10:30 am
Without this:
I wouldn’t have that:
Or that:
Archive | October, 2013
Tonight I won’t drink because…
28 Oct8:49 pm
I don’t want to feel drunk, or sick to my stomach. Or dizzy. I don’t want to feel dizzy, like my head is coming unglued, my brain unzipped, my thoughts not forming or falling apart as they form.
I don’t want to feel hung over tomorrow and ruin the day. Or the next two days. Or the rest of the week. I could really do without feeling like death, having a panic attack, and being barely able to function mentally and emotionally for the next several days, yes. I don’t want to be hung over, ever, EVER again.
I don’t have the money, if I’m honest, to waste on wine.
I will piss out the wine almost as fast as I drink it, along with all my nutrients (because I am, actually, eating now). But not before the wine soaks every organ in my body, metabolizes into a carcinogenic chemical, and turns my urinary tract into an acidic hell. No, no. I don’t have much say over the miracle of my physiology, but at least I can put gas in gas, and oil in oil, and make sure to not mix the two. Yes, I get the magnitude of this simple choice now, this choice of GOOD fuel over, well, dirty oil.
I don’t want to cry, or weep. About old things. Sad things. Things I’ve done. Things that are not what I’ve got going on now, what I’m doing now, who I am now, what I’m working toward now.
I have work to do. And I will have work to do tomorrow. And, I actually want to work instead of avoiding it by drinking and making it impossible to even try.
I don’t want to call people, like an ex, or my brother who hasn’t forgiven me for freaking out on him two years ago, and say things that they don’t deserve to hear.
I don’t want to be emotional. I want to be cold, precise, and sharp. Empty, even.
I don’t want to yell at people, for no reason, or every reason. I don’t have the energy to waste, and even if I did, I wouldn’t want to spend it on this.
I want what I have now, which is a certain calm, a deep well that doesn’t move at night, that keeps me in its grasp–finally.
I want to be responsible, boring even. I don’t need the drama, the attention, the diversion; I have a goal, a purpose, which is, well, being sober and then, working on allowing everything else to happen.
I like wearing my “mom” jeans, OK?
The hauntings of Santa Muerte
26 Oct3:09 pm
Hmm. Nothing all that profound about today. Just another day in “paradise.” Correction: just another SOBER day in paradise, which begins with me waking up not hung over! I swear, it never fucking gets old. EVER. I am grateful every morning for not having a hangover. EVERY morning. And, the longer I’m sober, the more accessible the memory of my last drunk (or one of my later hangovers) becomes; I seem to be able to remember it more clearly, breathe in every moment of that wretched feeling as if it were yesterday.
Today, though, I want to talk about hauntings. Of things past, things done. I have many, and of all the days of my life, all the events–these drunken shenanigans only make up a very small percent. A miniscule amount. Yet. YET. Man, do they take up SO MUCH space in my brain.
And, I can’t seem to let them go. Forget about them. Relegate them to the back burner, so that all the awesome memories of amazing things I’ve done in my life can take the front, can actually be remembered and serve as springboards in the present moment. That’s the sad irony of all this navel-gazing, I suppose, or maybe it’s simply the nature of the beast: we ruminate on all the stupid, shitty, god-awful things we did drunk, and they make up our mental landscape, affecting who we are NOW and how we behave HERE. I am, for some reason, focused on the miniscule 1 percent, which obscures just how bright and amazing the other 99 percent is. Hmm.
I have a red boa draped over my desk, as decoration and distraction. Or…is it to remind myself of what I did, to keep it within reach so that I NEVER FORGET JUST HOW BAD I WAS? It was two years ago, the last Halloween I “celebrated,” and let me tell you what happened. I was to fly to LA to meet a long-time friend for the weekend. It was supposed to be relaxed, fun, an escape. Too bad I started off the trip with a HUGE night drinking alone in my apartment–per fucking usual. When dawn came and the wine was gone, I was screaming drunk; and the utter dread and sickness of withdrawal–coming down SUCKS–was threatening to set in. NO, somewhere deep inside said. I am not done yet. I am not ready to stop. And, I didn’t.
To avoid the “night ending”–losing the buzz, dealing with what was surely going to be a suicidal hangover–I drank more. I opened another bottle and proceeded to down the whole thing, both while I was getting ready and en route to the airport in the cab. Once there, my mood picked up, I got my second wind, and though I was THIS close to being drunky-drunk, everything seemed clearer. I got to my terminal and downed a few beers–beer couldn’t hurt, right? It would hydrate me, I lied.
