A Christmas Miracle

At the risk of writing a sentimental sermon about the spirit of Christmas, I want to share a miracle:  Julia, daughter #1, volunteered to spend time with her grandmother. 

As a mother, GM was a classic narcissist.  She loved her three sons to the extent they reflected favorably upon her.  In other words, not very much.  Success meant being superior to everyone else in every way.  GM made this her life's work and was extremely good at it.  She was not, however, happy and the sad part is that she didn't know it.  When she felt upset, which was all of the time, GM went about "fixing" some aspect of her environment in the form of giving advice or criticism or picking a fight or redecorating a room or shopping or "having work done.". Somehow her sons managed not to murder her for her constant expressions of motherly love:  telling them who they should be, how they should look, and what they should (not) do.  Failure to conform to her wishes was an intolerable rejection which never went unpunished.

Son #1 did his best to conform, but in the end was unable to measure up.  He dropped out of Yale, married a nice (wealthy) Jewish girl, and lived in the style to which his mother was accustomed for a couple of years.  The marriage failed as did the next three.  He lost his psychology license because he engaged in a romantic relationship with a patient and then moved to Israel to become a militant Zionist.  Son #2 conformed up until he graduated from Harvard Law School (after Duke University) and then dropped out of law to become a professional psychic.  Son #3, my husband, refused to conform but became a successful business attorney, got married, and had two children.  Of the three, he is the son who reflects the best upon his mother, but she still doles out the "motherly love."

Grandpa is a classic enabler who allowed his wife to bully their children with her withholding of love unless they conformed to her wishes which they were never allowed to do.  There has never been a more co-dependent relationship than theirs and while they were successful in many ways, they are both emotionally crippled and disappointed in their offspring.

I never let it get to me when GM would buy me padded bras and lipsticks and force me to try on clothing which accentuated the negative more than my own choices did.  When the babies came along, GM had a fantasy about how wonderful it was going to be and bought a houseful of baby products for the week or two we spent with them.  Unfortunately for her, Julia had her own ideas from birth about what she wanted to do and how she wanted to do it.  The two never hit it off but once Julia entered puberty, the war was on and I was caught in the middle.  My daughter and husband would tell me to tell GM to back off and GM would complain to me about how horrible my daughter and husband were behaving, like I could fix everyone.  If anyone should have hated her, it should have been me.

As Julia grew from teenager to adult, she struggled mightily with depression, anxiety, mania, and ADHD.  Her grandmother had no ability to understand why Julia was so difficult to be around as well as her failure to fawn all over her like a good granddaughter.  No amount of explaining was enough to enlighten GM.  For the past decade, she has asked me the same twenty questions about Julia and I have given her the same twenty answers.  It's like talking to a stone.

Meanwhile, Julia has had the benefit of loving, supportive, and understanding parents who demanded no more than she was capable of doing.  The one time that we asked her to step up to the plate was on the occasion of her grandparents' 70th wedding anniversary, a dinner party planned weeks, no months, in advance.  Unfortunately, the dinner party coincided with a "cosplay" convention in which Julia and her friends hoped to win an award for their costumes.  Fortunately, the competition was held in the morning along with the photo shoot.  The winners -- my daughter and her friends -- were announced while we were attempting to enjoy the dinner and Julia made sure that each and every one of us suffered for requiring her attendance.  I nearly disowned her after that and it was a long time before I was willing to give her the time of day.

So, when the girls came home for Christmas and the grandparents came down to be with us for a week, Julia made a big show of hating her grandmother (who chose to ignore it).  Kayleigh, daughter #2, took her sister to task on Christmas Eve and said some things which caused Julia to realize that it was she who was causing the problems by being reactive instead of ignoring the criticism and acting like a civil and mature human being.  As Santa was getting ready to fill the stockings, Julia came in and apologized for her many years of being an asshole.  She said that she finally understood that she owned more than half the dysfunction in the family and promised to do better.  I hugged her and told her I loved her and that the past doesn't matter as much as the present.

The next day, after opening presents and eating a delicious Christmas dinner, GM mentioned that she needed to get a manicure and Julia volunteered to take her and have lunch with her.  I almost died of shock.  She seemed genuine in her offer and GM was thrilled.  It was the first time that Julia had said anything nice to her grandmother in years and she seemed sincere.  Just the same, I expected a blow-up and arranged to meet them for lunch.  When I arrived, they were chatting and laughing like a couple of old biddies and the only explanation I could come up with is that a God had performed a miracle. 

