I’m picking up on one of the comment threads on my last post, where the suggestion is made that I’ve hit upon a “formula” to come back to life as I want it, that formula being staring down the monster while it’s in the room with you, and then moving on — seeing the “relapse” as an aberration, not an excuse to go nuts again.
The formula isn’t original with me. Every diet book in the world says the same thing: if you Continue reading
Mike’s comment about social drinking really got me thinking. I replied to his comment but I wanted to expand on it a bit.
First of all, I have to say right off the bat that I no longer really experience social pressure to drink. It’s been many years since I’ve gone out drinking specifically to go for drinks with friends. We generally go for a meal or a coffee, but not just for a drink. My social circle generally doesn’t drink or doesn’t drink much. One of the hazards of middle age (okay, most of us are “seniors” now) — most of us have gotten less enchanted with partying than we used to be.
So when I say I went out to a pub only 2 days after I quit, I mean we went to a pub for a meal. (It’s the kind of pub that also happens to serve good food.) I suggested we try Continue reading
The title of this post says it all. Sure, I’ve had ups and downs, but overall I’m much much much better than I’ve been in years. Yes, it’s a challenge — sometimes a big challenge — and I still think about alcohol every day — it’s kind of become my project right now — but I’m not drinking and it feels good.
But.
An interesting thing has started happening. I’m finding myself substituting one addiction for another — TV, food, and work, mostly. I hear myself telling myself the same stories as I did about alcohol.
Watching TV seems to feed anxiety, which feeds craving … craving for something, but I don’t know what. I used to think it was wine, which it was and wasn’t. Wine was what I gave it, but really, it never satisfied the urge, and I wouldn’t have identified it as an urge to get pissy-faced. What it felt like — still feels like — is a hole, something missing, something ineffable that NOTHING will really satisfy.
What is it about TV that brings this on? Could it be that I’m feeling drawn in by the story, but the characters are over there and I’m over here and I can’t touch them, it’s just me being drawn in? Is that what it is? A one-way street, unrequited love?
And is there a time when don’t crave anything? Well, this may seem trite, but I think it’s about connection. When I meditate and get in touch with centre, I don’t get cravings. When I’m in company I’m totally comfortable with I don’t get cravings. When I feel totally supported in community I don’t get cravings … hmmm. So it’s more complicated than I thought. So I need to dig deeper and love more.
Remembering how I used to wake up every morning with a sense of abject failure because I had let myself down — again — by drinking waaaaay more than I’d intended to — again — and couldn’t stop. After just 2 weeks, I’m waking up refreshed, clear and without recrimination, after a deep, sound sleep, including NOT waking up in a cold sweat at 4:00 a.m. with my heart pounding in my ears.
I think about alcohol every day. At first there were no urges, no cravings, no arguments Continue reading
I thought I’d be getting a complete break from my normal life & therefore a good time to stop drinking because I was supposed to be going away for the weekend for a music retreat. But I had to cancel the trip — turned back when we were halfway to Toronto — because of a bad knee. Now I’ve been laid up in bed for 2 days, so I got the complete change but in a very surreal way. Today is Day 3 of resting the knee. Hoping it will be well enough by tomorrow that I can drive again, but I have to admit being waited on hand & foot is actually rather pleasant. All the coffee I can drink and so forth, delivered to my night table, with a smile yet.
The good news is, no urges to drink. Except … Continue reading
So it’s tomorrow now, only mid-day, and though I’ve been obsessing about alcohol and the fact that I’m not drinking and how is that going to work in my life, I’m enjoying the clarity.
Continue reading
Today was supposed to be Q minus 3 days. My quit date was going to be Friday. But this morning’s email contained a challenge that I just couldn’t pass up, so it’s Q day today! Continue reading
Yup, I’ve come to the (very) reluctant conclusion that the only way to get control of this beast is to give it up altogether. Clean break-up, total abstinence, maybe forever (BIG resistance to that), but at least for the foreseeable future, at least until the emotional charge is gone. And once the emotional charge is gone, well, I won’t need it anymore, now, will I?!
