Monday
Aug302010
Drunkenness Is Temporary Suicide*
Monday, August 30, 2010
I am an alcoholic. The mojo I have been working since 1988 isn't working for me anymore, and I must live a life I can love if I am going to survive.
I didn't want to start there, not with that first sentence, because it feels shameful to say something out loud that I have already known for more than ten years. I wanted to lead you through a bit of a story, ease into it, make us all feel a little more comfortable. In the end, though, that felt deceptive, especially when I feel like the emperor who didn't know he was naked for the whole town to see the entire time. Surely, my alcoholism can't be news to everyone.
So, this is about honesty and truth. This is about coming clean.
----------------------------
Being of Mennonite ancestry, I come from a long history of conservative drinkers. Technically, Mennonites are supposed to be teetotallers, but, if the story I am remembering is true, this level of alcoholic conservatism was new to my mother's side of the family when they arrived in Canada from the rather grim shores of the then Russian portion of the Dnieper River. Nowadays, you can take pleasure cruises along the Dnieper out of Kiev, but back in the 1920s it was a little too full of gunfire, thievery, murder, and rape for my family's tastes.
Again, I might have the story wrong, but I think it was my great grandfather, an ordained minister, who brewed the beer for the community's dances back in the old country. Mennonites are also supposed to be against dancing, but the town got around dancing's sexual implications by enforcing same-sex partnerships, which, as a queer kid who wouldn't have minded a little more leniency when it came to alcohol consumption, kind of made me long for the good old days when the straight kids were the ones who had to sneak out behind the barn to shake it down with their partners.
When my maternal ancestors moved to Canada, though, they found a more conservative Mennonite culture. There was no more beer-brewing and no more dancing, and so I ended up being raised in a climate in which my mother was moved by guilt to cry when she allowed me to go to my first school dance and my grandfather tactfully referred to the finger of rye whiskey he drank with my father as "medicine". We didn't cut out the drinking and the dancing altogether, but both were tinged with the element of sin.
At fifteen, I decided that I needed to break the mould one weekend when my parents were out of town. I had always been seen as the fresh-faced kid, the smart kid, the good kid, and I wanted to stake a claim to an identity without good, without God, and without a tie to pleasing anyone other than myself. I wanted to do what any fifteen-year-old wants to do: I yearned to declare my autonomy from the moorings of childhood.
A friend and I employed this skater dude with fake ID to score some alcohol for us and a few of our friends. None of us were drinkers, so we pressed forty dollars into his hands and told him to get us stuff that tasted good. We waited on the curb until we heard the crunch of his skateboard wheels against the asphalt, and then we rushed him into the house surrounded by a flurry of our arms and hands in an attempt to obscure him from the neighbours. Apparently, he took "tasty" to mean "grape-flavoured wine coolers", because he unpacked a couple dozen bottles filled with fizzy, lavender liquid. We had been thinking of something with a little more grit to usher in our first drunk, but alcohol was alcohol, especially since we weren't the ones with the fake ID.
My social group was generally into clean living. They mocked the stoners who hung out behind the cafeteria smoking cigarettes during lunch and the kids who bragged about falling down on front lawns over the weekend. I harboured a secret jealousy of those who didn't care what people like my friends thought, though, and I nodded along while saying nothing. Clean living was boring the hell out of me. I wanted to shake shit up, and, if you can call throwing a handful of fifteen-year-olds into a suburban basement with grape-flavoured wine coolers "shaking shit up", that's exactly what I was attempting to do.
It didn't take much when my entire life had been centered around being safe and good and responsible and smart. I had already looked ahead at the long suburban road of more safe and good and responsible and smart that was being charted for me, and I was horrified by it. I wanted to hang a sharp left and outrun that life like a hunted rabbit dodging the jaws of some terrible, beige wolf. It was not a place I could go and still maintain my heart.
Our friends started to arrive, and we handed out the bottles of what amounted to alcoholic pop. It was terrible, but our curiosity about its effects inspired us to down most of the small supply. While everyone else lay about in sickly stupors, though, complaining of headaches and queasy stomachs, I felt a fire within, a burning in my belly that arose from more than just the cheap drink. This was new, and I knew that I was going to do this again as soon as I could, because nothing like that sweeping heat and power had ever come over me in quite that way before. I lay on the floor of that bungalow's basement and felt good, really good, for the first time in years.
