Triggers

Flag Day. Flag Day was a major stressor for me. Every year Flag Day passed so
quickly I sometimes missed it, so I felt guilt. At first I didn't have a flag,
so I felt inadequate. Then I bought one and felt better than everyone else on
the block. Then I realized I didn't know all the rules about properly flying a
flag and I felt depressed. I finally got the flag up on the right day and the
sun was shining and I was happy. Then it started to rain and I was sad. Then
my husband dropped the flag on the ground and I was angry with him and horrified
at what people would think. Then it started to thunder and lightning and I was
scared he would get hit by lightning. The whole time my kids were jumping
around excited: "It's Flag Day! It's Flag Day!", until I thought my head would
burst and I yelled at them to pipe down. Then I felt bad for ruining their
Flag Day.

At the end of every sentence in the above paragraph insert the following
sentence: So I would have a drink. Then take out the words Flag Day and insert
any day of the week. Take out the words "a flag or the flag" and insert an X.

I drank For Good Reason for a long time, then I drank just because I had to. 
Because when Flag Day becomes a Good Reason for drinking, one has to face the
fact (preferably drunk) that one is rationalizing their behavior, not justifying
it. Mind and body, alcohol owned me. All the Good Reasons for drinking were
just mind games. I had to have it, and I would find ANY excuse to justify my
behavior. It had stopped working, so I chased its affect even harder.

Augusten Borroughs said it best, for me: "I used
booze as an escape hatch and a destination unto itself." What triggered the
desire to drink? Anything. It wasn't a trigger that caused the
desire to drink, it was the other way around. The desire to drink found a
trigger.

I Don't Do Tupperware Parties

During the 8 years of First Sobriety I learned a few things from Codependent No More.  One is to identify something I could not do without resenting it and, well, stop doing it.  So I set a boundary: I don't do Tupperware parties.  Or any other kind of Friend of a Friend party that involves overpriced merchandise, a host that invites her friends and door prizes.  There are all kinds of them out there, and while I want to support my friends, I hate those things.   Especially at the end where the Consultant is looking for the next woman to throw the party with HER friends.  Perhaps it is my imagination, but it seems I was always singled out as the one who should throw the next party.  I never did, somehow managed to demure every time, but I went to a few of those things to support friends back in the day.

I'll never forget a rather naive woman I knew in the early 90s who showed me a polyester, lime green baby-doll nightie at a lingerie party.  It was cheaply made and had, I shit you not, glow in the dark stars on it.   She turned out the lights to show me.  It was the least sexually inspiring piece of clothing I had every seen.  I didn't know whether to laugh or cry and she wasn't even wearing it, let alone hoping to inspire a hard-on.  Just goes to show you what happens when a bunch of women egg each other on to buy the cheapest thing in the catalog.

So I set a boundary and kept it.  I say "Thank you so much for thinking of me, but I can't make it."  That's an awesome thing about boundaries outside your own home, they don't really require explanation.  Someone who insists on an explanation is generally stepping over a boundary when they ask for one.  Which is actually red flag number two, the first being the invitation in the first place.

I do a pretty good job with boundaries out there.  Work, acquaintances, neighbors, friends.  Can set them and recognize when they're being violated.  I learned all this as I worked through my codependency issues in first sobriety.  Unfortunately, I wasn't in a relationship during the time I worked my codependency issues.  About the time I met my husband I had quit therapy and my meeting attendance was about once a month.  But man, did I think I had my shit together.  I was buying my first house, had a decent job, finishing my BA, living alone and loved it.  I think I donated my copy of Codependent No More somewhere.

Falling in love felt like icing on the cake.  In retrospect, however, without an active recovery program, and having skipped the real life portion of my codependency work, my relapse was inevitable.   As was a marriage riddled with boundary issues.  Enmeshed is another word I've read and liked.  So I think I will head to the used book store to buy another copy of the codependent classic.

But I still know how to say no to tupperware parties.

