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| My first author photo. Of course I'm drinking. |
The leap year threw off my two-year anniversary of not drinking, so this is the actual date of the day I went to detox two years ago. Yeah, I know, my birthday is still on the same date even though I lived through X amount of leap years. I was also inside my mom for nine months, and you know what many people in this country believe about when life begins. Unless it fucks with doing taxes, so capitalism does, indeed, trump religion here.
But even if you don't want to count yesterday, you have to admit I made it to two years today. So that's the end of that discussion.
When I first showed up at detox I thought I was going into withdrawals, but it turned out I was still drunk from the night before. That makes me wonder how many times, over the years, I've gone to my various jobs still drunk, just not knowing it. Good thing no one thought to test me.
I was dismayed to learn that I would have a roommate, at least for the first half of my stay, but it turned out that he was a pretty good guy. I fell out of touch with him. I hope he's doing OK. I know when we did IOP together he fell off the wagon a couple of times. He was kind to me when I had no idea how he was keeping himself together. He'd only arrived 30 minutes before me.
I wasn't a great fan of communal living. What I really wanted was time alone, but that was pretty hard to come by. I don't recall how many people lived in that space. Maybe fifteen? When I first arrived the plan was to stay for three months, and I didn't really want to do that, not with so many people always being around. I don't mind saying I was hurting pretty bad. Not just the withdrawal. There was that, but there was also Ativan to keep me from seizing up. I mean the swift change in my life. I was living with just my brother (Grandma had just passed, what, a couple of weeks before?), and all of a sudden I found myself in the midst of this crowd? Changing one of the most powerful parts of my life? I didn't feel confused or even weird. I felt fucked up. Just fucked up. I hadn't even thought about the food they'd serve. I'm pretty particular about what I eat, and I knew they'd be serving shit I wouldn't like.
I will say this. Being in detox was a lot better than the psych ward. The only thing the psych ward had up on detox was the food. Psych ward food wasn't great, but it was good. Detox food was downright awful. At the very least I didn't have to ask permission to go to the bathroom. That was nice.
The only comfort I found was in writing. It would turn out to be a story I started while still in the throes of booze but finished on the other side of detox. If you want to read it, it was published in The Rainforest Strikes Back. I also found solace in Julian by Gore Vidal. When I was waiting for the driver to pick me up I had the wherewithal to grab the nearest Vidal book I had. If I have to go to institutions every once in a while, it might be a good idea to bring Vidal with me.
The only other thing I enjoyed while I was there was the environment outside. Yeah, it was hot as fuck, but it was beautiful out there. We were supposed to walk back from the cafeteria to our living quarters together, but I regularly fell behind so I could admire the beauty of the land around me. One of the therapists saw me, and I explained what I was doing.
"You're the only one I've ever seen who does that," she said.
To be fair, the people I was staying with had their minds occupied elsewhere. Everyone was there to dedicate themselves to being sober. Not me. I was there to put drinking behind me. Except . . .
I don't think I've told this part before. I may have mentioned it to a couple of friends, but I don't think I did.
This was near the end of my time in detox. I'd beaten the physical addiction. But I wanted a drink badly. Maybe even needed a drink. So I decided I was going to get the hell out of there specifically to drink the instant I got home. Not putting it off until my birthday, like I told everyone.
I worked as diligently as I possibly could. I canceled the three months, explaining that I felt pretty good now, pretty confident. I wasn't. Those were flat-out lies. After signing a mega-shit-ton of paperwork they finally packed up my things (the stuff they didn't allow me to have) and got someone to drive me back home. This driver went a different way, a longer way, which irritated me to no end. I could practically taste the bourbon I was going to get as a gift to myself. Congratulations! You made it through detox!
Dammit, why is he taking the scenic route? I need to get home so I can get in my car, go to Williams Liquors and get a bottle for myself. And I wasn't going to cheap out on myself, either. I was gonna get me some Wild Turkey 101. Maybe a handle!
I finally got home and dragged my shit inside. My brother, who expected to be living alone for three months, was surprised to see me. I got up to my room and knew I had to take a shower first. Detox showers suck. They're better than psych ward showers, but not by much. I needed to take my first shower as a free man IMMEDIATELY.
Then I got dressed and grabbed my car keys. Out to the car. I was hungry for anything that wasn't detox food, so I stopped at McDonald's, a couple of blocks from my actual destination. And then, as I approached Williams Liquors, I . . . just drove past. I still have no idea why I did that, but the urge to drink was suddenly gone.
Don't get me wrong. I miss booze. A lot. But the urge to drink only happens every once in a while, and it's easy to fight.
So. How did I make it to two years? When so many alcoholics fail within the first week? And not being in AA? There are very few people in the world who think that an alcoholic can get away from the drink without AA. Everyone I was in IOP with was in AA, or at the very least they attended meetings. The therapist in charge of IOP is one of the few people who understood me when I said I only have a problem with booze. I'm OK with other drugs. And then even she said that it's a difficult row to hoe without AA.
But I can't stand AA. I know it helps others, and that's a good thing. But it is NOT FOR ME. I'm fine with Step One. Every alcoholic really does need to start there with admitting that you have a problem. I did that on Facebook, called friends and told them about it, had in person conversations, you name it. The one thing I most definitely did not do is proceed to Step Two, which is the problem for me.
If you're an alcoholic reading this, AA is probably a good idea, especially if you're not an atheist like me. It's a good place to start, and who knows? If you don't have a god, you might find one there. The first AA meeting I went to where I actually talked to people, they wanted me to take that second step. If you don't know, you have to acknowledge a greater power than you and that you have to place your trust in that power, that the power will get you to stop drinking. All you have to do is ask. All of them, each and every one of them, says it doesn't even have to be a god. It could be a doorknob. It could be a paperweight. And because a friend of mine had dragged me into the meeting, one of them said that I could even choose her as my higher power.
Incidentally, I told her about that on the drive home. Even she, an addict herself, said that was a bad idea.
I'm not such a staggeringly big asshole in that I don't believe there is a greater power than me. There are plenty of greater powers. My go-to example is the ocean. The ocean is a greater power than me. Unfortunately it has nothing to do with my drinking, so fuck the ocean. It's not going to help me. None of the greater powers is even sentient, so how could it know anything? Much less a method of getting me to stop drinking?
I am, however, kind of an asshole, so I suggested that I use myself as the greater power. Everyone said that was a bad idea. Really? Everyone?
If the ocean isn't going to give a shit about me drinking, and I'm not going to pray to a god about it, then the ONLY thing to do is put it all on me. And it's not really that hard. All you have to do is keep telling yourself NO. And you know how I feel about that word.
So I don't know how I do it. Probably not willpower alone. There *is* a reason I had to go to detox, after all. But here's what I think.
Even though I didn't drink on that very first day out of detox, I made a promise to myself. One day I absolutely will drink again. It will happen. Because I came up with a list of things that could get me to drink again. Some of them happened, and I didn't start drinking. A lot of these are not very likely to even happen, but I'm sure eventually one of them will knock me off the wagon.
The key is to make sure that day is as far as possible into the future. And if I die before that day comes? I win.
If you're an alcoholic looking for help, don't listen to me, even if you're an atheist, too. What I'm doing is very unusual and off the beaten path. It seems to be working for me, but addiction is fucking crazy. There seems to be very few hard and fast rules in overcoming such an addiction. AA isn't the worst place you could start. Hell, you might even get something out of it. A lot of alcoholics do. Just in case, here's the link to their website.
As one friend on Facebook said, while congratulating me on two years free from booze, good work. Now I gotta do it again.
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