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I can work without wine!

1:04 pm

I’ve had a lot of thoughts lately, but I’m just checking in today. Still here, still plugging away. I had two big weeks the past few, and today will be a big day, and then five more big days–all work, no wine. And, I am doing it.

It’s been tiring, and I still have to figure out the work-life (I have none to speak of yet) balance, but I’m actually really proud to say that I have three pieces coming out, have made my bills for October and November, and am *hopefully* going to make my bills for December (working up some pitches now, and waiting on some editing work to come through). This freelance life is pretty stressful, I must admit, and the day I go back to a 9-to-5 will be the last day I ever complain about working a 9-to-5; but, yeah, I’m proud to say that I’m not only doing it–I am doing it sober.

Honestly, it’s taken me over a year–almost a year and a half–to get my motivation and concentration levels back to where I can work. Well, to where I can work without the “reward” that was so wired into my brain. I can work without the reward of wine, and I can rest and get ready to work again without the reward of wine. There were a few times this week when I was so nervous anticipating not only my first interviews in a while, but my first interviews about things like cloud computing and SSRIs, and my first editorial feedback from a major magazine (ouch); so nervous that I couldn’t eat and all I could think about was, Why can’t I have my wine? I NEED IT. But, they were just thoughts, and as I tossed them around, I realized that I have SO been down that road: all wine will do is take away everything I’ve worked the past 18 months to get back, including my motivation and focus. I can’t imagine having to go through that getting-back process again, it was so tedious and hard-won. Plus, um, waking up hung over is something I cannot imagine doing right now, with deadlines to meet and a schedule to maintain–I’m my own boss, no one is hounding me here. In fact, it’s like I’m walking down a straight path now, and I simply cannot veer off. I’m not sure if I’d be able to handle keeping up, mentally, with my pieces and such if I distracted myself even for a few hours with wine.

So, it’s been stressful, but the important thing is that I’m managing it, and that I’m doing it without the crutch of wine. I can always drink after these stories are done, right? Right. But, then there’ll be something else, like another pitch, the personal writing, the long-term commitment that involves staying focused on a book’s breadth of research. In fact, it seems to me that there will always be a good reason NOT to drink. Or, there will never be a good time to waste being drunk or hung over.

And, honestly, after years of drinking precisely because I didn’t have projects, or the courage to start OR follow through on these writing dreams of mine–those two ideas are relief, cool water, opening clouds, a big wide sky. God-send-type stuff. I get it. I really do. No, there will never be a good time to waste being drunk in my life again. Who knew that would be a comfort to me, rather than a sentence, or a diagnosis?

So, on to my work (yes, I took on a bit too much and now have to punch in this afternoon), and a renewed resolve to make it AT LEAST another few weeks (300 days, my next goal, is right around the corner, and then there’s 365…and, it goes on, and on, and on).

Tags: alcoholic, alcoholism, binge drinking, concentration, drinking, focus, motivation, neuroscience, never a good time to be drunk, never a good time to drink, PAWS, recovery, self-employed, self-employment, sober, sobriety, stress trigger drinking, triggers, wasting time drinking, wasting time drunk, wine, women, work, work trigger drinking, work-life balance, writing

Comments 5 Comments
Categories Addiction, Alcoholism, Binge drinking, Neuroscience, PAWS, Recovery, Self-employment, Sobriety, Stress, Triggers, Work, Writing

Don’t give up before your motivation returns

5 Nov

2:46 pm

So, in getting sober, I’ve realized that there are things about myself that I know. Things that simply make me “me,” that are neither things that I have to accept nor things that I have to change. They are things that just ARE, and these things are OK.

Like, I’ve always been an overachiever. Some of this behavior was maladaptive, but to a certain degree, I was just born this way. I THRIVE off stress, off getting things done. A LOT of people do, I’m not saying I’m special. In fact, I’ve been wondering about this ever since I got sober. Why have I been struggling so much this past year? Well, I’ve been lacking in motivation because I don’t have wine anymore, that’s true, but I’ve also been going against my grain. Why do I need to go, go, go? Why do I like big cities, with all their ambitious people and innovative ideas and commotion and conflict? I don’t know! I just DO. That’s me.

The past few days have been awesome–large to-do lists, lots of information and sources to research, too much to do, all of it competing for my time. I got off on working in environments like this–for years I worked in the startup industry, and when I went back to corporate America, I can look back now and say that’s when I became depressed. When I went back to graduate school and was once again stretched to my limit, I was on top of the world again! Too bad I didn’t know how to manage my stress and my expectations–my “workaholism,” I suppose I could call it.

It’s always been a fine line for me, but in re-reading my journal from this year last night, I can say this much: I was my most enthusiastic after returning from a weekend visit back to NYC; and, I have never been more vexed, in general, than this past year struggling with too little to do and no motivation to do it.

No motivation was a daily thing in my journal, from about March until, well, now. It’s seriously been a theme in my getting sober. It was a constant struggle, and I blogged about it quite a bit. Now? I feel like there’s been some movement, something’s changed. My brain is healing, for real. Chemicals and circuits are getting back in shape. And, I can honestly say that it’s been like a missile landing in my lap, this return of my motivation levels. What a relief.