Free To Be You and Me

There's a land that I see
Where the children are free
And I say it ain't far to this land from where we are
Take my hand, come with me, where the children are free
Take my hand, come with me and we'll run....

To a land where the river runs free
To a land of the green country
To a land of the shining see
To a land where the horses run free
And you and me are free to be
You and me

Every boy in this land grows to be his own man
In this land, every girl grows to be her own woman...

And since you can find anything on Youtube these days: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_26FOHoaC78
Now if you bothered to watch this or didn't, it begins with kids on a carousel, and ends with the carousel horses coming to life and both the kids and the horses riding off into the sunset in true 70s animation fashion.  Magical thinking.  I will buy it hook, line, and sinker every time.  Maybe this time, I think, the magic will happen.


I clap for fairies.  I don't step on cracks.  I make wishes on dandelions and shooting stars (the latter being much more powerful as they are rare, unlike dandelions in my lawn) and birthday candles.  I take fortune cookies and my horoscope a bit seriously, and feel slightly ridiculous.  And when my intuition says it's time to go to TJ Maxx, that the perfect handbag has gone on clearance, I go.  There are many more, but you get the picture.  


Back in the 70s, Free to be You and Me was about gender equality.  All of the stories and songs that made up the show were about boys being able to cry (metaphorically, if nothing else) and girls able to be strong and make their own decisions.  I had the record of the show too, and played it so much that I can recite song lyrics, and skits to this day.  I saw the show on TV several times over the years in the 70s, and I remember watching it on film in 3rd grade.  It came on one of the big reels.  I always liked the films on the big reels-I knew they would be long.


Underneath all the gender role stuff, the message was even stronger: be who you are, be clear and tolerant.   Feelings can be scary, but a happy song will make it better.  People will assume who you are and what you want, don't let them.  Be free.  I guess, in the end, many things I know about life I learned from Marlo Thomas and her Friends.  

I'm just gonna say it.  Sometimes there is god's will and sometimes there is god's-stupid-fucking-will.  Or, GSFW, to internet the phrase.

One Year Later

So it's been a year.  Today.  Finally.  The last month before my one year has felt slow.  S----L----O----W.

Molasses dripping from a spoon slow.  First 30 days of sobriety slow.  So I have drawn a graphic of the addictions I use to avoid my feelings.

One year ago, when I stopped drinking, I flew into busyness.  I had a couple of weeks between when I knew I was done drinking and actually stopped.  In those weeks I put many things in motion that kept me VERY busy during my first 60 days of sobriety.  Had the interior of the house painted, had the carpets cleaned, had the hardwoods refinished, had a mile of fence installed, had waterers installed in the pastures,  fertilized and seeded pastures, had concrete installed in the barn.

Then marriage and job crisis.  Both my marriage and my career were going through a re-org.  These were both looming, large reasons why I quit drinking: not sure I could have managed surviving either one well while still drinking.  It was the summer of trying to manage the chaos, while letting go of it at the same time.  So I bought a different car, found a horse for my daughter, went to counseling with my husband, and read a lot of books about what the hell was wrong with our relationship.  Which, by the way, was really about what the hell is wrong with him.

My sponsor through all of this, made me stay on Steps 1-3, focusing on powerless and unmanageable in Step 1, restored to sanity in Step 2, and turning my will over in Step 3.  All this going on and I was ready to work the Steps like a fiend: give me an assignment and I'll get it done, I promised her.  Bless her, she understands exactly how I work.  She refused.  Which I intellectually understood, because, well, I knew the busyness I created and how I used it.  It wasn't completely sane, and every time I turned over my will I snatched it right back.

By the Fall, my job and the jobs of the folks who reported to me were resolved, happily.  My husband and I had walked up to the edge of the divorce cliff and taken several steps back.  Fall and Winter force me to knock it off with the busy.  I was finally allowed to move to Step 4, with the understanding we would be returning to Steps 1-3.  Often.  I stopped reading relationship books when my sponsor pointed out I was still looking for answers "out there".

