After three years of abstinence from alcohol, on an existential scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is “I am nothing,” 5 is “I am enough most of the time,” and 10 is “I am everything,” I’m settling into 5ish. I know I’m not more powerful than gravity or death. I know I’m powerful enough, in this moment, to pretty much do what I intend to do, with the understanding that the tidal wave of the human condition may gather in a torrent and wash me and my good intentions away.
With one exception. My intention to not drink is of questionable power.
A thought just on the edge of awareness
For me, alcoholism doesn’t feel like part of the “human condition.” Yes, I am human and it happened to me, but what I consider my most precious, fundamental power as a human, as a person, as Anne – the ability to do what I will and want – vanished.
I so appreciate the tireless work research, medical and treatment professionals are doing to unravel the snarl of what addiction is and what will cure or mitigate it in sufferers, an estimated 5% of the world’s 7+ billion people, an estimated 10% of the U.S. population. I appreciate that President Obama is proposing spending $1 billion on addictions treatment, specifically for opioid addiction. If or when that’s approved, what to do in the future may be clearer.
But right here, right now, not in the future, I, Anne, one minuscule member of the 7+billion, want a drink.
I have trouble conveying to people who don’t have what I have the sadness that comes with that want. The only comparison that’s close: I imagine my mother, gone now four years, in her nightgown walking in a field of grass and wildflowers. I would give anything, anything to see her again. I don’t even need to talk with her, just to see her. I just want to see if she’s all right, just strolling and gazing, absorbed in her own thoughts. I step right and left, lean my head right and left, but some entity is in the way, blocking my view just as I think I catch a glimpse. The entity conveys wordlessly that if I do a deal with it, that if I say I’ll give anything to see her, then I have to give my very self. But then I will be allowed to see her. My mother taught me never, ever to give myself away. So I stand there, torn, my chest ripping open with longing.
I have spent three years trying to figure out how to make that want go away. I’ve chronicled only a few of my billion attempts in this blog. My father even hired a team of researchers to join me in studying the literature to discover best practices for addictions recovery. Some of those findings are compiled here (.pdf opens in new tab).
All of the counseling and support group attendance and the support of friends and family member and ways I’ve tried have given a wonderfully supportive context to my not having had a drink for three years.
But right here, right now, I want a drink. And it’s as if none of those three years have happened or had any meaning or value whatsoever. I’m not thinking of whom I can call or what I can do.
It’s me and my longing. We’re it. While the addictions treatment world is scrambling this very moment to find a solution to the addictions problem, I’m looking down at my chest and my breastbone is starting to rip like paper.
catch that thought
hold that feeling
I envision myself catching each thought I have – about drinking, about my mother, about her white nightgown dotted with pink roses, about what a loser I am for becoming an alcoholic – and drawing them to me, and I can feel the emotions these thoughts create in me – horror, regret, sorrow – and I hold them to me close, comforting, holding, reassuring, murmuring that it’s all going to be okay, that we can do this, that we’ve made it through this before and we’ll make it through it again.
And as I hug my caught thoughts tightly and hold my poor, sore feelings surely in my arms, the tearing in my chest stops. And then it sort of tapes itself back up again and there’s my chest again with its familiar, inwardly angled sternum and small breasts.
Somehow, once I can catch a thought and hold a feeling, I can regain the power to choose to what I give my attention. And I acknowledge the beauty of my large heart beneath that bent sternum that loves beyond death. And I give myself one last hug for having the misfortune of developing alcoholism. And I use my athletic training to muscularly move my mind. I take a deep breath, more like a sigh. I become aware I am hungry. I envision a bright, orange-yellow yolk in the center of the white in a fried egg. I get up and head to the kitchen.
I don’t take a drink.
. . . . .
Approximately two years ago, my counselor, Dr. H., recognized unrelenting suffering in me and a kind of failure to thrive syndrome in my infant recovery and switched her approach to therapy. She told me later she began to use dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and gave me handouts from a workshop she had attended with the founder of DBT herself, Dr. Marsha Linehan. DBT scholars and practitioners have created layman’s guides to this complex therapy. I read The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook, I’m reading DBT Made Simple, and Dr. H. presented me with a copy of Dr. Linehan’s recently released compendium, DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets, the contents primarily only available in DBT trainings. The simplest way to describe how DBT works for me is: “Catch that thought. Hold that feeling.”
I had balls made to help me remember. They’re bright to see and soft to hold.
The Fix reported on the growing validity of DBT as an effective treatment for addiction/substance use disorder in June, 2015. It’s actually useful for any kind of merciless distress or sorrow or upset.
If Dr. H. hadn’t had the creativity, breadth of knowledge, courage to apply knowledge in novel ways, and the determination to help me, I believe I would have done the deal with the entity and never written this at all.
. . . . .
I’ll be attending the Montgomery County, Virginia Chamber of Commerce Women’s Leadership Conference on Tuesday, April 5, 2016. If you’d like your own “catch that thought | hold that feeling” ball, just ask me. Shirley Gillispie of Green-Eyed Designs made them for us.