With those first two drinks, I had christened myself into the slow swell that would become the ocean upon which I built my life. I had found my mojo.
----------------------------
Twenty-two years later and ten days ago, a switch went off inside my head while I dove into my fourth pint of draft beer for another night in a row of several. The switch felt identical to the switch that went off inside my head nearly a year ago when I faced my nicotine addiction of the same duration and quit smoking, the switch that made me feel settled and terrified and right and so terribly fucked up. The switch that changed my life and turned me inside out and set me right again after living in fear for my health and the despair over my own seeming inability to make life changes for the better.
A deepened understanding sank into my brain without warning, the depth of which understanding I have been avoiding for over a decade:
I am an alcoholic.
It was a command for action, a life or death demand, be the death physical, spiritual, or psychological. Change or die, it said, change or die.
That was ten days ago, and now I have just completed the longest stretch of sobriety I have experienced in probably well over ten years. I feel settled and terrified and right and so terribly fucked up again, and it feels so good to feel this fucked up, because it's me I'm fighting for, the me I fought for when I quit smoking, the me that can think clearly when I am not obsessing over the next inhale or drink, the one whose days are not governed by a constant revolution of chemical intake, managing my addictions for the sake of little else but appearances and the bare ability to make rent.
Cancer was hard. The Palinode's broken back was hard. My nervous breakdown was hard. Quitting smoking after twenty-one years was hard, (and it still is at times). Admitting to my alcoholism and maintaining the act of will to not drink is also hard, but after going through all of the above and having found only more love and more kindness both within myself and out in the greater world on the other side of terrible things, I know that, barring a graceful pirouette, I can at least stumble toward sobriety.
I don't know how to live sober yet, and almost none of my habits lead down the road to sober living, but I am going to learn. I can't not learn how if I am going to live any kind of life I can love. The mojo I found both through smoking and alcohol was little more than bravado born from physical and chemical remove. They are straw men that have left me hollow.
I am an alcoholic. The mojo I have been working since 1988 isn't working for me anymore, and I must live a life I can love if I am going to survive.
----------------------------
* The title is a quote by Bertrand Russell from The Conquest of Happiness.
I didn't want to start there, not with that first sentence, because it feels shameful to say something out loud that I have already known for more than ten years. I wanted to lead you through a bit of a story, ease into it, make us all feel a little more comfortable. In the end, though, that felt deceptive, especially when I feel like the emperor who didn't know he was naked for the whole town to see the entire time. Surely, my alcoholism can't be news to everyone.
So, this is about honesty and truth. This is about coming clean.
----------------------------
Being of Mennonite ancestry, I come from a long history of conservative drinkers. Technically, Mennonites are supposed to be teetotallers, but, if the story I am remembering is true, this level of alcoholic conservatism was new to my mother's side of the family when they arrived in Canada from the rather grim shores of the then Russian portion of the Dnieper River. Nowadays, you can take pleasure cruises along the Dnieper out of Kiev, but back in the 1920s it was a little too full of gunfire, thievery, murder, and rape for my family's tastes.
Again, I might have the story wrong, but I think it was my great grandfather, an ordained minister, who brewed the beer for the community's dances back in the old country. Mennonites are also supposed to be against dancing, but the town got around dancing's sexual implications by enforcing same-sex partnerships, which, as a queer kid who wouldn't have minded a little more leniency when it came to alcohol consumption, kind of made me long for the good old days when the straight kids were the ones who had to sneak out behind the barn to shake it down with their partners.
When my maternal ancestors moved to Canada, though, they found a more conservative Mennonite culture. There was no more beer-brewing and no more dancing, and so I ended up being raised in a climate in which my mother was moved by guilt to cry when she allowed me to go to my first school dance and my grandfather tactfully referred to the finger of rye whiskey he drank with my father as "medicine". We didn't cut out the drinking and the dancing altogether, but both were tinged with the element of sin.