I had an AA friend in first sobriety I will never forget.  We grew closer over the sobriety years, smoked together, went to meetings.  Once, after he'd quit smoking, we were on the phone talking.  I lit up.  He must have heard the snick of the lighter, the silence of an inhale.  "You're lighting up, " he commented laconically, "You must be having a feeling."  Fucker was right and I think of that comment probably 50% of the time I light up, 15 years later.   He also gave me one of the best compliments I ever received.  I wish I could look him up, but don't remember his last name.  He was really good at quietly calling out my shit.  I owe him an amends.

So today.   It's bonus and tax return time, which usually fuels pent up projects.  There's not much to do this year, which isn't surprising after all that I forced into motion last year.  I deliberately bring myself closer and closer to a center of AA, though I still suck at calling people.  I'm trying really hard to own my part in this marriage deal, but discovering internal fears that get in the way of that.  Prime directives, I call them.  I'm starting to understand how I silence myself, and how distrustful that is.

This morning as my coffee brewed, I got down on my knees and sent gratitude into the Universe for this first year of sobriety.  For the peace that comes, when I allow myself access to it, from knowing the Universe is unfolding as it should.  For progress.  For freedom.  For clarity.  For grace.   Amen.

I am as sick as my secrets

March 31, 2010 was my sobriety date. But the truth is, it isn't.

After years of a heavy wine habit, ending at 2+ bottles a night, I knew I was
done drinking. My relapse lasted 11 years. For the last years, I waited every
day to wake up and know that the pain of continuing to drink was more than I
could pay to drink. When that day came, I tried to quit. The shakes, sweats,
and insomnia were more than I could take. If I could have ripped off my skin, I
would have. All I needed was a few days, 3 or so, and I knew I could go from
there. I had done it before, but the first time I quit, I hadn't drunk as much
for as long.

After confessing to my doctor, he gave me 5 days of librium. I took it for 4
days and got my few days. On Day 6, with my husband traveling, I slipped. 
There was a bottle of scotch I intended to take to my mother's house, and
despite loathing scotch, I drank myself stupid. I may have puked. We were
having our house painted, and I awoke the next morning, more hungover than I had
been in years. It was all I could do to open the door, mumble I was sick, and
go upstairs to pass out in the guest room for another six hours. When I awoke,
still miserable, they were gone. I was mortified. I was supposed to be working
from home, but I hadn't even logged in or checked on my team all day. As we
all do, I felt shame and guilt and sick. Librium is supposed to pass out of
your body pretty quickly (it was no accident that it was two whole days after
I'd stopped taking it that I drank), but there still must have been some in me. 
I felt like a walking corpse.

And since I had 5 days of sobriety on April 6th, I did what I have always done:
rationalize, minimize, deny, and tell no one. I took that slip and buried it
deep away, put my happy AA face on and stuck with my original sobriety date
story. And while I didn't completely forget it, I didn't take that secret out
and examine it either.

My drinking was hidden in a cupboard, that is my go to position: hide, lie by
omission, and never waver from the original story. I'm just starting to
understand how deep and old and reflexive that habit is. It's so deep it
doesn't feel like a habit, it feels like a Prime Directive.

That shit will kill me one way or another. One day this month, while working on
my fourth step, I went on the back deck to smoke. As I sat looking over the
ridge, anticipating a sober spring and my AA birthday on 3/31, I realized I have
a huge lie hanging over my sobriety. As my marriage knits back together, as my
HP links me into a sober community that helps me see the folly in my mantra of
self-reliance, I risk it with a lie. I had a moment of clarity: Your sobriety
date is not March 31st; you have to tell the truth.

Suddenly, I knew I had to tell my sponsor, then, everyone else. The fear of
everyone's disappointment was nothing to the fear that keeping my secret could
lead me back to drinking.

