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 got the most gorgeous email from DZ a couple of weeks ago. Gorgeous because the voice was so raw. And the picture she painted so vivid I could actually taste cheap white wine. DZ was in the middle of a craving that was “surging up and down her solar plexus and choking her out”. She said no amount of exercise, candy or visits with friends was taking the edge off. She wrote to ask how I handled early sobriety cravings (candy, exercise, visits with friends…).

The Way We See Ourselves…

DZ had just moved. She said in her new, downtown apartment there were temptations everywhere…. A Mexican restaurant, live music, bars and drinking, drinking, drinking.  And it made me think about how, in early recovery, we try to shake things up. Move outside of ourselves. Avoid the people, places and things that remind us of those boozy nights on the tiki-hut, the sky so loaded with stars it’s silver and everything below is a bruised blur…

It’s good to get away from a toxic environment. But, what if our thoughts about ourselves are toxic? And the relapses, pitfalls, transfer addictions and loathsome behavior are self-fulfilling prophecies? There is no question DZ was in the middle of a hate-fest, begging her “know-better self” to give her just one night.

 “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” Thomas Theorem

For someone who is new to recovery, there is a lot to hate. And fear. DZ says it best:

Just one night. It’ll inspire you to unpack and organize and get used to your new… That’s what I don’t want to do. Get used to it and let the paranoid, self-loathing, unkempt drunk out. Down will go my boundaries and into my new apartment I will bring the undesirables… I will be afraid to call maintenance because I reek of a 3 day binge. I’ll have given every user in my building the green light without remembering, during one of my multiple trips to the garbage chute. Because much as I love to drink alone, the clumsier and uglier I get the more of a showoff I become…

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies…

I’ve read the above paragraph a dozed times. Clumsy, ugly, reek, garbage – it takes me back to my first sober days. When I tried to convince myself that life without alcohol was boring. When I was angry and resentful. And when instead of slugging the cheapest wine I could find, I secretly gorged on 4 for $5 boxes of Walgreens candy (if an all-night drug store could talk). Was I filling the empty hole or giving myself what I thought I deserved?

I still think of myself as someone who has an “addictive personality” even though I know that is not even a “thing”. And five years sober, I don’t have cravings for wine anymore, but I identify as someone with an unhealthy relationship to food. Maybe even more than as a person who is in good physical condition and hikes for miles, up hills.

Now I am wondering if these negative thoughts are shaping my actions…

Thomas Theorem

Thomas Theorem goes on to say that “the interpretation of a situation causes the action.… Actions are affected by subjective perceptions of situations…. ” Even when the perception is wrong.

So, if DZ sees herself as the woman in apartment 207 who spends a lot of time at the garbage chute, drunk and disorderly – or as the lonely woman salivating with her nose pressed against the window of a Mexican restaurant – maybe it will happen.

The Power of Positive Thinking is the Good News

I like it when my blog is formatted like getting fired. I start with something good (gorgeous email), sandwich the icky stuff in the middle (shit…. I’m making myself  eat 3 pints of Halo Top ice cream with my thoughts...) and end with the good news (positive thinking trumps negative thinking – but it takes time).

DZ is new to the sobriety game. I hate to say it, but it took two years before I stopped getting regular punch-in-the-gut cravings to DRINK. And a solid four years before I started getting a picture in my mind’s eye of a hiking trail instead of the brightly colored candy isle at Walgreens whenever it rained on a Sunday and I felt lonely…

This:

Not This:

Also, DZ emailed to say that she had “written herself out” of the craving and she was okay. I am going to imagine her in her new apartment, meeting desirable neighbors and visiting the garbage chute only when she has garbage to throw away – not when she is lonely…

And I am going to imagine her, two years from now, climbing a hill, writing in a journal or eating Mexican food with a gassy water chaser. She’ll be thinking about how proud she is of her accomplishments. And feeling like she’s fine – just fine – right where she is.

How’s that for a self-fulfilling prophecy?

How’s that for positive thinking?

The post Recovery Pitfalls – Are They Self-Fulfilling Prophecies? 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.

