Well FRIENDS, what can I tell you…
…I did NOT drink on my 10-yr anniversary of sobriety. What do you think I am, crazy??? I understand how foolish it would be to reconnect w/ alcohol. Nothing short of going back to an abusive lover.
We had a lovely adventure in St Pete—stayed in a hotel downtown, explored & dined & shopped, visited friends, went to the Phantogram show—and the temptation to drink just wasn’t there. Which surprised me. I really thought I would be playing pong with the moral gatekeepers on my shoulders. Should i? Shouldn’t I? I’m too paralyzed with uncertainty to have a good time!
But that’s not how it went. Considering how much I’ve dreamed of being able to taste the magic elixir again, I was surprised at how blase I felt about it. Barely a day has gone by in these 10 years that I didn’t yearn for a cold beer, or a shot of warm bourbon or a delightfully frothy boat drink. I’ve been plagued by a sense of deprivation this whole time…
…deprived daily of the Spirit of Alcohol…
…but now that I’ve been granted parole, the pressure is off, and the cravings are quiet. I still plan on having at least one drink before I leave this planet, but it may have to wait til I’m on my deathbed.
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I’ve already regaled you with tales of finding a spiritual path that didn’t clash with my over-analytical & highly skeptical sensibilities. From 14 - 21 I was on this feverish quest to discover why people matter, why life is an important journey, and why I could “see things” before they happened. At 21, I was initiated into Wicca, having decided that was the “religion” for me.
With that, I’d hit my “enlightenment plateau.” Life quickly became less about exploring the esoteric zones and more about the unpalatable survival pyramid.
Believe it or not, there was a time when I had contempt for people (ie, the adults in my family) who used alcohol to cope. I was NOT going to be one of those people. I had done my share of underage drinking & knew alcohol was there for me if I needed it. I knew I liked it a whole lot, and could easily become hooked, so I was always careful not to rely too heavily on it.
I could go on a long rant about how much harder it is for me to interact with people than it is for the average person, but I think you all know that about me by now : )) I watch you all, and I see how much easier it is for you to talk and laugh and mingle and socialize.
It was hard enough in school, but out in the real (phony) world of business/commerce/adulthood it was torture. Being around people, working with people, having relationships with people, connecting, conforming, placating people alllll day long was killing me.
I found out that having strong spiritual beliefs could not make me feel fine after a long day of facing the public onslaught. I needed something powerful & instantaneous to create a cushion between reality and me. I also needed a magic potion that could transform me into a people-person.
And I knew I could find that magical potion on any street corner!
So yeah, around my 23rd bday I scrapped my rigid stance on booze and started drinking pretty much constantly for the next 15 years. I won’t bore you with alllll the details of being an alcoholic from 23 - 38, only some of them.
Initially, of course, alcohol turned me into a super hero! I was one of those people who transformed drastically under the influence—I could talk & socialize like a pro; I made friends I never would’ve been able to meet; I was able to do things (like play guitar onstage) I never would’ve been able to do; I could drink & drink and still make it in to work (and I would often drink at work).
I was a successful & highly functioning alcoholic and life was great. (Not really, but my close relationship w/ alcohol made me feel like life was great.) As they say in AA, I was self-medicating. Without question, the magnificent spectacle that was my 20s never would’ve happened without alcohol. I don’t know if that’s amusing or pathetic…
I became a funeral director when I was 27, and let me just say…formaldehyde & alcohol do not mix well. It was around this time I began worrying that I may have a PROBLEM with alcohol. It was affecting my job performance. I tried many times to abstain or cut back, but I just could not do without it.
I really loved the social benefits alcohol gave me, but I also knew deep down… that the person I was when I drank was not the REAL ME. All my life I’d been told “You’re too quiet. You’re so negative. Smile. Speak up. What’s wrong? I can’t hear you. Why are you so sad? You look tired. You look mad.”
Basically, You have a shitty personality.
No one ever complained that I had a shitty personality when I drank. I felt obligated to drink in order to be liked by people. I was truly afraid that if I quit drinking I would lose everything—friends, job, social skills, creative abilities.
I met Moonchild when I was 28 and alcohol was a big part of our dating adventure, and continued to be a major part of our lives after we got married. He could tell drinking was problematic for me and we tried together to make alcohol less of a priority, but somehow it always returned to being front & center in our lives.
By my early 30s I was really trying to get a grip on it. I was losing my super hero ability to be a functional drunkard and wanted to feel “normal” (ie, not sick all the time). I was 31 and drinking pretty heavily when I started the “psychic safari”—writing the streams-of-consciousness that turned out to be foreshadows of 9/11.
And as I told you, I was able to stop drinking—strangely, miraculously—on Sep 4, 2001. From Sep ’01 to Aug ’03 I had no alcohol but lots of spirits visiting me : )) Then in Aug ’03 I went to spend time with my family when my nephew was born, and under those auspices I fell off the proverbial wagon.