My focus, my desire to work, and my ability to manage my time–it’s all back, so it seems. I can “parse” information even better than I remember I could. For example, I seem to have learned how to say “Fuck it” to my perfectionist tendency to get lost in the details when reporting, and instead, focus on the bigger picture, the gist of it. What I need to know is who to contact; what I don’t need to know is their field of expertise (that’s why I’m interviewing them), OR–and this is key–whether or not they’re going to think I’m stupid or ill-prepared. That’s none of my business, what they think of me. (And, they simply don’t think of me, is the point. When I was drinking, I was always so concerned with what others were supposedly thinking about me. Ugh.)

It really does seem that it’s happened only within the past several weeks, maybe a month or two at most–along with motivation, I find myself focusing less on the “what if’s” and trying to perfect the outcome, and more on the “why not?” and “just do it.”

I almost gave up. I was so frustrated that I was going to be “brain-dead” forever. It’s been almost 17 months since I started getting sober, so, seeing my focus and motivation needing that long to come back is DEFINITELY a deterrent to me starting to drink again (even in moderation, whatever that means).

These past few weeks, I feel new. Renewed. A version 3.0 of myself. (I was going to say 2.0, but I think at 39, I’ve already had at least one major upgrade, right?)

The point of this post is, don’t give up! It will come. As Carol said on “Walking Dead” on Sunday’s episode (because you never know where you’re going to find sober inspiration!):

How do you not feel afraid? You just fight it and fight it and fight it and then one day, you’re not afraid anymore. We all change.

Tags: accept things about myself, acceptance, alcoholic, alcoholism, binge drinking, brain fixed, change, drinking, fear, fix brain, focus, increased focus, increased motivation, it is what it is, motivation, overachiever, psychology, rebound, recovery, sober, sobriety, things I know about myself, triggers, Walking Dead, what is, wine, women, work, workaholic

Comments 6 Comments
Categories Addiction, Alcoholism, Binge drinking, Change, Issues, Moods, Psychology, Recovery, Self-employment, Sobriety, Triggers, Work, Writing

Nostalgia, not cravings

1 Nov

11:12 pm

I wanted to drink last night. Why? I have this thing that says, I can’t go out and not drink. I can’t hang sober. And, most importantly, I can’t get my “sexy cop” or “sexy nurse” or “sexy unicorn” on WITHOUT WINE. I just can’t do it yet.

I felt sad last night, too. I felt sad that I wasn’t in the big city I used to live in, that I wasn’t dressing up like I used to, that I wasn’t going out to marvel at the bazillion costumes on the streets; that I was here, at home, not able to care, unwilling to even try to pull a costume together.

It wasn’t Wolfie, though, because I didn’t actually want to drink. (OK, maybe I did, but it wasn’t a huge craving.) I just wanted what I used to have, which always happened to include wine! The number of things that I no longer do that coincide with me no longer drinking–well, that’s the rub. I changed a LOT in getting sober, including my job, my location, my friends, and my relationship status. And, in getting sober itself, well, you guys know, you change everything within all those sub-categories! So, sometimes I can’t quite parse out what, exactly, I feel and need to focus on from the mess of thoughts.

No, it wasn’t Wolfie-boy. It was nostalgia. For what I had, and for what I now don’t have.

So, I spent the night feeling sad, and then pouted, and then just went to bed. But, you know what? I got a pumpkin today. And, I wasn’t hung over. And, it’s been a hugely productive past few weeks as a freelance writer. I feel like my renewed focus and enthusiasm to work has been building–and, the past week or so, it just sort of popped! For instance, it seems that all of the sudden, I am pitching, not caring what editors think about me (they don’t), have started having days when the story ideas just keep coming (or, rather, I’ve stopped killing them before they have the chance to bloom in my head).

In fact, Belle was right on about something changing around 8 to 10 months–it happened to me, too. Somewhere around 9 months, things just changed.

I guess I sort of stopped automatically linking wine with relief. Stopped wanting it whenever my energy flagged, or my mood swung, or an editor rejected me, or someone was following me too close in my car, or the sun went behind the clouds. I mean, I still do have thoughts of wine–especially when I am feeling nostalgic and I want what “was” and not what “is”–but I don’t really feel the pull anymore to drink when shit hits the fan. As I wrote on Lilly’s blog the other day, it’s almost like “drinking is not fun” has become a fact, one that is simply impossible to deny. Drinking is not fun–fact. I have other options, like going to bed, or sitting there with a grimace, or watching tv and sighing, or petting the dogs, or going for a 15-minute run and then coming back to my desk and NOT GIVING UP. This idea that drinking is the answer, this emotional pull–it’s gone. And I never thought it would happen, honestly. I thought I would have to battle this pull forever, however niggling. I still do have cravings, but the urge to drink as reaction seems to have disappeared. Bigger fish to fry, Wolfie-fuckhead. SEE YA!

On that note, I am going to go and carve my pumpkin now. Maybe I should give it a wolf’s face? Happy All Saints’ Day, friends!

