“One Step at a Time” is a series of original essays we will be running monthly. We are excited to have writer and mom Patty Nasey share her fresh perspective as she embarks on the road to sobriety.

STEP TWO

by Patty Nasey

Albert Einstein said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”  That pretty much sums up my relationship with alcohol, especially in the past 5 years. I’d drink moderately, then get drunk, then beat myself up, then quit drinking, then decide I could control it because I’d been able to stop, then start drinking again, then get drunk, then quit, then start all over.  It was insane. I was insane.

But there was something about A.A.’s Second Step – the idea that I had to buy into this “Higher Power” thing in order to get sober — that made me a bit uncomfortable.  Not because I didn’t believe – I was raised Catholic, I converted to Judaism in 1996, I certainly believe in God.  It just sounded a little too much like “Jesus Saves” which totally freaked me out.  Because I had been “saved” once before — and it was scary.

When I was 12, my friend Roberta invited me to Wolf Mountain, a weeklong sleep away camp located near the small Northern California town where we lived. She told me it was co-ed so we could meet boys (not like the all-girls Catholic camp from which I had recently returned).  She told me it was “Indian Camp” so we would sleep in giant tee-pees.  She did not tell me, however (maybe she didn’t know) that the camp was run by fundamentalist Christians.  Every night at the campfire, Running Bear or Spotted Wolf (all the staffers had Indian names) would announce the campers who had accepted Jesus Christ as their “personal savior” that day.  I had no intention of adding my name to the list. I’d had my First Communion, I went to confession regularly, I was going to be Confirmed in the coming year. I assumed I was on the fast track to Heaven.  Then on the last night, all the campers were herded into a barn-like auditorium to watch a film about the Rapture. The film depicted, in terrifying detail, the moment when all of the “true Christians” would be gathered together to meet Christ upon His return, leaving all of us fakers behind to die a lonely, miserable death on Earth. It scared the crap out of me. Afterward, I sprinted back to my tee-pee, dropped to my knees and begged my counselor, Little Duckfeet, to save me, too.

Rationally, I knew that A.A.’s traditions were nothing like Wolf Mountain’s salvation-by-intimidation approach.  Still, around my 40th day of sobriety when my sponsor wanted to meet to review the Second Step, visions of Little Duckfeet danced in my head.  I told her I needed more time.

That same week, I was invited to an event at the very trendy Standard Hotel in New York City’s Meatpacking district. Some of my former Conde Nast colleagues had rented the terrace overlooking the High Line with panoramic views of downtown Manhattan.  As we got off the elevator, a young, good-looking waiter greeted us with a tray full of champagne.  I watched enviously as my friends lifted the gold-filled flutes, clinking, toasting, and drinking.  Then my insanity came knocking.

I can have one drink.

I have been so good, I deserve it!

How can I not have a glass of champagne?

Everybody else is drinking, why shouldn’t I?

I walked toward the bar.

“Champagne?” the bartender said as he popped the cork on another bottle.

I imagined the bubbles in my mouth, tickling my palate at first and then becoming sweet and smooth as my troubles melted away with each sip.  I wanted to say “Yes” so badly, and had I been trying to get sober on my own, I probably would have.  But I thought of all those people I had met in my A.A. meetings — unfailingly honest, day after day, sharing their experience, strength and hope with me. They’d given me their phone numbers, invited me for coffee, clapped and cheered when I announced my sober day counts: 12 days…23 days…36 days…41 days.  As the waiter filled up the glass, I imagined calling my sponsor to tell her that I’d have to forfeit those hard-earned days of sobriety and start over. I pictured myself telling all those people who had been rooting so hard for me that I “went out” over a glass of champagne.  I couldn’t do it.

“Just a Perrier with lime,” I finally said. The waiter handed me the unfamiliar drink and I winced as the bubbles stung the inside of my mouth. It was a lot to swallow – this unsatisfying champagne substitute, this strange state of sobriety, this saying no when I wanted to say yes, this Second Step. But I did it.  While physically I was at a glamorous Conde Nast event, mentally I was in a church basement with these strangers I’d come to know, trust and rely on for help. Together, they formed a power that was greater than myself. Together, they helped rescue me from my own insanity.

