A Sobering Vacation

Travel advice. Don’t go to Dublin, Ireland, on vacation, unless you want to be reminded that you would love nothing more than to get drunk. Mr. Supportive identifies with his Irish ancestry, as does our 13-year-old daughter, who will from now on be known as ”Little Darling.” I haven’t a drop of Irish blood, but when they both said that they really wanted to go to Dublin on vacation, I went along. This was an insane decision, even if I wasn’t an alcoholic, considering the state of the US dollar compared with the Euro, but I have to let that go. What’s done is done.

All I can say is that I should’ve gone to Dublin when I was 22 instead. Actually, when I was 22, my sister and I were traveling in Italy (heeding our ancestral yearnings) and Spain (before the dawn of the Euro and when you could get a room for the equivalent of $10 a night). We planned to go to Dublin for St. Patrick’s Day but got too drunk the night before we were supposed to head out and slept all day instead. Sounds about right. So we celebrated St. Patrick’s Day in Torremolinos, Spain, on the Costa del Sol. Didn’t really matter where we got drunk, now, did it?

Pubs really are a big deal in Dublin and people cram into them every night, spilling the smokers out onto the sidewalk, where they swill beer and drag cigarettes until 4 or 5 a.m. I know how late they stay up because our hotel was adjacent to Grafton Street, the place for partiers to party. They don’t tell you this on the hotel website. They also don’t tell you that there is a bar connected to the hotel where they play Abba music until 3:30 a.m. The bar’s patio happened to be just beneath our open window, where the drinkers were drinking and the smokers were smoking. Although the night was warm, we had to keep the window closed because of the noise and smoke. My Little Darling said, “It’s not that they’re keeping me awake that bothers me. It’s that I want to be down there with them.” Ditto for mum.

When we left Ireland, we stayed with friends in England. One of these friend was my old drinking buddy. She still drinks and asked me why I couldn’t have just one sip of her beer? “What will happen? Will you explode?” No. I’ll just finish half of yours and then order my own and keep ordering until we leave and then have something to drink when we get back to the cottage and then go to sleep and wake up feeling like a stuffed cabbage and hating myself for wanting to do it again.

The problem with alcoholism is that it doesn’t go away when you stop drinking. So it’s best not to put yourself in positions where you will be tempted. Truth be told, if my Little Darling was not with us, I would have gotten drunk in Dublin (and then, of course, in England as well, and my friend would’ve been happy). There is no doubt in my mind. The thing about this method of sobriety is that my Little Darling is not always going to be with me. If all goes according to plan, she will grow up, move out, and create a life of her own. She will no longer want to go on vacation with her parents (not that she wants to now, but she has no choice). She will no longer be my excuse for staying sober. I can no longer say, I need to be sober for my daughter because she won’t need me in the same way. Of course, if she has children, I can use them as my excuse. But alas, at some point, I have to decide that I want to be sober for me. That I want to be clear headed and healthy. That I want to feel good about the decisions I make knowing that they are the best I am capable of making. I have to decide that I never want to lay in bed at 2 a.m. again hating myself for getting drunk, feeling swelled up like a sausage with my head about to pop off and stomach churning.

And so where did I go wrong? First off, it’s best to travel with people who do not imbibe. This is difficult, when your spouse drinks, even if he is not an alcoholic. But he wanted to go to the pubs and hear music, as did I. I would’ve been better off letting him go to the pubs alone and finding a theater where I could enjoy Irish entertainment without waiters asking me what I would like to drink. This permeates life. You need friends and acquaintences who do not drink. I find that people who drink really don’t want to be friends once they find out that I’m in recovery anyway. It’s no fun for them. I do have friends who don’t drink at all and those are the people with whom I share my time, celebrate my holidays, and go on my girls-only weekends. Otherwise, it is just too much of a struggle.

Secondly, I should’ve found out, in advance, where the AA meetings were being held in both England and Ireland and I should’ve planned to attend those meetings even though I was on vacation. No, especially because I was on vacation.

People in AA say, “I know I have another drunk in me. I just don’t know if I have another sobering up.” That should be reason enough for me.

