Drinking Diaries » addicts

As Good As It Gets

guest — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:00:08 +0000

by V.C.

Nothing prepares you for seeing your 21-year-old son in handcuffs–still stinking of booze, beltless, pants falling down–led from the court pens at his arraignment for DWI. Nothing prepares you for watching your baby hold out his hands as the cuffs are removed, or the noise they make.

With each clink of the cuffs, your heart breaks and you ask yourself, why was I such a bad mother? Why couldn’t I save him? Did I do too much or too little?

What flashed through my mind were a series of firsts when he was just a child. His first steps, his first day at grammar school with his Power Rangers lunch box in hand, the look on his face when he hit his first home run. And then much later, his first drunk.

He was fifteen at the time, and that night he wore the bill of his ball cap down low. He sported his hip-hop clothes and his hip-hop swagger, and he told me he was just going to the park to hang out for a while. He wouldn’t look me in the eye, though. And on this night, while my husband slept, I stayed awake, instinctively knowing something was off. He came home, cap askew, eyes bloodshot.

“What did you drink?” I asked him.

“Nothing.”

“What did you drink?” I repeated, looking deeply into his eyes.

“Vodka. Don’t tell Dad.”

“I won’t. But you will,” I said.

Well done, Mommy, I thought to myself. Have the boy take responsibility for his own actions.

The next day, my husband and I projected a united front as he confessed his sins to his father. He had drunk vodka out of a Gatoraid bottle. Alot of it. We gave him the “talk” about drugs and drinking. With a family history of alcoholism, we had more than a workable knowledge of the perils of drugs and alcohol. Still. We wanted to believe it was innocent—a mere experiment. But Brian, as he grew older, seemed to gravitate to the seedier side of life. He didn’t always go to school. He’d gotten hurt playing baseball and had given up sports. He wanted to be “cool” so he smoked cigarettes. He smoked weed. We confronted him all the time. My cool, cocky son replied, “Don’t worry, I’ve got a handle on it.” We wanted to believe him.

Soon the incidents of drunkenness escalated, and he just got better at hiding it from us. Until he couldn’t. He would come home drunk and collapse on his bed. His room stank of booze. One morning I found vomit next to the bed. And then one winter break, when he was eighteen, I had had enough.

“You can’t live here anymore,” I told him. “I won’t live with a drunk.”

He called me while I was at work contrite. “I’m sorry. I have a handle on it,” he said. “But I don’t have a problem. I got a little out of control, that’s all.”

“One day you will have to stop,” I said.

After each incident he behaved for awhile. To show us. To show himself that he had a handle on things. But ultimately the feelings of Insecurity, of Less Than, of Fear were always simmering underneath his cool exterior. He was big on the outside, but on the inside he surely felt small. And now he’s 21 and legal, and so he’s begun drinking in earnest. He’s allowed into bars any time day or night, and that’s where he goes to feed his feelings.

That day, I cried at that court rail, and I didn’t care who witnessed my tears. I cried because I had and STILL HAVE such high hopes for him. After the arraignment he got into the car, still drunk.

“This was not so bad,” he said.

“No,” his Dad said. “It’s much worse. This is as good as it gets,” he warned. “If you keep drinking, what you have in your future is more jail. More pain. Hurting someone else. Hurting yourself. Save yourself NOW. We love you. You are a good kid with a bad problem.”

Our son is not even aware of the ripple effect that his contact with the criminal justice system will have on his life. It will affect job applications and work; there will be drug and alcohol testing for at least six months, car insurance will double for five to ten years, and of course there is our trust. The shock to our system as parents hit us like a lightning bolt. We hope that this is a wake up call for him. We don’t need any other signs for we know that this is either the end of a problem and he will straighten up and get his act together, or it is just the beginning of a life gone awry because of alcohol abuse.

My son, my son, I want to hug him and shake him awake at the same time. I want to slap him and then kiss his stinging cheek and tell him everything is going to be all right because I am his mother and I desperately want to make it so. But even a mother’s love can’t put a Bandaid over a bullet wound, and so what I do is I tell him he still has the power to choose the life he wants to lead, and that he must choose wisely and choose well. And then I echo his father’s words,” Don’t let this day be as good as it gets.”

As of this writing Brian is almost five months sober and we are very proud of him.

V.C. lives and works in the New York metropolitan area. She is married and has two children. She has written two memoirs, which are not yet published.

On Rejecting Addiction & Drama

guest — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 17:25:40 +0000

By Therese Borchard

It’s been 20 years since I used vodka like aspirin—to numb my pain. In fact, I’ve been sober 17 years more than I drank, since I quit before I was old enough to buy the stuff. So my brain should be used to ordering Perrier with lime and shaking my head politely as the merlot bottle comes my way. I should be so used to drinking non-alcoholic beverages at cocktail hours that I don’t give alcohol a second thought.