Lest you think I am starting the new year with a bad attitude, I’m here to tell you I woke up full of piss and vinegar. That could be because I am actually on steroids. I went to an orthopedic surgeon yesterday, convinced I had bone cancer, only to find that the radiating pain in my hip was probably caused by, “Years of doing what you love to do…”.

For example, hiking up hills, running on the beach and the wearing of four inch heals. That, and a lack of space between the round ball of my hip bone and the socket it fits in. I am a bit crooked. I have lost range of motion in “bound ankle pose”.  I am occasionally in enough pain to limp piteously.

When an alcoholic is in pain…

To put this in the proper perspective, I have not been to a doctor in ten years. The whole process is so rarefied, that even filling out the insurance forms seemed novel and “fun”. I asked questions. And I couldn’t help but think of the opioids lined up like fluffy, white rabbits with fangs, on a shelf somewhere. I was asked three times, even before I made it to the examining room, what I took for the pain.

My response, “Um, nothing? Maybe an Advil gelcap when it hurts really bad?” was met with looks of incredulity. It occurred to me that most people take pain medication when something hurts… As an alcoholic, it’s weird I suppose, that I have always avoided medicine of any kind. Other than the three bottles of elixir I used to drink per day, of course…

To the young man who took my vitals (excellent), I said, “I’m an alcoholic so I can’t take anything, you know, strong…” It felt like TMI, or at least like I should have had the proper name for what I couldn’t take. Narcotics? Opioids? Oxys? Corticosteroids? I’m an addiction professional for God’s sake!

To the x-ray technician I said, “I wish this would just go away…” She laughed, but I meant it. Miracles occur, why not me?

Bone Daddy…

I waited in the appointed room, with my x-rays pinned to the light box like a Damien Hirst exhibit. My hip and back bones looked fragile and lacy. It made me feel tenuous. As if a wrong step might snap my underpinning and I’d clatter to the ground like old pottery.

An hour and 1/2 later, I didn’t care anymore. I had studied my infrastructure ad nauseum, and sped read six Hello magazines (Megan Markle is divorced). I played with the models of joints. I thought about Tom Hager’s cyanotypes. I looked out of the sliver of window like a prisoner on the Bridge of Sighs… I just wanted out of there.

I mean, doesn’t everyone think of Thomas Hager’s cyanotypes while at the orthopedic surgeon’s office? Thomas Hager “Departure” cyanotype photograph.

When the great man arrived, I amused myself by thinking of him as Bone Daddy. He was actually super cool. And, get this, one of the first questions he asked was, “Has there been an alcohol problem in the past?” I nodded yes. “Are you an alcoholic?” Bingo…

Apparently my dicky hip could be caused by excessive alcohol consumption. The gift that keeps on giving, right?

I performed like a trained bear in one of those sad, roadside carnivals for Bone Daddy – over-anxious to please. I bent at the waist and touched the floor. I duck stepped in place. I lay on my back while he twisted my legs like pipe-cleaners. Does that hurt? How about that? 

Stoic or scared straight?

The doctor said I was “stoic”. That most people would have been shouting at him to stop when he pushed my knee to my chest even though it didn’t want to go there. But, I don’t feel stoic. And as with each new experience I have in recovery, I tried to process.

The bottom line, is that those of us in recovery must advocate for ourselves.

I have developed a condition that begged the alcohol question, but what if I had said, no? I volunteered the information about my alcoholism to anyone who would listen, but what if I didn’t? As it turns out, I left with a dose of Prednisone mild enough for “pregnant women.” And a prescription for an anti-inflammatory that “also coats the stomach”.

But I keep thinking about the question, “On a scale of 1 to 10 what is your level of pain?” What if I had said 10? Alcoholics are used to under-reporting. How many drinks a day? One? I am suggesting we also try to accept a bit of discomfort, when the fix is potentially addictive. And don’t be embarrassed by the TMI. 