In the book, Twelve Jewish Steps of Recovery, Rabbi Kerry Olitzky writes, “It doesn’t matter if God has a long white beard, what matters is there’s someone beyond you and beside you.  You just have to connect with it.”  I realized that day that it’s irrelevant whether I am Catholic or Jewish; Born Again or Atheist. What’s most important is that I’m not alone.

Patty Nasey is a 20 year veteran of the magazine industry. She has worked at Time Out New York, Jane, Lucky, Teen Vogue, Mademoiselle and SPY, and written for a variety of publications, including Time Out New York Kids, New York Magazine and
 PAPER. Patty currently works as a retail marketing consultant for Women’s Wear Daily, a division of the Fairchild Fashion Group. You can see her read from her unpublished, unfinished, unauthorized memoir at the NY Writer’s Workshop series at KGB on June 12. She lives in New York City with her husband, two daughters and a dog. Read Patty’s first post of this series here.

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by Lauren King

And then I was born…. and the cycle continued.

My name is Lauren and my dad was an alcoholic.  Watching him drink was as normal as breathing.  I can remember the daily progression of his love affair with alcohol.   From the time he stopped at the gas station to pick up his twelve pack of beer, to the quick onset of the slurring of his words, to finally passing out to the point that not even an earthquake could wake him up.  All of this was very confusing for me as a young girl but there was one thing that I was sure of.  I knew his drinking took precedence and that was because he was an alcoholic.

The one truth that I carried with me into my teens was that I never wanted to grow up and be like my dad, a drunk.  What I found out once I started drinking myself was that I had an uncontrollable desire to drink just like my father did.  The best way I can describe it is that I craved alcohol like a vampire craves blood.  I needed it to sustain me.  I needed it to help me cope with my feelings.  I needed it to converse with others.  I needed it to feel normal in my own skin.  The big question was, how could I hate my father’s alcoholism so much, yet end up with the same addiction that he was battling?

My addiction came hard and fast.  Starting at fourteen it progressed to the point that at the age of seventeen I found myself standing at a crossroads in my life.  Get sober or die.  I knew that if I didn’t get sober that I was going to end up overdosing or going to sleep one night and not waking up from all the damage that the drugs and alcohol were doing to my body.  Standing at that fork in the road, one path looked dark and the other had a light at the end of it.  It was the light of hope.  As I chose the path of recovery I knew that I wanted the cycle to end with me.  I now have two beautiful girls of my own and know that I may one day face the fact that this disease may slam right into their generation.  As a family we are now armed with information along with hope, which are two of the most important tools to have in our arsenal to help us fight against this disease from ravaging our family once again.

Lauren King the co-author with her mother of ADDICTED LIKE ME, A Mother-Daughter Story Of Substance Abuse and Recovery (www.addictedlikeme.com), has spent the past twelve years living a sober life. She is currently pursuing a degree in Chemical Dependency. She lives in Surprise, Arizona, with her husband and two daughters.

by Karen Franklin

My father’s alcoholism was an embarrassment.  Some families had their dirty little secrets but my dad was so extreme with his drinking that I felt like everyone knew, which made it feel even more humiliating.  My family lived in a two-story house with my mom’s brother and family upstairs.  I imagined what they must have thought as they listened to my father’s drunken rages against our family.  I hated everything about alcohol; how it smelled, how it tasted and how my father behaved when he drank it.

So how did it happen that I too touched the bottle to my lips at the age of thirteen and became an instant alcoholic?  I was smarter though because I didn’t need to drink every day, only when I felt I needed it.  I moved far away and married a man who was a quieter version of my father and we started a family.  His increased drinking and abuse of drugs soon disillusioned me.  If he was the problem, why did I still feel so empty after I divorced  him?  I curtailed my partying as I took on the role of single parent and breadwinner while creating an illusion that my life was under control.  That worked well until the addiction started to show up in my young teenagers.

When the pain of watching my children being consumed by addiction became greater than my occasional need to self medicate, I knew that it was time to break the cycle.  I understood that my family was once again being destroyed by addiction and it was time to take action to stop this legacy of pain.  I became willing to take whatever action was needed. My sobriety date is one month behind my daughter Lauren.