It took me another 2 weeks to actually tell my sponsor. But I did. Of course,
she understood, it is what people in early sobriety often do. Then I changed my
sobriety date in our home group directory. Then I told my husband, then our
therapist, and now you.

My progress is in confessing my secret. I refuse to allow it and that bitch Ism
to have this power over me. I bought her story for the last time on April 6,
2010. I thought I knew I was done on March, 31st. Apparently, I had to
research one more night. I never, ever, EVER want to feel that way again.

I am an alcoholic, and my sobriety date is April 7, 2010.

To a fellow alcoholic

I know the hell of the voices in your head. I know the blankness and relief that come from taking the action to get a drink. I know that feeling of fuck-it and the scrambling of thought to rationalize what I could no longer control. I know the sweet release of giving in to the incredible tension of Not tonight vs. Yes just one more night. 

I know the fear as it built each day: I won't today, I don't want to today, I have to, I have to right now, I cannot take another minute of this battle in my mind and body. I know the terror of realizing that I had no control, that the alcohol owned me, and I was a slave to it. The last month of my drinking I was simply resigned: Oh it's 4:00 pm, time to start that bullshit again. OK, tonight I won't get drunk. 

And every single night, without break or fail, I did. 

We are all capable, strong women here at the Booze Free Brigade. We manage families, jobs, homes, and our drinking. We keep doing it until it starts to break down. We keep doing it until alcohol sops everything we own, waiting only for a single spark to burn everything we try so desperately hold together in white hot flame. When I look back on when I quit, I imagine the Furies readying their scissors to cut the single thread of sanity that held my life aloft over their boiling pot of oil. They were waiting for THAT drink, the one that made me snap, the one I wouldn't come back from. 

I, who still looked good on the outside, who lived on "it's not that bad", awoke on a Wednesday like any other, pulled my shit together again. Got the kids to school, and was driving into the office full of the usual remorse, the usual shaking, the usual scrambling to fill in the blank spots in my mind from the night before. As I drove, I realized I was broken. I was in chaos and despair and stopping drinking was the only answer I had left. I couldn't put a happy face or denial face on what I was feeling and doing. I had tried everything else, and there was no other option.

I doubt you believe that alcoholism is a disease. I didn't, not really. But it is. Alcohol has changed the hard-wiring of our brains. We can no longer feel pleasure the way non-drinkers do. Once we pass over the line to compulsion, there is no turning back. There is only through: quit or die a slow, grim death one way or another. 

It is that serious and it is that deadly. I offer my support and encouragement, but I also have to offer the truth. It isn't fair, it isn't kind, and it isn't just. But every woman on this board who has quit will tell you it is better on the other side. Every single one. And we are here to help you when you are ready.






You can find all the smart, funny, sober women doing recovery any way that works at http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/Booze_free_brigade/

Boundaries: Mr Sponsorpants Strikes Again

"I thought for a long time that boundaries were like rules I made for other people to follow.  But I never really had much luck in getting people to do what I think they should do.  It wasn't till I came to AA that I learned that boundaries are really agreements I make with myself.  It's the commitment I make to myself about what I will do if a particular situation happens again -- whether it's with the same person over and over, or the same situation but with different people.  The boundary is the agreement I make with myself, not a rule for them.  And it doesn't always have to be a big exit or something.  It can be as simple as a smile and changing the subject.  But my boundaries never started becoming firm until I learned that they weren't about making other people do -- or not do -- something.  It was about what I would do -- or not do.  When I got that, that's when my boundaries started working.  That's when they became real.  And I got better."

I link to Mr. Sponsorpants in the right nav, but here is the link to this entry in his blog.  He's the man.
http://mrsponsorpants.typepad.com/mr_sponsorpants/2010/12/shooters-quick-shots-from-meetings.html#comments

The Black Hole

 I got this from Mr. Sponsorpants website and I love it.  It speaks to me.  

