Cher, Grant Me the Serenity

In my Advanced Fiction class last semester, I wrote a short story that took place in a Twelve Step meeting.  Write what you know, right?  The protagonist was fiction, the plot was fiction, the venue was fiction, but it was all based in reality because, well, the truth is stranger than fiction.  In the story, a Tuesday night group is reeling over the recent death of one of their members, who was the victim of a hit-and-run.  Little is known about the incident thus far, but based on the victim’s history and the nature of the accident, the group grapples with the question of whether their member was drunk, or if maybe the driver of the car was drunk.  This leads to other members recounting the number of times that they had driven under the influence and the consequences that ensued.  Or worse, the times that no consequences ensued and they, in their addiction, felt compelled to go out and do it again. 

As mothers, fathers, felons, and Christians, the group collaborates on making conclusions about how horrifying it is to live in a world where addiction gets to cohabitate with human beings.  The main character, and the host of the meeting, phases in and out of consciously paying attention to the conversation because he is actively struggling with his own trauma.  He began drinking again a few months ago and had not yet admitted it to anyone.  As his dependency worsens (it always does) he is plagued by the reason that finally convinced him to get sober the first time.  Twelve years earlier, his wife aborted what would have been their third child because she couldn’t handle the two children they already had, unpayable bills, and, of course, a constantly drunk husband.  That was the action that it took for him to fully grasp the catastrophe of how his family was living because of his addiction. 

Oh yeah, I went there.  You think my nonfiction hobby-writing is controversial?  You have no idea what trouble my keyboard and I can conjure…

During the workshop of my piece, a 19-year-old girl who writes dystopian fiction about matriarchal, asexual societies on the continent of Africa past the year 3000, said to me about my work:  “I’m just not buying it.”

“Maybe you should go to an actual AA or NA meeting for research before you write about it,” she suggested.  “Nobody would ever admit to drunk driving in front of an entire group of people.  That’s just not realistic.  And pretty much all of your characters had kids, but you didn’t say whether they had kids before they were alcoholics, or after they got sober?  I was confused about that.  The timelines don’t make any sense to me.  Also, how are their strangers in this group as well?  You talked about people that the group had never seen before showing up and sitting in on the meeting, but why were they there?  And how did they know where to go for a meeting?  It was all too weird for me- I just couldn’t really put myself there.”

And I hope you never have to, McKenna.

Just to recap- a girl who writes stories about a world where men are slaves, liquified metal is food, hyenas are the main mode of transportation, and women have evolved passed having vaginas so they give birth through their noses… she doesn’t buy the events and conversations in a realistic account of an average Twelve Step meeting.  There is a major problem here- and it’s not the creative liberties I take with my prose.    

We can’t blame people who aren’t addicts for not understanding addiction.  Addicts don’t understand it either.  To not even be able to play pretend for a few paragraphs and put yourself in the urine-soaked shoes of an alcoholic?  That is a whole other level of disillusioned.  That disconnect- that disbelief- that’s what extrapolated my drinking problem beyond just being “a problem.”  My reckless, careless quest for a life of “fun” and “ease” took me down the first mile of that marathon.  Addiction itself dragged me, kicking and screaming, for the next 25.  Complete ignorance and the absorption of false information about sobriety and recovery had me fighting and flopping like a dying fish mere inches away from that dry finish line.

In defense of the “Teenaged Sci-Fi Queen,” the goings-on of an addiction support group are unbelievable.  Unless you’ve lived the prologue to that story.  It’s also unbelievable if you’ve fallen victim to society’s far-reaching, wholly incorrect, assumptions and stereotypes about addiction.  For example, here are some things that I was told about addiction that are, at the very least, a total farce:

“You have an issue with moderation.”

False.  I was measuring out tablespoons of blue cheese dressing for my cobb salad at the same time that I was chugging vodka straight from the bottle. 

“The first step is admitting that you have a problem.”

Nah.  Admitting you have a problem is not a step.  For starters, we know we have a problem long before we admit it out loud.  Admitting it to someone else is not only not a progressive step, it’s a massive disappointment.  So much emphasis is put on “admitting you have a problem,” that addicts think it’s the end of the game.  I truly thought that once I told someone that I had a drinking problem, I would be ready for step two- quitting.  In reality, I told someone I had a problem and… nothing changed.  My desire to drink became stronger than ever.  Admitting that I had a problem did not catalyze the ending of my problem- it took me into that terrifying gray area where “I don’t want to stop,” became “Oh my God… what is wrong with me… I can’t stop.”

“Only through God can you achieve sobriety.”

God? Where dat bitch be?  Do you mean my “higher power?” Cause Cher is on her 8th Farewell Tour and way too busy to come smack the cocktail out of my hand.  God is not a hound, he doesn’t come every time you whistle for him.  Someone should have told me sooner that a big part of early sobriety would be me and my harmonica in a cold, lonely cell playing the “AOTA Doesn’t Want My Liver” Blues.

“Addiction is a disease.”

No, it isn’t.  That’s a great way of thinking to eliminate all accountability on my part, though.  Cystic Fibrosis is a disease.  Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis is a disease.  Drinking is a choice.  A frustrating, heartbreaking, impossible choice- but a choice non-the-less.  If you claim that you can’t imagine an “impossible choice,” then may I remind you that a mere 5 years ago, we all had to choose between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump?  Yeah.  Impossible choices come up every now and then.  Sometimes you have to check a box to indicate the manner in which would like to get fucked.

The people who spout these cliches mean well, and I know that.  My complaints are not a slight to them.  That being said, we have to stop making it seem like getting sober can be done as easily as following the yellow brick road.  It cannot.  It’s complicated and arbitrary.  Sobriety exists on the other side of a dense forest, where that Chesire Cat asshole is giving directions. 

“Which path should I take?”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Sobriety, I guess.”

“Ok so then that first path will take you to rehab, the second path with take you to another rehab, the third path will take you to a third rehab, and the last path will take you to jail.”

“Which one will get me sober?”

“All? None? I dunno. Throw a dart.  I gotta go turn my teeth into a moon, good luck with that shit.”

I promise, recovery is not hopeless.  It just feels hopeless when you are also feeling helpless.  The helplessness is exacerbated after you’ve made the effort to ask for help, and ended up making a series of bad investments based on a string of outdated platitudes.  However, the more people who weather the storm, face the dragon, take a machete to those woods and forge a path, the more likely other addicts are to follow the trail.  By definition, hopelessness cannot exist where there is an abundance of hope.  Despite my jokes and my being constantly terse, I hope that people understand what this blog is.  Hope. 

While we’re on the subject of tasteless jokes, there is one cliché that I stand by in the alcoholic world.  Rule 62: Don’t take yourself too damn seriously.  You cannot rise with the weight of the world on your shoulders- its murder on the calves.  You cannot right the wrongs you’ve done to others until you, yourself, get right in the head.  Its not selfish- its pragmatic.  And yes, its ok to laugh sometimes.  Addiction is no joke, but it sure does turn your life into one.  I’m surprised no one has attacked me with the question yet, so I’ll go ahead and preemptively answer it:  How can you joke about something as devastating as addiction?  Easy.  Alcohol was going to kill me.  Laughter is what I live for.