Happy Birthday to Me

Today is my birthday. I’m eight. They say that when you start drinking alcoholically, you stop growing emotionally. Since I started at 13, I guess I now have the emotional intelligence of a 21-year-old. (Hey, I’m finally an adult.) 

I quit drinking right before the holidays — the masochist in me. I went to meetings, called my sponsor, read the Big Book, prayed, and remembered that I didn’t want my child to grow up with an alcoholic mother. That’s how I did it. I remember making it through that first year and thinking I was home-free. The first year of anything is telling. A new marriage, a new job. You go through all of the holidays and birthdays and ups and downs of daily life. Once you have a year under your belt, you can look back and say, “I can do this; I did it last year.” But four years into my sobriety, my 20-year-old nephew was killed. He crashed his car into a semi-truck after drinking all day. All I wanted to do was drink. I went to an AA meeting and it was someone’s first birthday. She talked about how good it felt to get that first year behind her. When it was my turn to talk, I broke the celebratory mood with my grief and, through my sobs, I said, “Don’t get comfortable.” Never pretend that the party is over.

Recently, I was having a bad day and I told my Little Darling, “I think I’m just going to smoke and get drunk.” (Joking, of course.) She said, “I can’t even imagine you doing that. It would be as out of character as a kitten weilding a machine gun.” At that moment, I realized that I had succeeded. I wanted her to have a stable, loving, nurturing, sober mother and that is how she sees me. Wow. It’s amazing when life works out the way you want it to — so far.

Of course, eight years of sobriety have taught me that you are not home-free once you make it through the first year. That’s why AAers are always saying, “One day at a time.” That’s the key. If you try to imagine that you will be sober for the rest of your life, it seems daunting (and unfair). So you just say, I will not drink today and that is good enough. I don’t have to think about whether or not I will drink tomorrow or November 4, 2009 or ten years from now. What matters is today. That’s enough.

Recently, I had a health screening through my place of employment. You fill out a questionnaire and they take your blood, weight, blood pressure, and so forth. The questionnaire had all sorts of questions about alcohol and tobacco consumption. I proudly answered zero when asked how many alcoholic drinks I ingest or how much tobacco I consume. When I received my results, I was low risk in every category (except I am six pounds overweight — all those sweets). Other than advising me to eat a little less and move a little more, the report said to just keep doing what I’m doing. It didn’t say, you are healthy, so go ahead and start drinking and smoking again. It said, keep doing what you’re doing. In other words, “Don’t get comfortable.” I won’t. Someone pass the cake, please.

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.