Tags: alcoholic, alcoholism, better focus sober, binge drinking, change, cravings, drinking, drinking is not fun, emotional addiction, emotional addiction to wine, Halloween sober, holidays, holidays sober, more energy sober, nostalgia, partying sober, psychology, pull to drink, recovery, sober, sobriety, socializing sober, triggers, what is, what was, wine, women, work

Comments 8 Comments
Categories Addiction, Alcoholism, Bars, Binge drinking, Change, Cravings, Holidays, Psychology, Recovery, Sobriety, Socializing, Triggers, Work, Writing

Baby steps, or faith in…? Something, at least

10 Oct

10:43 pm

And, sound the trumpets! I pitched my first “real” science story today. I don’t want to get my hopes up, but I’m hoping anyway.

For some reason, I’ve stopped worrying about money this week–the making of it, I mean–and have had a surge of story ideas. The kind of surge I used to have, back when my brain was working, fluid, and open to anything and everything being a possible “story.” I had forgotten about the “fun” part of this job because I’d been so busy killing any and every idea I had before I even gave it a chance. Ideas, any and all, plus the ability to pitch them and then, not care if you’re rejected–that’s the heart of this profession. It’s been a while, as you know.

Drinking. Man. Drinking. What good is it? It fucks with your motivation, your reward system. It messes with your ability to learn. It ruins your powers of concentration, of focus. It zaps your energy, so you feel lacking in determination, in initiative. That “oomph” that I thought was gone for good? That I was SO SURE was never coming back, months and months into my sobriety? It is slowly but surely coming back.

And so is the reality of work. Of sitting down and reading and researching–for hours, days if need be–to at least tease out an idea enough to be able to say, this is (or is not) a story idea that I could research and pitch. Did I not know this was part of a journalist’s job? Sure, I did, but I guess I “forgot.” Conveniently, when it was much easier to drink wine than it was to follow through on any of my ideas with sustained effort. Did I just spend too much time at the recovery fair, so to speak (Joan Didion reference!), that I lost sight of the fact that I am not exempt from hard work? From actual effort? Did I expect it to be handed to me, or was that the byproduct of all the thought-wrangling involved in quitting drinking? Because I’ve spent SO much time figuring out this sobriety thing, don’t I deserve everything else to be easy from here on out? NOT.

I don’t know. But it’s coming back and it feels damn good. Good to actually WANT something again. Friends, it’s been SO long, and I’ve been feeling my way through the dark, existing on hope and dare I say, faith. Faith, yes. Faith that somehow, this shit would improve. Somehow, I would mine an ounce of authentic (as in, not forced) motivation and interest. I’ve been reading lots of science magazines and combing through scientific articles this week, not only being interested, but remaining interested after hours of work. Who is this new person? (I have to say, the sciatica has subsided a lot lately, and that is a huge relief; I really don’t acknowledge just how much my back pain has interfered with my life, do I? Of course, I don’t; this alcoholic loves to think she is supposed to be in pain all day, pretending that it’s not affecting her mood and focus. Sigh.)

I also seem to have some distance now, in the form of a MUCH more solid foundation of self-appraisal as well as perspective on what it means to “succeed” and “fail” in this business–and to take little of it that seriously. To have some fun with this. And, to learn to see when I’m becoming too tunnel-visioned and say, OK, deep breath, it’s not that big of a deal, take a break, think about something else. There’s just…balance here now, in my life. I never had any sort of “balance.” I’d heard a LOT of people talk and read and write about that elusive “balance,” but I could never pin it down and define it for myself.

So, maybe this post is about balance. And baby steps. Being OK with the baby steps, taking them even when I’m afraid or am CONVINCED that they’re too small/going to lead to nowhere fast.

This morning, I was thinking about how things have changed since this time last year. I sat down at my computer and noticed the line of folders stacked up along the left side of my screen–all of them are personal projects. I’ve had so many ideas for so long, but none of my personal writing projects ever got started, let alone worked on enough to even be labeled a project worthy of its own folder on my computer. I drank away my time, out of fear–fear which is with me even as we speak–how on Earth could I ever make any of these things happen?

Now? Lo and behold, I have projects. Some just begun, others being quietly plugged away at. And, I’ve realized that this “getting projects started” thing is very similar to quitting drinking. It’s baby steps, little by little, and it hurts and it feels awkward and painful and “I just can’t do this shit…” And then, you’re doing this shit, and it stops being shit and starts being something that you’re doing, that you CAN do and you WANT to do. For example, freelance writing: initially, for me, lots of blunders, lots of fear. But, every day, that fear goes away, I pitch more, my projects are slowly but surely increasing; the fear of being “found out” for the alcoholic fraud that I am (think I am) is going away. I am no longer a fraud; I am no longer hiding behind a bottle of wine (or inside one, more like it). I am doing the shit now, and the car keeps rolling down the hill. I’ve realized in all this healing and navel-gazing that “failing” is part of the process of moving forward. Failure is not the end. Failure is a node, and things happen at nodes.

I want to be where things are happening.

