“Check in…or check myself out.”
Some people say that our addictions began the moment we picked up that first drink..or drug. That our lives changed from that moment on, and we were “off to the races”. Others say that it started long before that first drink, in our attitudes and our behaviors. That long before we ever drank or used drugs, we were already an addict.
Thinking back, there are many times that stand out to me now, almost as a foreshadowing of what my life was going to become. Small things, but seemingly innocent things. Lying to my family when I was 5 about whether or not I carved “I love you” in the end table. Stealing money from my dad to sneak away and buy candy when I was 8
One thing that I remember in particular, which helps to explain who I am, was an incident that happened when I was about 10 or 11. I had been in Brownies as a little girl for a few years. As a matter of fact, my mom was a Brownie leader, I was a Brownie, my sister was a Brownie. During some arts and crafts project I was being asked to make a small braided octopus on some Styrofoam. They kept telling me over and over how they wanted it done a certain way. I, for one, didn’t see the point in doing it their way. I continued on my path, arguing the whole time. During the argument, it would’ve been much easier to follow their directions, to take their suggestions. But that’s not what happened. That was the last day of Brownies for me. I walked away and never came back. I’d rather do it my way, even at my own expense, or as was later in life…at yours.
I was never outwardly rebellious, I was more subtle about it. I wasn’t one to throw things and cause a major scene. I usually followed the rules, but only to a point. I could never fully commit myself to anything. Later in life this included my family, my marriage, jobs, and even sobriety.
When I was a teenager, my brother fell heavily into drugs. All of my families attention was on him. The fights, the worry, the anger, the fear, all of the feelings that come into a family when a child is on drugs came into ours. I don’t know if I fully understood what was going on at that time. I do know that the attention was now always on him. It’s like I slipped through the cracks somewhere. Being in the middle of two siblings, I was now officially invisible. Not that I minded at the time. My brother was always in trouble, and with me…they assumed that I would be ok.
To give you an understanding of where I was at during this period of my life, when I was 13 years old I started dating my first serious boyfriend. He was 18 years old, a drinker and a drug user. My family became so consumed by my brother’s drug problems, they couldn’t see mine were just starting to begin.
At 13, I also picked up my first drink and began to use drugs. I don’t know if I was “off to the races”, but I definitely fell into a world that I was most comfortable. The crowd I was in was always much older. To be a young girl surrounded in attention and affection by an older group made me feel important, worthy and special. It made me feel older, wiser somehow, and more mature. I was no longer invisible. I had found my place.
My high school years became almost a split personality for me. I did good in school, but hung around a dangerous crowd. Because of my brothers drug use, my family now also tried to enforce the rules on all of us. It was getting more and more uncomfortable. Drinking and smoking pot with my boyfriend and my older friends one minute, arguments with my family the next. I couldn’t wait to get out of my families house, I couldn’t wait to grow up. I couldn’t wait to finally be in a place where no one could tell me what to do.
So, I did what any girl looking to get out does. When I was 18 years old I got married. Not because I was desperately in love with him, but because I was desperate to get out. An alcoholic starts to develop a “hole inside” that we describe as being “restless, irritable and discontent” with our current life. A feeling that only goes away with a drink…or a drug. At 18, I had already had this feeling for years. I blamed it on my family, my brother, where I lived, even on school sometimes. “If I get out of here and get married, then I’ll be ok”. And “ok” I might have been. But I was already a potential alcoholic. I was still that 11 year old girl who walked away from anything that made her uncomfortable. I was still that person who walked when someone tried to help me, when someone made a suggestion, or when someone tried to tell me what to do. My husband had married someone who couldn’t commit to anything but drugs or alcohol. The real roller coaster was just beginning.
The next several years were interesting, to say the least. I joined a rock band and began playing in the local bars. To be a girl in a band draws a lot of attention and I loved it. I also got a job working in the legal field and continued that career for over 20 years. I suppose I liked my dual life. Work at a law firm in Chicago by day, party at the bars playing in a rock band on the weekends. I wasn’t a “bad girl”, I was a good girl…with an edge. An edge that was becoming worse by the minute.