The plane took off and I had an “amazing” seat-mate, some married asshole who was flirting with me and drinking with me (wine for breakfast anyone?). We had the most “marvelous” conversation, and by the time our flight touched down about an hour later, I had definitely gone from drunker to drunkest. Of course, I was STILL hanging on, desperate for the party not to end, so I convinced this guy to have one more drink with me–another bar, another airport.
Then (finally?), I blacked out. DUH. Piecing together the texts and my shoddy memory of how this scenario was resolved, I concluded the following: I must have been stumbling around LAX for at least two hours blacked out; my friend had texted numerous times that he was waiting for me and would be leaving VERY soon if my ass didn’t show itself; I remember my friend heaving me into the passenger seat of his car and driving home; I was slouched next to him, and it was only then that I registered that my jeans were soaked from top to bottom–my entire pants were drenched in urine. I had pissed myself, and I had been walking around LAX like this for two fucking hours, and people must have noticed, including my friend. OH, GOD. Oh god oh god oh god.
Cue the remorse that haunts me to this day, that prods at my soul, begging to come in; that ends up saturating my gut with its daily drip-drip-dripping.
I slept at his place until about 5 that afternoon–the whole day, gone–while he went out and did some errands. What must he have been thinking? Fortunately, he is one of the forgivers. While he was quite upset (for a long time after that weekend, I imagine), we made the best of the night. I will never forget his stare, wary, as we swayed together in our costumes at some bar in LA and I drank again–this time, three small glasses of wine just to take the edge off and make me feel somewhat normal again. That’s where the boa comes in: I went as the Mexican goddess of death, or Santa Muerte, and the boa was to give it a festive, flowery feel.
Now? That fucking boa above my desk HAUNTS me. While I definitely felt like death that night (I was still mightily hung over, shaking even), I was riding on utter gratitude for my friend–and, that “lovey dovey” feeling that you get when you are coming off the booze, grateful to be alive, thankful beyond recognition to have made it through yet another hangover. Now? I look up and see that boa, and it makes my entire inner body shudder slightly every time I do.
So, why not take it down? I can’t. That day still haunts me. And, I’m actually OK with that. I think I actually NEED the constant reminder of both how bad it got–I feel somewhat ill just remembering it again in such detail–and how far I’ve come. I’ve long since made amends with my friend, who never held it against me anyway. I’ve been getting sober for over 16 months, and I’ve been sober for a continuous 221 days. I was sober last Halloween. I was sober last Christmas, and New Year’s, and Valentine’s Day, and Easter, and my birthday, and the Fourth of July, and Labor Day. I will be sober this Halloween, too.
Yet, I have ghosts. That incident haunts me, one of a seeming-eternity of nights (and days) blacked out and left for dead. And, the least scary thing about it was my costume. Santa Muerte is a “personification of death…associated with healing, protection, and safe delivery to the afterlife.” Is it not worth noting that it was I who chose to dress up as a goddess of death? Or, that this very same goddess also embodies the afterlife? Maybe Santa Muerte was simply looking out for me that night, and all the others, too, waiting for the old me to finally die so that she could transport the new me to a better place?
The view outside my sober healing bubble
24 Oct3:56 pm
Tired, but hanging in there…
…not unlike the one car that YOU happen to be on that gets stuck, dangling in mid-air on the roller coaster ride called sobriety. Or life. Or living sober. Or just living.
I had a job interview today, and I only got about three hours sleep last night due to waking up at about 3 am and then tossing and turning for the next four hours. I had the worst recurring “nightmare,” too: I was literally buried under mounds and mounds of possible interview clothes, and I had like, 45 minutes to pick an outfit. I was running out of time, and I had no idea what pieces I wanted to put together, and I needed help, so I frantically called in…an old boss of mine? What? Anyway, it was SO stressful. When I finally shook the sleep out of me, I realized with sweet relief that real life is actually better than my dreams–kind of like when you dream you’re drinking, or drunk, and then you wake up to the fact of your sobriety. Sweet, sweet relief.
Someone emailed me the other day, and she reminded me of what I’ve heard before, that the first year is about getting sober and learning how to stay sober; while the second year is about learning how to live sober. I think I’m finally simply understanding this shift, from “healing” to “living;” and that I can’t stay inside my sober healing bubble forever. Unless I want to either stagnate and/or drink again.