In a way… I guess you could say we saved each other.

Karen Franklin, the co-author with her daughter of ADDICTED LIKE ME, A Mother-Daughter Story Of Substance Abuse and Recovery (www.addictedlikeme.com), has spent the past twenty-one years recovering from the legacy of her family addiction. She resides in Phoenix, Arizona, with her husband and has committed her life to helping others in their personal recovery process.

Just in time for the holiday season, so full of liquid temptations: a new drug called naltrexone was approved by the FDA for use in the treatment of alcoholism. If taken daily, naltrexone can curb the urge to drink. The drug works by blocking the effect of drugs, known as opioids, on the brain. While it is not meant to take the place of AA, psychotherapy and other treatments for alcoholism, naltrexone–which is generally used for a 3 month period–can lessen cravings for alcohol. In clinical trials, patients using naltrexone to curb cravings were twice as successful as patients taking a placebo.

Time Magazine named Naltrexone as one of the health highlights of 2009. And given the statistics on alcoholism–in the U.S. alone, 14 million residents are battling an alcohol addiction–naltrexone will most likely be welcomed as a powerful weapon in the battle against this tough disease.

by Maura Kelly

The first time I got drunk was during a New Year’s Eve party my parents
threw when I was a kid. I stole three unattended glasses of red wine and
secretly gulped them down while sitting underneath the kitchen table. Less than an hour later, my Dad tells me, I passed out in the middle of the living room, snoring.

I was 3 years old.

Getting my lips on booze was an easy thing to do in my Irish
immigrant family. As a kid, I sipped the foam off the top of my dad’s
beers, or sneaked slurps of his favorite drink, gin and tonic. I liked
to surreptitiously fill up on ignored champagne during weddings and
holiday parties. More than anything else, I craved the giddiness the
bubbly affected in me.

Though I was usually able to keep my habit a secret, I unintentionally outed myself when I was a high school sophomore, the day a distant relative got married. During the reception, as I table-hopped looking for flutes filled with toasting fluid, I introduced myself to an older man. The stranger was so friendly that I asked him if he’d give me his champagne. He not only obliged but poured me my own glass of red wine. When he saw how quickly I drank the stuff, he poured me another and another.

Trying to consume as many as possible before our transgression was
detected, I drank furiously until, a few Zinfandels in, I wondered why
my head didn’t feel connected to my body anymore. I glanced down to look
for my nose, which I was sure had fallen off and was mingling with the
leftover scraps of filet mignon and baby potatoes on the plates in front
of me.

I excused myself in alarm to go to the ladies’ room. But my aunt,
unaware that I was drunk, intercepted me, dragged me to the dance floor
and forced me to do the Chicken with her. Eager to appear normal, I
wiggled my butt as hard as I could — so hard, in fact, that I lost my
balance and plowed headfirst into the dance floor.

Following my performance, I passed out in a private room. After my
dad found me there, he told me we were going home. I stumbled out to his
car, sat in the passenger seat and threw up in his lap before he even
started the engine.

In front of my dad, I feigned shame about what I’d done, but the
next day I bragged to my friends about it. Barfing meant I’d been really
wasted, and I thought that was as cool as sneaking cigarettes in the
school bathroom. Of course I was getting drunk in non-family
settings by that point, too, and generally doing my best to develop a
wild reputation. Every once in a while when I was intoxicated I did
something really dangerous, like drunk driving or walking along the
railing of a third-story porch. But I thought those things, while
regrettable, added to my tough-girl legend.

My boozing increased exponentially during four years at an Ivy
League college. I was never competitive about grades or
extracurriculars, but I was competitive about partying. As an undergrad,
I spent most of my hours getting intoxicated or recovering from a
hangover. By the time I graduated, I was getting drunk at least three or
four times a week. Most boozing nights, I would have at least eight
or nine before I started to lose count. Wild Turkey and Diet Coke — a Diet Turkey — was my cocktail of choice
since the alcohol content was high, the calories were low and it went
down fast. But I also drank  just about anything I could get my hands on except beer, because it never
messed me up fast enough.