Be Good to Yourself

Drinking heavily used to be the way I took care of myself. Chasing away the anxiety, depression, and stress with a few tall, cool ones was my “self care.” When I finally made the decision to quit, I knew I had to replace my spa-in-a-bottle with something that relaxed me and allowed me to escape from my life now and again. Self care is not a temporary state to get you through the first year. It has to become a lifestyle. Some women are not particularly good at taking care of themselves, especially women with partners and children. We tend to make sure everyone else’s needs are met first and then serve ourselves the wilted, lukewarm leftovers. This is nothing new. We’ve all heard it before but how many of us take it to heart and actually put ourselves first once in awhile? 

Of course, I needed justification for putting myself first, so I calculated the tremendous amount of money I’d save the family budget by discontinuing my consumption of alcohol and applied some of those dollars toward two-hour body massages once a month. They were my reward for maintaining my sobriety. I scheduled the appointments for Fridays after work, thereby creating a whole new version of Happy Hour. Having the toxins rubbed out of your tired, stressed-out muscles once a month with herb scented oils in a quiet, warm room with the sounds of nature playing on a portable CD player feels really good.

So does getting out of debt. So I put the rest of my monthly savings toward paying down our credit card bill. We only have one card but had reached the $5000 limit (how’d that happen?). I created a chart with colored markers and “happy” images that I cut out of magazines. Every time I made a payment, I charted the graph downward and affixed one of those jolly pictures next to the amount so we could visualize our progress. It made me feel good to look at this artful chart, as nerdy as that sounds, and it reinforced the benefits of sobriety.

I found that when I stopped sedating myself every evening and weekend, I had a tremendous amount of nervous energy. I took advantage of it and cleaned my house. It was OK that I couldn’t sit still and that I wasn’t comfortable in my skin yet. There were plenty of drawers and closets that needed cleaning out and reorganizing. We all know that clearing out the physical clutter has a tremendous effect on us mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. It feels great to throw away those stained clothes from the 80s with shoulder pads on steriods. And don’t try to donate them to your local Goodwill. If they are clean, stain free, and in good shape, even out-of-style clothes can be of use to someone. But I can’t tell you how many charitable garage sales I have helped organize where people drop off their stained clothing in various states of disrepair (or used underwear — now honestly!). Don’t kid yourself. The next guy will toss your favorite t-shirt from the 10th grade right into the trash, but curse you and it first. So cut out the middle man and throw away your own garbage.

For escapism, I unapologetically turned to romantic comedies, self-help books, and girls-only weekends. You could easily do 90 romantic comedies in 90 days. As for self-help books, I went for the spiritual (Caroline Myss is a favorite), financial planning (gotta love Suze Orman, the common woman’s money guru), and health (Andrew Wile’s Eight Weeks to Optimum Health got me started). I got my books and many of the movies from my local library — still working on that credit card bill. As for weekend getaways, I still take an annual pilgrimage to a hot springs resort a few hours from my home with a friend. We do yoga, soak, sit in the natural sauna, eat wonderful vegetarian, organic food prepared by someone else, and lounge. It’s heavenly.

In the early days of sobriety, there is a tendency to want to fix everything that is wrong with you and your life. Fight the urge. First of all, you never will. And secondly, if you start to stress over trying to be perfect, you are likely to go back to drinking. Pick up a few gems from the books you read. Don’t try to do it all. Only do the things that make you feel good and reinforce your sobriety. Be gentle. Not drinking today is the kindest thing you can do for yourself. So if you accomplish that much, you are practically walking on the moon.

How to live in your skin

As I neared the end of my drinking days, I sat in bed lamenting all of the things I would never experience. Miring in my 40th year, this seemed like typical midlife madness. “I will never be president of the United States,” I moaned. “I will never go to Harvard, do a cartwheel, or speak Russian.” My husband, Mr. Supportive, said “Did you want to be president of the United States?” That’s so not the point.

When you’re young, with your whole life ahead of you, there are no “nevers.” Everything seems like, “Hey, it could happen.” Enter midlife and suddenly you realize that, not only is your time limited, but your possibilities have been shaped by what you’ve done so far. I lamented having spent so much time “partying,” nice little euphemism for drinking all the time, instead of studying for the SATs, becoming a Senate page, investing, traveling to Eastern Europe, taking gymnastic classes, and so on.