At fifteen, I decided that I needed to break the mould one weekend when my parents were out of town. I had always been seen as the fresh-faced kid, the smart kid, the good kid, and I wanted to stake a claim to an identity without good, without God, and without a tie to pleasing anyone other than myself. I wanted to do what any fifteen-year-old wants to do: I yearned to declare my autonomy from the moorings of childhood.
A friend and I employed this skater dude with fake ID to score some alcohol for us and a few of our friends. None of us were drinkers, so we pressed forty dollars into his hands and told him to get us stuff that tasted good. We waited on the curb until we heard the crunch of his skateboard wheels against the asphalt, and then we rushed him into the house surrounded by a flurry of our arms and hands in an attempt to obscure him from the neighbours. Apparently, he took "tasty" to mean "grape-flavoured wine coolers", because he unpacked a couple dozen bottles filled with fizzy, lavender liquid. We had been thinking of something with a little more grit to usher in our first drunk, but alcohol was alcohol, especially since we weren't the ones with the fake ID.
My social group was generally into clean living. They mocked the stoners who hung out behind the cafeteria smoking cigarettes during lunch and the kids who bragged about falling down on front lawns over the weekend. I harboured a secret jealousy of those who didn't care what people like my friends thought, though, and I nodded along while saying nothing. Clean living was boring the hell out of me. I wanted to shake shit up, and, if you can call throwing a handful of fifteen-year-olds into a suburban basement with grape-flavoured wine coolers "shaking shit up", that's exactly what I was attempting to do.
It didn't take much when my entire life had been centered around being safe and good and responsible and smart. I had already looked ahead at the long suburban road of more safe and good and responsible and smart that was being charted for me, and I was horrified by it. I wanted to hang a sharp left and outrun that life like a hunted rabbit dodging the jaws of some terrible, beige wolf. It was not a place I could go and still maintain my heart.
Our friends started to arrive, and we handed out the bottles of what amounted to alcoholic pop. It was terrible, but our curiosity about its effects inspired us to down most of the small supply. While everyone else lay about in sickly stupors, though, complaining of headaches and queasy stomachs, I felt a fire within, a burning in my belly that arose from more than just the cheap drink. This was new, and I knew that I was going to do this again as soon as I could, because nothing like that sweeping heat and power had ever come over me in quite that way before. I lay on the floor of that bungalow's basement and felt good, really good, for the first time in years.
With those first two drinks, I had christened myself into the slow swell that would become the ocean upon which I built my life. I had found my mojo.
----------------------------
Twenty-two years later and ten days ago, a switch went off inside my head while I dove into my fourth pint of draft beer for another night in a row of several. The switch felt identical to the switch that went off inside my head nearly a year ago when I faced my nicotine addiction of the same duration and quit smoking, the switch that made me feel settled and terrified and right and so terribly fucked up. The switch that changed my life and turned me inside out and set me right again after living in fear for my health and the despair over my own seeming inability to make life changes for the better.
A deepened understanding sank into my brain without warning, the depth of which understanding I have been avoiding for over a decade:
I am an alcoholic.
It was a command for action, a life or death demand, be the death physical, spiritual, or psychological. Change or die, it said, change or die.
That was ten days ago, and now I have just completed the longest stretch of sobriety I have experienced in probably well over ten years. I feel settled and terrified and right and so terribly fucked up again, and it feels so good to feel this fucked up, because it's me I'm fighting for, the me I fought for when I quit smoking, the me that can think clearly when I am not obsessing over the next inhale or drink, the one whose days are not governed by a constant revolution of chemical intake, managing my addictions for the sake of little else but appearances and the bare ability to make rent.
Cancer was hard. The Palinode's broken back was hard. My nervous breakdown was hard. Quitting smoking after twenty-one years was hard, (and it still is at times). Admitting to my alcoholism and maintaining the act of will to not drink is also hard, but after going through all of the above and having found only more love and more kindness both within myself and out in the greater world on the other side of terrible things, I know that, barring a graceful pirouette, I can at least stumble toward sobriety.
I don't know how to live sober yet, and almost none of my habits lead down the road to sober living, but I am going to learn. I can't not learn how if I am going to live any kind of life I can love. The mojo I found both through smoking and alcohol was little more than bravado born from physical and chemical remove. They are straw men that have left me hollow.
