Late Night Phone Calls

I hate late night phone calls.  If you grew up with drama and alcoholics, I know you understand what I'm talking about here.  If the phone rings after 11:00 pm, it is usually not good.  In fact, it's usually really, really bad.

I remember being a little girl and my parents getting late night phone calls.  It was rarely a good thing.  I was 15 when my dad's dad passed away.  To say that there was unfinished business between them is an understatement.  The phone rang, he answered, he hung up and said, "He's dead."  That was it.  Then he started to cry.  What I remember most is that my mom didn't come out of the bedroom to comfort him.  It was really uncomfortable.  We were such a healthy family...

Once I moved out, my phone rang all the time.  Seems my parents couldn't survive without me.  Well, okay, my dad was blind and really did need my help but my mom just wanted to be sure that if she was up and troubled, everyone was up and troubled.  My dad called one night when my sister had freaked out on PCP and put her arm through seven windows of the house and then dumped a trash can full of water on him.  She probably would have gotten more violent with him but she saw the blood and that brought her back to reality.  He called 911 and then me.  I cleaned up the house for him.

Then she freaked out once and attacked my parents after the hubs and I had taken her out for dinner.  She drank too much (duh) and insisted we take her home (where my niece was with my parents - she was all of two).  Long after everyone should have been asleep the phone rang - this time they called me BEFORE 911.  Really?

Lots and lots of other calls like this.  A car accident.  Someone's sick and needs to go to the hospital NOW.  Your dad has had a stroke.  Your husband's sister has passed away.  Someone needs to be picked up because they can't drive or they are with someone who can't drive (YES I'll be there right away.)  Someone is drunk and just wants to talk (NO call me when you're sober).

For a long time I would unplug the phone at night because my sister got more "active" after the sun went down.  Then I had kids who were out and about in the evening and so the phone had to stay on...thank goodness for caller ID and voicemail.

But those times have passed.  I haven't had a late night phone call like that in over 10 years (since my nephew deleted my phone number from my sister's phone).  My mom lived with us until she died so I knew what was going on with her.  You'd think I'd be over it.

But I'm not.

Last night my nephew called.  He used his fiance's phone.  When I saw her name, my first thought was, "Oh my God, what has Michael done now."  My heart started beating in my ears and a pit the size of Chicago formed in my stomach.  I answered the phone and heard his voice.  It was only 10:00 my time but it still freaked me out.

He needed the email address and password to the Netflix account.

I spoke with him for awhile, laughed with him and gave him the info.  Then I hung up and thought, "When will this reaction ever end?"

Answer...probably never.  I'm a product of conditioning.

Just call me Pavlov's pooch.

Namaste

Trading Addictions

Well duh...

My life prior to recovery was all about control.  Controlling my thoughts, controlling my eating habits, my drinking habits, my smoking habits, my home, my family, my children, my finances.  In other words, controlling my addictions.  Some of these things are good (finances for example) and some are not.  But for most of my life I had a clenched fist, white knuckle hold on my life.  As I got older, I learned to chill the hell out a little and the only thing I maintained control over were cigarettes, food, alcohol and money. 

Then shit got real.

First, I quit smoking.  This was in 2001.  The year I turned 40.  The year we took the kids to Disney World. 

The year those bastards hit the Twin Towers and the Pentagon and killed thousands of innocent people. 

We practically lived next door to Andrews AFB at the time so the impact to us was palpable.  In the aftermath, our local economy tanked and my husband, a sub-contractor and small business owner, saw his company begin the slow descent to its demise.  For a year that started so well, it ended horribly and signaled a pivotal turning point in my life.

That's the year I lost control.

I had quit smoking, so while we were losing money and the world seemed to be crumbling around us and, at the time, God didn't seem to be listening, I didn't have anywhere to turn for an outlet for my feelings.  No where to go to numb.  Yes I did yoga, I exercised, I had long conversations with the hubs - but none of it could touch the feeling of lighting up and making things go away for awhile.