Through the fuzziness of my pickeled brain, a spark of realization gathered enough oomph to make it to my consciousness. I cannot change my past but my future does not have to mirror it. I can change now, and thereby, possitively affect what comes next. I can change now. That was a powerful little message my subconscious managed to spew forth. Changing now meant not drinking anymore.

When you are in the midst of an addiction, getting out from under it seems like the ultimate goal. Once you stop drinking, the music swells and the screen goes black. It’s totally post Hollywood kiss. Except it isn’t.

It’s the beginning of figuring out how to live in your skin because you have never had to do that before. How do you keep from jumping right out of it all day, every day. How do you face your stuck relationships, the job that stresses you out (whether you love it or hate it), the 20 pounds you’ve gained, the friendships you’ve neglected, or the children who associate you with ice clinking in a glass? How do you do life sober? All of your regrets, the problems you’ve ignored, the goals you never bothered to achieve. How do you look your life in the eyes without screaming and running from the room?

That is the question. I can tell you what I did — and still do. Because after eight years of sobriety, every once in a while, I still want to get drunk. I don’t want a drink. I want to get drunk. And, that, my friends, in the definition of an alcoholic. Someone who wants to get drunk every time she drinks — whether it is once a week or every day.

The two most important components to my recovery are Alcoholics Anonymous and self care (I’ll talk about self care in my next post).

AA is saving my life (an ongoing process). Some people have a problem with the Higher Power aspect of AA and some people just aren’t joiners. This is not about God or whether or not you want to become a member of a club. This is about survival.

AA provides a list of people for you to call if you want to drink. The only time I made a call was my first Christmas Eve when everyone was drinking and I wanted to join them. Instead of doing those shots of Sambuca, I picked up the phone. It worked. Even though I’ve only made one call in eight years, I keep that list in my purse at all times. The psychological life line is enough.

AA provides meetings — lots of them no matter where you live or travel. They are even on-line. They say that you should go to 90 meetings in 90 days when you first start out. I didn’t do that, though I know lots of people who did (and do). I went to one women’s meeting a week because I was comfortable with that level of participation. I did that for the first six years. Now I go when I feel like I need a meeting. But this is selfish of me because the reason people with years of sobriety go is to help newcomers. It is part of the recovery for all concerned.

During meetings, you hear people’s stories. Sometimes, you feel like, blah, blah, blah. I’ve heard it all before. But usually, you get one gem, the thing you needed to hear to make it through the day (or the week in my case). Oftentimes for me, it is the story about the alcoholic brother who just died young because of his disease or the aunt who lost her home and now her children won’t speak to her because of her addiction. It’s sick. I know. But it reminds me of where I don’t want to be.

12 Steps. Yes, there really are 12 Steps and, if you are serious about quitting, you should do them. Some people do them all for the first time in a few months, some take years. They are steps you repeat throughout your sobriety. It’s all explained in the “Big Book,” the AA Bible. You’ll probably read the whole thing at first and then use it for a pick-me-up on days when you struggle. I don’t use the book as much as other people. For me the meetings and phone list hold far more power.

Get a sponsor. This seems scary but after you attend a few meetings, it will become apparent who you might be able to click with. Choose someone with a similar background and who you actually like. I chose a woman around my age who worked, was married, and had children. I figured we could relate. I was right.

Cliches. AA is full of them and at first you think, “Give me a break.” Fake it ’til you make it. Just don’t drink today. Meeting makers make it. Keep your own side of the street clean. But after awhile, you realize that you need a trite little line to get you back on track when you start to slide. Four years into my sobriety, my 20-year-old nephew was killed in a drunk driving crash (he was the driver — and an alcoholic) and I wanted to drink more than I could possibly explain. For weeks, I suffered. I went to meetings, talked to my sponsor, read the Big Book, blah, blah. One day, I was eating lunch with my sponsor and she said to me, “Just don’t drink today.” And it was as if she had just parted the Red Sea. It was that simple. I was wallowing in my pain and trying to imagine how I would get through life with this intense heartbreak. That little cliche reminded me that I didn’t have to get through my whole life without numbing the pain. I just had to get through today.