The trouble with abstinence is the abstinence.
When I remember how I felt when I began to drink an increasing amount of wine every night at 5:00 PM, I float far from shore in the warm green waters of the Gulf of Mexico off the beach at Pass-a-Grille. The salt water lets me drift upright and eye-deep. My skin is touched, my neck and arms and legs are supported and surrounded. Ahead of me I see soft, wavy water and a blue sky horizon, and to either side is warm, warm green. I am small and safe in largeness. All is well. I just am.
I got to feel that sense of well-being, of womb-like safety and oneness, every single night when I was drinking. Nothing in sobriety feels like that. If I never drink again, if I am forever abstinent from alcohol, that feeling is gone forever.
Synthesizing more than two decades of work with addicts, Gabor Mate, M.D. concludes that addiction, at essence, is about having suffered almost to breaking and, therefore, not being able to bear the pain of being present with the self.
Living primarily in Virginia and Florida, in over half a century, I have only experienced one earthquake: in Blacksburg, Virginia in 2011. I was with my father in his office upstairs looking through papers just days after my mother died. The house shook, my father shook, I shook.
Some things happened in 2007 that shook me. Nightly wine began. In 2014, sober, if I am present with my self, my mind and heart vibrate, my teeth chatter and my arms pulse. I am shaken by an earthquake within.
Each and every addict has to give up what the substance did for them, or kept from having done to them. Because the substance artificially stimulates the brain, there’s nothing in the natural world to replace it. We have to experience the reality of “life on life’s terms,” not life relieved or shifted by a substance.
Abstinence means handling whatever comes up within and whatever happens without for as long as it lasts without taking a drink or using a substance. For me, being present for my sober self means being present for shaking.
I understand from others in recovery and from daunting reports like this one that year 2 is a tough year. I certainly get why alcoholics and addicts relapse. I have frequent thoughts of drinking, although they’re less like to-do items. Let’s see if I’ve got this: Abstain from what made life with the self bearable and then bear life with the self without help and with nothing to replace it? Um-hmm. That’s some deal. Pain all day, every day? Sure, sign me up.
I get well-meaning feedback that I often appear very serious. Ya think?
If I can no longer float with a wine-induced illusion of oneness with self and the universe, that I must accept. But it is something like what I want, I think. I need to get to know this new, shaken self better, see if I can work out a better deal with her and for her than we have now, seek to find ways to lessen the intensity and duration of the shaking, be present for what I can’t ease, and try out different things that might, in part, if accumulated, replace or approximate that sense of safe floating.
I scoffed at golf as a waste of time. Then I was given the directive by Dr. H., “Waste time, Anne.” A friend is passionate about golf so I asked for help, just for some easy-does-it putting lessons.
When I’m putting, I’m not floating, but if I’m shaking, I’m not aware of it. I line up the eBay La Femme brass putter bought for me by my friend and try to stroke in that one way that connects me and club and ball and speed and direction. It’s, well, fun.
Have I laughed in 16 months of sobriety? Yes, I have. Most of each day? No, I have not. Recovery, at least for me, at least at year 1 and 4/12, is serious.
Anne:
Yours is another fluid and thoughtful essay on getting sober, so let me offer that my experience over 20 years has been a bit different from yours. I regained that feeling of placid completeness a short while into recovery and have felt it frequently–almost daily–through the years.
I know that each of us has a different experience with recovery, but I think we all must find the process that works best for us, beginning with not taking that first drink. Mine included finding a higher power, one that I didn’t have to understand, but needed to feel and believe. It came after quite a quest, one that included a tiny chambermaid telling me that she collected foam cups after a recovery meeting once, took them home and had them serve as her higher power until a real one came along.
The large hole in the middle of me was filled for years with booze, women, work, excess of all kinds. It is now filled almost all the time with a life of much more value, beginning with a belief that I am not the center of the universe and that what happens to/for me is what is supposed to happen. I am fine with all of it. I am responsible for all of it. A little annoyed at times, but adjusting to be fine with it.
I don’t so much get that euphoric recall any longer (floating in the Cowpasture River, shoulders wedged between two small boulders, body floating, a 12-pack of beer resting on one of the rocks), but the daily highs can come from anywhere: helping a young writer, planting a begonia, hiking up a steep incline with my new knee, meeting someone with sparkling and delighted eyes, writing an especially good paragraph, reading one of your essays, talking to a group, living as fully as I can, fighting for a cause.
None of that was part of the drinking me, the one that gave me the Cowpasture River experience, the one happy thought in a river of sadness. I promise you I’d rather have what I have than what I had.
My very best to you and your incredible journey.
Dan Smith
Anne & Dan,
Both of you are an inspiration to me. Anne, you and I both across to people as intense. I’ve had to learn that not everything is worth all that energy. Every time I read a post about something Dan has delighted in doing – cooking a meal, planting a flower – I’m reminded that I’d do well to put more energy into enjoying where I am at that moment. That’s not to say that I don’t mess with my iPhone while I watch TV so much as that doing what I enjoy and making it a point to enjoy what I do makes for a much happier life.
I was nine or ten when I decided not to have children. I didn’t think life was all that great, and I didn’t want to be responsible for bringing another being into the world as I knew it. The fun and natural happiness that I think is inherent in people was scared out of me at a very young age and replaced with wariness and intensity. It’s just been in the last year or so that I’ve really begun to enjoy my life.
Dan took me on the first hiking trip I went on this is year, and while walking a trail around one side of Carvins Cove, I found myself so filled with joy that I started running down the trail, arms out, twirling once in a while, just like the happy little girl I should have been. I was outside after a long winter with someone who was just there to enjoy it with me, and I was alive to feel that joy.
I’m not recovering from alcohol; I’m recovering from the effects of what my parents taught me: That I wasn’t good enough unless I was doing what they wanted me to do. I’m relearning the joy of being alive.
Staying sober (says she who didn’t inherit the gene for alcoholism that ran rampant through my family) is important. It’s a primary illness. But I think the primary cure may be in two things. First,, as Dan said, developing a relationship with a loving Higher Power. That was difficult for me, to because I grew up with was a punitive one. The second is being grateful for everything. In those two things, I’ve found a joy that I had been buried deep inside for a very long time.
May you find in your recovery a way to revive the part of you that you need to revive to find joy and peace without alcohol.
Dear Dan and Janeson,
I feel like I’m in the most important conversation with the most enlightened, insightful people! Thank you so much for sharing with me. I am thinking and thinking and you both have helped me so much. I am digging deep to find what is, or can be, meaningful to me. You helped me put new pieces together. I need to keep writing to discover more, but I want to let you know that you are informing and inspiring me.
With gratitude,
Anne
Anne:
Healing, I think, involves having a constant conversation with myself and you give me the opportunity to examine how I feel, what I’m doing, how I am responding when you write your thoughtful self-examinations. Thank you.
Dan
Anne,
Like Dan, your posts are helping me to think about where I am, what I’m doing well, and what I need to improve. Keep writing, Anne; I think it’s helping all of us!
Supportive hugs,
Janeson