Serenity Happens!

Holy Christmas

Can we just fast forward to January 2nd?  The holiday season -- Thanksgiving to New Years -- is my least favorite time of the year.  It's not that I don't love the gift-giving and cookie-baking and turkey roasting, because I do, nor is it because I fear spending time with my nearest and dearest.  It is what happens inside my head and heart as I struggle to get everything done, be everything to everyone, and radiate joy for the benefit of others that does me in.  In recent years, the gap between Thanksgiving and Christmas has shrunk from a respectable amount of time to a matter of days.  Suddenly, it is Thanksgiving and even more suddenly, it is Christmas Eve and I haven't sent a single card or wrapped more than two gifts.  In years past, the best cure for this feeling was just a little bit (OK, a lot) too much wine.  Last year at this time, I was constantly on the verge of tears and wishing I could check myself into a psychiatric hospital.  Somehow I managed to make it through to January, probably through the grace of God.

2013 started out on a high note:  my youngest brother announced his engagement to a lovely young woman whom we had all met and decided to adopt.  The wedding happened in March and brought my entire extended family together for the first time in years.  We had a blast, so much so that my husband asked me if I was drunk (I wasn't).  The glow from this happy event didn't last, unfortunately, because shortly thereafter my sister discovered that her husband -- one of the pillars of my life -- had been cheating on her for years with multiple women.  The circumstances of her discovery were so bizarre that it made her believe in a punitive God because her soon-to-be-ex-husband was critically injured during his final tryst with one of her colleagues.  He survived but may never have the use of his "little man" again.

It felt as if we had had a death in the family but there was no body and there would be no funeral.  My grief was such that I began drinking in earnest every evening as a way to escape the feelings my soon-to-be-ex-brother-in-law had provoked with his narcissistic behavior.  And then I realized that I was reaching a point of no return, that I had to give up the drinking completely and forever or give in to alcoholism and lose everything I cared about in life. 

Call it God or a Higher Power or Big Fish, it really doesn't matter.  What matters is that I heard the message that I needed to live my life without wine and I acted upon it.  And thank God I did because 2013 wasn't finished with me.  Being sober, happily and voluntarily, enables me to embrace the challenges posed by each and every day.

Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year!  #LiveSober and enjoy the peace that comes from #recoveringlife.

Nature vs Nurture

Our two children, born three years apart, are so different we sometimes wonder if there was a mix-up at the hospital.  Firstborn Julia was a beautiful baby whom I showed off constantly in my effort to prove that I wasn't really a social pariah.  Pushing the stroller around the neighborhood gave me the courage to meet and converse with my neighbors, which I had studiously avoided for the five years before Beau and I became parents, out of a combination of fear and loathing (i.e., defensiveness).  Julia was so pretty that strangers exclaimed over her everywhere we went and for the first time in my life I felt like I could let go of the outermost layers of my psychic body armor; after all if I could produce such a beautiful baby, maybe I was capable of being normal.  I vowed to be the mother to her that I never had so that she would grow up happy, secure, and self-confident.

As I met other young mothers I became convinced that my baby was the one destined for greatness and glory; their babies were ordinary in comparison.  She learned to speak in sentences by the time she was fifteen months old and was completely toilet trained soon thereafter.  Only one other mother (a religious fanatic who regularly beat her little son with a paint stick in order not to "spoil the child") had her child out of diapers before his second birthday.  The rest let their children figure it out on their own which I found irresponsible.

Out of concern that Julia not grow up as an only child, Beau and I decided to have a second baby.  As the pregnancy progressed, Julia's personality became increasingly eccentric but we chalked it up to her extraordinary intelligence.  Every adult who interacted with her commented on how smart and funny she was, how engaging and creative, how insightful.  As her intellect became more and more obvious, so did evidence of inner demons.  By the time Kayleigh was born, Julia's tantrums were legendary.  I refused to believe that there was anything wrong even though her troubles were so visible I could no longer in honesty deny them.  I kept hoping that if we just continued believing in her and loving her and talking to her she would eventually grow out of her extreme emotions.  At the time I believed that nurture could trump nature.