As you’ve seen, I’ve been sort of getting my mojo back when it comes to socializing and work. Today, I took a BIG peek–maybe even a step!–outside my sober healing bubble and went on a job interview. Now, I have gone on a couple in-person interviews in the past two years (when I left my last full-time job to begin freelancing), but my last one was last June, and last June seems like FOREVER ago. In fact, I believe I was stupid hung over on that day–big surprise.
Anyway, today I interviewed sober and not hung over, and I felt good. Good to start to put myself back out there, in all ways, not just pitching and talking on the phone in the comfort of my own sober living room. Good to have to stress myself out a bit, whether that was finding an outfit (I’m picky, so I reluctantly spent more than I could afford), or driving myself downtown, or finding parking (I’m pretty sure I fucked that one up and parked where I shouldn’t have), or introducing myself to a new person and having to talk about myself for half an hour.
I don’t know if I want this job, but it would be SO nice to have some reliable income–a 9-to-5 job is manna from heaven to this girl right about now. In any case, over the past few weeks I’ve managed to land a few other freelance gigs that could turn into more substantial income, so that’s definitely good news. The name of this game is persistence and/or how bad you want it. Fortunately, I have at least one (persistence), which I might be confusing with banging my head against a brick wall, but so it goes.
So, that was what happened this morning. And now, back to my regularly scheduled program of looking to see SO many other science writers being published, especially in two new-ish magazines. Le sigh. One day…one day.
“If I feel this way tomorrow, I’m going to drink”
20 Oct10:29 am
And, I woke up feeling the same way I felt last night, and the night before, and the night before. Am I glad I wasn’t also hung over? YES. Will I drink tonight? I don’t know.
I feel like a lot of the time, I’m waiting for my “break.” I never get to escape, turn it off. It’s maddening. No amount of “wholesome” fun, like yoga, running, swimming, socializing sober, even JOB FUCKING SEARCHING ON A SATURDAY NIGHT (welcome to the reality of freelance writing) can fully mask the feeling that all these things are just placeholders for the real deal.
Yet, I have to ask myself, is drinking the real deal? Even as I whine about having no escape, no down time, and thinking that wine will fix this agitation, this irritated hole; I’m not at all sure that it WILL. And, I know from waking up this morning, and feeling an emotional hangover, it would have been SO much worse had I drunk (copious amounts, I’m sure) out of desperation last night and added a physical one on top of it.
So, I move ahead today. With my aching heart and burning, twisted stomach, forcing a smile and doing what needs to be done. Check, check, check. I know eventually it’ll lift, and at some point today, I’ll be doing things more out of “yay” and less out of “have to do this, here, I’ve done it.” I guess.
Strange days, indeed.
No, Oreos are not as addictive as cocaine
19 OctAs a science writer, I have come to despise how reductionist scientists (well, maybe this is a prime example of how faulty the mainstream media is) can be! Addiction affects and influences EVERY part of the brain, and many neurotransmitters working in conjunction, not just one area and one chemical. Not to mention, I’ve always found drawing conclusions about humans from a rodent’s behavior around a lever or a maze to be…astounding. It’s like, REALLY? It is nice to see a bit of perspective!
Thank you, Stephanie Pappas from LiveScience!
“The study performed cannot determine whether Oreos are as addictive as cocaine,” said Edythe London, a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, who uses brain imaging to study the neural basis of drug cravings. “That question is best addressed in a comparison of how hard a rat will work for Oreos versus cocaine — how many times a rat will press a lever to get one or the other.”
The students also measured the expression of a protein called c-Fos, which indicates brain cell activity, in the nucleus accumbens of rats exposed to Oreos or cocaine. This brain region is important for pleasure and positive reinforcement and is involved in addiction because of the pleasurable feelings brought on by drugs.
The rats’ nucleus accumbens activated more strongly with the stimulus of Oreos than the stimulus of cocaine, but those findings don’t…
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Allowing myself to be happy, or, the balance between “should” and “want”
18 Oct4:41 pm
The longer I am sober, the more I am learning–having to learn, and painfully most of the time–how to allow myself to be happy. I had a friend about ten years ago who used to tell me that I liked being in pain. That I liked not being happy. I took offense to that, as well as feigned confusion: Me? Reaaaaaallllly?
Years later, after sort of (well, OK, totally) confronting my drinking problem, I am realizing just how much truth there is to his observation. I don’t–I never fucking DID–allow myself to be happy, and I drank because of it. I did things I “should,” never things I “want.”
