The Weight to be Me

I attended my first 12-Step meeting (it was a women’s only group), when I was 16 years old. I didn’t have any idea what the program was about, but one of my closest girlfriends was the live-in nanny for a woman who rented out rooms in her house to people of all ages and backgrounds who were learning how to live sober. It wasn’t an official “sober living facility,” much more informal, but they did have several 12-Step meetings in the house throughout the week, and when my friend/the nanny, invited me to come attend the women’s meeting because she thought I might find interesting, I decided to check it out.

I didn’t think of myself as an alcoholic at that time; but I’ve come to believe there are no coincidences or mistakes in life. The seed of recovery was meant to be planted that day, even if nothing grew from it until many years later.

My brother committed suicide on the 4^th of July that year, and I was going through a tremendous amount of disruption and confusion – at home, school, and everywhere. I was getting progressively caught up partying, sleeping around, drinking too much, taking drugs with reckless abandon, and driving (or being driven around) drunk. In a fit of impulsiveness, I dropped out of high school at the beginning of my junior year (something I never thought I would do). My drinking and partying were quickly leading me into a cycle of risky and dangerous behavior.

I was hurting, but I had no idea how to express it, and the only relief I could find was in a state of numbness through alcohol, or whatever drugs were accessible. But, as a result of attending that first 12-Step meeting, I started to make some new sober friends, and started spending weekends hanging out with them. We’d stay up all night laughing and playing endless games of Uno. Then I’d start to get the itch to get drunk and escape reality, so I’d go out and cause trouble with my lower companions on other weekends. The longer I kept that up, the less I felt I really belonged in either group.

I continued this weekend on/weekend off pattern for several months, until I’d been to just enough meetings and met just enough sober people I liked hanging out with, that I considered giving sobriety an honest try. Somewhere between 17-18 years old, I decided to quit drinking. My first “experiment” in recovery, mostly involved going to a lot of sober dances and events, attending meetings just so I could meet up and hang out with my friends after – it did not involve doing any of what the foundation of the 12-Step program is – like doing the 12 Steps, or being of service to other alcoholics. I was still a kid. A broken, messed up kid, just trying to figure out if I could have any fun without being high or drunk.

While all this sober socializing and dabbling in the program was happening, my dad’s health was going downhill. I was 19 when my dad passed away on the day before St. Patrick’s Day. It was devastating, happening just three years after the death of my brother. When I got the news that he’d died, the very first person I called was a woman I had met in that first women’s meeting. Both she and her daughter had become close friends of mine, and I had finally found some people I felt safe having big feelings with. 

If I only would have had the willingness to expand my recovery and bring all those emotions to a solution, rather than the alternative, which was to hide in my disease. I didn’t work with a sponsor, do the step work or make a more meaningful commitment to the program. If I had, I might not have had to go back out and find what I thought would be the easier, softer way to get through pain…by picking up again. But that’s the way my journey through addiction had to be. I wasn’t ready.

Two months after my dad’s death, I took a coin commemorating my first year of sobriety, which coincided with meeting a guy at work that I started spending more time with. This meant I spent less time doing even the bare minimum in my recovery, which was basically just going to occasional meetings. And I eventually abandoned those, and all my sober buddies, and I was back to using in no time.

At Thanksgiving I snuck out of a family holiday dinner to meet my new boyfriend at a bar, and that was the night he introduced me to crack cocaine. It became my substance of choice. My ridiculously expensive, highly addictive, new best friend. I spent the next two years in a frightening downward spiral. My life became something I couldn’t recognize. Friends and family were out of sight unless I needed something.

My new boyfriend was a married man, but by the time I discovered that about him, it was too late…I was already knee deep into getting drugs and alcohol and staying high, by any means necessary. We were partners in literal crime…a poor, drugged out “Bonnie & Clyde.” Although getting involved with a married man with kids, was not my finest hour; sadly, it was not the worst of my questionable life choices. 

I entered my second decade of life with all the consequences of my disease, including not being able to keep a job, or a place to live. Towards the end of my two year crack story, after being fired from yet another job, I returned home to find a little note tacked to my front door – “NOTICE: You have 2-day to move.” I couldn’t remember the last time I’d paid my rent, and the apartment manager had had enough of my empty promises that the rent check was in the mail.

The series of events that followed became the catalyst to my bottom. Over a three-week period, I had no other choice but to ask my mother if I could move into her basement. She was gracious and said yes, but the upside (or down-side depending on how you look at it), was that I was now walking distance from the crack houses I used to have to drive 20 miles roundtrip to get to.

Having such fast, easy access facilitated a dangerous binge that left me so desperate for money to get high, I found myself succumbing to the pressure from my toxic married boyfriend, to consider his idea that I start thinking about prostitution as a career option. I became so sick from my addiction I was starting to believe it was the only viable way to earn money.

After a horrendous night of using and getting to such a place of despair I was begging for my life to end, I spent hours trying to come down, staring into the distance, until the wee hours of the morning, when I crawled upstairs to my mother. She could see I was in distress, but I was unable to form the words, so she kept prompting me: “What is it? Are you pregnant? Is he beating you? Are you on drugs?”

Her last guess sent me into a puddle of tears while nodding my weary head up and down. I knew I was done. I was at a fork in the road – afraid of what would happen if I didn’t stop, and afraid of what would happen if I did. Thankfully, I was desperate enough to ask for help.

