I am off work today, the child is in Daycare having a blast with this friends, husband is at work, and I am alone to ponder and write. Hence multiple posts. Heh.
I have been very well-versed in the 12 steps. My third post-college job was working in a community psychiatric center with mentally-ill substance abusers, and I took them to AA and NA meetings daily. We reviewed step-work all the time and I learned a ton about addiction from the guys, most of whom had long-term sobriety and had truly bought into the program. They had turned their lives around.
Several years after I left that job, I met a wonderful guy and fell madly in love with him. We had several fabulous years together, and were engaged, when he had to go in for a surgery and was given opiate painkillers. He'd had an opiate addiction when he was a teenager (we were in our late 20s) and had been clean for a decade...but he went back down that rabbit hole.
I called his parents in tears to let them know, they literally drove down, picked me up, and took me to a Naranon meetings that night. And thus began several years of Naranon meetings for me, and rehabs, halfway houses, intermittent sobriety, and many, many AA and NA meetings with him. We'd spend our weekends together just hitting up meeting after meeting. At the end of the NA meetings everyone would get in a circle, hold hands for prayer, and go around the room introducing themselves. "Hi, I am Jenn, and I am addicted to my addict!" and my guy would squeeze my hand and appreciate me for sticking by him. "Hi, my name is L and I am a grateful addict."
Before L fell back into his addiction, he was a drinker. As was I, we met in our neighborhood bar. I'd been drinking frequently since turning 21. In college I drank a LOT. A LOT. Every night. When I graduated and started working, I knocked it way down but still drank on weekends. I'd drink sometimes during the week if I went out but I didn't even consider it "moderating": I just didn't drink much if I had to work the next day. Wa-la! Didn't even occur to me that it was doing anything hard or special.
L had to stop drinking for about 3 months prior to his surgery, and I stopped with him. I stopped throughout the years of his remitting/relapsing addiction, unless I went home and hung with my mom, or was out with my friends. It was not hard at all to stop and I actually preferred it. I lost a TON of weight, and my career was taking off, and prior to his surgery things were actually fabulous. After the surgery, when I got my crash-course in addiction and 12 steps, it was natural not to drink, why would I?
After three years of being with L through two rehab stints, and numerous relapses, I made a big change. I was in my mid-thirties and wanted a family, and I knew I would never have that with L. He had just relapsed again. The grant I was funded on was ending at work, and I knew I was going to have to find another job. At home, with my parents, my dad was dying. I decided to leave the city, leave L, leave my job, leave my friends, and return to my hometown in the sticks to be there with my dad, to help my mom.
Once I split with L, I started drinking again. I moved home and got a new job. My now-husband and I started dating, and he was a drinker. I just picked right back up.
It's now 8 years later and things are different with my drinking. I've had times in my life where I drank a lot more, but it didn't affect me like it does now. I used to call my blackouts "Old Faithful" because I'd have one every six months- and that was it. I didn't care. Now I care. I care a LOT. I am terrified of waking up one morning and finding something wrong with my son, because I was too drunk to notice. I felt sick too often. I was relying on huge amounts of ibuprofen to get me through the days because I need to think at work. I have to REALLY focus and use willpower to moderate. Moderating sucks. I still have a few triggers that I know will disable any Off Switch that I have left. Too many times my Off switch just didn't work at all. I've gotten way too good at being a Drunk Asshole- I don't need any more practice at it.
My young son thinks it is normal for adults to drink. It is a Grown Up thing.
He is getting set-up to follow in my and his dad's footsteps.
Drinking- all of it- means something different to me now. I want to write my new slogans, my own freaking sobriety psalms. I have lived life without alcohol before. I didn't even consider it "sobriety", it was just living life and not having alcohol in it. I want that again, for me, for my little guy H.
My fervent, almost begging prayer today is: Please let this stick. Please let me keep this. Please! No more drinking- just sober, clear-headed life. PLEASE please please.....
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