Drinking Diaries » numb

A Million Pirouettes: Drinking as a Ballerina

guest — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 12:45:22 +0000

by Marika Brussel

The room spun as if I were doing a million pirouettes. My fingers and lips were rubbery and only vaguely recognizable as my own. From the other room came echoes of voices, laughter, the skunky aroma of pot. The floor was cold and dirty. I closed my eyes again to feel the spin.

I started dancing when I was three, and by the time I was thirteen I was dancing at least five hours a day, six days a week. I loved it. I loved the sweat and the blisters and the discipline. I loved the mirror and starvation. What I didn’t love was that the competition made it hard to have real friends. I liked the older kids, the 20-year-olds. They had it all together, I thought. They lived on their own and didn’t have homework. They seemed to be able to be friendly with each other. With me, they acted like I belonged.

In the ballet world, you’re judged on how good you are, not on how pretty or how smart; it’s all about talent and your potential for a successful career. I was good. And because of that, I could be included. I see that now with my own students. If a kid is talented, the older people hang out with her, talk with her, treat her as an equal. The lesser-skilled kids have to hang out with their own. It is a hierarchy based largely on ego.

It was autumn, and the new schedule had just been posted. I was in Advanced, with the older kids, including Frankie, who was about 19 and whose sweat smelled like sandalwood. ”Josh is having a party,” he told me after class, as I uncapped my Diet Pepsi and gulped. “You should come.”

Soda spilled down my chin, leaving sticky tracks on my neck. He wiped it off with one finger. It confused me.

“Okay,” I said, as if it didn’t matter at all, as if I always went to adult parties by myself.

“See you there,” he said, licking his finger and smiling.

Josh lived in the Bronx, a borough of the city I had never been to. I took the subway, creaky and hot, up past Yankee Stadium, a ride that seemed to take forever. I dressed in tight Jordache jeans, and a shirt that reminded me of sugar. The streets in the Bronx were long, wide and empty.

You may be wondering about my parents. Me too. They were pretty hands off.

The apartment was easy to find. Dancers leaned against the railing of the fire escape, smoking cigarettes and drinking from plastic cups. A few people nodded to me as I walked down the hallway looking for Frankie. He wasn’t there, but a tall boy I knew from class put a plastic cup in my hand and smiled.

I sniffed the drink. It smelled kind of like Passover wine, but stronger, less fruity. I dipped my tongue in. Wow! It was just like Manischevitz, but with a kick. Later, I learned that it was Sloe gin, but at the time it was liquid confidence.

With each sip I become enboldened. ”Where’s Frankie?” I asked a girl in the Company.

She laughed. “He and Bethie went into the bathroom about an hour ago.”

I took another sip. And another. And pretty soon it didn’t matter where Frankie was. The room took on a calm echo, and I felt fine, just fine.

“Hey,” the tall boy said. “You okay?”

“Great.” I steadied myself on his arm. Boy, he was tall.

“Wanna go look around?”

Before I knew it we were kissing, hard and deep, in the other room. I didn’t feel anything other than his tongue winding itself around mine. It wasn’t bad. It was fine. Everything was fine. My body felt nothing. Alcohol had made me numb in every way. I kept touching the waist of my jeans to make sure they were still on.

After about a hundred years we pulled away from each other. I squinted. He was older than I thought, maybe 25. I was 13, and my body looked younger.

“Want more?” he asked.

I stared.

He held up a cup.

“Sure,” I said, lowering myself to the floor. The room spun when I closed my eyes, but I was so tired. The tall guy didn’t come back. The next day I found out that he’d passed out in the living room. I also found out he was gay, but that’s another story. And not mine.

Eventually someone put me in a cab. I remember sitting in the back seat as the city whirled by me. I didn’t want to think about anything. I just wished I could stay in the taxi forever, as the city passed me by in a tornado of color and sound, and I was safe, enclosed, and all alone.

Marika Brussel is a dancer who trained at the Joffrey Ballet School. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and currently dances with Napales Ballet Theater in San Francisco.

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.