Well...that is...except for wine.

I always had a hard and fast rule that I didn't drink at home.  Ever.  In 2001, I started drinking at home...on Thursday nights...one (large) glass of wine while I watched House Hunters on HGTV.  That lasted about three months.  It quickly became a bottle on Thursday night, then on other nights, then more than one bottle at a time, then every night.  Over the course of the next 8 years my drinking took off and soon became the full blown alcoholism from which I am now recovering.

I had traded the feeling I got from smoking for the feeling I got from drinking.  That feeling of ahhhhh...and the world goes away for a little while.  Life is happy and carefree, if only for a minute.  During this time I also flirted with spending way too much and that threatened to get out of control as well.  Thank God I had the good sense to turn the finances over to the hubs.  I still get a thrill out of just walking into a Target or Nordstrom.  Sometimes I'll go to Target and just walk around and look at things...just to get my fix.

Then I got sober.  Now what.

Food.  Sugar most specifically but really, it's just eating that does it for me.  Since puberty I have had a hard time keeping weight off.  In my 30's I figured out the perfect combination of food and exercise that kept me fit, healthy and within a good BMI range.  I maintained control.  I seldom ate candy, never ate chips, regularly turned down birthday cake and would rather die than eat at a fast food restaurant.   I exercised good portion control and never went back for seconds.  I worked out seven nights a week with a combination of yoga, cardio and strength.  AND I LOVED IT.

Then I got sober.

Now I eat candy (chocolate) almost every day.  I keep milk chocolate chips in the cabinet so that I can have them after dinner at night.  I go to the little store in our building at work and get mini candy bars in the afternoon (three of them...because I don't want to eat a whole candy bar...really?).  I eat chips on a regular basis.  I still try to practice portion control but consistently overeat when it comes to pizza and pasta.  I bake...and I eat what I bake and I bake what I like.  I've even started dipping into ice cream and I'm a little lactose intolerant.

It's not enough to "just say no".  First of all, I have to eat.  It's not like with cigarettes and alcohol where I could dig in, make my mind up and go with it.  I must have sustanance.  Secondly, I have the same exact dialog going on in my head when it comes to food that I did when it came to cigarettes or alcohol.  The same exact rationalizations go on and on and on.  The same excuses. 

The same result.

And as a result, I've gained 50 lbs over the last 5 years.  Some of it came from the booze but most came after the booze left.  I have a long standing account on My Fitness Pal where I log calories in and calories out.  I've lost about 15 pounds doing that...which I gained right back two or three times over the years.  I've signed up to Jenny Craig twice.  Lost those same 15 pounds only to gain them back...both times.  I've done Weight Watchers both online and in person.  Same result, lose some...gain it back.  All the while beating myself up for my failure...over and over and over.

Then an angel, Annette over at Just For Today, mentioned a book in this blog post about a woman who battles mental illness and addiction.  Hmmm...sound familiar?  I devoured that book and came to a startling revelation.

I am never going to conquer this thing on my own.

I need to surrender.

I need help.

So I surrendered.  I prayed and turned it over to God.  I admitted defeat and that I am no longer in control.  Okay...I'm still working on this part but I'll get there.  What I did do right away was also significant to my recovery.

I made an appointment with my psychiatrist.

I've been clinically depressed for 18 years.   Except for a few misguided attempts to ditch the meds, I've been medicated successfully all of that time.  I've had good shrinks and bad ones (this current one is great) but overall I've been lucky and I've guided my own mental health journey.  This is a lot of work for me AND my family but it's better than the alternative.

What this book did for me however, was to educate me on my illness.  My depression could also be related to my compulsions and lack of impulse control.  The neurotransmitters that fire in my brain may not be doing their job correctly and I may not be helping them all that I can.  Who knew?

So I'm going to talk to an expert (August 20th...it was the first available appointment...ugh.)  I'm going to see if I need therapy or just a medication change.  I'm tired of being a slave to my addictions and my compulsions and my impulses.