One night, a little more than a year after I had finished college,
I did something I had done a number of times already: Inebriated, I took
home a stranger I met in a bar. (I hooked up drunkenly as an undergrad
all the time, but my campus was so small it was almost impossible to
find someone I didn’t know.) The next morning, when the guy left my
Adams Morgan apartment, I figured I’d never have to see him again. But
he got my number from information and called every night for a week.
When I wouldn’t pick up his calls or ring him back, he started coming to
my window at night and screaming my name from the sidewalk. After a few
nights I was unsettled enough to pick up the phone the next time he
began leaving a message and ask him to please leave me alone. He
repeatedly asked why I had acted so passionately that night, angrily
resisting the explanation that I had done so primarily because I’d been
blind drunk. Luckily, after we hung up I never heard from him again.

Though that incident seriously spooked me, I decided the problem
was him, not me. So I didn’t change my ways. My next significant
and inevitable scare came when I was 25. Around 10 p.m. one Saturday, I
went to an open-bar party for a friend. The next thing I remember, it
was Sunday afternoon and I was lying in my West Village apartment in my
underwear. It seemed clear a visitor had spent the night with me, and my
apartment door was unlocked, as if a person without a key had let
himself out. Later that afternoon, after I had tried for hours to dredge
up any memory of what had happened, I started phoning friends to see if
anyone knew what I had done. No one was surprised I couldn’t recall
much. They were used to my blackouts, which had been happening regularly
since college. Only one friend knew anything: She had watched me getting
into a cab with a guy she had never seen before.

Another friend — who was not that much of a drinker — happened to
call that day and was shocked when I told her about the mystery du jour.
”I’ve been volunteering with a rape crisis hotline and it sounds like
you’re a rapist’s ideal target,” she said. “Are you sure you weren’t
attacked last night?”

Though I thought she was overreacting, her response helped me realize
my behavior was not cool, and potentially life-threatening. I was lucky
the guy, like all the other unknowns I have been alone with over the
years, wasn’t a rapist or a murderer.

The thing that finally made me turn a corner was telling my therapist that I had never kissed a
guy sober in my life. Not in my whole life, and I was in my
mid-twenties. The fact had never shocked me until that moment, when I
said it out loud. While alcohol might have helped me get physically
intimate, it was preventing me from getting emotionally intimate and
from developing into a mature, healthy, normal adult. I always thought
alcohol made me sexy, powerful, brave and interesting. But I started to
realize that more than anything, it made me ugly, weak, cowardly and
boring. It made me a loser. And that reality was scarier than the threat
of death.

So the last time I got drunk was March 3, 2001. Have I missed it? Sure, it was difficult to get through the first few parties without it.
And often, when I feel frustrated or unhappy, I am tempted to whiskey my
woes away. But then I realize a vicious hangover will only make my
dissatisfaction with life worse, and that a meaningless sexual encounter with a stranger will not provide happy memories. It’s also been great to find that kissing and all that goes with it is actually better when I’m
sober. Though I never thought I would, I feel more in control of myself,
my prospects and my experiences now that I’m not drinking.

I desperately wish I could be a kid again and do it all over.
Instead of sharpening my drinking skills during my young adulthood, I
would have read more poetry, written more short stories, acted in more
plays, maybe learned to play the guitar. Maybe I would have fallen in
love. And I often wonder how different my writing career might be if I
had never had the handicap of a heavy boozing habit.

Getting wasted isn’t cool. It’s not courageous or tough or
rebellious or bold or beautiful. More than anything else, it’s a waste
of your time and your youth.

Maura Kelly recently finished her first novel and is looking for a publisher. Her personal essays have appeared in The New York Times, the New York Observer, The Daily Beast, Salon and other publications.  She writes a dating blog for Marie Claire www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/dating-blog/.

(*A longer version of this essay was originally printed in The Washington Post in 2002.)

I’m Leah Odze Epstein, and I am a blogger. Actually, I’m co-editor of Drinking Diaries, and this is my first official off-the-cuff blog post, spurred on by a reader who threw down the gauntlet and said, “Why don’t these bloggers just BLOG?” Hmmm. Good question.

