Self Loathing

Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night full of self loathing, feeling hungover, dehydrated, swollen, head throbbing, nauseous, and fretting over why you keep doing this to yourself? In the morning, you swear that you will not drink that day. You’ll take vitamin C and drink lots of water. You’ll have a salad for lunch and exercise after work. You are not a bad person. You’re successful in so many ways. You do everything that you swore you would do and by the time you get home, you’re feeling pretty good. Headache’s gone. The swelling has gone down. Appetite is back. You have proven that you have what it takes to be a normal person. You are a normal person. Normal people unwind at the end of the day with a drink. And so it begins again.

I road that roller coaster for 25 years. Some people never get off. For others, it takes a few months. For many of us, it takes years but eventually something snaps. The choices become clear and then the universe aligns to stop the ride and deposit you safely on the side of the road. My perimenopause symptoms got my attention. Night sweats, insomnia, and anxiety were new to my addiction and they scared me.

My husband, daughter, and I were fairly new to a rural town where I thought I could make a new start. We’d been here a year but not much had changed regarding my alcohol consumption. Attending a little New Age church that felt safe and comfortable, I learned that a women’s Alcholics Anonymous group met there on Thursday evenings. Twenty years prior, I had attended an AA meeting where the group told me that I was not an alcoholic. I hung tight to those words every time I hated myself for getting drunk again. So I was a little gun shy about going back. I didn’t want to offend anyone or be presumptuous by showing up with my little problems to a meeting with real alcoholics. The kind who drank their booze straight from the bottle, lost their jobs and families, and lived on the streets.

Doubting myself, I went to lunch with a new friend from the church and for some reason, I just blurted out that I thought I might be an alcoholic and I wanted to attend this AA meeting. Without missing a beat, she said, ”I’ll go with you.” We hardly knew each other but it turned out that her father was an alcoholic and killed himself when she was only 16. This is what I mean by the universe aligning itself when you know the time is right. I learned about a meeting that felt safe. And then, I tell someone I hardly know that I think I have a problem and she makes it even safer for me by understanding the problem and offering to accompany me.

We went to the meeting that week and, of course, most of the women were just like me. They had jobs and families and pasts they’d rather not talk about (except in meetings). After telling them my “story,” I said that I just wasn’t sure if I was an alcoholic and I’d come there to find out. They said the right thing. They couldn’t tell me whether or not I was an alcoholic. Only I knew the answer to that question. Now I know that it was really a matter of whether or not I was willing to admit it.

Sweaty Nights

An episode of night sweats scared me into going to an AA meeting. At 40 years old, I was ignorant of the symptoms of perimenopause. In my earlier drinking days, sweaty nights meant one-night-stands and partying in fields during those hot Midwestern summers.

The first time it happened, I’d had about a fifth of vodka to ignite the flame and I thought my liver had finally given up. Can’t filter out the toxins anymore, sweetie. You’re on your own. Although it frigtened me enough to seriously consider saying goodbye to alcohol, I drank for two months after that episode. It didn’t take much to turn on the faucet. A couple of glasses of wine would do it. I started talking about this to my extended family. My sister-in-law ensured me that I was not an alcoholic, that my liver was not shutting down, and that I was simply going through perimenopause. She’d just seen a doctor on Oprah who wrote a whole book on this mystery topic. As if PMS and menopause aren’t enough, we need a bridge from one hormonal nightmare to the next. Perimenopause or premenopause can begin up to 10 years before you actually stop menstrating. With high hopes that I would not have to give up my beloved alcohol afterall, I went to my local library and found this book from Oprah. “The Wisdom of Menopause,” by Dr. Christaine Northrup.

Great book for anyone experiencing perimenopause. I discovered that our bodies will tolerate an awful lot until we reach this stage, but once we do, it takes the wheel. If you are doing something that is not in the best interest of your body, mind, and/or spirit, you will have “symptoms” as a warning. Symptoms include night sweats, insomnia, anxiety, headaches, weight gain, scattered thinking, memory loss, and hot flashes (others too, but these are mine).  And if you don’t heed the warning signs, eventually you will get terrible diseases and probably die. Great. So let me get this straight. Drinking alcohol is giving me night sweats and waking me up, which is my body’s way of saying that I need to stop drinking alcohol, or my body will put me out of my misery.

I hated those health books that told you to stop drinking because I didn’t think it was possible. They may as well have told me to stop breathing or peeing. Alcohol was part of who I was. I needed it and it needed me. Fortunately, my love for my daughter was slightly stronger than my love for vodka. I’d wanted a child for years and when I finally had her at age 36, I couldn’t be happier. To leave her without a mother and to miss out on what is the greatest joy of my life because of alcohol just was not an option. I didn’t know where to start. So I went to an AA meeting.