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.