My mother made a few outreach calls, and through her generosity and concern for my life, I was admitted the next day into a 28-day drug and alcohol treatment facility. 

I’d love to say that was the last time I used, and that I stayed sober from that point on. I did finally submerge myself into the program by staying actively clean and sober, working with a sponsor, doing step work, and taking service commitments for the next two years; but then I made the decision to move from Seattle to New York to pursue my dream of becoming a professional actor. In and of itself, that would have been fine! The program should be a “bridge back to life,” – but as much as I would have liked, I couldn’t outrun my alcoholism.

When I got to NY, I “tried” (I use the term loosely) to find myself a new homegroup, and get situated in meetings in NY, but I felt like a fish out of water, and rather than push through the discomfort and explore as many meetings as I could until I found my people, my willingness became less and less, and my alcoholism got louder and louder “YOU DON’T NEED THESE MEETINGS ANYMORE, YOU’RE TOO YOUNG TO BE A REAL ALCOHOLIC, YOU CAN DO THIS ALL BY YOURSELF!” 

I found myself in that familiar place where I didn’t feel comfortable anywhere. I had a mind full of the program (at least enough to ruin my drinking) and was getting thirstier as every day went by.

Some good friends came from out-of-town for a visit, and because they were not in the program, not alcoholics themselves, and didn’t really know much about the disease of alcoholism, they didn’t flinch when I suggested that on the last night of their visit, I would make us all a lovely Italian meal, which would include a nice bottle of wine. That suggestion started the whole ball rolling. Rather than enjoy their company and their visit, all I could think about was that I’d FINALLY get to quench the thirst from my three and a half years of being a dry drunk. My phenomenon of craving was now full steam ahead.

After they ate their big meal, and were tired out from a full day of sightseeing, they both took a nap. I sat on my couch with that full bottle of wine that neither of them so much as touched – and I proceeded to take that first drink. It had been five and a half years since alcohol touched my lips, and my disease exhaled with relief as I proceeded to feel that warm, mushy glow. My alcoholism was alive and well, and regardless of my having not had a drink in many years, it had, as they say, been doing push-ups. 

I spent the next two years drinking excessively, which up until then had never been my “drug of choice.” Alcohol was always available and reliable to get the job done, but now I was using it much like I used to smoke crack. And while I’m grateful I didn’t go back down the rabbit hole of drugs, which on the streets of New York were readily available, instead, I found myself drinking booze furiously, as if I was trying to make up for lost time.

But make no mistake, my “relapse” happened long before I took that first sip of wine. It was in session all those years I was dry and had been separating myself from the program. Most importantly, I stopped being willing to be honest with myself, or anyone else about my obsession to drink.

At the age of 28 I found myself living alone in a lovely apartment, with a great job, and some good, but worried friends. I’d been so lost in the haze and escape alcohol provided for me for two years, that I woke up on the 3^rd of January 1993, incredibly sad and depressed.

The night before I’d participated in a number of embarrassing events, including a visit to a nasty strip club, falling flat on my face in Times Square in front of my “date,” to end up once again, returning home, fucked up and alone. And while I hadn’t lost all the things (jobs, apartments) I previously had when I went into my first treatment center at the age of 21 – this time, it felt like I was losing my mind, my spirit, and was at a point where I had no life in my life.

Good alcoholic rebel that I am, I still resisted asking for help, telling myself and anyone who’d ask, “I’ve done the whole 12-Step thing, it didn’t work for me.” But after three excruciating weeks of trying to do it alone, several little things happened in succession that got my attention – what I refer to as my “Is it odd or is it God” moments. I felt myself being pushed towards letting go of doing it my way and once again, being willing to ask for help. I was being 12-Stepped despite myself.

It’s been over 29 years since I, one day at a time, surrendered to my disease and walked into the rooms of a 12-Step program…again. The one and only thing I’ve managed to do “perfectly” is not pick up a drink or a drug, no matter what. 

I’ve gone through intense grief, divorce, the death of loved ones, the death of beloved pets, big moves, job changes, new relationships, having money, not having money, letting go of toxic relationships – pretty much anything, and everything that without active participation in my recovery, would have given me any number of excuses to drink or drug again. But I learned the hard way, that to get the most out of my program, I must stay in the middle of it. 

I spent many years with my face pressed up against the glass, watching from the outside, as people embraced and celebrated everything recovery had to offer. Thinking I was too cool, too smart, too something, to really go all in. Until it got so painful, that I had to be willing to let all of that go and let myself be a part of. 

In my tenth year of this sobriety my first marriage ended, and I went through a very painful divorce, where I had moments that I didn’t know how I was going to get through it. I tried to tell the women I was sponsoring at the time, that they might want to find another sponsor to work with – I felt like I was going to be too much of an emotional wreck to be able to show up for any of them. They all chuckled and wisely ignored my “suggestion,” and all of them proceeded to lean-in closer. As I dealt with mending my broken heart, I found that taking their calls, listening to them as they reasoned things out, and getting the focus off me…was saving my life. We helped each other heal, I still showed up for my recovery, and theirs. 

Learning to face life on life’s terms was, and still is hard. But the connections I have with my friends, family, and fellow program members gets that much deeper when I feel the fear and keep moving through it. No matter what. 

Around that time, I was at a speaker’s meeting, when I heard the wisest, most perfect words, that have stayed with me to this day. The speaker ended his talk by saying “Even if your ass falls off…just come to a meeting…we’ll teach you how to sit without an ass.” Words to live by.