But the truth is that ex-drunks need to stay in recovery their whole lives. Like cancer survivors, they live in a state of remission, where they humbly acknowledge that their illness is impatiently waiting for a moment of vulnerability to make a surprise visit.

And that surprise visit may not even involve alcohol.

The face of addiction morphs into different beasts. Mine does so with the election of every new U.S. president. Just when I think I’ve learned how to fill my jiggly center with prayer and meditation, with the love of my family and friends, I get that undeniable ache and reach once more for something to “complete me,” as Jerry Maguire would say.

Addicts do that.

Why?

Craig Nakken, author of “The Addictive Personality” explains:

“Addiction is a process of buying into false and empty promises: the false promise of relief, the false promise of emotional security, the false sense of fulfillment, and the false sense of intimacy with the world….Like any other major illness, addiction is an experience that changes people in permanent ways. That is why it’s so important that people in recovery attend Twelve Step and other self-help meetings on a regular basis; the addictive logic remains deep inside of them and looks for an opportunity to reassert itself in the same or in a different form.”

That means that even though I only drank for three years, I will forever have a “thinking problem” that, if I’m not careful, could dump a bunch of unwanted pain unto my lap. It means that as I form important relationships, that I need always remember my propensity to mix up intensity with intimacy—that the rush I feel from scoring 100 followers on Twitter can in no way replace the intimacy I share with my husband and kids—that even though it feels like a high profile career can provide a world of glitter that won’t bore or disappoint me, that any accolade that I win is going to be a fleeting and unreliable high, and should not be depended on.

Intensity is not the same thing as intimacy.

Nakken repeats that logic several times in his book. “The addict has an intense experience and believes it is a moment of intimacy,” he writes.

It’s only been in the last two years of my recovery from, well, just about everything, that I’ve come to appreciate that mistake. I suppose part of my brain is programmed to pursue the thrill, no matter how many people I hurt (myself included) to get it. I chase the adrenaline rush, the dopamine high, that is akin to the buzz I get from smoking an entire cigarette in three puffs after staying away from lung rockets for a year or more. It treats my bruised insides the same way Kids’ Tylenol does my son’s leg cramps. The addictive object dulls the blunt emotions with which I experience most of life.

I crave drama, even as I know it’s not good for me. And I create turmoil although I recognize that it obstructs the serenity I’m after.

Last week a friend sent me a piece called “Dispelling Drama” that she found on DailyOm. I recognized the wisdom in this paragraph:

“Drama, however, disastrous, can be exciting and stimulating. But the trill of pandemonium eventually begins to frustrate the soul and rain the energy of all who embrace it. To halt this process, we must understand the root of our drama addiction, be aware of our reactions, and be willing to accept that a serene, joyful life need not be a boring one.”

How do we treat addiction and break the cycle of madness so that we’re not mired in drama our entire lives?

Recognizing it, for starters. I’ve begun to do that countless times a day when my mind turns to numbing agents—persons, places, and things that inspire intensity of thought or emotion, that physiologically give me that dopamine boost for a minute just as my shot of vodka would or a long inhale of weed or an extra long puff on a Marlboro.

“Self,” I will say some days, “Let’s take this thought a step further… Imagine you get your thrill … there you are … your body getting the buzz … now sit there a second longer … and ask yourself … are you happy? No, I didn’t think so.”

I will remind myself that I have everything I need to be happy.

Sometimes I will jot down my priorities again. For like the 349^th time, just so my brain can make that connection between thought and pad and pen. “Did Oprah make the top ten this time? Didn’t think so.” And so on and so forth.

And I heed the advice on DailyOm:

“When you confront your emotional response to drama and the purpose it serves in your life, you can reject it. Each time you consciously chose not to take part in dramatic situations or associate with dramatic people, you create space in your inner being that is filled with a calm and tranquil stillness and becomes an asset in your quest to lead a more centered life.”

I reject it over and over again. Sometimes it’s merlot. But often it’s not. It just feels like the same to me.

Therese J. Borchard is the author of the hit daily blog “Beyond Blue” on Beliefnet.com, which is featured regularly on The Huffington Post and was voted by PsychCentral.com as one of the top 10 depression blogs, and she moderates the popular depression support group, Beyond Blue, on Beliefnet’s social networking site. Her memoir, Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression & Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes, will be released in January of 2010. Therese lives with her husband and two children in Annapolis, Maryland. Subscribe to Beyond Blue here or visit her at www.ThereseBorchard.com.