Abstinence Is Not a Choice

February 5, 2015 by

In 25 months of abstinence from alcohol, I have never chosen not to drink. I cannot remember the glass of wine that turned from being a choice to not a choice, but that turn happened and when I am in the wine aisle at Kroger, when I see the starfish on the green label, I want. I want without ceasing.

Debbie Palombo on Mt. Kilimanjaro

Beautiful, merciful friend Debbie Palombo on Mt. Kilimanjaro, June 2013

When I see and want the bottle of wine, I don’t consider options or choices. I don’t resist, I don’t use my brain to hold my arm down, I don’t think about how I would disappoint others, I don’t think about the consequences of drinking, I don’t exert my willpower to keep myself from buying two bottles (the days of one bottle a night were long gone when my drinking stopped). There’s nothing I can do to not buy and drink those bottles of wine.

This is such a very subtle, difficult inner experience to explain: I can’t even walk closer to choice. I have no power over choice. The closer I get, the more power it has. Instead, I throw myself off a cliff. Every time I want a drink, whether I’m in the grocery store, sitting across from you at a dinner table, or all alone at my house, if I want a drink, I throw myself off a cliff.

It is an either-or, a direness that extreme. I can’t even flirt with choice.

I can truly envision myself standing on a cliff across from someone holding out a glass of wine to me. I feel that terrible, aching, yearning longing. I don’t just lean back and fall. I turn my face towards the space beyond the cliff. I bend my knees and I push off.

It’s just a metaphor, just an image, but there’s no doubt about what happens when people throw themselves off cliffs.

I choose death over drinking.

Day after day.

It’s not a very nice way to live. Yet, it’s the addict’s “choice”—if one dares to call it that.

I don’t understand why my mind (heart, soul, spirit or some combo?) has generated this cliff metaphor. What’s the cliff made of? Where do I fall? Am I caught somewhere? By what? Why do I not die? I don’t know.

People addicted to alcohol and other drugs hear: “Just choose to stop! Use your willpower! Just say no! Just put it down!” and “Think of the consequences! You’re going to jail, to lose your job/lose your children/lose your relationship! Don’t you care about those?!” or “Don’t you see how your using and drinking are hurting me?” or “You just don’t really want to quit, do you?”

Yes, I have willpower. Yes, I want to put the bottle down. No, I don’t want to hurt anybody. No, I don’t want to lose anything. Yes, I want to quit.

But I can’t. I can’t quit if I think in terms of choice for the good of myself and others or choice against consequences that would harm myself or others. Thinking about addiction and choice is like thinking about stirring milk into a cup of tea with a teaspoon and pressing desperately to staunch a gushing wound with soaked gauze. Yeah, they both involve a hand. Otherwise, they’re not related. They’re not compatible.

I hear people who are newly abstinent or attempting to become abstinent try to rally themselves to make better choices, or admonish themselves to think of consequences, and I groan.

The only thing I know for sure is that I was unable to stop my drinking on my own. I needed help. Perhaps I throw myself over and over off a cliff into the spaciousness of the mercy of others.

Filed Under: Addiction

Nutrition Supports Sobriety

January 19, 2015 by

A guest post by Laurel Sindewald

When we’re early in recovery from alcohol addiction, it’s important to remember to be kind to our bodies. We’re used to getting half of our daily calories from alcohol. Alcohol turns to sugar in the body. Processed sugars make our blood sugar levels spike and drop, and when our blood sugar drops, the craving comes stronger than ever. To use nutrition to help ourselves stay sober, sugar is the first food we need to stay away from.

Nutrition can support sobrietyRather than eating a few large meals a day, we can keep ourselves stable with multiple smaller meals and snacks in between. Nuts and granola can make good snacks, with plenty of protein and carbs to keep us fueled through the day.