I kept the drinking minimal for about a year, but in 2005 I went back to my old habit of just drinking all the time. And unlike in my 20s, I couldn’t even pretend to be functional. Much of ’06/’07 was a rollercoaster of blackouts & withdrawals.
By 2007 I was sick & tired of being sick & tired (to use more AA speak), but I was also powerless to overcome my addiction. It was getting to the point where I needed to go to the hospital to get through the withdrawals. I started to feel like I was going to die from drinking. But I also thought I might die from NOT drinking.
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So…how did I end up getting sober and staying that way for 10 years?
I started to realize the toll my drinking was taking on Moonchild. He was just about done with it, and he told me so around Jun 2007. I’ve never felt like a worse human being than I did when I could see on his face how serious he was. I knew I HAD to quit drinking immediately. But the thought of that scared the shit out of me.
Also in Jun 2007, I got a phonecall from an old friend I hadn’t seen since high school. This was just before the social network floodgates opened and every friend you ever had was right there at your fingerprints. It was a totally random, unexpected call. My friend was in town visiting family & wanted to meet up after all these years.
She called on a Wednesday, and luckily wanted to meet at the beach that Sunday. I had 4 days to sober up. Because I could not have driven to the beach, or sat on the beach for 3 hours, or had any sort of coherent conversation w/ my friend if I didn’t. So basically as soon as I got off the phone I began the process of withdrawing. I was able to sober up and feel okay enough to make it to the beach.
That day I learned my friend was also an “alcohol addict” and had sobered up at 28 when her dad died. She had been sober for 10 years! And what I really wanted was to be able to say that too—I’ve been sober for 10 years.
My plan was to find a way to quit drinking as soon as possible. So I made an appointment with a doctor who was highly recommended by another friend. The appointment was for Jul 19; I had about a month left to drink before I got help from the medical community. (Notice I didn’t say the religious community)
So I had my last binge…from June to July of ’07. Then around Jul 15 I knew it was time to stop so i could make it to the appointment. I count Jul 17 as “the day I got sober” because on the 16th I got desperate & drank the drops at the bottom of all the bottles in my closet. (yes, judge me)
I made it to my doctor’s appointment and managed to convey to him how desperate I was to quit drinking, which was difficult—a lot of doctors will tune you out or profile you as a liability if you speak candidly about addiction. But this doctor seemed to take me seriously, and was willing to help.
I credit Moonchild, my beach friend, and the doctor for getting me across that threshold into a new life that did not include alcohol.
I would say getting sober was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, and I’ve done a lot of hard things. (har, har It’s a dick joke for ya!) I had to change everything about my life—the way I interacted with the world, the way I processed emotions, the way I celebrated, the way I recovered from painful situations. All the things we think of as difficult in this world are nothing compared to rewiring your whole nervous system.
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Well…enough about my adventures with the fine spirit of ethanol. Now how can I put a spiritual spin on this?
I’ve read several stories/articles about alcohol’s unique property as a distilling agent. How alcohol can extract the essence from just about anything, including a human body. And when your spirit has been extracted, what then takes its place? Is it our personalities undergoing a chemical transformation or is it more like a surrogate parallel-soul fills the gap?
The word alcohol comes from the Arabic al-kuhl meaning (depending on the source) “the kohl,” “a distilled or rectified spirit,” “body-eating spirit,” or “ghoul” —all words that remind me of waking from a black out.
Of course i am regretful (I won’t say ashamed) that I used so many years of my life solving the alcohol dilemma, and most of all that I put Moonchild through that. I’m surprised he is still with me.
But here’s a deep & poignant ask—does addiction cause a spiritual collapse or does spiritual collapse cause addiction? Can spirituaI beliefs cure addiction, AA style?
My years with alcohol were pretty devoid of any spiritual practice. Ingesting alcohol was such an easy fix, requiring none of the patience or discipline needed to meditate or chant or pray or do any Wiccan spells.
I dealt with the alcohol without once querying the spirit world. And yet it seems fate lent its hand anyway—especially in the form of the phone call from the one friend I needed to hear from at that moment.
I like to believe a guardian angel helped me because it’s heartwarming. No, because random coincidences are sketchy. Does it seem like more people are committing suicide than ever? Is this the Hammers & Eggs war?
I can understand why people do drugs, become addicts. I don’t judge, because I know how much I would love to just check out. I fight hard against being a drug addict and I hope you all appreciate that.
Having a body hurts. The inner workings of the body can hurt even more. Drugs are the fastest scariest solution, a belief in a bigger picture is the slow boring solution. So…depends how much time you got…?
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Okay that’s all I’m going to muse about booze. Is summer almost over yet? I guess we have a month yet or more in FL.
Moonchild & I went out to the Mystic Faire this weekend, because it’s been a long time since we’ve done anything like that, plus it was research for The Octopus Thesis. So I’ll write up something about that.
I also have stuff to say about:
Spiritual Tactics Employed in the Sober Life
My Dad Was A Born Again Promisekeepin’ Amway Salesman
The New Age Industrial Complex
Sometime. In the Octopus Diary.
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