Dry Drunk

Alcoholics tend to share common traits, such as blaming others for their own mistakes, denying obvious truths, and rationalizing their unworthy behavior.  For example, a wife might blame her drinking problem on her husband's lack of sexual interest (when the reality is that she is passed out drunk every night and he finds this repulsive).  Teenagers who binge drink every weekend often fail to see a problem when they drag their hungover selves out of bed on Monday mornings.  Parents who regularly finish a bottle of wine (or more) every night credit their European heritage for their appreciation of the finer things in life.  Of course, there are much worse examples than these:  physical and emotional abuse, lying and stealing, and self-destruction, among others.

Not everyone who blames, lies to, or hurts others is an alcoholic or addict.  In AA circles, these people are called "Dry Drunks".  During my rehab and recovery process, I realized that almost everyone could benefit from a Twelve-Step type program because of the profound effect it had on my inner experience.  Each of us engages in denial and rationalization to some degree because being brutally honest with ourselves is often painful.  But, taking an honest look at oneself can be transformative because it allows us to stop pretending that we are whom we are not. 

Defensiveness has many faces:  anger, passivity, aggression, fawning, criticizing, and masking feelings are a few.  Anger, aggression, and criticizing deflect attention away from one's own shortcomings and serve to intimidate others.  Passivity, fawning, and masking feelings are a way of protecting oneself from angry, aggressive, and critical people.  Honesty is the key to being whole and healthy because it cannot survive defensiveness. 

In rehab, my counselor Chrissy often said that when someone stirs up strong (negative) feelings it is about some aspect of ourselves that we dislike.  This powerful insight allowed me to let go of anger and resentment I had toward some people in my life and confront my deeper feelings about myself.  Twelve-Step programs force us to examine our behavior over a lifetime and tease out the defenses we have used to protect ourselves from unpleasant emotions.  It is easier to hurt someone else than to admit failure or humiliation to ourselves.

If everyone could, from time to time, take an honest inventory of his or her behavior and forgive him or herself for wrongs done to others, we might all get along better.  On a global scale, this could foster a more peaceful world:  It's not you, its me and I apologize for making you feel bad because I hurt.  Amen.

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.

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.