A diet rich in complex carbohydrates will help stabilize our blood sugar so that we can focus on building our new lives. These are whole grains, beans, and vegetables, many of which also have protein and vitamins. When we go to the store, these are some helpful complex carbohydrates we can look for:

  • Quinoa is a grain high in protein and good carbs, and can be found at grocery stores with pre-mixed spices for excellent flavor. It only takes about 15 minutes to cook and most boxes have various recipes to try. Consider making quinoa with fish, like salmon or tilapia, and a hearty pot of southern greens.
  • Lentils, of whatever color, are another fantastic carb. Lentil soup with carrots, garlic, and celery is heartwarming on a cold day, and helps keep one feeling stable and strong.
  • Split Peas also make a wonderful soup with a robust flavor. Home-made split pea soup only takes about thirty minutes to prepare. Add ham or cooked bacon to this winter favorite.
  • Barley and Rice are great in soups, cooked with spices as a side, or even cooked and cooled for a salad.
  • Black Beans, Kidney Beans, Black Eyed Peas, or any bean is your best friend for quick and sustaining meals. Whether it be a delicious chili or black bean soup, beans are full of the kind of carbs and protein you need. Stay away from baked beans, which have sugar in them, but pinto beans combine well with fish and Mexican dishes.
  • Collard, Mustard, Turnip Greens, Spinach, and Kale are full of vitamins in addition to those complex carbohydrates.
  • Other Vegetables: Carrots, Brussel Sprouts, Asparagus, Broccoli
  • Whole Wheat Pastas and Bread

Sometimes it can be hard to find time to cook, but fast food is full of processed sugars and carbs which can bring on cravings. The additives in processed foods can tax the liver further. Try some of these simple dinners:

  • Baked or fried salmon or tilapia, a side of quinoa or couscous, and steamed broccoli. (Mix and match different vegetables or grains as sides.)
  • Lentil soup with slices of buttered whole grain bread.
  • Black bean, kidney bean, and ground beef chili with a side salad of baby spinach with walnuts and cranberries.
  • Split pea soup, containing ham or bacon, potatoes, carrots, and celery.
  • Spaghetti or ravioli with sautéed onions, mushrooms, and ground turkey, beef, or sausage.
  • Baked chicken and asparagus, steamed Brussels sprouts, and a side of wild rice.
  • Bell peppers, onions, chicken, and garlic sautéed with fajita spices and served in tortillas.
  • Tacos with ground beef, lettuce, tomatoes, sour cream, and salsa.

Researched and written by Laurel Sindewald

Nutrition Supports Recovery is a clinical version of this post with links to cited research.

The content of this post is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical or professional advice. Consult a qualified health care professional for personalized medical and professional advice.

Filed Under: Addiction

Two Cats, Second Person

January 11, 2015 by

“My young friend,”I said, “if you want to be a psychological novelist and write about human beings, the best thing you can do is to keep a pair of cats.”
– Aldous Huxley

So how this writing thing is going is that I get up, I take care of my two cats, I make tea, I look at the 46-item outline, I scan the list, feel the calling, and write about that one.

Cat waves on an ocean bed

It feels very strange to write from my year-two person to my day-one person in second person. “You felt this. You thought that.” So very odd.

But it’s giving me a way in that I’m not sure I would have if I were writing in first person. Something about, “I felt,” snarls me with tangled grief and uncertainty.

So far, every morning I have a book-writing session, I cry. I had no idea of the sorrow I felt, the anguish I was in when I quit. From two years out, I feel very sorry for myself and in the very best way. I feel such compassion for my suffering self. My words to her are so clear, so kind, so understanding. I see nothing to judge her on, scold her about, reprimand her for. Nothing. She was a mess. And there were and are reasons.

I am mindful of Dr. H.’s caution that I do not re-traumatize myself by writing this story. After two hard mornings in a row, I took the next morning off. When I feel I’ve done all I can, I look at the word count. If it’s over 600, I quit. No rereading, no editing.

I have thought I was writing from deep within for my blog, more deeply in personal emails. This writing is deeper still, more intimate, with no eyes upon it but mine. Although I feel deep in earth as I remember and cry, I find myself feeling paradoxically refreshed afterwards, as if I am standing upright, breathing in curlicues of air. So far, I am okay.

. . . . .

To share my process: I’m attempting to write a memoir of the past seven years, my first two years of abstinence from alcohol and the preceding five years of drinking. I’ve written a draft of the preface here.

