Let go of the notion that alcohol is a treat – catherine gray

An inspirational letter from a friend who’s about to celebrate one year alcohol free

I love hearing from people whose lives have changed after quitting alcohol.

This letter is meant to provide inspiration to those who think that alcohol is a treat – or they will never have fun again without a drink.

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and purchase. 

The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober

But before I share the letter, I also wanted to offer up this quote from Catherine Gray, author of The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober.

I mentioned Catherine in an Instagram Story this summer. – and we had a short conversation.

Here is what she wrote back after me telling her I have had lots of white knuckles moments in the beginning of this alcohol free journey. Thought I would share with you, because, it was during these moments that I still viewed alcohol as a treat.

Inspiring right? O.K. On to the letter from my friend:

“I once thought that quitting drinking was a punishment to me. I truly believed that I was going to miss out on all the fun, the romantic dinners, that I wouldn’t dance, that I wouldn’t belly laugh.

Boy, was I wrong.

Not drinking is a gift. I can clearly see that now. And I also know that I can have fun, that I am fun!

Now, I truly laugh because something is funny, I engage in conversation, and I truly connect.

Drinking blurred every little thing and detail for me, I was missing half,  if not all of the night. Piecing together forgotten moments the following day. Now, I clearly see things, I have so much more clarity and more hope and more honesty.

The Cutest, Quirkiest Little Treehouse

I’m up very early at the cutest, quirkiest, little treehouse with my dearest friends.

I decided that I was just going to relax and enjoy, just let it be. And, boy did I.

We got here right after lunch and explored the cute town. Anyway, the place is just the cutest, it’s literally a treehouse. It’s right on the water.

We made a fire and gathered around and shared stories and had conversations about our lives, things we’ve never really talked about. We talked about friendship and how we are truly besties.

I shared with them how some of my relationships have changed since I stopped drinking, I shared how I really miss one of my friends that I made at my kids school six to seven years ago who’s not really in my life anymore.

We all shared and all had concerns but hopes too. These girls know me, they support me, and make me feel loved.

Then a giant storm rolled in, white caps quickly covered the water and debris fell from the trees, we rushed up to the house, giggling as the fat raindrops bounced off our heads, that was fun too. We ended the night all snuggled on the couch and talking and laughing.”

This little sliver of contentment can be yours, too.

Change can be challenging. But it can also open doors to new experiences, unexpected adventures and peace of mind that is truly priceless. If this is what you are searching for in your life, I truly wish for you to find it.

A final word on inspirational literature

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Today I’m sharing three ways alcohol sabotages your fitness goals.

Did you ever wonder if alcohol affects the time you put in at the gym? Well then today’s blog post is for you!

[Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and purchase.] 

I’ve always loved, loved (and loved) to work out. I love running, circuit training and yoga. Lately, I’ve been doing the 21-Day Fix Extreme Videos. I’ve definitely seen some great results and am excited to move on to 80-day obsession!

I really love anything except cycling or riding a stationery bike. And I’m amazed at how much easier it is to have incredible workouts without also asking my body to try to rid itself of the wine.

How alcohol sabotages fitness goals

It’s really no surprise that alcohol absolutely sabotages workouts. But here are three interesting things it does, which work against fitness goals.

#1 It packs on fat

According to Jillian Michaels in her book Making the Cut, alcohol releases estrogen into the bloodstream. “Not only does estrogen promote fat storage and inhibit muscle growth, but frequent estrogen spikes in the body have been linked to an increased risk of breast cancer.”

#2 – It disrupts recovery

From an article in the Active Times: Alcohol depletes important minerals that are important to the recovery process.

“It encourages yeast overgrowth which has a whole spectrum of symptoms. It depletes the body of vital minerals such as magnesium which is an important electrolyte for muscle recovery and muscle health for those exercising and seeking fitness,” explains Dr. Carolyn Dean.

#3 – Sleep quality suffers

This quote comes from an article from Shape Magazine. “A few glasses of wine before bed may help you drift off faster—but the zzz’s you log won’t be deeper, says Haas. “Alcohol can prevent restorative deep REM sleep, which is needed to feel rested.”

Lack of sleep can impair muscle recovery, and even if you manage to drag yourself to the gym after a night of tossing and turning, your workout will suffer.

So, if you’re ready to take a break from alcohol, why not start now? I’ve written about some amazing tips on how to rock the weekend sober. Go ahead and try them on for size. I guarantee you’ll have more energy when you hit the gym!

{Kim Banks RESET is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.}

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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 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.

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.

I told Christine that I had just experienced the “move from hell.” She said, “Your last move was ‘the move from hell’ wasn’t it?” Which is kind of true, but also made me feel like my horrible moves are somehow my fault. As if I don’t have the moxie to pack my own belongings, or the strength to navigate flights of narrow stairs while juggling breakables. Like I’m fabricating these hellish, move-a-day outcomes to make a better story.

 

I had this idea to get cute photos of me perched on boxes for this blog. That crazy Mare – recovery on the move again!  But after the fortieth trip up three flights of stairs to get my hanging clothes, I didn’t have the heart for it. So there are no pictures of before and after. Suffice to say I am relocated. And I look like I used to look when I stayed out late drinking and fell down a lot.

 

The offending daybed, now in a garage…

 

I had help…

And it’s not like I had to do it all myself. I had a moving company for the heaviest lifting. But I am sitting here with a body full of bruises and a head full of horror stories to tell. Come on, who has a 4 to 6 hour estimated move take 12 hours? Who has the smiling waif of a moving boy drop 500 pounds of wooden cabinet on the cement stairs and break it into pieces?