It's time to get control...for reals yo.

Namaste

Googling My Way Sober

It's been 3 1/2 years since I had a drink.  3 1/2 years of sobriety.  3 1/2 years of wonder and learning and coping and...just...living.  And about 2 years in what I would call actual recovery.

Wait...what?

When I got sober it was all I could do to string a series of hours, then days, then weeks together.  I just wanted to stay away from the wine aisle in the grocery store.  I just wanted to not drink.  To be dry, sober, abstaining.  I could have cared less about recovery, or being healthy or dealing with life on life's terms.  I just didn't want to drink anymore. No, strike that...I wanted to drink but I didn't want to be a drunk anymore.  After three relapses, several unsuccessful attempts at moderation, and a number of fits and starts, I realized that I couldn't drink without the drunk part so I had no choice but to give up the wine entirely.

I (blessedly) hadn't really become physically addicted so I didn't need detox.  I was also afraid of AA because of what I'd seen in my family (I later went for a few months and then decided it wasn't for me.) So I did what I always do when faced with a problem that needs an answer.

I Googled it.

This was not the first time I had Googled my drinking. 

"Am I drinking too much?"
"Signs of alcoholism."
"Signs of cirrhosis."
"What is alcoholism?"
"Alcoholism in women."
"Alcoholism in working women."

You get the idea.  No matter how I phrased it, the answer was the same...I was drinking too much.  I had a problem.  I was a problem drinker.  (That's as far as I would go then.  The "A" word didn't come up until much later.)

This time though, I needed something else.  I needed a way to stay sober.  So I Googled something like, "how to stop drinking" or some such.  What I found was a rich online community with Chinese restaurant menu like options - give me one from column A and two from column C...etc.  Want to try AA?  There's an online community of AA groups that meet entirely in cyberspace.  Want to talk?  Register in a chat room.  Need to spill your guts?  Online counseling exists (this one usually costs money and I'm rather skeptical but to each their own).  Need a different recovery process?  There are a host of others from which to choose.

And yes, there's an app for all of that.

So I entered some chat rooms, participated in some online AA meetings and eventually found the blogging community which proved to be the best thing I've ever done with the possible exception of marrying the hubs and having my children.  When I started blogging, and reading and discovering I finally began to enter what I consider recovery.

Recovery for me is learning to live as a sober person and not be pissed off about it.  (I still pout from time to time and even throw a little tantrum now and then but for the most part...I'm over it.)  Recovery is learning to appreciate the beauty of sobriety and the way in which it colors my world.  Recovery is forgiveness of past sins whether they be mine or those of others.  Recovery is learning to live in the now and not worry so much about what's going to happen down the road (okay...I'm still working on this one.) 

Recovery is reestablishing my definition of fun, and love and sex and romance.  It's trying to figure out how to relate to the hubs and open my heart to him without the lost inhibitions that a bottle or two of wine brings.  It's learning to be married and grow old together and take on whatever may come without a crutch.  With just each other.

Recovery is finding out who I really am, right now and who I want to be when I grow up.  It's about learning to like and maybe even actually love myself.  Recovery is learning to give myself props (a formerly total foreign concept).

Recovery came in it's own time and, as usual, God's timing is perfect.  When I was trying to get and stay wine-free, I couldn't have handled all that touchy feeling kum-by-ya crap.  I was hanging on by my then artificial nails.  It came when I was strong and ready and open to the experience.

Not sure why all this popped into my head today.  Just felt like it needed to be on the "page".  Maybe it was just because I needed to say thank you.

Thank you to all my blogging friends who have shared, and cried and laughed and suffered and survived with me.  I love you all and I could never have come this far without you. 

Thank you to the lurkers who I can see are out there by page views and who followed me over to this new space where I "Maintain The Zen".  If you ever need anything, please don't hesitate to drop me an email.  I promise to be there for you like this community was there for me.  It's just how we roll.

Thank you God.  You know my heart and how I feel about You.  In a word...you ROCK.

Namaste