Stage Dependency

Mayday! This is the crisis point where everything takes a back seat to drinking.  The alcoholic is rarely without a drink. Nothing matters but buying, harboring and drinking alcohol. This was the stage where I didn’t even look out the window at the spectacular, Bahamian view. I drank from morning till night. If it happened after 5 PM I made a slurred excuse. I was, in a word, miserable.

Okay, class what have we learned?

That there is no joy in looking back? There is no point in thinking, “If only I’d gone to treatment right after my divorce… if only I hadn’t gone on that vacation in The Bahamas… if only I hadn’t met that dude who looked like Captain Ron…”

What’s done is done, but I have become pretty militant about calling people on problem drinking. I do not tiptoe. Because, if I can halt the progress of alcohol dependency in a few people, in just one person, I will have accomplished something grand.

E2E – thinking of you…

The post Predicting Alcoholism – When Does Choice Becomes Reliance? first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

When my son was a toddler, a resourceful mother bird built a nest in the tree outside his bedroom window. It was stressful for both of us to watch. The sparrows built their nest during a Florida wind storm. And because they took up residence in our tree, we felt responsible. We’d sit on the floor of Jonathan’s room and supervise like unqualified nannies. Knocking on the window if our cat came too close to the tree. Fending off a marauding osprey as it cast a shadow on the speckled eggs.

Even with all our knocking and peeking (and yes, touching the nest), life happened. And when the fledglings tried out their wings, I was horrified to see that they dropped like stones. Or careened into bushes and walls while they learned the un-easy task of flying through the air.

And the mother-bird, exhausted as any single parent with sextuplets, spent all the live-long day feeding her charges a steady diet of regurgitated grubs and worms. The daddy-bird was like the father in Angela’s Ashes – rolling in late on a work-night, the food money spent. Perching on a branch with a detached look on his little bird face.

And here’s the thing – birds don’t leave the nest until they are bigger than their mother. Crammed into their crib and bellowing for MORE GRUBS till my son and I were mouthing through his window, “Oh, come on. It’s time to fly away already.”

When they did finally leave, I dismantled the nest… but the lesson was learned.

Parenting in the best of times …

My son was visiting from Florida last week.  And it reminded me of that mother bird. My son is almost 26, but I feel exactly the same toward him as I did when he was a child. The same pride at his many accomplishments. The same punch in the gut when I feel with his hurts or disappointments. I still think he is one of the funniest people I have ever met… the most engaging…

Luckily, Jonathan is going through a “good phase”. He is happy, healthy and just got a promotion. And it’s not like I wait around for the other Vans slip-on to drop, but I am ready for the phase where I might have to step in again. After all, parenting doesn’t stop at 18. For a mother, her children never leave the nest.

And the worst…

Last week the Director of Admissions  was out for a couple of days, and I answered phones on her behalf. About half of the many calls I took were from those who needed help themselves. Or from professional referrals. But, the other half were the calls that rung me out. Those were the calls from the loved ones of the person who was suffering from a substance use disorder.

And I don’t mean to diminish the concern of sisters and brothers and children and fathers and spouses, but the voices of the mothers have a particular, tragic ring…

we say that addiction is a “family disease.”  It impacts every member of the family system. But, I am thinking right now about a mother who called last week (in fact I can’t stop thinking of her). We talked for a while about her daughter – the bad crowd she was running with, the likelihood she would not listen to reason, the drugs that were killing her. At some point the mother said, “What do you think I should do?”

Wow. That is when I know I am doing good work.  Important work. And that my answer – mother to mother – will validate her – exonerate her. And just might give her hope.

Sin eating, nest building…

I spend a fair amount of time listening. To folks who write to me on this blog, to the women at Sanford House who elect to go on morning “Walks with Mare,” at various meetings and support groups… Answering phones…

It’s a bit like sin-eating. Last night I attended a Families Against Narcotics meeting and watched while family members lit candles on behalf of loved ones. For those who had died and for those who had survived and were in recovery.

And I don’t mean to diminish the pain of sisters and brothers and children and fathers and spouses, but the faces of the mothers had a particular, poignant look…

As good mothers, we do our best to nurture our young.

Certainly mistakes are made. But the bottom line is that we never leave the nest, never really watch our children fly away. And in that shaking voice on the phone, the tremulous chin as we stand with our candle, there is the unspoken question. Did I do enough?