Unfortunately, her tantrums worsened and in significant ways she did not keep pace with the "ordinary" children in her age group.  While her playgroup friends were able to count to twenty and recite their ABCs, Julia couldn't have been less interested.  She was too busy tearing the house apart to create a world of her own, narrating all the way, complete with imaginary friends and dogs.  Supervising her while caring for a newborn was exhausting and both children got less nurturing than I wanted to give them.  Meanwhile, Beau and I hit a low point in our marriage and we each blamed the other for Julia's increasingly troubled behavior.  I was beside myself trying to figure out how to protect her from the turmoil in her world and began self-medicating to an increasing degree with wine.

Kayleigh, meanwhile, developed on a more mainstream track.  She learned to count and recite ABCs by the time she was three, she sought out playmates rather than going off into her own little world of make believe, and she quickly grasped the concept of being rewarded for good behavior.  Like her sister, Kayleigh was a busy little bee, but in ways that seemed more "normal", in other words she made an effort to fit in with the other children.  This pattern continued through their childhoods and into young adulthood.

Today, they do not speak to each other in anything other than monosyllables.  Kayleigh is furious at Julia for being a self-centered whacko with a personality disorder.  Julia is furious at Kayleigh for being "perfect" and belonging to a sorority and studying business and being a high achiever in a conventional sense (i.e., making her look bad).  Julia is finishing at art school where she is majoring in sequential art, (also known as comics).  She can design and sew elaborate costumes for the conventions she attends with other sequential art fans, some of which are quite beautiful.  Kayleigh believes that Julia is an overgrown child who needs a reality check;  Julia feels that Kayleigh is mean and unloving and judgmental.  Beau and I hope that Julia will be able to live independently.  We aren't worried about Kayleigh being successful, but we do hope she can learn to be more accepting of her sister's challenges.

Neither girl wants to be home when her sister is there.  On those increasingly rare occasions that the four of us sit down together, Julia suffers because she feels that her parents are only interested in what her sister is doing.  Kayleigh suffers too because deep down she is heartbroken at having a sister she cannot love.  It seems that Beau and I have ended up with two only children. According to Tolstoy, every happy family is alike but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.  Our family is an exception:  we are a happy family but not when we are all together.  When the girls are alone with one or both of us, there is love to spare.  When the two are together, the best we can hope for is a restless peace.  Is this problem between the two of them the result of nature or nurture?  I would argue that the answer is both:  75% nature, 25% nurture.  Beau and I certainly made mistakes in how we built our family, but having two children who have long been completely incompatible can only result from demons passed from parents to children.  If we hadn't been fighting our own demons, we might have recognized and treated Julia's illness in early childhood, when it could have made a difference to her and to Kayleigh.  Or, maybe not.  We can only know what is.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.

Delayed Reactions

At some point in my early childhood, I became numb and by that I mean that I no longer experienced emotions.  I don't remember ever being happy or feeling loved and wanted, but there were things that delighted me, such as taking walks and riding my tricycle and later observing the natural world.  I remember clinging to my mother, even though I had no confidence in her constancy because she seemed so lost in the world.  What I felt for her was not "love" exactly, it was more like wearing a life jacket in a leaky boat adrift in an angry sea.  I learned the feeling of love the first time I touched and smelled a horse, but I had very little access to these magnificent creatures for most of my life.  Mostly, as a child, I remember people saying and doing unkind things to me and being incapable of responding because I would become paralyzed.   Rather than try to understand why I lived like a deer frozen in the headlights of oblivion, I distracted myself with obsessions and addictions.

My overarching problem was clinical depression, often quite severe.  When Prozac came into my life and put that beast in the dungeon, I then realized that I needed to face the emotions I had avoided by freezing away the pain.  After a couple of decades of acknowledging past hurts and learning to understand more recent feelings, I noticed that I was consuming a lot more alcohol than was appropriate for a woman of my size.  Problem or symptom?  Both, it turned out.

Until recently, if something made me feel angry or sad, I would "let it go" and look forward to happy hour.  Now that I have stopped drinking, I can no longer hide behind my evening buzz and this has given me the conscious choice of either speaking up about my feelings or allowing resentments to fester.  Hanging onto resentments is classic alcoholic behavior and so I am retraining myself, with increasing success, to let people know how their words and deeds make me feel.  The art is in not reacting negatively but rather in a way that assumes the other person did not intend to make me feel bad.  I remind myself daily to use this sentence, "When you said (or did) _________ it made me feel __________ because ____________."