My counsellor has said some people write letters to the bottle. Maybe I’ll do that. But for now, I’ve come up with a couple of ways of looking at it that may be helpful in letting go. Remembering it’s an abusive relationship. Remembering alcohol is NOT my friend. And so forth. Here’s what it’s like, from where I sit right now:
– Alcohol is like that friend of a friend who shows up at your door one day to spend the night and ends up living in your house and he’s the roommate from hell but you can’t get rid of him because he’s charming in a bad-boy kind of way, and every time you try to kick him out he says he’s sorry and he’ll change and he didn’t mean to annoy you and he puts on that puppy dog face and because he’s such a smooth talker, he talks you into letting him stay one more night and then he’ll find his own place but he’s been here for YEARS and he’s charming in a devilish mischievous kind of way like Jack Nicholson in Witches of Eastwick or something like that but he has a dark side just like Jack Nicholson in Witches of Eastwick & if push comes to shove he will shoot you. Or like Matt Damon in The Talented Mr. Ripley, a needy loser who is charmingly ruthless and who worms his way into Gwyneth Paltrow’s life. Seriously creepy, and hard to get rid of.
– Alcohol is like your ex who you had a really troubled relationship with but he’s still charming and you’re still kind of attracted to him, well anyways attracted enough that you keep ending up sleeping with him even though you know this is not good. It’s not that he won’t leave it’s that you can’t quite get up the wherewithal to say you really want him to go.
– Alcohol is like that seriously irritating roommate who leaves hair & makeup in the bathroom sink, towels on the floor, pubic hair in the bar of soap, and takes forever in the shower when you have to pee; who leaves her food container, unopened and unrinsed, in the sink for you to open and clean and put into the dishwasher; who won’t feed the cat even if he’s right at her feet howling at her; who “forgets” to put away her shoes, her jacket, her purse, her keys, and anything else she happens to drop wherever she goes; who eats the last of the peanut butter and “forgets” to put it on the shopping list; who never seems to have time to stop for groceries; who drives the car for a week and a half and doesn’t put any gas in it and leaves the tank nearly empty so the empty idiot light comes on when you’re driving to Montreal; and who won’t leave on her own, so you have to be the one who moves out even though it was your apartment to begin with.
I was off alcohol altogether — not a drop — for over a year, a few years ago. So, knowing what I know, why on earth did I start again?
Because my abstinence buddy fell off the wagon. I felt so betrayed. I was hurt and angry — we had a deal, dammit. We had a deal and he broke it! And what made it worse is that he didn’t even tell me himself. I found out entirely by accident, and by the time that happened, he’d been using again for months. Months. I was devastated. The rug had been pulled out from under me, the wind was taken out of my sails, I was knocked flat. I tried to forgive him. I thought I had. But I really couldn’t.
You see, when I found out he wasn’t with me, really, and hadn’t been for months — that we’d been living a lie — well, something broke inside me. Somehow abstaining just didn’t matter to me anymore. And then all hell broke loose. I felt that if he wasn’t going to honour our agreement, I sure wasn’t going to. In fact, there wasn’t even an agreement anymore.
So, I started drinking again, slowly at first, but catching up pretty quickly to where I’d left off. At first it was just a glass of wine with dinner at a restaurant, but no booze in the house. Then it was just a glass or two with dinner at home a couple of times a week … and next thing you know, I was right back to square one. Hurtling down the mountainside with a maniacal bus driver with a death wish. And I blamed him. If he hadn’t broken our deal, I thought, I would never have started drinking again. And so I held onto the pain of the betrayal, clung to the disappointment, unable to let it go, for years.
Now I think I might finally be able to set it free.
All this time, I’ve been completely fixated on the fact that he lied and on how betrayed I felt and on how that reflected on our relationship and on and on and on. My obsession has been stopping me from seeing the obvious: maybe the lying wasn’t because he doesn’t love me or doesn’t respect me or our relationship. Maybe he lied because he was ashamed. Because his own self-respect had taken a big hit and he didn’t want to admit it to me because I was being strong about abstaining and he wasn’t. And what if he was afraid that if he told me I’d start drinking again? And he would have been right. What if his withholding the information from me wasn’t about me at all, but about him?