 

And who stage manages two enormous, decorative “key pieces” of furniture out of the bell tower of a refurbished church, only to have them founder on the impenetrable entranceway of the new apartment (ne historic home). And what does one do when the movers (after trying two stairways and twisting the furniture every which way but loose) look at you and say, “We don’t know what to tell you lady, but this won’t fit and we can’t put it back on the truck.” At that point, I was tired of sweet talking, cajoling and demanding. I just didn’t care. But, it’s not like putting a rickety end table at the curb for someone to dumpster dive.

 

These pieces of furniture are so large and unwieldy you need, well, a moving truck to move them. Luckily, my new landlord owns cattycorner mansions. I mustered enough charm to negotiate temporary space in his garage across the street, and got Niles and Clem to carry my behemoths to yet another location.

 

Unpacking the shot glass collection and all those flasks, again…

And why my friends do I keep packing and moving my shot glass collection? Hoisting box after box of brandy snifters and my Grandfather’s Waterford sherry flutes? And why can’t I just throw away those gag cocktail napkins, whiskey flasks and the wine glass that holds an entire bottle? I don’t think there’s any nostalgia for the days when I carried a wine goblet like an affectation. So why not toss the alcoholic’s accouterments?

 

I’d like to say this is my final move. That I will never move again. But the truth is, this move is just the next step in my resurrection/recovery (I have a fireplace!). There will be moves in the future and more stories to tell. But I need that neat, little book by the Asian woman who helps people all over the world organize their dross (keep/give away/throw away). I need to keep only those things that “bring me joy”.

 

Which reminds me, it does not bring me joy to schlep all those extra wooden hangers and the throw pillows that keep multiplying. And for God sake Marilyn, you will not be hosting a martini buffet anytime soon, so give away the martini glasses. Give them away. They do not bring you joy…

 

Today I’m not drinking, because I am moving again and keeping only those things that make me blissful…

How come you’re not drinking?

E2E I hope you are finding joy…

The post Moving the Shot Glass Collection Again… first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

In the end, the reason I decided to move was because of a shower curtain rod. There were lots of reasons I can list, now that the decision is made, for leaving my apartment. It was expensive. Especially given its (admittedly groovy) industrial, proletariat vibe. I never saw anyone in the halls and isolation is not good for my psyche. And with 40 foot ceilings, it was a challenge to heat in the long Michigan winters.

Thinking, thinking, thinking…

My lease is up this month and I have spent a fair amount of time  standing in the middle of the “great room” and thinking, moving is just too hard. I have big, heavy pieces of furniture and live three flights up. There’s a bookcase so unwieldy, the previous movers threatened to leave it on the landing or cut it in pieces to make it fit into the narrow, third floor hallway. And there is the tedium of changing my address. I have an orchid. A new case of water unpacked in the refrigerator…

Two weeks ago, my shower rod fell in the middle of the night. Again. It is something I have battled my entire tenure. I don’t know whether the Restoration Hardware, linen curtain is too heavy or the rod not quite long enough, but it has never fit properly. I’ve padded the gap with paper handtowels folded into discreet squares. I have augmented those patches with damp toilet paper (the sides of the shower are slippery). And just when I think I’ve got it beat, it crashes at the most inconvenient time. And I find myself stuffing more, less discrete, wads of scrap paper into the breach and cursing my fate. Why? Why God? I might whimper, at a particularly vulnerable moment.

I never thought to buy a new shower rod, or even complain to the landlord. They supplied it after all, and every time my handiwork crashes, it takes a small swath of paint off the bathroom wall so they should want to fix it. Anyway, the last collapse was the final straw (rod?). I folded up the shower curtain, propped the curtain rod against the wall and put a towel down on the floor to catch the splatter when I take a shower. And like a bolt from above I thought to myself, it’s time to move.

When Something Small Leads You to Decide Something BIG

This is typical of how I make big decisions.  All the good reasons for a life change might be clanging in stentorian obviousness and I will ignore them. Then, someone like Dee or David makes a simple comment, or a shower curtain falls and the way becomes clear.

Take how I got sober for example. After ten years of not-so-subtle prompts to quit – knocking out my teeth on a dive-bar countertop, getting divorced, falling off bar stools, the yen to drink in the morning, running short on cash, falling for another “inappropriate” boyfriend – I quit drinking for good, because my son Jonathan needed to be picked up from the airport. Go figure. He was getting in from England at midnight. Usually, I would have gotten my drinking in early, passed out, set an alarm and “sobered up” enough to go get him. When we got home I would have poured a nightcap.

Instead, I just didn’t drink. All day. And a bell went off – I thought to myself, this is enough – I’m done. For almost four years, that decision has stuck.

Is There a Moral to This Story Mare?

The moral to this story is that getting to the right decision is a good thing, no matter how long it takes. Better however, is the ability to read the signs. Change is never easy – especially when packing boxes or the pouring out of hooch is involved. But ignoring the BIG things is a form of self-punishment. In the NEW APARTMENT, I am going to be more aware of my surroundings, take better care of myself. Take note of the forewarnings.

And in the new apartment, if the faucet drips, or the shower curtain falls – boy oh boy, look out. I am loaded for self-care bear…

The post When the BIG Decision is Prompted By Something Small first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.