Such a simple sentence and so powerful.  Try it, it works.

Happily Ever After

Sorry, girls, there is no such thing.  My parents wed in 1955 and immediately began begetting.  That's what Catholics did in those days because the church required a steady stream of new parishioners; the more the better.  Some families of size were great fun with siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles always available for company and games and adventures and trouble.  No so in mine.  Both of my parents were only children, ill-equipped for the demands of a growing household.  There were no aunts, no uncles, no cousins and the grandparents were no fun. When my older brother began exhibiting signs of severe emotional disturbance, my parents had no one they could turn to for support; and their inability to cope swept away what little comfort and security I enjoyed.  From then on, the atmosphere in the family home was toxic.

After my mother's suicide, I brought her wedding dress home with me and have kept if for thirty years.  Today, I finally let it go for nothing in the estate sale my husband and I held to empty his parents' winter residence.  The ladies running the sale oohed and aahed over the dress and told me I should take it to a vintage clothing consignment store, but I didn't want to.  Once I hung it up for the sale, I had the realization that I was carrying a relic of my mother's broken psyche and needed to get rid of it.  Why I had hung onto it for so long is a question I will spend some time discussing with my therapist.

It feels good to unburden oneself;  I highly recommend it.

Detox Happens

The first time I quite drinking, it was easy not to drink.  I had no cravings and was thus spared the soul-searching arguments with myself about why I needed not to drink.  The second time I quit drinking, exactly three months ago, it was extremely difficult not to drink.  At around five o'clock, I would begin thinking about making dinner and that would make me think about a nice glass of white wine while I examined the contents of the refrigerator and pantry and then another while I did the preparation.  I missed that part of my daily ritual and the way my world would take on a softer focus as the second glass worked its magic.

There were many days across the past 90 when I almost cried because I wanted to go back to my drinking life.  I missed the best friend and confidante who was always there for me.  At the same time, however, I felt so much better and achieved more without alcohol in my system.  A good analogy is ending a bad relationship with a great lover.  The difficulty with an addiction is that it is seductive and makes you want more and more.  "Just one glass, for old times sake," said my addiction night after night.  "I promise to leave you alone after that."  Fortunately, I had gotten rid of the wine rack in the kitchen and had recruited my husband to support my effort not to drink.  Being accountable to someone is key to successful recovery, whether it is an AA sponsor, friend, relative, or spouse.  It is easy to lie to one's self but much harder (and more painful) to lie to or disappoint someone else.

It was just a few days ago that I noticed I hadn't thought about having a glass of wine for an entire day and then I looked at the calendar.  Sure enough, I was reaching the end of the detox phase and that explained why my cravings had suddenly gone away.  It is a relief to have reached this milestone (for the second time in my life) and to know that I can live without wine even when people around me slug back glass after glass.  I smile to myself and look forward to having sweet breath in the morning.

Tweet?

After reading an article in The New Yorker magazine about Jack Dorsey, one of the founders of Twitter, I decided to give it a try.  The reason I did this is self-serving, of course:  I am hoping that lots of people discover and buy my ebook, Recovering Life, and given how nothing is on paper anymore, I figured that I should at least try Twitter to see what it was other than annoying.  The only instruction I could find on the Twitter site was to follow other tweeters.  Great suggestion, except that I know exactly zero people who tweet.  I uploaded my profile picture and blogger address and then tried to think about whom to follow.  The only one I could think of off the bat was Jack Dorsey, himself: @jack.  And then I decided to try various health-related tweeters like NIMH and NPR Health.  Suddenly my Twitter home page was a dump for everyone at those two organizations who spends too much time at their computers or on their iPhones.  I no longer follow those organizations -- #toomuchinformation.  And then, to my surprise and delight, a total stranger became my follower.  So I decided to take the plunge and become his follower.  We exchanged cordial greetings and now whenever I sign into Twitter, there is at least one tweeter who knows I exist.

If anyone out there reads this blog, send me at tweet @serenaenglander. 

