"Are you sure you're an alcoholic?"

   "Are you sure you're an alcoholic?"
   I was recently asked this question after mentioning to an acquaintance that I was approaching my 32-year anniversary of sobriety.
   My first response? I laughed. After a moment, I asked, "Was that a serious question?" Turned out, it was.
   When I am surprised by someone's question, or someone's response, I typically swallow my first reaction, my emotional one. It's an almost unconscious response, and is probably a fear-based defense mechanism left over from my past. My first reaction simmers in my unconscious, then bubbles to the surface a few days later, and I assemble the words I wish I'd said.
   So on that day all I said was yes, I am certain that I am an alcoholic. I explained that I had had an immediate, visceral response to alcohol the first time I caught that liberating, loosening feeling of a light buzz. I explained that I always drank to get drunk, and that even when getting drunk stopped equaling a good time and became a series of frightening incidents of self-destruction, I was unable to stop. And if my own experience wasn't evidence enough, I had been evaluated by an addictions counselor.
   I wish I had spoken more strongly. I wish I had asked, "Are you asking me that because you don't believe I would be capable of staying sober if I were truly addicted?" I wish I had asked, "Why do you think you have the right to question my own self-knowledge?" I know who I am. I know what I am. And I know how I got here.
   I drank heavily - alcoholically - for four years. I experienced my first blackout the second time I drank. By the time I attended my first 12 Step meeting, two months before my 22nd birthday, I had humiliated myself in several local bars, experienced countless blackouts, missed I don't know how many hours of college classes because I'd start drinking at lunch and lose the rest of the day, acted out sexually in a manner my sober self would never be capable or desirous of, and was battling suicidal impulses every time I got drunk.
   Those were the drinking years.
   Sobriety has not eliminated the impulse to drink. I have teetered at the edge of relapse several times in the past 32 years. It's a horrible feeling, desperately wanting - needing - to drink, and knowing that doing so will tear your rebuilt life to shreds. What kept me sober in those tormenting moments was my 12 Step practices, music that soothed and buoyed me, my supportive circle of recovering women, and my spiritual life. When those thoughts flit through my mind, which they rarely have in recent years, I am able to brush them aside with an ease achieved only by rigorous practice of my recovery principles.
   Am I sure I'm an alcoholic? Despite all evidence, I have actually asked that question of myself. An insidious voice in my head will whisper, "Come on, you were just a kid out partying! You're an adult now. Maybe you can have a beer or two..."
   I can definitely have a beer or two. The problem is, there will be a third. And a fourth. And so on, until my money is gone and I am a laughing, weeping, vomiting, intoxicated embarrassment. It has always been so and will always be. I cannot separate drinking from drunk. Imagining myself having being satisfied with a social drink or two is like trying to imagine myself leaping from the roof of my house and taking flight. Drinking is not something to do; drinking is the passageway to drunk.
   My sober life today is bigger than anything I could have imagined 32 years ago when I was a timid, desperate newcomer. Alcohol would have killed me; admitting to alcoholism saved my life.
   Am I sure I'm an alcoholic? Dead sure. And grateful beyond measure.
 

What to expect when you're expecting... Christmas

Christmas is a time of joy and good cheer, baby Jesus, peace on earth, good will toward... Yes, yes, I know.
But for a lot of us, Christmas means stress. It means shopping, which means ricocheting from store to store, sweating in our winter coats as we wait in too-long lines, smiling weakly when cashiers wish us "Happy holidays," hoping we can manage to accomplish all we've planned for while staying within our budgets.
Christmas is damned hard work.
This year I had a revelation which led to a determination. I realized that my pre-Christmas angst is rooted in expectations - mine, not other people's. I assign imaginary expectations to my family and friends and then try to build a Christmas based on those imaginings. Forget visions of sugarplums, I'm too busy picturing the disappointment on my children's faces if I don't manage to match their (meaning my) expectations of what the holiday should bring.
Mind you, the "children" are 19, 23 and 25, and they are the most undemanding, grateful, enthusiastic gift recipients anyone could hope to wrap a box for. Again, it's my expectations that twist my guts and pull my neck muscles tight. I worry about pleasing them. I fear disappointing them. All based on a foundation of absolutely nothing other than my own insecurity and need to control and create an absolutely perfect Christmas each and every year.
This tail-chasing state of mind usually kicks in right around Thanksgiving, when the world around us becomes steeped in pre-December 25th regalia. Carols on the radio. Ads on TV and in newspapers. Christmas movies, Christmas programs. Did I mention Christmas shopping?
This year, just as I was getting a nice knot of anxiety formed, I had a revelation. What if I approached Christmas the way I try to live my recovery program?
Ba-zing! Talk about a new perspective!
Instead of being overwhelmed, I could keep it simple. Instead of thinking of Christmas as the be all and end all, I could think of it as one day, and I could approach that day with ease, one day at a time. And if I didn't manage to achieve Christmas nirvana for my loved ones, I could forgive myself, knowing I'd done the best I could, and done it all with love.
Christmas is now about two weeks away, and my stomach doesn't ache, and commercials exhorting me to get out there and shop, shop, shop don't make me feel panicky. I am aiming for a Christmas focused on family, love and laughter, which is what always ends up being at the center anyway, no matter what the big box stores say. My kids and I will all be together, alive and well. We'll decorate the tree, hanging the breakable ornaments up high so the cats can't bat them down, we'll keep "A Christmas Story" on throughout its 24-hour run on TBS, we'll exchange gifts and hugs. We'll take a day to stand still and celebrate, pure and simple, accent on simple.
May your days be merry and bright. May you give and receive. And may you give yourself the gift of freedom from self-imposed expectations.

