"Just as drinking pervades our culture, it diffused into my personality. I grew into my abuse, like the occasional tree you can find on a nature walk, its roots spilling over both sides of a boulder like outspread fingers, in spite of the rock's lack of soil, moisture, and stability. To see it only at the height of its maturity is to wonder: Why build on that?" ~ Koren Zailckas, Smashed

This blog is one of my many recovery efforts to uproot my damaged foundation and cultivate the right conditions for blossoming.

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

2012 - Getting Sober on the Inside

I have been avoiding getting sober on the inside.  I have been avoiding the transformation that I know, I just know, it entails.  In my three years of not drinking, I’ve learned so much about the depth and range of my alcoholism but it’s only in the last few months that I’ve begun to catch glimpses of just how deeply I can change, my life can change, once I dive deeper into sober living beyond just not drinking. 
Now that I’ve been connecting slightly more regularly with a particular group, now that I’ve actually committed to a sponsor, I feel like I’m on the precipice of a change as big as the one I made when I put down my wine.  I can see why I’ve avoided this. It’s scary!  I know I will discover honesty, which will enable me to identify and articulate some pretty major illusions about my life that were fueled by alcoholism.  I still wear alcoholic lenses and I am about to take them off.  It’s time.  It’s just time to do so.  And I know what this will entail.  Honesty about my career.  Honesty about my marriage.  I adore my husband and I have a good career but I now have the perspective and courage to articulate, even if just to myself, all of the issues I glossed over when I built this life in my wine-drenched days.  Forever I have always buried my own needs, desires, interests in order to please others (raise your hand if you are also the daughter of an alcoholic!).  And my career?  Wow. I am evolving so much just via not drinking (“re-covering” my true self?) that I feel like I’m almost a bystander, watching in fascination as new (or just buried?) interests and talents emerge. 
 My alcoholism functioned in two powerful ways ~ it buried things for me to avoid or it colored things so I could romanticize them.  That’s my alcoholic life in a nutshell:  Avoidance and Romanticism.  My degrees, my career, my friendships, my relationships, my interests.  Who am I without my alcoholic lens?  What will my life look like?  Ah, what a journey 2012 will be…

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Sober Holidays - Argh!!!

Omg, I had not idea the holidays were so stressful!  Why has no one ever told me about this?

I always thought Christmas was the most blissful and amazing time of year ~ full of sparkly lights and glittery presents and stylish clothes.  I couldn't believe it whenever I heard anyone complain.  What a bunch of grinches, I thought.  I was having a great time, thankyouverymuch, because it was "the most wonderful time of year" and... oh wait... because I was drinking lots and lots of wine.  Ha!  Right, it was wonderful because I was rocking a buzz all day, every day.  Oh god.

After three years of sobriety (and three years of uber-stressful holidays. Coincidence?  I think not.) I just realized that I never felt holiday anxiety because I was ALWAYS DRINKING!!!  Why didn't any one warn me about the whole overwelming-sober-holiday experience?  Wow.  Quite a trip.  Still, like many other aspects of my life, it's such a relief to realize that it's not just me.  That I'm not crazy or incapeable or alone ~ this is part of getting sober.  This is what it feels like to... well, to feel things.  And I just need to let it wash over me - the stress, guilt, doubt, whatever - and find new tools to confront it all without falling apart.  Oh, thank god for meetings.  Thank god for a community of recovering alcoholics.  And thank god I'm giving myself permission to NOT be an uber-chipper-holiday-cheerleader anymore.  I'm allowed to have a mini-meltdown in whole foods, leave my overpriced organic groceries in line, and hop on the subway for home.  (That was actually pretty liberating - I highly recommend it).  I'm allowed to slightly fall apart when I haven't pulled together a gift for my amazingly tolerant and supportive husband (I'm getting there on this one).  I'm also allowed to take sick days from work when desperately need some quiet down-time (three cheers for working in the flexible world of higher education).

Okay, that's all for now.  If anyone has tips for getting through the holidays with some kind of calm joy, please share!  Have a great night, all...

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Lousy Sober Moments

What could be more appropriate than following my "Blissful Sober Moments", posted ages ago, with "Lousy Sober Moments"?  Isn't that totally the nature of recovery?   That wondeful rush of "Omg I am really getting my act together!"  to "Okay now ~ time to stick my head in the oven!" 

Don't worry, I'm not really near the head-in-the-oven scenario (especially since I'm having a great hair day) but I am having one of my I-Am-Overwhelmed days.  I read something recently about how it's so challanging for recovering alcoholics to learn normal functioning because we "feel so much".  I don't know about you, but this rings totally true for me.  I have always been aware of my emotional depths and extremes as being a bit beyond the emotional realm of those around me.  This used to make me feel superior, of course.  "Look at me ~ I am so alive!  I FEEL so much!" while I judged everyone with a calm, even  temperment and drama-free life as a total bore.  Spiritually dead.  Creatively numb.  An idiot, I was.  Now I wish I could just remove about half of my emotional capactiy and mail it off to someone who needs it. 

I just wish I weren't so reactive with any kind of emotional extreme.  Overjoyed, furious, blissed-out, devestated.  This is exhausting!  Why can't I just be happy, perturbed, calm, sad?  Perhaps I will always retain my emotional extremes but will get better at managing them?  After three years of sobriety via just going to meetings and having NO sponsor and NO step work, I am very much aware that I inhabit the dreaded world of dry-drunks.  I see so so so so clearly that alcoholism is a disease of thinking, of perception, of behavior and that it remains (and gets worse) even after putting down the glass (I mean bottle/s) of wine.  I see that AA is treatment not just for the craving and addiction to alcohol (so evil, it is) but for the actual disease itself which I believe pre-exists the drink.  This disposition is what lead me to drink.  It's facinating, the combination of physical dependance and mental... oh, I'll just say it... mental illness.  That's what I believe it is.

Okay, so the good news is I did get a sponsor two days ago.  This time, I am willing.  Whatever she wants me to do/write/say/think, I'm going to follow along.  With 28 years of sobriety ~ and a super-wonderful disposition ~ I think I'm safe in suspecting she knows things I could benefit from.

Exhausting, this is.  Exhausted, I am.  Off to turn down my emotional volume with silly tv and a nap on the couch.  Hope you are all having a healthy, calm, sober night...