Why the Truth Sets You Free

As soon as I was old enough to realize that other people were smarter, prettier, more stylish, had more money, more friends, and everything else, I began pretending that I was better than they were, even though I knew that was not the case.  My family was about as dysfunctional as it is possible to be before the social workers pay a visit.  I desperately wanted a beautiful and stylish mother, a strong and loving father, a big brother I could look up to, a sister who looked up to me, a grand home with air conditioning and wall-to-wall carpeting, a Cadillac and Jeep Grand Wagoneer in the driveway, and a horse in the open lot next door.  What I had instead was a mentally unstable and unstylish mother; a mean drunk of a father; an autistic big brother; a sister who was smarter, prettier, and more perfect in every way; a tiny and unimpressive house with no air conditioning and a single bathroom for seven people; an embarrassing boat of a station wagon with manual transmission; and not a horse in sight.  Being me was a tremendous source of humiliation and the only way I could live with it was to tell myself that we were the superior ones (in the same way that my father frequently congratulated himself on being "an ingenious and talented fellow").

As I moved into my college years, I told myself that, despite hard evidence to the contrary, I was smarter than everyone else, that my clothes were more stylish, that my choices were smarter, that I was a great dancer, a gifted artist, and didn't need friends because no one was smart enough or cool enough for me.  It was the only way I could make it through the endless days of my young adult life.  And then I met someone who broke through my defenses and I discovered that I was not the person I was capable of being -- a shattering epiphany -- and I spent the next few years making up for lost time.

For most of my young life, I blamed my father for my failures but after becoming a parent, I forgave him because my children taught me that nature trumps nurture at least 75% of the time.  Sure, if I had been nurtured, I might have had a better childhood but there is no guarantee that I would have been happier or more successful. I was in my fifties when I decided to drop the weight of resentments and delusions and accept myself for who and what I am.  Once, in a therapy session, I had attempted to explain my experience of reality as hiding behind a "false face" because I didn't want to show the horrors of my real face to the world.  I knew that if people in my life saw the "real me" they would be horrified and I would be completely alone.  My therapist didn't understand what I was trying to say because to her, I was a troubled soul possessed of undeveloped gifts, a pretty young woman who was capable of giving and receiving love.  When she communicated this, I got out of therapy because she obviously "didn't get it."  The truth was that I had denied my reality for so long it had grown to mythic size in my imagination -- I was filled with self loathing and disgust -- and therefore was convinced that my "true" self was something that needed to be exorcised. 

At some point in my early twenties, I decided to live my life like a "normal" person and that meant getting married.  Rather than learn to love my true self, I decided to improve my alter ego.  This meant I had to redesign certain elements of my history into something more mainstream so that I could pretend that I wasn't as mentally ill as I actually was.  It also meant that I had to become an educated person.  I immersed myself in classic literature and philosophy, absorbed as much as I could from visits to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York.  I attended art gallery openings and began painting and drawing again.  And then I met the man who would become my husband.  He was highly educated and cultured and had his own psychic burdens; we were well matched.

As we approached our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, my daily glass of wine was becoming a major problem because I was using it to self-medicate.  I was depressed and wished desperately that I could drop everything and check into a psychiatric hospital except that too many people depended on me to be there for them; so I said nothing other than "keep it together, keep it together, keep it together."  The paradox was that at the same time, I was happier than I had ever been in life.  I had it all:  happy marriage (at last!), beautiful children, gorgeous home, and the pony I had always wanted.

Despite this success in life, my drinking began escalating and my mental health continued to deteriorate.  I knew that I needed to quit drinking but I couldn't bear the loss of my best friend and confidante.  Without the numbing gloss of wine, I would be too alone with myself and that idea was intolerable.  My "aha moment" came after a fundraising gala where I had many glasses of champagne and many more glasses of red wine and was so staggeringly drunk that my husband noticed.  I knew it was time to quit.

Quitting drinking meant telling my family that I had a drinking problem in addition to being dangerously depressed.  They didn't buy it but went along with my decision to go into an outpatient substance abuse program for people with depression.  I didn't exactly buy it either, but I knew I was in trouble and didn't want to die just when my life was going the way I had always wanted it to.  I accepted the terms of the program and threw myself into it because I had to know if drinking was problem or a symptom of a deeper problem.  The entire time I was in the program and the many months afterwards when I didn't drink, I told myself that once my depression was under control, I would have a drink to see if I could drink responsibly.