I am an alcoholic. The mojo I have been working since 1988 isn't working for me anymore, and I must live a life I can love if I am going to survive.
----------------------------
* The title is a quote by Bertrand Russell from The Conquest of Happiness.
Reader Comments (86)
Applauding your honesty, bravery, and willingness to do this for yourself and your body. I'm rooting for you, friend.
Change! It's better than death. I'm looking forward to the next part of our lives.
You will be all right. And I'm very proud of you.
"I must live a life I can love if I am going to survive."
So true.
Rooting for you.
Proud of you, rooting for you, and inspired by you.
I wish I could give you a hug right now. The first 90 days are the hardest, but you can do it. Ask for help more than you want to and watch the miracles start. I am about to hit 8 months and my life is amazing now.
You are a brave lady and I'm here to support you the whole way, even when I'm being quiet.
Easing into things is overrated. Sometimes I prefer to be smacked in the face by the honesty of an audaciously simple opening line.
We've all got various monkeys on our backs. That one of yours is a common and notoriously wicked one doesn't mean you are a common or notoriously wicked person. (Though you may be pleasantly notorious for better reasons!)
That you are standing up to and naming your monkey in public, though: that means something. That means you are brave.
You've given a voice to alcoholism which is very powerful. Much like everything else in life, thinking about doing something is much harder than doing it. I'm sure it was agonizing turning it over in your mind before you put it to paper. You should feel good about taking the first step. It is a major one followed by many baby steps that go day by day. You've already survived a lot and with the support of the internet, I have no doubt you will be triumphant!
You and MaggieDammit need to start a blog called Alcoholism Unsilenced! ;-)Sharing your story will free you and encourage others to tackle the demon.
Everyone else will offer the appropriate congratulations, encouragements, understanding nods, guilty eye-aversions, love, and respect. I add my sentiments to theirs, of course. But I also have to add:
I can't believe you were watching Llama Eyes sober.
You grow before our eyes. Thank you for trusting us with this.
As a child of two alcoholics (one amazingly sober and clearheaded for 18 years with the help of an AA mentality and support group, another who still insists on telling people she has "stomach trouble,") I applaud your willingness to look at yourself in the mirror and really SEE what's there. It's hard, but it's life-changing.
For the Palinode's sake, I recommend that he (and the others you're close to) consider at least a few visits to an Al-Anon meeting to spend time with other people affected by this disease. For him, it will be important to realize that there are other people who've been the victim/witness to minor slights and huge hurts as a result of loving an alcoholic. Realizing I wasn't alone in loving an addict was a huge part of my own healing process.
It's going to be scary, but remember, setting your fears up on the table for all to see and claiming them as your own takes away their power over you.
Brave woman. You can do it. If you can quit smoking, you can quit drinking.
You have no idea how much I needed to read this post today. Day 17 of quitting smoking and it seems all I do is think about smoking but I WILL NOT smoke. I picked a fight with my husband yesterday, a totally irrational and ugly argument about nothing but the total misery I was feeling and it took me an hour to figure out what the hell was wrong with me, at which point I crawled into bed and slept until I felt like a normal human again. I swear to God I felt like "This is it? This is my fucking life? Unbearable!". And the sudden realization that it's just the withdrawal from a chemical that I am addicted to reinforced my determination, but it is so very hard in those moments. But I can feel that it's a good fight, a fight for my life and so I'm trying to embrace even the worst of it.
Rock on, girl. I applaud you and encourage you and thank you for putting these words out here. They helped me immensely today.
I've quit other things besides smoking...if you feel like you're faltering and you need some encouragement, I'm an email or a tweet away.
I wasn't expecting this and you hit me right between the eyes.It takes guts to admit you have a problem and I admire your honesty and your courage. As the daughter of an alcoholic you touched me with this post.Be strong.Thinking of you. x
Your courage is breathtaking, both in undertaking sobriety and in articulating it to a general public. I wish I was there myself. Not yet. I wish you so much luck and wellbeing on this next leg of your journey.
Ok, I am completely tripped up over the reference towards yourself as a queer kid envying straight kids and I had to check multiple links to make sure this wasn't a guestpost.