I listen more than I give advice. I think that’s a good policy in my line of work. But I will say this – sometimes, even with the best of intentions, bad things happen. What should you do? Love, hope, build community and know that motherhood brings with it a sort of exquisite malaise.

Lifelong…

E2E – Did we do enough?

The post The Mothers of Addiction first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

I went to CPR training/certification last week. I felt a bit anxious as the trainer painstakingly itemized all the unfortunate things that can happen to a person. In the video, after someone cut themselves with glass or collapsed while ordering coffee at a kiosk, there was always someone who stepped forward. They would hold up their hands like a surgeon and say, “Remember the emergency training I took? I can handle this.”

And then the person, a little smug if you ask me, would go through the prescribed steps to secure the area and provide quality care until the real EMTs arrived.

Here’s What Made Me Anxious…

There are A LOT of dangerous circumstances out there to beware of besides heart attacks and chocking. There are cuts that require gauze and pressure to stop the bleeding. More serious gashes that might need a tourniquet (we fashioned them from tree branches and bandannas). Around every bend there are snake bites, bee stings, spider chomps and concussions. Overdoses, broken bones, drowning, curling iron burns and anaphylactic shock wait in the wings to ruin your day…

And babies – we were assigned baby dolls with trachea and instructed to resuscitate our tiny charges (with two fingers instead of two hands). Pressing a third of the way into their chests 30 times to the tune of “Staying Alive” by the Bee Gees; two breaths into their maws, watching to see the chest rise; repeat.

I started feeling like Aunt Josephine from Lemony Snicket: fear that the chandelier might fall and impale you. Fear that the glass doorknob will shatter and get in your eye… Fear that the alcohol wipe I used to clean my dummy’s mouth  didn’t prevent infection…

The Good News…

The good news is that I am now certified in CPR. Although I don’t see myself stepping forward boldly like the actors in the video, I am good in an emergency. And now, I know what to do if a stranger keels over at my feet or bleeds all over my beige carpet (hint – deal with the wound first and the Woolite Rug Cleaner later...).

The other good news is that even though I am anxious about it, I have at long-last become aware of the world’s dangers. There was a time, when I was drinking, where everything from mitigating the peril of  riding in golf carts with nefarious strangers to near-daily hematomas were remedied with another glass of wine.  In those days the cause was also the panacea…

I had a morning habit of checking the sheets for blood and running a finger over my teeth to make sure they were still there. (Which reminds me, I know what to do if you knock out your teeth or cut off a finger!) Then I’d lean over and start my day with a slug of the leftover wine on the bedside table.

Sobriety Breeds Safety…

Interestingly, the CPR class did not talk about what to do if someone had alcohol poisoning, specifically. Although we did get the number of poison control and talk about what to do for an opioid overdose.

The bottom line is that “normal folks” are aware of potential danger without developing irrational fear. And they also tend to the occasional emergency with the appropriate level of care. Not like the old me, who drunkenly cut off the top of my thumb with a Cutco knife hosting a dinner party, and wrapped it with a tea-towel and (you guessed it) had another drink…

I continue on this journey of recovery, perhaps as a late bloomer, but keen to learn. My previous disregard for safety aside, I can now step forward and try to save a life.

And that’s what it’s all about, right? Just staying alive, the best we know how…

E2E – I can take care of you. WE can take care of you…

The post It’s a Dangerous World Out There, People… first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead When the skies of November turn gloomy… Gordon Lightfoot

It would not have been a trip to Marquette without thinking of the time my brother almost got swept off a break wall there, during a storm. A couple of days ago I said the UP was fashioned by God’s kinder, gentler hand. That was compared to the force majeure in Florida, and it was unseasonably warm. But it was a fluke. There is nothing quite so terrifying as a storm on Lake Superior in the winter.

A drink called the “smorgasbord”

I was in college. My brother and his wife Bonnie came to visit. And my boyfriend at the time was famous for a drink he called the “smorgasbord”. This was a vile, unpredictable concoction made of any leftover liquor he had in his apartment. Spare rum, vodka, whisky, creme de menthe,  and the leavings from a year-old, gift bottle of Kahlua would be slopped into a tumbler. Sometimes, for effect, he’d light it on fire… He and Tim had several.