It took two years, but the occasional glass of wine became a daily glass, then two, then ... I was back to where I was when I entered rehab.  I was at a crossroads and I knew that if I didn't quit completely and forever, I was going to end badly.  So, for the first time in my life, I was honest with myself and my family about my abuse of alcohol and how addicted I was.  July 4th, 2013, was my Independence Day and I have been facing reality ever since.  I am no longer afraid or ashamed to be honest about who and what I am, warts and all, and people in my world have begun responding in surprising ways.  The greatest benefit has been the removal of the false face.  As soon as I allowed my true self to show, I felt a great heaviness fall away and a warm bright light surround and lift me up.  This lovely feeling is so superior to the temporary relief provided by a glass (or two...) of wine that I am learning to enjoy social situations for the first time in my life.

Living without alcohol successfully means living honestly with yourself, accepting what you cannot change, pushing yourself to grow, and knowing your limits.  It means allowing others to share your world even when -- especially when -- you disagree.

For most of my life I defined success in material and economic terms.  Now I know better:  success is about relationships beginning with my relationship with myself.  Today I can look in the mirror and smile at the person smiling back at me.  She is not perfect, she has many flaws both innate and of her own making, but there is no one else she would rather be or other life she would rather live.  That is freedom.

Triggers

Cooking dinner for my family across twenty-plus years is what did me in.  When the children were babies (after I had finished with breastfeeding, of course) I decided I needed a glass of wine in the evening to bring a shred of civilization into my life.  Caring for small children is tiring and about as un-glamourous as being an elementary school janitor.  At the end of the day, I wanted to relax a bit and since that wasn't possible, a glass of wine while I fixed dinner let me pretend.  But it was never a glass because when I sat down to eat the meal I had prepared for my family, I needed a refill.  Or two.

It took a long time but eventually I was consuming a half bottle each day, just to take the edge off and let me pretend to feel relaxed.  Family life is complicated in the best of circumstances, but in my case all four of us have strong personalities and opinions and varying degrees of psychological problems.  When the children entered middle school and high school, the conflicts became more intense and the level of emotion in the house was often unbearable.  By the time we were filling out college applications, I was frequently drinking the equivalent of an entire bottle.  First I'd have a little white while chopping the vegetables, then a little more while marinating the chicken or seasoning the fish.  If my glass looked a little too low, I'd just top it off while the rice cooked.  When it was time to call everyone in for dinner, I'd open a red because that's what my husband prefered but he rarely imbibed.  So, I would enjoy a glass or two with a couple of top-offs while relaxing over dinner.

I would never have admitted it to myself but I was frequently intoxicated.  My family was so used to seeing me tipsy, they had no idea I was drinking way too much.  Maybe they did but chose not to notice.  By the time my youngest was choosing which college to attend, I realized that I had a problem and checked into an outpatient rehab program.

So, here I am three years later and once again sober (three months!) and with an empty nest.  The worst part of the day, still, is what I used to call the Witching Hour -- fixing dinner.  When the children were growing up, they raided the kitchen and played around when they were supposed to be doing homework.  When I put dinner on the table, they weren't hungry because of how much snacking they had done.  My husband would come home at some point and I would have to reheat his food only to have him tell me that he had eaten the same thing for lunch or that he wasn't hungry for what I had cooked, so he would fix a peanut butter sandwich and finish whatever snack foods the children had left behind.  This went on for a good ten years.  It's a wonder I didn't drink more.

To this day, I cannot open the refrigerator without looking for my bottle of white because being in the kitchen reminds me of how unrewarding it was to fix meals for my family for all those years.  My husband sort of gets that being in the kitchen makes me feel like drinking and has started cooking again.  He has been out of town this past week so rather than face the kitchen, I've brought home pizza and boxed salads to enjoy with my sparkling fruit-flavored water.  I feel better, I am happier and much more relaxed without alcohol, but I sure do miss it.  Wine was the only friend I had during those lonely years in the kitchen.

Insatiable

One of the hallmarks of an addictive personality is how there is never enough.  One drink isn't enough, neither is one cigarette or a single french fry.  It is interesting how many types of addiction there are besides alcohol and drugs.  Clothing, shoes, food, gambling, shopping, "collecting", etc.  The common element of all is the quest for more and the need for the chase.