In this case, too much information is a good thing…

E2E – I’m BACK…

The post An Alcoholic Walks Into a Pain Doc’s Office… first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

I just read an article by William White about the difference between Relapse Prevention (RP) and Recovery Management (RM). In a nut shell, he opines that one focuses on “deficits and vulnerabilities” and the other on “assets”. RP implies we are running from monsters (waking up the ghost?). RM suggests we are “being positively drawn toward something of great value of one’s own choosing.”

The four-year experiment…

It came at a perfect time. Because, I was reflecting on the Thanksgiving weekend and my own, four-year psychosocial experiment in sobriety. And I was feeling pretty full of myself this morning. In fact, for the first time in four years, I actually broke my typical cycle. I think I have begun to trick my own brain!

Let me explain.

My son Jonathan and his girlfriend Kallie were visiting. And it was a fantastic weekend of family, hikes, great food and conversation. Even the Up North winter cooperated with unseasonable warmth (other than the 25 mph winds off Lake Michigan).

Jonathan asked me if it was still difficult for me to be with people who were drinking. He wanted to know if I still craved wine – if it was still an “issue for me”. (This asked while he sipped a Coppola Cabernet…) I answered truthfully, that I never thought about drinking anymore. It took a long while, but I have not had that out-of-nowhere, punch in the gut desire to DRINK! in about a year…

What I have done, is replace my addiction to wine with candy, coffee and food. And exercise. Hiking in the Michigan wilds has been a staple of my recovery, and I talk about it all the time. But, so has anesthetizing myself with the fast food equivalent of white wine shooters in the glove-box. That, I don’t talk about much…

Cultivating wellness…

Yesterday, Jonathan and Kallie left at 4 AM. I experienced the usual feelings one feels – tired, a bit lonely, a touch of anticlimax. And I also experienced the feelings that plague the person with a substance use disorder. That empty, bleak, icky feeling that used to send me to bed with a jumbo bottle of chardonnay and a party bag of M&Ms.

I have to admit, when I got home I felt the momentary desire to eat up the frayed remains on the charcuterie plate. And I wanted to scrounge for anything containing Karo syrup. Stuffing my mouth with processed, sugary foods has been my go-to panacea to fill the void since I quit drinking.

But after a nap and a cup or two of coffee, I had the out-of-nowhere, punch in the gut desire to go for a walk. It was a beautiful, sunny day. And I had no desire to hole-up and eat. The feeling was so shocking, I didn’t quite know how to handle it. I even opened the refrigerator and looked inside to test myself. Rattled the Skinny Pop bag because I am a glutton for punishment. Nothing. 

Talk about being drawn to something of great value of one’s own choosing…

Learning positive reinforcement…

The only explanation I have is that after four years of sobriety and two years of actively trying to rewire my brain – it is working! When I had the moment to fill an empty day, I chose the positive reinforcement of a walk.

Recovery is so much more than just not drinking. So much more than looking over one’s shoulder for the next relapse. It requires an overhaul of an entire life. And positive, healthy choices after the cravings for alcohol or other drugs dissipate.

Bill White says, “If recovery is more than the removal of alcohol and other drugs from an otherwise unchanged life, then the focus of recovery support interventions should shift from a strict RP focus (a process of problem subtraction) to an RM focus on achieving global health (a process of addition) and increasing one’s potential for a both personal fulfillment and social contribution (a process of multiplication). There is a difference between the prevention of illness and the promotion, achievement, and transcendence of wellness.” Relapse Prevention, Recovery Management, Recovery Transcendence – William White

I might not be at transcendence yet…

Full disclosure. I came home from the walk and ate a bag of Boom Chick a Boom caramel and sea salt popcorn. I also watched some smutty TV. But the difference is that I was not compelled to do so. And although I am a work in progress, my brain is rewiring in the right direction. The fact is, I like popcorn. Almost as much as the choice to walk along the lake on a cold, bright new day.

E2E – We always think of your well-being…

The post Alcohol Recovery Management or How to Trick Your Own Brain… first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

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.

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 heard from another long lost friend this week. Whenever someone from my past contacts me they say, “You just popped up on my computer.”  As if my details appear randomly in their ad column on Facebook. (Like the pair of suede boots you were checking out on Zappos that materialize in your feed for weeks after you decided the boots you have are fine.)