Tags: alcoholic, alcoholism, baby steps, binge drinking, change, concentration, drinking, failure, failure is part of the process, faith, fear of failure, focus, freelance life, freelance writing, freelancing, goals, recovery, sober, sobriety, wine, women, work

Comments 12 Comments
Categories Addiction, Alcoholism, Binge drinking, Change, Fun, Goals, Recovery, Self-employment, Sobriety, Work, Writing

Stress, writer’s block, and Wellbutrin, oh, my!

12 Aug

11:58 pm

On a positive note, first: tonight I had both pizza AND cake. Yay! Yay, cake! With homemade buttercream frosting! (Nope, it never gets old.)

So, that dip? The one that started about 10 days ago? Welp, it’s still here. I’m still dippin’.

I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but I think this community can handle my sad, sorry rants by now! And, I DID have fun tonight, and I DO sort of just take this all in stride. But man, the days have felt long, hard, and…extremely agitating.

After some pondering lately of my past, I think I may have had an at least notable chemical imbalance for most of my life, which was exacerbated by abusing wine. These days, I just can’t seem to shake the foggy brain, and I’m wondering if this was basically my base state and I used wine all along–about 15 years–to “fix” it. I feel like sobriety has sort of killed my fire. I NEED that fire, you know? It’s not that I want to drink wine; it’s more like I want to inject it directly into my brain.

I don’t feel very motivated. At the very least, I feel (much?) less motivated than I used to, before I quit drinking. Days like today, when the brain fog takes hold, it’s hard to find any motivation at all! The things I do do, I find myself doing more out of necessity than any true sense of pleasure or reward. Maybe this sense of authentic pleasure or reward is so unfamiliar to me that I don’t recognize it when I see it? Keep your eye on the prize, I keep telling myself. Yet, I’ve been waiting, and waiting, and waiting…for the other shoe to drop–where the hell are my pink clouds? Sobriety just feels flat. Worse is, *I* feel flat.

I’ve been figuring, I can either go on an antidepressant (Wellbutrin sounds exactly like what my brain needs, a “dopaminergic” jump start), or I can go back to drinking. (Or, of course, I can wait it out and muscle through, which is 99.5 percent likely what I will do. Why the black-and-white thinking, I’m not sure; it just seems like after all, there’s not that many more choices in terms of immediate solutions…) It’s more bitter than sweet to realize that I probably drank (and did a lot of other self-soothing behavior) not just to self-medicate normal negative feelings but to self-medicate abnormal brain chemistry.

It’s no secret that a LOT of people self-medicate trauma with drugs and alcohol. For some reason, I tend to dismiss my past as irrelevant to my current place, as if it was totally my fault. My past, I’ve come to see, definitely predisposed me to addiction: recurrent stress in the form of childhood emotional trauma. I don’t remember a time when my parents weren’t angry or sad or upset; I remember the yelling, and crying. I remember trying so hard to please, putting my introverted self out there in plays, musical competitions, dance recitals; succeeding in all of it but being so emotionally taxed in the process. (I hated performing so much that after almost a decade of playing piano, and performing, it took me almost another decade to pick it up again. Sadly, I never play musical instruments in front of people, and I think my past has something to do with it!) Onto college, with more overachieving and ridiculous striving. (Who gives themselves a literal semester of recurrent heart palpitations? Someone taking a heavy pre-med courseload and getting 4 hours of sleep a night, that’s who!) I probably messed things up way more than I can understand by being a binge eater for several years during my late teens and early 20s, too.

Stress (especially as a kid) causes your body to make all sorts of adjustments, and you end up both more sensitive to it (lower amounts of stress can now cause a greater response) as well as being unable to produce normal amounts of dopamine (and probably others, like noradrenaline, which is what Wellbutrin works on improving). You–well, I–end up being always in deficit, feeling a lack.

I drank to feel better, plain and simple. Could it be as easy as finally getting the meds I need to fix my dopamine depletion, let’s just call it? And, even if I didn’t start out this way, and drinking caused me to mess up those circuits, wouldn’t I be justified even more in getting a prescription for meds?

I must admit, I fear the side effects. Every time I’ve taken a pill, I’ve gone crazy. Xanax is not my friend. Vicodin is not my friend. Chloroquine is DEFINITELY not my friend. All the side effects of Wellbutrin sound…horrifying. And, believe me, those “rare” ones DO occur, and it’s not a fun trip.

Has it really come to this? Wellbutrin versus red wine? I’ve had ONE bottle of wine on ONE night in almost a year. I don’t know if this is going to “right” itself. How much longer should I wait? In sobriety, I feel less motivated and less able to find motivation to work the way I once did. I can’t focus, and this is a problem. I’m at the point where I really need to find that mental oomph, otherwise I’m going to have to change professions and call it a fucking day.

That’s what’s been up over here. It’s not a fun post, but I know that I won’t drink. Maybe it’s just a gnarly case of writer’s block?

Have a great night, all. Tomorrow is another day…to hope it gets better and a firework goes off inside my head. (A girl can dream, right?)