I was a big wine drinker even then. Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill – mixed with Squirt to cut the sweetness. And I was drunk. My brother and Mark were drunker. Bonnie was the designated driver (possibly drunk as well…). And for some reason, as drunks often do, we decided to load up in the car and check out the storm blowing in off the big lake they call “gitchee gumee.”

Why do drunks do dangerous things?

Drunks do stupid things like storm chase, because each drink affects the brain’s chemical messengers that tell us, “that’s a bad idea.” The neurotransmitters in the brain either excite or inhibit all of our control signals.  And alcohol increases GABA, an inhibitory neurotransmitter, while it decreases glutamate, an excitatory neurotransmitter.

This causes the clumsiness and slurred speech we boozers know so well.  But, alcohol also boosts dopamine – the pleasure chemical – tricking us into thinking we are having a blast. This combination is as bad as, well, a smorgasbord, because it causes us to chase a temporary “good feeling.”

Until it’s not good anymore. And when we drink, we might do something ill-advised, but we just don’t care as much about the outcome.

That my friends, is how one might find oneself slumped in the backseat of a car on a late night, back street. Watching the rain pelt the windshield, while your beloved brother decides to commune with nature. On a break wall being slammed with twelve-foot, Lake Superior waves.

Think about those scenes…

I can kind of remember the scene. It went the way many drunken scenes go after the dopamine begins to taper. We were sitting on a tar-black road looking at the storm and my brother opened the door and got out. He was still carrying his drink. I think my sister-in-law and I were crying. Yelling for my brother to stop. He, full of bravado and stale bourbon staggered onto the break wall, looking up at the heavens like the jester in The Tempest.

And we could barely see him in the rain. Mark was going to get out to rescue him when a huge wave hit and knocked Tim to the rocks. We could see that – we assumed he would be dead, swept out to sea (lake?). More crying and yelling. Sometimes I think drunkenness saves us – the disjointed looseness. Because there is no reason he stayed on the wall, except he was like a sack of sand.

He crawled back. Wet, everyone angry and relieved. And Bonnie backed off a two foot drop-off while scolding him and we had to be towed. We did not end up in jail, but should have…

It’s funny the things you remember…

I have forgotten so many things I did when I was drinking. And I don’t recall the details of that night. But, I remember like yesterday the blue-black horizon, the steel girders and the broken rocks. I remember the shape of my brother’s shoulders, barely there in the dark…

The old break wall is gone, I think. I looked for it, but it has been moved closer to Presque Isle. A solid slab of concrete with a warning sign. Plenty of parking and when I walked the length of it (agile as a cat), a lake like glass.

I have been sober for four years now. And I have become a person who heeds the warning signs. I am no longer misguided by a hodgepodge of contradictory brain chemistry. My brother died – just not that night. And (God forgive me) I still remember how dazzling it was to be that young and crazy. Don’t go back to your college town if you want to forget that, right?

But, we live. We learn.

E2E – Read the signs…

The post Read the Signs: Turbulent Water! Violent Waves! first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

I am currently obsessing about climbing a set of stairs. The stairs begin at a feeder road to the expressway in Grand Rapids and end, like Jack’s beanstalk, high and steep enough above the ground to disappear into the early morning mist. I am obsessing (and I don’t use that word lightly), because this staircase is a big challenge. And it doesn’t seem to be getting any easier. Even after a two-week long, daily dose of its cardio hellishness.

No Instant Results

I’ve been  thinking about the stairs at odd times. I’ll be in a meeting and it will pop into my mind. Wait. Maybe I should pack a lunch this weekend and go up and down the stairs a bunch of times. Once doesn’t seem like enough any more, because I want to be the BEST stair climber in the whole world.  I am an instant gratification seeker, so the fact I still heave like a dying mule and go into  slow-mo as I get to the final steps up top, bothers me. I don’t understand why both David (who has joined me in this quest) and I can’t run up the hill by now.

It should be easier.

This kind of thinking is probably one of the reasons I became an alcoholic. And one of the reasons I was able to quit with such dogged determination. Once I start something, I go huge. This morning, I am mercifully in Puerto Rico. So I have an excuse to not be kitting up at the crack of dawn to stair climb again. But, it has me thinking about what it takes to quit drinking.