They go on to profess undying love (I found you) or genuine interest in what I am doing or in at least one case (well, maybe a few cases), how much they hated me in my past life.

Admit it, you Googled me…

My guess is, these visitations from the past were just sitting around one day, bored and Googled “Marilyn Spiller”. Why not say that? After all, if you search for me, the grizzly details of my alcoholism and recovery are there for all to see. The particulars of my divorce settlement and the houses I lived in are buried in the history… a treasure trove of details. I am a dog-eared, open book.

Anyway, this person wrote to me, “I spent much of Sunday evening reading your blog, and your interview and watching your video.  Could not sleep that night.  It actually triggered all sorts of contemplation.  Took me until tonight to write.  I was so taken aback by all…I feel like I should offer some words of wisdom or gestures of help or something else vague and awkward.  Anyway, I am so glad to know you are fine and living the reality of Michigan and all that brings to one’s life and soul.”

Does that sound like pity to you? Or am I being overly sensitive? I mean the guy can feel what he feels, right?  I just never thought about it before – but, I bet there are folks out there who knew me before, who feel sorry for me now. What a horrible notion.

I’ll be honest, I’d prefer you hate me than pity me.

Don’t do that…

Please don’t feel sorry for me and here’s why:

• I really was kind of a douche in my drinking days. I am a much nicer person now.
• I hurt myself a lot and fell down and made a fool of myself when I was drinking. I am careful where I sit, sleep and walk these days.
• If you’re sorry addiction happened to me, it could have been worse. A lot of people suffer more than I ever did. I didn’t kill anyone – I did not go to jail.
•  I lost some things. I have the love of many people (that former nanny still despises me, but she left in the middle of the night with my leather bomber jacket, and she was a crappy babysitter, so I don’t really care…). I am getting back all the things I need and more.
• My brain is better than ever.
• My hair is better than ever…
• After flittering around The Bahamas for 8 wasteful years (and a few years before and after), I am gainfully employed in a job I love.
• And speaking of The Bahamas, there were plenty of good times before the fall…
• I am in great physical shape.
• I have found a calling.
• I enjoy my sobriety and my life.
• After plumbing the root cause of our collective addiction, people in recovery are the strongest, most introspective and honest people on the planet – I am proud to be among that group.
• I am happy.
• I write a blog, so I always get the last word..

It’s nice to get a blast from the past, I guess…

But, I’m not really into harkening back. I have rekindled some great relationships with my childhood friends, now that I’m back in Michigan, and a few of my college pals – but that’s different. I have met some amazing people from this blog, but they understand the journey.

There are some things best left in the past. Because I’ve been through a lot and I don’t want to have to explain. Or justify. Or give a second thought to whether you pity me or not. I certainly don’t want anyone to lose sleep over me. And there is no joy in considering a reconciliation or the rebirth of romance. Been there. Done that. “To know them is to be disappointed,” to quote you…

It’s like cleaning a closet. If you haven’t worn that Moschino jacket  for ten years, it’s unlikely you’ll wear it again, even though you paid a lot for it. Best to give it away. Or throw it away…

E2E – Be careful where you sit, sleep and walk. Wish we were there to take care of you…

The post Why do I get the impression you pity me? first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

A few short years ago, the month of August would have been like every other month. I would have woken in a tangle of sheets, maybe bloody (certainly besmirched) with nausea rising in my throat and no memory of how I got the abrasions on my knees.

Read it and weep…

I’d reach over to the bedside table and drink the last dregs in the wineglass from the night before like a tonic. The curtains would be billowing, a sharp breeze off the Exuma Sound. And as I started another day in Paradise, I wouldn’t bother to look out of the window…

As patches of the previous evening came back, I’d get snippets of memory. It felt like the sickening strobe light – OFF ON OFF ON OFF ON – at the Happy People Bar in the village. A face here, a piece of a room there, swapped with a matt-black nothingness…

My past came up in the office yesterday. Jess said she could not imagine me in my active addiction. She said it made her sad to think of it. Weirdly, I can’t imagine it either. That time in my life, at the tail end of the maelstrom that was my late-stage alcoholism, feels like it happened to someone else.