Sorry. I AM in awe of your admission and commitment to sobriety, but not mentioning the first bit felt insincere.
Like your lovely Palinode said earlier, change is good. It's unsettling but can you imagine never being unsettled? That's unhealthy. Never being unsettled is never having the chance to advance oneself. Shedding skins and old growths and dead weight as we earn more and more clarity with age. Congratulations.
Also? Subtracting beer from The Dreaded Possibly Wheat-Caused Bloat? You're going to be all lean and mean. You'll be jumping through flaming hoops for fun every second Sunday. You should start roller derby or powerlifting or marathoning or something.
I can imagine that this was hard for you to put on "paper", but I am so proud of you for doing so.
You are amazing and I am totally rooting for you as you continue changing your life.
YOU can do anything. This I know.
Love you, lady. Behind you 100%.
Breaking out of any addiction is hard. I celebrate your strength for following the path of change.
well done, to the switch in your head, and to you, for listening.
i have someone dear to me who i hope will make the same decision someday. but it isn't mine to make.
This is going to sound trite, but I mean it with all my heart: Thank you for sharing. In doing so, know that you have big, huge support walking right along with you.
"I must live a life I can love if I am going to survive."
I don't think I have ever read anything so raw, and powerful, and meaningful.
You have no idea how good it's going to be. I bet you a thousand gold coins.
Call me. Anytime. Please.
xo
Not going to say you are brave writing this, because I already knew you're brave from years of reading your honest writing. Good for you for embracing change!
This is an honesty most of us never achieve for ourselvess. Savor it.
I'm on a similar journey. I wish you all the luck in the world as you head towards a life you wish to live.
I stopped drinking July 13. We're walking the path together.
am awed by this, by you, by your courage.
sending love and support.
It is brave to confront problems head-on. I've known and loved many addicts in my life and quite frankly nicotine addictions have always seemed harder to quit than alcohol. Either way (or both ways) I am in awe of your honesty and strength. My best for the difficult days to come.
Time to send that monkey back to the wilds from whence it came. On the Everest of my mind, another prayer flag goes up in the cold, clear wind...and it has your name on it.
Power to you. Sending you all the good vibes I can muster. Best wishes, my dear.
Peace,
IG
Love you.
I am so impressed by you - your writing, your courage and your ability to be true to yourself. Congratulations and best wishes.
The sound you can't hear from over in my corner is the clapping of my hands together over and over again. Congratulations. You are well on your way to meeting your goals.
whew. so wonderful and so scary and so so good of you. it is like you are becoming this powerhouse of love and purpose. not at all that you were purposeless before, but it is kinda' striking to watch you grow stronger and stronger. happy i can be of witness.
and if you do join roller derby as sweetsalty kate suggested, please please take iphonography. i love those girls
Love you much, much, much. Supporting you on your journey and so proud of you for putting this out there.
here's to change, bravery and new chapters.....inspired and in awe of you at this very moment.
You are amazing. And you're going to be even more amazing.
Thank you for letting us watch you bloom.
I was invited to a friend's 15-year medal of sobriety at his local AA. It was there that I heard all the stories of struggle and triumph over drinking. I think it may have been the first time I truly understood why some people just need another and another (drink, smoke, hit). You've made it even more clear. I applaud your exquisitely-written honesty.
I hope you have a strong support system because from what I've heard it'll be very tough. But not undo-able. And you obviously have the cojones to belly up.
Sharp inhale, then release of breath. This was really moving. Change or die. Change or die. All the luck in the world to you.
much luck to you, you strong fierce wonderful woman.
So very beautiful - as are you.
So, so proud of you. Proud to know you.
I know how hard it is to realize that alcohol is holding you back - my thoughts are with you.
Also applaud your honesty and desire to be free of straw men and hollowness. Thinking of you through this!
You're phenomenal.
((hugs)) for I'm sure that they will come in handy during the harder days.
You, are amazingly awesome.
Over here from Maggie sharing your post on google reader...
What an incredible story - your courage is palpable. You are doing such a good thing - you are amazing :) 10 days is a heck of a lot of days strung together.
Another one here to talk if you need it... the first bunch of days is the hardest, but it gets so much better.
Sobriety is so good.
Hugs to you...