Tags: alcoholic, alcoholism, antidepressant, binge drinking, childhood trauma, depression, drinking, PAWS, psychology, recovery, sober, sobriety, stress and addiction, Wellbutrin, wine, women, work, writer's block, writing

Comments 6 Comments
Categories Alcoholism, Binge drinking, Depression, Psychology, Recovery, Sobriety, Writing

Recovery meets real life, or, Time to get back to work!

19 Jun

8:02 pm

It’s not that I don’t like being on this inner tube, fizzy water in hand, floating down the calm waters of a river with no end in sight, because I do.

For me, recovery has been about stopping what I was doing and just…stalling for a while. Breathing. Doing nothing but focusing on myself, and my recovery. Don’t get me wrong: getting sober WAS work, but I didn’t have the stress of going into an office every day doing a job I felt was meaningless (a large part of why I drank in the first place). I had good reason to not work (and here, I use the term in the sense of “real world” work): I was getting sober. I was healing. I was putting all my energy–for once, for ONCE!–into saving myself instead of the saving the world, as it were.

Until recently. Lately, I’ve been pushing myself to get back into the world of science writing. Truth be told, I’ve been scared SHITLESS of writing on a freelance basis, well, since I graduated from boot cam—err, my master’s program in journalism. I tried, here and there over the past several years, wrote a memoir that I shelved, started and stopped a few other personal writing projects; but, I simply haven’t pitched many story ideas–what if I was ignored or worse, brutally rejected?! YES, I worked in the field, but my standards were high: in order to be a “real” journalist, I needed to be pitching and writing as a contributing editor, a freelance writer; not being assigned stories and story ideas by an editor.

It’s hard to explain this pedantic notion of what it means to “be a writer” in my mind. Whatever it is, I wasn’t it. No way, no how. Even though I WAS, actually, writing quite complex pieces every month for a magazine (and doing it well, I might add). Somewhere along the way, I lost confidence in myself as a writer–in my creativity and in my writing.

That’s been the story of my life, though: a deep-seated lack of self-confidence. Part of it is genetic: I’m an introvert. Journalism isn’t necessarily a good occupation for a lot of us writers who, yes, prefer to be alone all day. However, we grow, we learn, we stretch outside our comfort zones; it gets easier, and it becomes a job that we can do. Part of it is experience: my graduate program was pretty brutal, and I guess I internalized that criticism a little too much. I’m always fearing the worst when it comes to negative feedback and/or criticism. I was–I am–in abject fear of failure. Finally, part of it is being from the Midwest: we don’t brag. Bragging is just not in our blood. We’re nice, we let others go first, we say we’re sorry a little too much. (In fact, I wonder how different my life would have gone if I had been born and raised in New York…)

I KNEW this day would come, and maybe I drew out my recovery–quitting, staying quit, conquering the cravings, dealing with some issues–so that I could put off getting back into the real world of work.

Yet, I’ve made some progress lately on the pitching and writing front. I’ve also started the process of getting back into reviewing and assimilating the science news (which is a hefty amount of information, to be done on a gradual basis).

I think, actually, that the so-called “miracle” is on its way. I’ve noticed my confidence increasing: I’ve suddenly seemed to have arrived at this point of, Hey, I can do this, and I WILL DO THIS. It’s no longer a matter of, I’m not good enough, or, I’m afraid. I need to get back in the game. I’m a (damn) good player, and I’ve been on the sidelines for too long.

Onward! 100 days in one week… Unicorns, CHARGE! 🙂 *glitter ball*

Tags: alcoholic, alcoholism, binge drinking, drinking, fear of failure, milestone, perfectionism, real world, recovery, self-confidence, sober, sobriety, wine, women, work, writing

Comments 9 Comments
Categories 100 Day Challenge, Addiction, Alcoholism, Binge drinking, Milestones, Recovery, Sobriety, Work, Writing

Bobbing along nicely and–BAM! Another pesky issue…

10 Jun

1:52 am

That’s how I feel. I’m just bobbing in my inner tube in the middle of the ocean. There’s blue horizon everywhere–possibility–but I’m sort of just USED to it. No big whoop. And then…

CRASH! I run head first into an issue like, I have low self-esteem. Or, I may never speak to my brother again and I’m not sure I want to, and that feels really bad inside. And, all my hip-hip-hooraying for myself fizzes out of me like air from a wet balloon.

For the past several weeks (a month?), the urge to drink has been replaced by the urge to do. To Get Things Done. The necessity to move forward, before It’s All Too Late. I’ve got 12 weeks sober again tomorrow, which is good-fine-great-grand. Whatever, in a way. I really can’t even think about drinking, I have too many important tasks and decisions. Maybe next week, after 90 days? Nah, probably not. Maybe next month, after 100 days? I don’t know…I might be volunteering, or going back to school, or something else huge and stressful (what IS my problem?).

Fortunately, there are no real cravings, is what I’m saying; I’ve basically stomped them into the ground with my rationalizing and true-storytelling (i.e., If you drink, you will feel horrible and do and/or say horrible things). And, this has been absolutely amazing. A relief of the sort I never in a million years would have imagined, let alone hoped for, in sobriety. NEVER. Never never never. (I’m still waiting for the desire to guzzle vino to come roaring back, or even niggling its way in; but so far, so good. FUCK YOU, WOLFIE. HATE YOU VERY MUCH!)