It’s not that big of a stretch…

It’s not a big stretch to think of quitting drinking like climbing a staircase. (Which reminds me I should stretch before and after…) Especially when you imagine the whole, painful project at once. There is a reason difficult tasks are best broken up into small, attainable parts. Standing at the bottom of the stairs and looking up is daunting. There are certainly other ways to get around Grand Rapids. Or you could just stay in bed and pretend the staircase isn’t there…

But if you look at the first landing, you can tell yourself (a lie) that you will only go that far today. And when you get to the landing you look to the next landing – and so on till you reach the top. I’m assuming you get the symbolism here. It works for every overwhelming challenge…

And the things you will see

I am never sorry I have gone for a challenging hike. When it’s all over. And the things I will see at the very top of a hill are a big incentive to get the job done.

I’m tired today. And as I mentioned, I am basking in PR. However, after my second cup of coffee I am off to climb a mountain. In Puerto Rico they call it “the hill”. The things I will see.

The things I will see at the top of that hill.

The post Thinking About Quitting Drinking? It’s a Pretty Big Climb… first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

In the movie La La Land, there is a “what could have been” scene.  And by the time you get there, you are so enthralled with the connection between the main characters, you can’t help but hope the real outcome is some cheesy, cinematic trick. A dream sequence, perhaps? Anything, so the beloved couple really does give up their grandest, creative dreams and choose each other, have a child and live happily ever after.

Playing it Forward…

The brilliance of La La Land is in the melancholy. Sandwiched between the high kicking, brightly colored cheerfulness, is a slice of the sacrifices we all make in life. If you are like me, you leave the theater haunted by the fact, things don’t always turn out as you expect or want. And even when you long for a happy ending, you’re smart enough (or in my case cynical enough) to continue to play “what could have been” to its natural conclusion.

We alcoholics are taught to do that.

To use another cinematic example, I am the only person on the planet who watched the ending of Pretty Woman and said, “Oh come on! That relationship will never last.” It’s nice to think they would ride off into the future, happily forgetting how she used to make her living. But after a while, he’d begin to fixate on those boots. And when she fist pumped and shouted, “Woof, woof!” at yet another polo match, it would become less cute. He would start working the kind of hours he used to work. (And that’s what had him hiring an escort for unfettered sex in the first place, right?)

Where am I Going with This?

I am definitely not at the stage where I am thankful for my alcoholism. But I am no longer resentful, either. And I nip those nostalgic, “what could have been” drinking memories in the bud, whenever they pop up. What if I just drank in a fun way and didn’t fall down as much? Couldn’t I time travel back to the tropics, sip a discrete glass of wine or ten and not become addicted? And most dangerous, What if I could go back to the year 2004 and start all over again, knowing what I know now?

I am not thankful for my alcoholism. Not at all. However, I know the bewildering steps that got me here (going every which way like an Escher graphic) cannot be changed.  So what is the point of rewinding? Life is not a film, but the really great movies don’t give false hopes about “happily ever after” either. We make our indelible choices and we get bounced around in God’s plan and sometimes, shit just happens.

For the worse. For the better…

The post What Could Have Been. Don’t Go There, My Sober Friends first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

In the pubs in England, everyone talks about the weather. “Bit of rain today,” they’ll say, even when their brollies are turned inside out from the violence of the storm.  It seems we do the same in Michigan in winter.  We minimize our despondence, caused by the seemingly endless gray, as if we’re responsible. But, like England, when you get one of those crisp, sunny days, the contrast is so shocking and gorgeous, you almost appreciate the lead-in. Almost.

SAD

SAD is a real thing. The Mayo Clinic describes Seasonal Affective Disorder as “…SAD is a type of depression that’s related to changes in seasons — SAD begins and ends at about the same times every year. If you’re like most people with SAD, your symptoms start in the fall and continue into the winter months, sapping your energy and making you feel moody.”

Hokay if “moody” is defined as lying in a bed strewn with stale Christmas bonbons,  rereading Sylvia Plath’s greatest hits…

I try to make the best of things. And I am an optimist, even when I have to fake a smile when someone says, “Best kind of weather to curl up with a bottle of brandy, right?” So when Thrillist listed Michigan as the number 2 state for miserable winters (second only to Minnesota), I was loaded for black bear. I wrote this for Sanford House, and it’s getting LOTS of response on social media. In fact, someone commented, “Oh shove it,” on Facebook.

Join the conversation.

The post 50 Shades of Michigan – Sober Winter SAD? first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

The post It’s Not About Getting Sober So Much as STAYING Sober… first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.