I remember being called Little Miss Needy Greedy when I was a toddler because I constantly said "Seri wants..." and then proceeded to grab whatever it was from whoever happened to be holding it.  This led to many spankings but the neediness was stronger than any wish to avoid pain.  As long as I triumphed for a brief second over my sister or brother who possessed the object of my desire, I would accept the beating.

The only thing that slaked my thirst for what I wanted but couldn't have was beer.  My parents were particularly fond of Schlitz and I remember my first sip of that sharp, foamy and metallic wonder:  it was what I had been searching for all along.  I was three years old at the time and from then on, my parents would give me a sip here and there just to stop my whining and begging.  I didn't notice the buzz at the time but there was a qualitative difference between beer and soda pop which I found irresistible.

There is no way of knowing whether I would have turned into an alcoholic had I grown up in a different family.  Plenty of alcoholics and drug addicts come out of the straightest, most conservative families in the deepest most southern of the Baptist tradition (Pat Robertson's son, according to his classmates, was quite the party animal in his college and law school years).  I will say that my father celebrated alcohol and drunkenness in a way that made it seem culturally acceptable and therefore I never thought of inebriation as a bad thing.  He matter-of-factly told us of how his own father was passed out in a gutter the night he was born and in the same sentence condemned his mother for divorcing the bum.  He related fond memories of being a mean and ugly drunk himself, and had a charming photograph of one infamous incident in which he bragged that he was "the meanest man in the world."

I didn't start chasing alcohol until I was in high school and it was cool to get high and to drink.  Marijuana did nothing for me and the other drugs frightened me because I felt like my grip on reality was fragile at best.  Alcohol, on the other hand, gave me a warm and confident feeling which allowed me to pretend I wasn't a wallflower.  One drink was good, two were better, and after losing count nothing mattered anymore.

If ignorance is bliss, oblivion is better.

Letting Go

Being a mother, I have always been reluctant to send my now adult children out into the mean streets of life and because of this I have done many things to shelter them from reality.  When I was in college, I had no money and worked twenty or thirty hours per week to pay my living expenses.  I never had enough to eat, to wear, or to sit on, but I managed to get through with a bachelor of science degree.  Just the same, I suffered the entire time from privation and from major depression, anxiety, and at times full blown psychosis.

My children were not going to suffer the way I did and so I made sure to spoil them so they could concentrate on their school work and enjoy their youth while they had it.  My oldest child suffered anyway because that is her nature.  She is, unfortunately, bi-polar among other things and therefore her experience of the world is never in balance.  This is a tragedy but it is not insurmountable.  Because I have spoiled her and never forced her to make hard choices, she has no idea how hard life really is.  She is scheduled to graduate from art school within the year and given her recent behavior at an important family gathering I have decided to begin the painful process of weaning her from the money teat.

When she went away to college I gave her my VISA card and set up on-line banking so I could monitor her spending and add money to her account whenever it went low.  She took advantage of this situation by buying anything and everything she wanted ("needed") in order to cope with the demands of living on her own.  She liked the feeling of superiority that being the "rich bitch" among her peer group gave her.  She was the one who could join the ZipCar program and pick up the check at the sushi restaurant that everyone loved.  At the time, I didn't give her much grief about this because her dad had a high-paying job and her grandparents had funded her education expenses.

In her sophomore year of college, she spent two weeks in a psychiatric hospital on a medical leave of absence which stabilized her, but at the end of the semester, she realized that she needed to come home for a year.  We call this the year of living dangerously.  She took a class or two from the local community college while selling kitchen knives for Cutco.  She made good money, thanks to the referrals her dad gave to her through his place of work but the pressure to sell-sell-sell was too intense as was the crush she developed on her boss who used this to his advantage (not sexually, to her dismay) and she ended up burned out but wiser for the experience.  In the fall, she enrolled in art school and we lucked into a great living situation for her.

Art school was exactly where she needed to be because she is most definitely not a mainstream student and neither is anyone else at this particular institution.  Her creative juices began flowing and her two dimensional drawings of anime-like characters became three-dimensional costumes enabling her to begin role playing.  Sounds like good, clean fun, and it is for lots of people.  My daughter, unfortunately, has a shifting view of reality and loses herself in these fantasy worlds to the exclusion of everything and everyone else.