Of course, being a member of the band had its perks, and it enabled me to drink.. a LOT… and FREE, as well as underage. We separated 4 years into the marriage and ended up in divorce. What can I say? He didn’t party like I did and brought me down, so he had to go. I ripped through his life worse than a tornado, still not realizing that alcohol and drugs were the common denominator. I was always of the mindset that it was MY body I was putting drugs and alcohol into, so I wasn’t hurting anyone except myself. Today I can see the whole “domino effect” it had as it trickled down from person to person whose lives I touched and who ever cared for me. He tried to help, but I always took offense when someone tried to help.
Most people who knew me at that time would say that I was the “life of the party”. But that wasn’t really true. Although I kept up with the parties, the music, the “sex, drugs, rock and roll in a business suit” lifestyle, somewhere along the line, I became a “loner”. Not, the “shy reclusive” loner type…but the “outgoing life of the party” loner. The one who doesn’t appear to be alone at all, but really is. The one who, if you look deep enough into her eyes, says that underneath the laughter and the smiles is the loneliest one in the loudest bar. I was still an attention seeker, but I was starting to feel true loneliness, unless I had a drink or a drug. And in the end, even a drink or a drug couldn’t fill that feeling.
A few years later, engaged again, I lost a fiancee, due to his own alcoholism and liver failure, and he was only 36! I drank as much or more than he did, and it made me wonder why I was still alive, yet I continued, never seeing, or accepting the fact that alcohol was still the common denominator. I couldn’t even stay sober to go to his wake. I got a DUI in 1991 which, to this day, I don’t completely remember. All I do know is that when I parked, there was a cop coming from both ends of the street. I guess I hit my head since it was bleeding, and my windshield was slightly cracked! I still denied I had any alcohol or drug problem. The problem was that I had too many Long Island Iced Teas, so I never drank them again. That was MY solution to the problem!
Shortly after my fiancee’s death, I stumbled into Alcoholics Anonymous. Somewhere along the line, I crashed. My first marriage was over, my new fiancee was dead, problems were starting to pile up, work was starting to notice. I stumbled into recovery, sincere but still me. In AA it felt like they were big on rules…most of which I usually broke. “Don’t get in a serious relationship your first year”…I got married again to someone I met after a few months in AA. “Don’t drink”…I started smoking pot and justified it because I wasn’t drinking. “Work the steps”…not for me. Everything was better, but not fine. I was not fine. I was a time bomb. Once again, I hadn’t committed to anything, not even recovery.
Dry for over a year, I picked up a drink during a vacation over Mardi Gras. It was going to be only one drink…or at the very most, only for that week. I could quit when I got back.
SEVEN YEARS LATER, everything was gone.
And on that day, for the first time in my life, I fully committed myself to something other that drugs and alcohol. It didn’t start that way. I was drunk, empty, and tired. I had been smoking crack cocaine all night and no longer had my family, my job, or almost any friends at all…except one. I was suicidal and wanted it to be over. I went to the one real friend I had left (with crack pipe in hand and quite wasted), and I told him that I either had to “check in” somewhere or I was gonna find a way to “check OUT!” He drove me to a lake where I threw away my crack pipe and did NOT look back, and then he followed me home. I told him I’d call a treatment center “tomorrow,” which for an alcoholic/addict like me meant nothing. After my friend got off work and came to my house to see if I had called and, of course, found out that I hadn’t, he sat there and refused to go away until I made the call with him there. I called. Strangely enough, I did what he suggested, I took his advice, and I let him help me. At that moment, I wanted to live more than I wanted to die.
Over the phone, I gave the nurse my drug/alcohol daily use, and she told me to pack things for 3-5 days and to come in at 8:30 a.m. the next day. My friend took off work the next day, helped me pack while I continued to use drugs and alcohol, and made sure I got to the hospital for a medical detox the next day.
And that is where the story ends, or shall I say…where it begins. I haven’t taken a drink or a drug since. I am now committed to recovery more than anything else in my life. And I also dedicate my life to helping others to recover
I now intervene on people who want to change but are unwilling to ask for help. People who are dying but who don’t want someone else’s advice. People who would get better but they won’t follow suggestions. I intervene on the loneliest one in the crowded room.
I intervene on people just like me.