Falling off a bar stool should hurt, right?

When I think about that crazy blonde who wore a wineglass like a wedding ring and drove a golf cart like a drunken banshee, I don’t even like her.  And think about what it does to your body to fall, dead weight, from the summit of a barstool. And what it must feel like to have a baker’s dozen of the local guys try to hoist you from a filthy cement floor.

It’s no wonder my Pucci kitten heals didn’t survive.  It’s a wonder I did.

There were good times living in The Bahamas. Such good times in fact, I cannot muster the nerve to return. Another island perhaps, but not Staniel Cay… not yet…

This summer I have been working…

Living in Michigan, is like living in Opposite World from The Bahamas. In fact, people work during the summer here and travel to warm climes in the winter. Speaking of working, I’ve been doing a lot of it.

And because I am proud of my accomplishments, and happy to be working at something I love to do, I wanted to share with you the new website I created (along with Jess, Monica, Kevin and Mindutopia) for Sanford House Addiction Treatment Centers.

We have gone from being a gender specific treatment facility for women, to adding treatment for men to the mix. It was necessary to rewrite the entire website before the opening (in the next two weeks in a series of events) of our newest restored historic mansion – Sanford House at John Street for Men. The website has been a long time coming. I began writing it in February, in a cabin in the Up North woods.

Walden Pond and all that…

When you think about it from the marketing perspective, a profound change in an organization makes for a host of problems, challenges, exigencies and opportunities. One must bow to the Gods of Google SEO… And what a fun brain teaser it is.

Now, I’m not saying that launching a new website and opening a 20 bed treatment facility is as relaxing as passing out on the deck of a boat on the Exuma Sound. And I am not sporting a tan this summer. But the confidence, pride and community I have developed during this process is so satisfying, I can honestly say I’d rather be doing this than sitting on a beach.

But I am thinking of taking one of those Michigan, fall vacays or booking a trip to Florida for the holidays now… All work and no play makes Mare a dull girl.

E2E – We are thinking of you every day…

The post What Did You Do On Your (Sober) Summer Vacation? first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

My four year sober anniversary came in like a lamb. I only remembered it, because Lauren sent me a text to congratulate me.  And other than being a mother (and for a while a wife) I haven’t maintained interest in many things for four years straight, so I should have been jazzed. Maybe the milestone fizzled because I drank as a hobby and later, as an avocation, for at least ten years. So by comparison it’s small potatoes.

Or maybe it’s that my sobriety has settled…

…and I’m not dealing with those punch-in-the-gut demands to DRINK anymore. So I don’t feel so full of my sober self at this milestone. It’s been six months since the last time a Bob Marley song or a walk through an airport or the smell of Aqua di Gio Pour Homme (don’t ask) has made me crave a tall, icy glass of chardonnay. Reading the words “tall, icy glass of chardonnay” doesn’t even make me salivate.

I don’t want to negate the degree of difficulty in getting and staying sober. It is the hardest thing I have ever done. There will always be a little piece of me that feels “missing”, but I am comfortable as a sober person now. And my life is so much better, I can’t even muster the resentment I used to wear like a cheap suit, because I couldn’t swill white wine anymore. I have learned there is always a worse case scenario, always something to be grateful for.

And I do not want to drink.

I work for an addiction treatment center, so I am around folks who are new to recovery all the livelong day. And at My office, in the marketing group, we are always researching the cutting edge treatments, methods and modalities available to increase the national averages for successful long-term recovery. I have found that you really have to want to get sober. No one can do it for you. I have also found you have to be ready to slay the dragon when the words, “I’m going to drink” pop into your head at inopportune times (and they will).