Anyway, tomorrow, aside from finishing an editing project, I want to pitch a few story ideas to an editor. Yes, actually. And, no, I have no idea who this nebulous figure is, said editor, but I do have contacts at the magazine and why not? WHY NOT.

I discovered that, sans wine, I can no longer avoid confronting the existence of my sad, sorry self-esteem. I have major self-esteem issues, and of course, drinking made them worse but also, drinking was just a good cover. I didn’t have to confront them and therefore, I also didn’t have to deal with them. As for pitching, partly, I’m still making excuses why I shouldn’t, but mainly, it’s the rejection I fear now (I guess) more than the work involved in the ensuing project if said editor says yes (or the work involved in pitching more and again and elsewhere if said editor says no). OH, WELL. That’s the writing life, and I am SO SICK OF MYSELF for not actually doing it.

I can do this. And I will. I just have no idea why I haven’t believed in myself enough for this long to not even fucking try.

Like I said, bobbing along and then–BAM! Icebergs! (The good thing about being sober is, you don’t get stuck on the iceberg’s tip and start to freeze to death. You see it, drink in some of its actual stunning beauty, and then, push it aside with your toe. You are, after all, bobbing along in YOUR inner tube, on a summer’s day, blue horizon all around. And, wait, LOOK–there’s the shoreline, and there’s your Unicorn with Sparkly Teeth! She’s waiting for you! She’s still pulling your water wagon and YES, yes she IS holding a nice fizzy drink in one hoof JUST FOR YOU! And you look back, see the iceberg floating away, and sigh, Eh, it was JUST an iceberg…)

Tags: 100 Day Challenge, alcoholic, alcoholism, binge drinking, cravings, drinking, goals, issues, recovery, self-esteem, sober, sobriety, wine, women, writing

Comments 3 Comments
Categories 100 Day Challenge, Addiction, Alcoholism, Binge drinking, Cravings, Goals, Issues, Recovery, Sobriety, Work, Writing

You have to go through it to get through it

30 Dec

9:39 pm

I REALLY wanted to drink last night. REALLY, REALLY, REALLY. Frustration, disappointment in self, ennui, fear of the past and future, sadness… I spent the day on the couch, feeling ill, too, which only contributed to this pent-up bad juju.

A fog of desire, that’s what it was. A fog of desire to drink. To drown it out, drown it away.

I used to drink when I felt the way I felt last night. OH, YES, I did. NO WAY IN HELL was I going to let that pimple come to a head. What I mean is, I would shut down the emerging thoughts before they fully formed, effectively transfiguring them into something other, something nebulous–something drunken. I would drink, then weep, yet, I never understood exactly what I was crying about; I knew I felt bad, but I never let myself think the real thoughts, only the drunken, fake ones.

I really wanted to drink the past two days, actually. I’ve just felt low energy, depressed, frustrated. Numerous points, but always the same theme: I’m not doing enough with my talents, I’m wasting valuable time. What’s it all mean? Why create, produce, leave behind, anyway? I’ve forgotten most of my life (I mean, I don’t specifically remember a lot of the hours I’ve been alive, y’know?), what’s the point of creating new memories? (LOL–SUCH a negative thought!) And, of course, the next thought had to come: In fact, what a SHITE thing to do, to have a kid and subject him/her to what I’m feeling and thinking right now, which HAS to cross most people’s minds now and then, right? RIGHT? And on and on. We rented “Ted,” and that was pretty funny, so the night wasn’t ALL BAD, of course! Yet, the whirring continued until my boyfriend went to bed and I was left on the couch (still), wishing I had bought myself a treadmill for Christmas. Or a sledge hammer!

I’ve always felt pressured to accomplish, achieve, create. It’s become an addiction, I know, perceiving my reality this way and reacting to it, usually negatively. However, being sober–getting sober, the process of, actually–has allowed me to begin to see that NO, I don’t have to keep doing what I’ve always done! I have a choice in how I see the world and how I let it make me feel. I mean, I can choose not only WHAT I think about but also HOW I choose to think about certain things, especially my own ideas of productivity, purpose, and achievement. I get to choose how I relate to my thoughts, my feelings, and my gut reactions.

It’s a process, though, so one step forward, two steps back. Last night, I did the usual: I let my brain go there, and pretty soon, I was clenching my gut, nearly wanting to break my teeth because… I…I…What am I doing? What am I doing with my time? Am I simply not a good writer? Have I become a has-been? And then, the thought of thoughts, the rotten core of the apple:

Have I lost myself in being sober? Which, of course, almost instantaneously morphed into, Sobriety has taken myself away from me!

Evil-doer, DEVIL sobriety.

Today, I’m not sure what to think about this melodramatic conclusion except, it’s sort of true. I am no longer my old self. I no longer have wine to boost my mood, to encourage me to want to do what I thought I wanted to do. Without wine, I don’t do this and I don’t do that, so did I ever really LIKE doing this and that? Was I even good at it?