That something in me that broke so many years ago finally seems ready to heal. The hard little shell that’s formed around the broken bits finally seems to be melting, softening, giving way to something else, something greater than anger or fear. I am beginning to be able to yield to compassion rather than standing in judgement and blame. I’m feeling like I’m truly opening to love again, after ever so long, after way too long.
And where is this coming from?
I mentioned the event in counselling the other day, and I think just talking about it crystallized things for me. My counsellor observed that while a buddy system makes sense for going to the gym, an abstinence buddy hardly ever works out, for exactly the reason that it didn’t work for me. If one or the other of you falls off the wagon, chances are you’ll drag the other guy off with you.
Perhaps the realization that I’m not alone in this and that others have had the same experience is what has shifted my perspective. Perhaps my perspective has shifted just because we talked about it at all, regardless of the content of the talk. Talking about it has moved this story out of my dark little heart into the light of day, where I can see it more clearly because now it’s outside of me.
Now that I can see it from a different angle, now that it’s outside of me, now that I’ve written about it, and I’m revising the story, suddenly it’s not eating me up inside anymore. I’m humbled, but I’m grateful and I’m done here. Finished. Moving on.
Thank you. Namaste. Gassho. Blessed Be.
Some new thoughts from last counselling session: I’ve been finding I’m not getting my head around hitting the pause button. I just don’t remember to do it when I’ve already had a few drinks. So my counsellor suggested “playing it through” instead: how does the movie end? (Hugh Grant at the beginning of Four Weddings and a Funeral comes to mind.) What’s the sequel? Play it through to tomorrow morning, go through all the steps on the way, from the “whoopsie, had too much” moment to the 4am, aw shit, can’t believe I did it again, and now I can’t sleep, all the way through to sleeping in past 9:00 and the prospect of yet another ruined day. How does that feel?
Delayed gratification and changing my thinking about “habit”: I know that sometimes only alcohol will do. Nothing else will, not tea, not distractions, nothing. And I need to know that and accept it: nothing else will ever be as good initially. My brain-paths have been structured over the years to accept alcohol like nothing else, to respond to alcohol like nothing else. The receptors are primed to grab the alcoholic high. So, nothing will ever be as good initially, but it will be better in the long run if I don’t take that drink, if I distract myself with a cuppa tea, with exercising, with playing some guitar. I know in my head that it will be better in the long run — even while I’m drinking some part of me is in there somewhere, knowing full well exactly what I’m doing, exactly what the consequences are, and knowing as well that almost anything I could do would be a million times better than drinking. And yet, the compulsion remains.
There are two things that feed this compulsion: habit and triggers. The triggers are these big emotional walls — I drink to ease and soothe frustration, anxiety, and fear. But I also drink out of habit. I love to have a glass of wine when I’m cooking, and I practically feel like I have to. This is partly habit and partly cultural construct. It may go back to … what was his name? The Galloping Gourmet or something like that. It just seems “cool” to have a glass of wine while cooking. This seems programmed into me. I also reach for a glass of wine when I’m winding down from the day. Again, there’s a kind of cultural construct there, something from movies and TV that tells me alcohol will be a nice thing to have while I’m watching TV in the evenings. Then I get into this vicious circle where I have to have a glass of something to relax, and then I have to have some food with it to absorb the alcohol somewhat, and then the food and alcohol are never in sync, so I get another drink, then I finish the food so I need more food, then my glass is empty so I need another drink, and on and on it goes till I get to that “whoopsie, think I’ve had too much” moment.
It’s this habit we’re focusing on, the habit of staying up after everybody else goes to bed and watching the things only I enjoy watching on the TV, and having a nice little drinky-poo while I’m doing it.
So, how do I re-wire the pathways, re-train the receptors, so they’ll accept some substitute for the alcohol? How do I think new thoughts, create new behaviours?
And then, how do I make them stick? I’m having to remind myself of thoughts I’ve had before, because I’ve forgotten thoughts that have been successful in the past. I’d completely forgotten my “potato chips” strategy (what’s the difference between potato chips and alcohol — addicted to both, so why can’t I make my strategy for chips also work for alcohol?) till I re-read the post about the night I came up with it. How dumb is that? It’s as if a big part of me wants me to be asleep all the time. Dammit, it’s getting crowded in here!
Driving my own bus 