In fact, I had a nightmare the other night in which I was rendered unable to breathe in the midst of a “craving panic.” You know what craving panics are, I’m sure: that anxiety that must be quenched, now, right now, and if it’s not, which it won’t be and can’t be but has to be, you start to feel your insides boil, your heart clench, your throat close…and your breathing stops. You need wine, right now. Yes, it was horrible. I woke up feeling sick, and had to take a few minutes to catch my breath.
And what was I doing in said nightmare? I was sitting in a salon chair, getting my hair cut. But I hated the hair cut. And, I couldn’t tell her (who?) that I hated it. Which made me want to drink more than I ever remember wanting to drink. And, after I woke up and calmed down, I remembered something, a small thing really: when I was about 12, going into the 7th grade, I got my hair cut really short. I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but it was the 80s and my “stylist,” Louise, thought my curls would look SO CUTE short. My mom wore her hair severely short, and she agreed. Me? Not so much. I sat there in silence, though, as my hair was butchered. Tears started to pinch out of my eyes, and my face went red trying to hold them back. I was crying, and my hair was gone. There was nothing I could do. We all looked at each other. “She’ll get used to it,” and “It looks SO CUTE!” I felt voiceless then, and I remember now how often I felt this way growing up.
Fast forward to now, and this voicelessness–stifling my own ideas of what I want, my expression, my creativity–remains to a certain extent. And, it was a large part–an integral part–of why I drank, I see now. Never allowing myself to do what I wanted, instead only what I should, what I thought everyone wanted me to do! I mean, I could go deep into this, but the gist of it is, as a twin, as an introvert, as a perfectionist at heart, as someone with an absentee father and fighting parents, all my efforts went into overachieving as a kid. When I got to high school, this morphed into a masochism that kept me up until 2 am every morning, joining and trying to excel at every single extracurricular activity on tap. College brought a crash-and-burn of sorts in the form of bulimia, heart palpitations, running away to France for a year. And finally, wine. Wiiiiine.
After my early 20s, when I WAS doing something I wanted, I reverted back to my old ways. Late 20s came and went, early 30s. I thought I was doing what I wanted, so why was I drinking all the time, exhausted and anxious and irritated and downright angry? My brain always hurt. I felt alone. Was it supposed to be this way? Everyone ELSE in New York was running around, overachieving, working and then, drinking until all hours, weren’t they?
I drank, that’s all I know. I drank after a long day of doing a job that both bored me and overwhelmed me. I drank all throughout a graduate degree that stressed me beyond which I thought humanly possible. I drank to be able to get the courage and extroversion to reach out to sources, to interview them. I would drink for these very reasons now, if I had my way! I notice now that most of the day, my stomach is sort of clenched, my gut apprehensive: ugh, I have to research this complicated subject matter; ugh, I have to get the balls and the thick skin to be able to pitch and then, face rejection of my pitch; ugh, I have to worry CONSTANTLY about earning enough money to pay my rent. Some of the best days are when I don’t have to think about this shit.
But yet…I LIKE IT. I need it!
See, on the other hand, I NEED this sort of achievement in my life, goals that are gotten by hard work. If it’s not hard-won, if it doesn’t hurt, it couldn’t be worth it, right? I have to achieve at least as much as my competitors, if not more, don’t I? Where is the line between doing something that you put up with in order to “grow” and “push your boundaries,” and doing something that you love and it being easy, almost too easy in the sense that you stagnate, that you never find that sense of accomplishment that comes from a hard job done well?
Sigh. It’s especially confusing now that I’ve gotten sober. I put down the wine glass only to realize that I drank to avoid this edge, this cliff, one which I can neither back away from nor jump off of. I am sitting on this cliff, scared out of my mind, knowing that I “can’t go home again” but pretty sure I can’t fly!
I know now that I drank in the face of these feelings of wanting to do something easier, more fun, more with my grain; while at the same time feeling afraid that I wouldn’t be challenging myself enough if I put down my burden–and, abandon the sense of identity that doing the hard work got me.
I’ve been this way all my life–a highly overachieving, academic-focused person. It’s served me well, and believe me, when I look at my resume and see my degrees from Ivy League schools and “impressive” roster of companies that I’ve worked for, I’m not ashamed. I’m proud, but only to a certain extent. At this point, I’ve realized that life is forgettable if you’re not doing something that makes you happy, that makes your day enjoyable. That’s all that we’re going to the grave with, is a memory of our happiness, locked into every cell in our body. Maybe that’s what gets us to the next plane.
