My heart breaks for these women.  They are busting all of the stereotypes, while taking the brunt of the stigma.  They aren’t uneducated, they have a master’s degree.  They’ve never been homeless; they have a walk-in closet and a subzero refrigerator.  Their fathers didn’t rape or abuse them, they bought them a Jetta on their 16th birthday and danced to “Butterfly Kisses” at their wedding.  They don’t subscribe to a “party” lifestyle, they (along with Dr. Seuss) put the kids to bed at 8pm and after doing the dishes, changing over the laundry, wiping every surface with Lysol, and applying a futile night serum, they put themselves to bed.  They aren’t selling sex for a fix; they are putting a cheeky zinfandel in their grocery cart next to the kid’s fruit snacks and the husband’s nasal strips.  Most importantly, they aren’t raging narcissists who only care about getting drunk to the point of neglecting everyone they love.  They are nurturing, sacrificing, laboring, chauffeuring, cooking, cleaning, kissing, hugging, teaching, diapering changing, flashcard making, snack providing mothers.  They would take a bullet for their children, there’s no intentional neglect anywhere in this narrative.  These Goddesses do everything, all day, every day for their families.  Its just… right now… they cannot stop drinking. 

We can justify our behavior by saying that we are trying our best to save our loved ones from the fall out and run them off… but the reality is, we are dragging them into Hell right along with us.  Nostalgia is powerful.  How can you tell a mother to forget about her helpless addict child when her child is standing right in front of her?  She may be slurring, stumbling, and riddled with track marks, but that’s her child!  She was a sweet little girl once, how do you give up the hope that she’ll be a sweet little girl ever again?  How do you give up on a brother? A sister? A nephew? A friend?  You can’t.  So, yes, in a way our loved ones kept signing up for the punishment, which is why we adopted that “fuck them for loving me,” attitude.  We think that we are just asking them to leave us alone and let us kill ourselves-- which is a simple request.  Actually, what we’re asking them to do is erase any and all memories of us from before we were addicts, and to give up hope that we’ll ever be ourselves again.  That is a much taller order.    

There are a lot of mounting ironies in identifying as an alcoholic.  I find it particularly entertaining to be in a room full of people who used to identify as the “life of the party,” and now they insist on remaining anonymous.  That’s a big part of being an admitted alcoholic, right?  The anonymity.  “Shhhhh! Quiet! Whisper! Don’t repeat anything! No last names! Nobody but Jesus can know you are here! Wear a black turtleneck! Serpentine through the parking lot! Slip in the side door- we’ll hide you in the basement!”  Can you imagine if the Underground Railroad had been as effective at hiding people as the church is with alcoholics and pedophiles…?  There would be far fewer ghosts in Gettysburg, is all I’m saying. 

Addiction is addiction. Our demons may be different, but at the end of the day they all meet up at the same dive bar, high-five their cloven hooves and brag about how they fucked with us. People don’t realize the level of self-deception and self-sabotage involved in addiction, or they wouldn’t fixate on this concept of “rock bottom” so strenuously. They think that the only drive that people have in active addiction is “do whatever I have to do to get high,” “do whatever I have to do to get drunk.” To an extent, yes, that is the drive. The reasons, however, are rarely “I just like getting high,” or “I just like getting drunk.” Another huge mistake is thinking that addicts are just trash automatons with one setting- get high. Get drunk. Wrong.

Why me?  Why this?  Why now?  Why didn’t I see it coming?  Why couldn’t I stop it sooner?  These are the questions that simmer in the cauldron of my mind as my hands start to sweat and I desperately search for a mental escape hatch.  Isn’t that what we do when we feel threatened? Fight or flight.  I don’t have the luxury of “flight” any longer to get away from myself- that’s what my addiction was.  Every night was a one-way trip on Vodka Airlines to numbness in Nowhere-ville.  I was committing the only action I knew to free myself, but every drink was another brick and spread of cement to seal me in my own tomb.  So, fleeing is no longer an option.  All I’m left with is the fight.  But its not a fight like I’ve ever know before. 

“You can’t bullshit and bullshitter!” Spend any amount of time in a recovery program and you will, at some point, hear someone state that. It’s a terse way of saying, “I know a liar when I see one because I, too, am a liar.” Lying is a major component in the addict vocation. It’s as essential to our business as a company leased Nissan Altima is to a traveling salesman. The lies facilitate our use. They start small: “How much have you had to drink?” “A couple glasses of wine.” Then they escalate: “Where were you?” “Oh, I had to work late.” Then they implode: “Are you sure you’re ok to drive?” “Oh yeah, I’m fine.”

I get really sick of suicide happening, either in the public eye or in the suburbs, and people’s reaction continuing to be, “I just don’t understand.”  That’s not good enough.  Let’s endeavor to understand because we have an epidemic.  Just like in a court of law, circumstantial evidence is not enough to label someone “guilty” or “not guilty,” “happy” or “mortally depressed.”  Even worse, when the evidence is more than circumstantial, when someone admits that they need help, society reacts in one of two ways: accuse them of being dramatic and/or lying.  Or, lock them away in an institution where, if they weren’t suicidal before, after 10 days of wearing foam hand covers and using a rubber hair brush, they will be.

What would easily fix the issue of addicts being stigmatized as just “addicts” would be people endeavoring to understand addiction. From the outside it looks like worthless people making repeated poor choices until they die or sober up. Its not a super-flattering status quo. It’s a cliché, but in the recovery community I have met some of the most impressive, successful, determined, kind-hearted people you could imagine. I’ve also met some serious assholes. A room full of addicts isn’t different than any other room in that regard.

Every time that you feel like you want or need a drink, ask yourself, “what is my brain really telling me that I need?”  I think you’ll be surprised at the necessities that alcohol has been helping you neglect.  I don’t expect everyone to go full teetotaler for a month and have a life-affirming, religious, mind/body nirvana-adjacent experience.  I do, however, think you’ll be surprised at what you learn about yourself when you aren’t choking down all of your bad emotions in the same swallow as your white zinfandel. 

In the daylight, there are tasks to keep your hands busy, projects to keep your mind busy, places to go, people to call, drives to take, walks to go on… but in the wee small hours of the morning, you’re nothing but a case of insomnia surrounded by four walls with nowhere to run to. I live in a studio apartment, I barely have a toilet, let alone the space to get away from myself. Even if you are secure in your sobriety, you still have it in the back of your mind that you are just one drink away from escape.