Moreover, I just feel–feel is the key word; feelings are tricky, remember?–like I’m no longer myself! Sure, I’m a new self, and probably a better one. But, I MISS the old me. The “fun” me. I realized I haven’t danced alone in my room since June! That saddens me. And, I have to say, not drinking has left me feeling more content but less happy. I don’t get to get giddy, to let off steam. Sure, I could do this sober, but…why haven’t I?

So, that thought of “I’ve lost myself in getting sober” was what sent me on a crying jag. No wine, though, to initiate it for no apparent reason…and to instantly turn it off when the wine wears off. You know how that goes: you get drunk, you turn on a song (fuck you, Damien Rice), and you start bawling. It feels good, mainly because you DO have something to bawl about but it’s deep down and you simply don’t want to bring it up, or you CAN’T, or you can’t without the wine; and then, the song ends, you abruptly stop crying, and you refill your glass…likely now laughing. At something equally ethereal and, well, NOT REAL.

Last night, the opposite. Real pain, real tears. A staring-me-in-the-face realization that YES, maybe I will never be the same person, maybe I will no longer be able to identify with that self, which I’ve been living with for a long time. Yes, I am getting older; yes, I might not have children; yes, I might be a has-been, as far as the science writing community in [cold east coast city] goes. Yes, yes, yes. And, it hurts.

But you know what? This, too, shall pass. Cry, sit there and sulk in the dark, and then realize, who the FUCK cares anyway aside from little old you? LOL. Like, if John Doe over there doesn’t even KNOW what I’m going through let alone can even identify with it, is it really worth fussing over? Let it go. CHOOSE how you react to your own Never Never Land of thoughts, Drunky Drunk Girl. It’s not real…

A funny thing happened, then, which is pretty simple: I felt better. When I woke up this morning, I felt like I had made some sort of progress. Moved forward, or at least moved beyond a certain point. If I had drunk to drown out my thoughts and feelings, I never would have processed them. I might have had a fake catharsis (cry, hit someone, pass out exhausted), but I would have woken up in the same place–still sad, still semi-baffled and unclear, and worse, HUNG OVAH.

So, the title of my post: you have to go through it to get through it. For me, desiring to drink these days is much less about wanting to get drunk and happy as it is avoiding confronting my “issues.” Which is a good thing to know, really. Simple, but it takes what it takes, right? Oh, AA, I must thank you for your funny little expressions that I’ve sort of come to adore.

(I’ve decided that the Big Book is a bunch of malarkey, but we’ll blog about that another night.)

AND, thank you, Sobersphere, you’ve kept me once again from ruining my streak with one false move–coming up on 90 days in about a week and a half!

Tags: accomplishment, achievement, alcoholic, alcoholism, anxiety, binge drinking, coping mechanism, coping skills, cravings, depression, drinking, ennui, goals, productivity, psychology, recovery, sense of purpose, sobriety, triggers, wine, women

Comments 32 Comments
Categories Addiction, Alcoholism, Anxiety, Binge drinking, Coping mechanisms, Cravings, Depression, Life, Psychology, Recovery, Sobriety, Triggers, Work, Writing

Perspective…and post-hoilday pangs

27 Dec

10:10 pm

Oy. I got ’em. Well, I got pangs, but I don’t got (ouch, sorry, Mom) perspective.

The past few days I’ve felt like a mack truck hit me. I just can’t. Do. Anymore. Taking care of shit. AND, it’s not like I had THAT much to do!? What is wrong with me? All I know is, I’m way too hard on myself AND, drinkin’ won’t fix these (post-)holiday blues…

Anyway, I’m tired. Overwhelmed by…what, exactly? The holidays are kind of bullshit. I mean, stressful, running, spending, expecting, performing, judging…no fucking wonder people go crazy. Someone in my AA circle hanged herself a few days before Christmas. It’s one of those things that just sticks in the back of your mind, rests there like a benign tumor. I had met and talked to her a few times, and she seemed to be, well, on something. Talk about my little first-world problems meaning nothing. Annnnnd, now I’m feeling guilty for having any feelings at all about my life. ARG.

I really wanted to drink today. Feeling somewhat exhausted from the constant telling myself that I really didn’t want to partake in the “fun” at multiple Christmas get-togethers; remaining cheerful even when I felt a little bit like stomping my feet and throwing a tantrum inside; looking on Facebook to see multiple people/friends, OF COURSE, publishing articles, and books, and yada fucking yada. Me? STILL stalling. No pitching, no reporting, no writing. I could do it, I could be competitive. I’m wasting my talents, I often think. Have I simply chosen not to participate, at least for now? Am I just lazy, or still burnt out? Or, maybe I, um, had a mental/nervous breakdown the past three years (since I was fired from my job after a disastrously drunken Christmas party shenanigan–I yelled at my CEO and then missed two days work because I, um, went to jail for disorderly conduct…). In any case, it’s time, isn’t it? Shouldn’t I be busting a move? What is wrong with me?

All these thoughts were circling in my head as I woke this morning. And, I woke from a dream in which I woke up to find that I had gotten shitfaced and texted mean things to like, 20 people while sleeping. Let me repeat: I dreamt that I drank while I was asleep and did a bunch of mean things. So, there is now something called “drunkwalking” in my world, which is made even more meta because I dreamt about it. Jesus.