Last night my home group had a tough meeting.  Many folks are struggling with depression over the holidays.  They are sitting and staring into the black hole and feel it will never change.  They are praying more, trying to turn it over, let go.  And yet, they feel abandoned by god's grace.  I'm sure lots of people have said it over the years, but the one I remember is Julie Andrews: when god closes a door, he opens a window.  Or, in the case of this painting, not a window, but a wall.  

Yet there is so much stillness in this painting-the moment for action has not yet come.  The white figure could be an angel, god's grace, the spiritual representation of the seated man himself.  I see it as grace, and grace is present: don't look, don't look, I am with you, I feel your pain.

I heard this in my first month of sobriety and it gave me a physical jolt and brought tears to my eyes: whatever god's will brings you, god's grace will never abandon you.  And here is a representation of that reality.

A side note on dishwasher detergent

My alcoholic brain likes back-ups.  If I REALLY like something I buy two: one for use and one as a back-up for when the first runs out/gets ruined/is in the wash.  I feel safe knowing I have a back-up.  I've examined this vague compulsion over the years.  It definitely comes from my mother who has multiples of anything.  One for every day, one for nice.  What's interesting is the number of back-ups I've purchased that I've never used.  Once I realized that I moved out of the back-up business.  I want them, but I don't buy them.  Unless something is cheap, then I back up to my hearts content.

Or something isn't made anymore.  Where I live the water is hard, and calcium build up happens.  The dishwasher is a bit of a struggle.  It gunks up and doesn't work very well: leaves teeny bits of food on dishes and doesn't rinse clean.  A few years ago I tried to call a repairman to come look at it.  Luckily, I got the lazy repairman who didn't want to come all the way out to my house so he told me the trick: put a half gallon of white vinegar in the bottom of the dishwasher, run it, and it will clean all the gunk out of the dishwasher.  Only use powder detergent with phosphate content over 7% (and told me how to check the label).  That worked for a few years.  Then in June it didn't, the dishwasher was 8 years old, I bought  a new one.

From the get-go, the new one wasn't the huge improvement one would expect.  So when the new one was no more effective than the old one, I made a service call appointment for the new one.  The company called me back and told me that the reason it wasn't working was because, as of July, dishwasher detergent with phosphates had been banned in several states and as a result, national detergent manufacturers had stopped making detergent with phosphates.  Quietly. Without warning or fanfare.  I checked my detergent: sure enough, no phosphates.  At this point, I had abandoned the useless thing and was washing all dishes by hand.

I was pissed and went online.   I was not alone.  Phosphate free detergents don't work for CRAP with hard water.  The number of folks with the same complaint who were looking to buy new dishwashers, have a repairman out or generally complaining was staggering.  But I found a helpful tip: try looking at stores that carry close-outs on items, like Big Lots, for the old stuff.  Being a self-reliant girl, I first tried all the national stores hoping for old inventory: Walmart, Target, Sav a Lot.  No luck.  So I made it to Big Lots not feeling hopeful.  And hit the back-up motherlode.

First I hit their off brand: no luck.  But then, at the end of the aisle, on the bottom shelf I found Cascade: boxes and boxes of blessed phosphate Cascade in powder form.  I stood in the aisle and calculated and bought 4 years worth, plus a years worth for my mother.  Then, later that day, I went to another Big Lots location.  I had bought 5 lb boxes for $6 each.  They had a different type of Cascade: 7 lb boxes for $5.  I cleaned them out of the cheaper formulation.  At checkout, the clerks at both stores looked at me like I was, well, crazy.  Preparing for the dishwasher apocalypse.  But when you've paid several hundred dollars for a big machine that is rendered useless, and have a back-up need, finding exactly what you want knowing  you can't get it anymore is intoxicating.

So I have a couple hundred pounds of dishwashing detergent in my car.  I plan to give boxes to my worthy neighbors as Christmas gifts.  After all, we're in this dishwasher debacle together out here in hard water country.  I will not go back and buy more.  I WILL NOT.