What does being happy mean, though? Right now, to me being happy means not feeling stressed to the point that I’m going to get cancer of the second (voice) and fifth (sacral) chakras. Yet, it also means being challenged, and having the ability to write, to teach, to explain–I am good at this, and I like the process. So, how do I do this AND not let it get to me? How do I reconcile a desire to “achieve” in the sense that most of us here in the US understand–working for appraisal, and winning–and an equally strong desire to “let it go” and work to live? How, in fact, do I allow myself to be happy, no matter what I’m doing for work, or for play?
Pause button on thinkin’ about drinkin’
18 Oct11:00 am
Wow. Who would have thunk it?
Sorry for the silence lately. I’ve just been doing other things, i.e., life, instead of thinkin’ about drinkin’ (and everything that entails). This life and work and self-employment thing is alternately getting easier and kicking my ass!
Stay tuned, however, for regularly scheduled programming!
Day 200 + 2 weeks today! 🙂
You should get out more
13 Oct3:46 pm
Uh huh. Yup. I know, right?
I’ve learned not to take these comments from others to heart, to learn what I can from them, and well, to respect my process. Which has been to slowly but surely–as head and heart dictate–come out when I’m ready. When I’m wanting to. When I’m getting my mojo back, as Paul at Message in a Bottle so aptly described what seems to be happening to me lately.
Yesterday, October 12th, was the anniversary of something really horrible happening after a night out drinking (4 years ago) and something really amazing happening, which was that 1 year ago yesterday, I’ve gone for one whole year sober minus one day. Technically, I’ve got…208 days. Which is cause for celebration, methinks!
While I felt mostly pissed off and cheated and wanting to drink last night (yup, that shit still comes around and usually takes me off guard by how gale force it is!), I went to brunch today. I felt like it. I invited my neighbors, and we had some great conversation. (They were drunk, which made it easier for them to talk to me, I know. It did me some good: drunk people are VERY forthcoming, and they’re “good people to know” when it comes to getting into the somewhat closed circles here.)
Anyhoo, I’ve been feeling like “it” more and more, and that includes talking to people and not feeling exhausted after it’s over. LOL
I was reading a book the other night on happiness, and how to be happier. The author says that cutting out the things that you don’t need to do, or that suck time, is key. When I first got sober, I could only focus on not drinking, and I cut out a lot of things. I cut out my old job. I cut out making new friends. I cut out “frivolous socializing.” I cut out AA–it was too emotionally draining and it served to piss me off more often than not. I cut out a lot of things, I had to. That was my process, and it’s worked for me. I knew I had to figure out how to stop drinking and stay stopped on my own time. I had to learn how to derive the desire and motivation to not drink, and not be able to refer to a list of equations, as it were.
One of the most important things for me in staying sober has been to be honest with myself, not necessarily anyone or everyone else. Just because you’re not venting to the world, and admitting how horrible you feel to your 50 closest friends doesn’t mean you’re not working on it. Just because you put dealing with painful memories or emotions on the back burner doesn’t mean you won’t come back to them, and that they won’t get worked out.
I have to say, I feel a thousand pounds lighter than I did last year on October 12th. My mojo is coming back–I want to work, and I want to be more social again. My bigger-picture thinking skills are coming back; like, I can take in a lot more information and put it into place, without having it affect me, or my feelings, or my memories to the point where the pot gets too stirred and I feel overwhelmed. 95 percent of me is glad; the other 5 percent is like, Fuck you, man. I had to become a navel-gazing hermit for a year to want to want again?
Anyway, like I said, I was in a bad mood last night. But, I woke up this morning and made the choice to not carry it into the next day. I call it selective memory–and not the kind that happens when you black out! I also got some rejections to my story pitches. But, I made the choice to forget about it and move on–there are a hundred reasons as to why, none of which involve me, personally, or my talent, ability, and motivation to do a good story.
Slowly but surely, I’m coming ’round. The things I didn’t want to talk about last year, I’ve confronted. I’ve dealt with past trauma and mended my ways, so to speak. Some of the things I cut out last year, I’m adding back in. Mostly, things are righting themselves. Just the act of stopping drinking fixes a lot of problems that you don’t necessarily want or need to face all at once, head-on, right when you get sober. Some of the most painful of the ruminating is caused by the drinking; some of it, in the case with depression or anxiety, is not. It’s up to you, and your honesty with yourself, to figure it out. And, figure it out you will. Just not all at once.
Looking back, this has been a great year. I wish some things would’ve happened sooner (as in, socializing leads to networking leads to a job leads to a savings account), but they didn’t. Oh, well, that’s been my process. Drive your own drive, as one of my friends likes to say.
Hi, it’s DDG!
Drunky Drunk Girl 