Keeping the faith

Faith was the topic at a recent recovery group meeting I attended. When you're living in recovery, either in your first 24 hours or your 24th year, faith matters.

I was raised a Catholic, but I don't remember faith having much to do with it. It was more of an unwavering tradition. My father's parents were Catholic, so I was raised Catholic. You went to church on Sundays because you went to church on Sundays. The closest I ever got to a theological discussion at home was when I badgered my dad about why I had to go to church every week. His reply: "Because I said so, goddammit!"

I've always believed in a higher power, which gave me a big jump start on my recovery program. But while I never doubted the existence of a higher power, I frequently doubted the logic behind putting a useless being like myself on earth.

Growing in recovery is difficult, uncomfortable, liberating and exhilarating. One of the greatest gifts I've received is kind of an equation of faith; ironic, considering my unabashed hatred of all things mathematical. It goes like this: If I have faith in a higher power, I must believe that my higher power has faith in me. Based on my higher power's faith, I have faith in myself.

That tag team faith gives me the courage to roll out of bed each morning and believe that I can survive whatever the day may throw at me. It gives me the gumption to speak up, to trust that I have enough experience, strength and wisdom to share with my fellow humans. It lets me relax into my faith, knowing that a power greater than myself is running the show.

  My prayers are no longer desperate pleas for what I think I need. Most often they're telegrams of gratitude from my soul: Thank you for another sober day, a loving family, a body that works, a houseful of nutty pets, a life full of beautiful friends.

This is not to say that I don't ever thrash around in prayer, freaking out over the quick fix I want when uncomfortable situations arise. But the more conscientiously I work my spiritual program the less thrashing I do and the more peaceful life is. In fact, sometimes I wonder if all of this peace of mind is a signal that I am, in fact, losing my mind. Shouldn't I be more worried about money, my kids, my job, the world?

No, I shouldn't. All I need to do is stay spiritually connected and concern myself with being the person I believe I was meant to be. 

In the end, it's all about keeping the faith, whatever your faith may be.

Ow

You know those annoying people who feel the need to go into exhaustive detail about every minor injury they sustain? They talk about how they got hurt, where they were when they got hurt and, worst of all, they offer to show you every cut and bruise?
I'm one of those people.
I was walking Indy earlier this week and I fell down. That's the abbreviated version. The longer explanation starts two days prior, when I didn't walk him, and the day after that, when I didn't walk him again. Two days on the human calendar; 6,594 days in dog time.
By the time we finally did go for a walk, Indy was on fire. He ignored my commands to walk, he yanked me hither and yon, desperate to make up for those sniff-and-pee deprived days.
Then he spotted a big, mellow galoot of a dog being walked on the other side of the street and felt the urge to hurl shrieking oaths at him. Embarassed, I pulled Indy close and hustled him away. In mid-hustle I tripped over Indy's feet and crashed to the pavement, landing on all fours.
The good news is, I did not unleash my formidable temper on my hapless pooch. I got up slowly, feeling as teary and sore as a 6-year-old after a playground spill, and gave Indy a stern talking to.
He stared up at me with those round, earnest brown eyes and a big doggy grin, waiting patiently for Mom to stop yammering so we could resume our tour of power poles and fire hydrants.
The bad news is, damn I hurt! My knees were scraped and bruised and I ached in peculiar spots: two fingers on one hand, the palm of my other hand, one side of my neck and one spot on my lower back.
And yes, yes I did tell everyone I encountered, from my daughter when I got home to every hapless coworker I saw the next day. No, I didn't show anyone my poor, banged up knees - but only because I hadn't shaved my legs.
What is this compulsion some of us have to dwell on what hurts? Misery dwelling was the theme of my drinking career, topped with a generous helping of self-pity.
Why, oh why were my parents so dysfunctional and weird? If only I'd had better parents I wouldn't be such a mess. Nothing for it but to get good and wasted.
There's a saying in recovery: Poor me, poor me, pour me a drink.
Recovery gave me the freedom to stop playing the victim, to accept responsibility for my lot in life and to choose what I wanted. This didn't happen with the touch of the recovery fairy's wand. It took years of working my program, getting honest and accepting my share of the blame for whatever went awry in my life.
Being a victim is comfortable. The only action required is whining and lifting that bottle. But being the victim leaves you at the mercy of outside forces, and those forces aren't necessarily benevolent.
To sum it up with another recovery truism, I got sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Being responsible is hard work. When I screw up I have to own up to it and live with the consequences. How much easier it would be sometimes to point the finger and whine, "Well what about what you did?"
But I don't want to be a victim anymore. I want to hold my life in my own two hands, and I want to be a woman others can lean on for support, the way I've leaned on my comrades in sobriety. I'll take my lumps and learn from them rather than drink over them.
But the next time I fall down you'll probably hear all about it. As I like to say, I'm a work in progress - and a bruised one at that.