Last night, when I couldn’t sleep (probably because of an overloaded back-to-school schedule, as the mother of three kids), I was thinking about how my mom, a recovered alcoholic who has been sober for over 30 years, explained to me that alcoholism was a disease, and alcohol was not the only cause. It is a disease of the emotions as well as a chemical disease (involving blood sugar issues, the body’s ability to metabolize alcoholic, etc.). She always said to me, “You don’t have the personality for it,” which somehow made me feel better.

Over the years, I’ve debated many people on the disease front–people who don’t believe alcoholism is as much a disease, but a failure of will or a lifestyle choice. It’s confusing, because so-called high functioning alcoholics throw a wrench in the works–can’t everyone just cut down? Isn’t it just a question of moderation and self-control?

For alcoholics, it’s not that easy. My mother had to go through detox–and after that, she was told she should never drink again because she is allergic to alcohol, and she hasn’t.

I would argue that my mother’s definition is true: an alcoholic is someone who is allergic to alcohol, and should never drink again. Just as my husband and daughter have celiac disease, and their bodies cannot tolerate wheat or gluten-containing products, some people have an allergy to alcohol. I think a distinction needs to be made between alcoholics and heavy drinkers, and that the label high-functioning alcoholic can be misleading. Most alcoholics eventually hit rock bottom. Many people can benefit from moderation management, I am sure, but they are probably not alcoholics.

I’m not saying that alcoholics should not make amends to the people they hurt, using their “disease” as an excuse. I’m just arguing for  increased understanding of the distinction between heavy drinking, a drinking problem and the disease of alcoholism.

What do you think, readers? What is your definition of an alcoholic?

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.

Welcome to the DRINKING DIARIES.

Whether we are drinking it or not, alcohol remains a potent part of our lives. Our culture is saturated with it, steeped in it. We confront alcohol everywhere we go—from the home to the office party, date night to ladies’ night, happy hour to super bowl. Every season has its own liquor—there’s the champagne at New Year’s, beer on St. Patty’s Day, summer’s mojitos, autumn’s new vintage of velvety red wine, and winter’s warming brandy. Each religion has its prescribed ritual, from egg nog at Christmas to Manischevitz at Passover. Every culture has its signature drinks, from ouzo to sake and rum to Aquavit. Skol! Kampai! Cin cin! Salud!

Ask anyone you know to scratch the surface and she will find a drinking story. Maybe it’s the night she got smashed and so belligerent she spat in the bartender’s face. Or the time her alcoholic mother poured wine into a Sprite bottle so she could ride an Amtrak train, her self-medicating uninterrupted. It may be that her teenage daughter’s scar—from the time her beer-drinking boyfriend crashed the car—is healing, while hers is not. That the deepest philosophical question the stressed-out mom ponders is: “How big the glass?” Or the eyebrow-raising looks she gets when she mentions she doesn’t touch the stuff.

Here you can read other women’s drinking stories and/or spill your own. The Drinking Diaries will have guest posts and interviews, as well as links to articles, studies, and just about anything that has to do with women and alcohol.

For the two of us, alcohol is a loaded topic.

Leah: For my first grade school photo, my alcoholic mother put my sailor dress on inside out. My mother stopped drinking when I was nine years old, but by the time I hit fourteen, my older sister was sent to rehab. I spent half my adolescence at self-help meetings, and although I would rather have been hanging out with my friends, I found the personal narratives of fall and redemption riveting. From high school to college student, writer to stay-at-home mom, I have run the gamut from abstainer to binge drinker.

Caren: I grew up in a home where wine was always around. My European parents drank every night with dinner, and my mother–a French hidden child survivor of the Holocaust–often bragged about how she’d corrupted her American friends with the joys of a late afternoon glass of wine. But later in life, my mother’s wartime demons came back to haunt her and her social drinking morphed into need. Since then, I—a lover of wine in moderation—have been wrestling with what drinking means to me.

We want to reach out to women, like us, for whom alcohol—for whatever reason—is also a loaded topic. And so, we started THE DRINKING DIARIES…

Please check back on MONDAYS and THURSDAYS for the latest round of new posts!