Four things I know for sure about getting and staying sober:

1. You Simply Must Find a Passion (If You Are Able – Get Physical)

I am convinced that long term sobriety must contain a passionate interest in something outside of oneself. For me it has been writing and hiking. Seriously. I am still saved regularly by a comment on this blog or a rigorous walk with friends (or alone). I have started a walking group, and I can see the positive influence an early morning, city trek can make on a day in treatment.

And if the passion is physical, I think it works even better for quelling the cravings. Statistics show that rigorous exercise and challenging yourself will increase your chances for long term recovery.  Fill your hands with something and get the heart pumping. You can mountain climb, but you can also walk dogs at a rescue shelter or garden. Or for a double whammy, become a docent at an art museum and take the stairs.

Passion is defined as “strong and barely controllable emotion”.  Yes. Find that.

2. We Are All in Control of Our Own Lives

I hear from people all the time who say things like, “It was my sister’s wedding. They made me drink.” Or they might say by way of excuse, “My cousin died,” or “I knew I shouldn’t have gone to that Kid Rock concert,, but what was I going to do? I couldn’t cancel…” This “excuse-thinking” is something I can relate to. Because I did it for years. I am reminded of the plastic bag in the movie American Beauty. Born on the winds as it dances with no direction of its own.

All my drinking stories used to begin with the words “I ended up”, as if I were not responsible for crawling out of a ditch after drunkenly crashing a golf cart. My bad? The fact is, we are not pushed around by capricious winds. We are in control of our own lives. And here’s the kicker – shit still happens, temptations abound even when you are sober.

3. Nature Has the Power to Save You (God is in His Heavens…)

One of the reasons I am so passionate about hiking, is that I am humbled by what I see in nature. There is something about standing alone on Guana Reserve beach before a storm that makes me feel large and small at the same time. In my mind, it is impossible to deny the existence of God, while rustling through the Michigan Up North in Autumn. 

In the excellent book by Interventionist Jeff Jay, Navigating Grace, he describes exactly that feeling during a solitary moment on the deck of his boat. He says, “I was standing on the deck, leaning back against the shrouds, looking up into the Milky Way, musing on the Universe. Here I lived in a tumble of stars, sharp and silent as the night, a thousand visible and a billion more I couldn’t make out… …And here I was, an infinitesimal being standing on a sailboat.” Beautiful.

Jeff (who is obviously farther up the ladder to heaven than me), says he can get that feeling on a city street too, or having coffee with a friend. But it is in a natural setting, in solitude when my path becomes clear and my troubles very small by comparison. I want you to have this feeling, no matter what you believe – this epiphany that is seeing the trees and the forest.

4. Find a Way to Be Accountable to Someone or Something

I am a card carrying loner and a natural at isolation. All my heavy boozing took place behind closed doors. A wise psychologist (who I summarily ignored and lied to at the time) once told me, “Marilyn, it is dangerous to not be accountable to something.” At the time I was newly divorced and swanning in the Exumas like I owned the place (I should have, for all the dough I threw around like a drunken sailor…). The truth is, I didn’t really listen to any good advice, and I was getting some from Kim and Dee…

I think this is where AA comes in. Or a church or another 12 step or recovery group. If you can find a community where you feel comfortable and will be missed if you don’t turn up, it is a positive move for your recovery. Create a schedule. Join a book club or a walking group.

It is also the place where mended family fences and work relationships can assist. I advise anyone who is serious about getting sober to tell every single person who is important to them they have quit drinking You would be surprised how resistant most newly sober people are to doing that…

I’m Still a Grasshopper…

In the grand scheme of sobriety, four years is not a long time. And time is certainly my sober buddy. After five years of sobriety I can feel a little more comfortable that the statistics are with me on maintaining my place on the wagon. And the longer I am sober, the smarter I feel. The more secure in my own health and wellness. Maybe I don’t have all the answers, but I have four.

I can’t say, “Whoopee! I got sober, found the love of my life, lost 20 pounds and I can do a cartwheel now!” But I can say, “I have found myself. I am where I am supposed to be, doing what I am supposed to be doing.”

And I don’t lie anymore. So that’s the truth.

XXXOOO, M

The post Four Years Sober – Four Things I Know For Sure first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.