On the evening of her grandmother's 90th birthday party, she wanted to be at one of the big Anime conventions in order to compete in the costume design and execution competition.  Fortunately, the judging took place in the morning and the convention was in the same city as the family gathering.  Unfortunately, she and her friends won "best in show" and this meant that she was absent for the adulation and accolades she desperately wanted for her beautiful work, not to mention her beautiful self in her big-hair blonde wig.  During the birthday dinner, she kept checking her iPhone for updates on the judging and when she learned that she and her girls had won, she let her fury rip.

It was an unfortunate situation but how could she not attend her grandmother's 90th birthday party?  Especially since it is this grandmother's money which finances her private school education.  Fortunately, she is a great actress and made a lovely toast with a genuine-looking smile on her face.  The rest of the time, she did her best to get my attention by slugging down as much wine and champagne as she could get her hands on and trying to get me out in the hallway so she could berate me for "forcing" her to be where she did not want to be and preventing her from being where she did.  I had had enough and I told her to suck it up.

She called a few days later to demand an apology which I explained she was not entitled to.  The person who needed an apology was Daughter #2 who had been seated next to her during the dinner and who spent two hours after the dinner in tears because of how horribly Daughter #1 had behaved at an important family celebration.  I was proud of her for not hanging up on me, although she did her best to deflect responsibility for her rotten behavior.

It is time for Daughter #1 to learn to face reality and to that end, I have removed myself as co-signer on her credit card and have put her on an allowance.  I am expecting a very rough ride for the next few months but she believes that she is an adult capable of adult responsibilities.  Better she learns this now -- before she moves to San Francisco and meets reality in all its meanness.

A Day Made for Drinking

Every day is a day made for drinking if you are an alcoholic (or drugging if you are an addict).  The trick to staying sober is recognizing your vulnerability in the face of bad news, disappointments, frustrations, hurt feelings, and crises.  Thirty years ago tomorrow, my mother committed suicide.  Over the weekend, while I was out of town, my darling sun conure died.  A month ago, my husband lost his job -- at age 61 -- and we are way below our target for retirement savings.  Last weekend, my psychologically challenged, but brilliant, daughter ruined a family gathering because she couldn't be in two places at the same time.  When she finally decided to call me, it wasn't to apologize, it was to make me feel guilty for not tolerating her childish and self-centered behavior.

The wine bottles are in the cellar and the corkscrew is in the utensil drawer and I could pop one open at any time, but I do not even entertain the possibility.  Why is that?  After my long relapse, during which time I was convinced that I was not really an alcoholic, my consumption slowly and then rapidly ratcheted up and I once again found myself approaching the abyss.  I cannot go back and now, I no longer fantasize about going back to my old friend, Wine.  Alcohol numbs the pain, yes, but it also makes it worse.

Having a clear heart, mind, and spirit allows me to float like cork on my ocean of troubles and this is for me the definition of freedom.

Inside Recovery

We all know someone who has gone through substance abuse treatment, or "rehab", as it is usually referred to.  Addiction does not care if you are rich, poor, ugly, beautiful, fat, thin, smart, stupid, or anything else.  You can become addicted to things which are not in themselves "addictive", gambling and food, for two examples.  An addiction becomes a problem when feeding it takes priority over self-care, relationships, and even life itself.  If you lie to yourself and others about your consumption, if you plan your life around your drug of choice, or if doing without makes you irritable, you need help and fast before you do irreparable damage to yourself or someone else.

Addictions are not necessarily bad, as any self-respecting coffee drinker will attest.  For a long time, my daily wine was not a bad addiction (well, it actually was, but I didn't see it that way at the time) but then my consumption began creeping up and my ability to cope began declining and I realized that I powerless over alcohol.  At first, I believed that my problems were psychological and if I could resolve my repressed feelings, I would no longer feel the need to have more than a glass of wine with dinner.  I signed up for outpatient rehab because I knew that I needed to stop drinking while in intensive therapy and a "dual-diagnosis" program was the only option available. 

While in recovery, and afterwards, I kept a journal which I published in blog form before turning it into a manuscript.  My reason for publishing this highly personal record of my illness is to help others by showing them what a gift recovery is.  I think about drinking every day and socialize with people who drink but I know that every day I do not drink alcohol is a good day because I am free.