I’m shooting for 75,000 words, a pretty standard length for a memoir. I’m giving myself 6 months, no more, no less. I figure if I write 5 days per week, 25 weeks, about 600 words each of those days, about 3000 words per week, I’ll have it. My outline currently has 46 sections, so that would be a limit of an average of 1630 words for each section. However, I see some sections being 100 words long and others being 5000.

I started the above regimen on Monday, January 5, 2015. So far, I’m behind on 5 days per week, but ahead of 3000 words per week.

I’m finding I can’t write a book and a blog and emails, so if you don’t hear from my via blog or email, my words are in the book.

I am so grateful for the wonderful support I am receiving for this effort from family, friends and those who share comments, and particularly from Sarah Beth Jones, Dan Smith, Laurel Sindewald, Alex Edelman, and my father, Robert Giles.

Microsoft Word reports I wrote 1047 words this morning. I am done writing for the day.

Filed Under: Recovery Story

Letter to Myself at Two Years Sober

December 28, 2014 by

Two years ago today, I did not take a drink. That night before, I drank all the wine left in my house.

Today I begin to write the book I most needed to read today, two years ago, on day one of my abstinence from alcohol. I have found the first two years of recovery from addiction to alcohol so, so difficult.

I do not think these two years had to be that hard.

View from my office of the sun rising

View from my office of the sun rising on December 28, 2014

At about twenty months without a drink, I began to feel a bit of a turn for the better. In the past four months, I’ve gotten some of my mind back and have been able to remember and reflect upon the past two years. The observations, conclusions and insights I am having, I think, could have been so useful and valuable to me at the start.

In the preface to the book I would write:

If you are reading this, I’m hoping you are thinking about quitting, or early or newly in recovery from addiction to alcohol or other drugs, or perhaps even from a process – gambling, sex, shopping, eating, porn – whatever has been plaguing you. I’m hoping you might be a professional in the addictions treatment field looking to understand, again or for the first time, what the first two years can be like.

If you’re on medication-assisted treatment (MAT) – Suboxone, methadone, naltrexone, something else – or practicing another form of harm reduction, say marijuana instead of meth, this book could be for you, too. Maintaining abstinence, using or doing less, doing a so-so substance, or just plain doing things that feel like less – it’s just plain hard.

While I offer this book to you, I am writing it addressed to me. I had trouble with first person – “I couldn’t stop drinking” – because I couldn’t find a structure to it. It just went on and on with trouble and hardship. I was drawn to second person, “you,” but I loathe unsolicited advice in the “you should” form. Somehow, I started writing a letter to myself:

Dear Anne,

Here is the book I would have given to you if I had met you on day one. Oh, the pain you were in! I’m so, so sorry. If I had only known! There’s no way to go back. But if I could have been there for you from day one, this is what I would have said.

And I started crying and knew I was expressing some kind of truth from deep within so that’s the form this book takes: a letter of understanding, compassion and kindness to myself. Because that’s what I needed from day one: very, very specific knowledge, insights, understanding, compassion and kindness.

Very few have the ability to be specific and knowledgeable about recovery from addiction on days one through 730, the first two years of abstinence or harm reduction. Reasons for that exist which I will explain in the book. Simply put, what I most needed wasn’t available. So I am writing it now. Two years too late, I am still finding it healing and redemptive and restorative to express it now. If one single person finds the comfort and solace I needed at the time I became abstinent, then two years of abstinence and this soul-probing writing would be worth it.

Because I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.

If I relapse while writing this, ah, well. I don’t know what it’s like to relapse yet, but the odds are so in favor that I will. (According to this source, I had an 80% chance of relapsing in year one, now have a 40% chance of relapsing, and have to keep up this intensity of effort at least through year five. Exhausting. Heart-breaking.) I’ll hope I haven’t irreparably harmed myself or others. I expect my time drinking – or using other substances (I hope not, but I have felt the pull) – will be short-lived and I’ll be back doing what I need to do to stay in recovery from addiction to alcohol.

I’m sticking to doing my very best to write only what I think would have helped me in the first two years. I don’t feel confident writing a recovery self-help book. I’m so new to this. I don’t know what works long-term. And the addictions treatment field doesn’t know either, which astounds, flabbergasts and enrages me.