Today, I tried, but it was hard to really appreciate any of it. The water, the beach with my boyfriend, the sunshine, my new bikini and wrap… So, I decided to come home, take a deep breath, walk the dogs, gaze at the marvelous moonrise through a set of pink clouds, and eat cake. My boyfriend invited me out to the bar where he works, but I just don’t feel like sitting around watching people drink and then trying to have a conversation with someone who won’t remember it and who keeps repeating him/herself anyway…

So, what’s the point of this? Oh, perspective. Wavering at the moment. And I do have pangs, as in “I really want to drink when I hit 90 days”-type pangs, but I’m hoping they’ll pass once I get a handle on my next moves, professionally. This was a problem that nearly floored me when I was drinking, and I would drink and drink and drink over it. Now, I realize that it simply needs to be addressed. I can do it, if I put my mind to it. Drinking will not solve anything, and will only keep me in this place, for longer.

Onward and upward. Or, maybe, let it go and go to bed early. Or, better yet, watch The Lord of the Rings trilogy in preparation for The Hobbit in the theater tomorrow night? YES.

Tags: alcoholic, alcoholism, binge drinking, coping mechanism, coping skills, cravings, depressed, drinking, holiday blues, holidays, lonely, perspective, recovery, sad, sobriety, stress, triggers, wine, women

Comments 11 Comments
Categories Addiction, Alcoholism, Binge drinking, Cravings, Holidays, Recovery, Sobriety, Triggers, Work, Writing

Anyone up for a sober conference? Promises in Paradise is where it’s at!

25 Oct

2:29 am

There’s a conference on [beautiful island where I now live] this weekend called “Promises in Paradise,” which is basically a weekend-long AA meeting. Not sure if I can swallow it just yet; I mean, I still sort of cry inside every time I think, island + wine + DDG = null set.

Ah, well. Maybe, like my boyfriend says, I should fill up my wine glass with chilled rooibos tea — my current obsession — instead of wine?

Today was OK; nothing Earth-shattering. Which, in a way, bums me out. (I think I just have to get used to having settled in, and not, like, continuously moving around and looking forward to being somewhere else — or do I? I’m already looking forward to trips to PR, D, and H!) I had an interview with a possible fourth client, and that went well. I must say, this freelance thing takes a lot of patience, as there isn’t as much measurable output as one might need to feel productive. AND, it just takes a lot of time linking up with people and arranging work. I feel somewhat blah about this next project, but I’m sure I’ll rally.

No meeting for me today — figured I’d be able to OD on meetings this weekend if I end up hitting that conference. (And, why not? It’s right around the corner and how cool will I be when I get to tell people that I actually LIVE in said paradise?). I ended up spending the evening cleaning and unpacking! It feels GREAT to have my closet a little bit more organized, to have the bags off the floor and the sheets and towels and underwear in their right place. Yet…

Always a yet. Why can’t I just be happy with what is? Settling in makes me feel unsettled, that’s just a given. I am a restless mofo, and I know this about myself. It’s one of the reasons I drank. Speaking of which, at last night’s meeting, one woman shared that her biggest obstacle to acceptance was that she didn’t like the 21st century! LOL I could relate; I mean, we all have our “head” issues, our perceptions of reality that make us feel crazy/weird being human. Mine is information overload and an inability to “see through” the physical reality around me. More often than not, I would drink out of anxiety and frustration surrounding these glitches.

Anyway, yup, always in my head! Oh, well, that’s what this blog is for. Anyway…I miss my stuff in [cold east coast city]. I miss…my life. In [cold east coast city]? I’m not sure. I feel…like I’m floating. Maybe it’s time for a “real” job; it’s cool to have reached my goal of earning a living as a freelance writer, but I know — have known for a while — that it’s not something that I find all that rewarding anymore, writing/editing, and there are other things I know I’d like to spend my time doing.

All in due time. One day at a time. I have trouble with this, so I’m just going to calmly shut my laptop and Turn It Off.

Oh, and: 14 days, kids! And, really, very little desire to drink; very large desire to keep working, moving forward, and keeping the “wine gut” to a bare minimum (I think I can safely transition to using the more aptly named “blueberry muffin gut” now).

Tags: 12 steps, AA, alcoholic, Alcoholics Anonymous, alcoholism, binge drinking, drinking, freelance writing, goals, moving, Promises in Paradise, recovery, sobriety, travel, triggers, wine, women

Comments 10 Comments
Categories 12 Steps, AA, Addiction, Alcoholism, Binge drinking, Goals, Recovery, Sobriety, Work, Writing

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Drunky Drunk Girl

I can work without wine!

Don’t give up before your motivation returns

Nostalgia, not cravings

Baby steps, or faith in…? Something, at least

Stress, writer’s block, and Wellbutrin, oh, my!

Recovery meets real life, or, Time to get back to work!

Bobbing along nicely and–BAM! Another pesky issue…

You have to go through it to get through it

Perspective…and post-hoilday pangs

Anyone up for a sober conference? Promises in Paradise is where it’s at!

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