Ah, Anne, it’s okay. Deep breath. You’re not wrong or bad to feel angry. It’s just not helping you at this time. Let’s let that go for now.

See how a kind, reassuring voice appears when I’m distressed? It’s a little weird. But I haven’t had a drink in two years and that’s the voice that “wants” to speak in the book so I’m going with it.

So the book is written in second person, to “you,” but please know that it’s not advisory or directive. It’s a letter to me. I’m thinking that you reading the letter to me as “you” might be of help to you. We shall see.

Here’s my plan for the book: Part 1 is the letter to me. Part 2 is my story, my first person narrative, with parts chosen that help explain the letter. Separating my thinking this way has helped me not go on and on with my story but to excerpt it.

Part 3 is my story as a case study. I’m a teacher and a counselor. I am trained to take a clinical, scientific, research-informed look at people. I do so with myself in Part 3 and offer a brief clinical case study with myself as the subject and myself as the clinician. Self-diagnosis and self-treatment are considered professionally unethical in the counseling field, but I make a case in my story why it was imperative for me to do so. Autodidactic addicts and addictions professionals may or may not buy my reasoning but I offer it in case it may be of value.

I also write this book for the people who love and loved me and were confounded by the development in me of an addiction to alcohol. Anguish is the only word I can use to describe the reason for, and the resultant, separation that occurred between us. This is my attempt at explanation and grief-stricken apology.

I have made a list of the things I would have told myself on day one and it’s currently 46 items (not 12). I’m going to cut myself off from adding to the list at the end of today, December 28, 2014, my two-year sobriety date, and let this book truly be about the first two years and no more. If I get a burning desire after that date, I’ll let it go or publish it on my blog, annegiles.com.

I need to hustle and write it now while I can still feel and think and remember what it was like. Because I am starting to feel better.

Anne Giles
December 28, 2014
Blacksburg, Virginia

Filed Under: Recovery Story

Why I Have a Coach

December 19, 2014 by

Coach Sarah Beth Jones and I had an email correspondence which I am sharing with her permission, a few words edited for clarity.

Anne to Sarah Beth:

[Thoughts about outline for memoir mentioned in this post.]

Sarah Beth to Anne:

Absolutely chilling, Anne! There is power absolutely radiating from this outline. So raw, so real, so useful.

What’s your next step?

Anne to Sarah Beth:

May I have your permission to share our correspondence?

Brewing a Cup of Identity CollageI have been asked why I have a coach for writing this book. I’m an excellent writer, I’m a counselor, I could coach myself. I’m organized, driven, can both envision projects and execute them. Why a coach?

Because I go in, and I come out, and I look around and feel sort of vacant. What did I just do? What did it say, where did it go? Did it *work* on some level? And given that I don’t know what I just did or where I am, where do I go next?

During the time we’ve worked together, I’ve kept waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop – for you to be judgmental and directive like so many people to whom I have turned over my direction for guidance. I keep waiting for the reason to flee, to get out.

Not once have you judged me. Not once have you directed me. You have told me what you felt and what you thought and then asked me a question. That is a perfect fit for what I need. There is nothing wrong with me or weak about me. It’s not me that needs shoring up. It’s me and my creative process that need non-judgmental, accepting, conscious guidance and assistance. Help me see what I cannot see! Help me discern what I cannot discern! It’s so difficult for me to go in and in and in and get out what’s there and also see what’s collecting around the edges on the outside of the in.

Something like that. Anyway, it feels both imperative and organic to have you as a coach.

I am so so so grateful to you.

Back to writing!

With inspired gratitude,
Anne

P.S.

I would want to share what you wrote to me personally once and no more. I need the synergy to be between us. I just want to show an example of what the deal is. Then I want to go back in with just us. No witnesses, no critical doubters. Just us doing the thing.

Image: “Brewing a Cup of Identity” made during collage party workshop with Sarah Beth Jones, displayed in Anne’s refrigerator gallery.

Filed Under: Sundry
« Previous Page
Next Page »