Sky Daddy... Take The Wheel
After Eighteen Months of Not Drinking Alcohol I Discovered That Wasn't The Only Problem and That There Was Another Break Up I Would Need To Make
Last Sunday marked me reaching eighteen months without a drink. This isnāt my first time reaching this milestone. Once upon a time I reached five and half years- a significant amount of time that felt like I earned everyday. What I was able to glean from that time off was that I was living the life of a dry drunk. I spent a lot of time over those years questioning if I had a problem; if I inherited the problem; if Iād ever be able to drink like a ānormalā person again; but failed to examine my part in the problem.
It was a grind. And so was life.Ā
I concluded that alcohol must not have been the problem after all those years off. That lifeās circumstances were harder when I originally had to quit. That my kids were old enough not to be affected by my drinking. They were, after all, my main driving force to take it off the table. Being the child of an alcoholic was something that I didnāt want them to experience or be.Ā
I know now that there wasnāt room for them to be the children of an alcoholic. I was too busy filling that role; forever the victim of my mothers drinking; trying to rationalize mine in the face of hers.Ā
So I went out to drink for a few years and spent a majority of the time trying not to. Taking breaks. Attempting to drink less in the calendar year that I would consume.Ā
One day I was on a walk talking to a friend about the crippling anxiety I had experienced the night before when trying to sleep after a couple of glasses of wine. How I knew I couldnāt drink liquor. But otherwise!
For once, I said, Iām finally enjoying and having fun drinking. Iām not being hard on myself or judgy about it.Ā
She stopped and looked at me, Ash, are you having fun?Ā because thatās not fully what you just described.
Was I having fun? In some ways, yes. It was the first time that I could remember not going hard on myself for being hungover; that I let myself be out late with friends; that I didnāt experience the volume of the inner dialogue talking to me while I was drinking, about my drinking. This āfunā lasted for only a few short months. Literally, maybe three.Ā
What a lot of people didnāt know was what I was experiencing physically and mentally after I went home. That the fun ended there.Ā Ā
I would spend the second half of the night with my body and mind rejecting the alcohol. I was unable to physically process it. The smallest amounts, too. The joke was Ash was a lightweight who couldnāt hold her RosĆ©. It was part of my charm.
What wasnāt cute was anxiety that felt impossible to contend with. Hangovers that hung on for days. I started googling what happened if you were āallergic to alcoholā.Ā
Shortly there after, I found myself having a conversation with my anesthesiologist before a surgery.Ā
Wow, he said. Your blood pressure is really, really low.Ā
I know, I replied. I bet youāre going to ask me if Iām a runner. A question that I had heard in response to the same results for twenty years.
No, I was going to ask you if youāre a cheap date. With blood pressure this low, itās close to impossible for your body to process narcotics and substances.Ā
Wait, what?! I said with wide eyes. Iāve recently began experiencing vertigo and vomiting after a glass or two of Rose and I feel like Iām going to have a heart attack when I should be sleeping. I thought I was allergic.
Nope. Itās your body unable to break it all down.Ā
I laid there in disbelief before going under.Ā
Here was my answer. Finally, After all this time. SCIENCE. It made so much sense.Ā
My mind and beliefs shifted drastically about alcohol and putting it in my body. Suddenly, it seemed I was poisoning myself. I started thinking about the fragility of my body and brain. How I couldn't spend the next forty years of my life feeling this way and putting my body through this. I couldnāt mentally handle it either. I started thinking about what Iāve put my body through over the years. Not just drinking, but marathon training, stressful long days. How hard Iāve been on it and how much I've demanded it do without considering that it might not be able to keep up and giving back. It seemed an unreasonable request that I insist on figuring out how to drink when my body was showing me it couldn't handle it.Ā
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Of course, I would still think I could go have one glass of Rose with a friend for happy hour. Which turned into two glasses of Rose? Which turned into two tall shot glasses of Sake with dinner. I remember feeling like my speech was off. I also remember barely making it through the door. The room was turning on its side as I walked in.Ā
I remember all too clearly the hours two am to six am. My heart was pounding out of my chest, my mind reeling. I thought I was dying. In a way I was wishing I was. I was consumed with terror. I thought about calling for help but chose to lay there, breathing, talking back to my brain.
That morning I canceled my day.Ā
And drinking forever.
Since that day, I have not had any desire to drink. Unlike my previous attempts, this one has been effortless.Ā
Unlike my previous attempts, this one has shown me that not only was my low blood pressure a factor, but the hard truth; I am an alcoholic and addict.Ā
A few months ago, I started looking at my alcohol free life. I didnāt understand why my things looked like they did; why I felt emotionally broken; why things were getting better. Why I wasnāt better at life-ing.
I wonāt go into all the āis odd or is it Godā moments that have occurred, but the people, literature and occurrences that have been placed in front of me since I started asking that have opened my mind to seeing and hearing what I couldnāt when I first walked into an AA meeting in 2012.Ā
I didnāt see the denial, the absolute gaslighting of Self and inability to accept my problem. I didnāt work the steps. I didnāt spend time socially or in service with other sober persons.Ā
I called on Sky Daddy only when I needed him to get me out of trouble or to make me feel better. I totally called on him when cumming which I feel is slightly more selfless than the ladder, but again, very one sided.Ā
I made massive attempts to control not only my drinking, but my life and the people in it. (I believe the profās refer to this as manipulation)Ā
None of it worked.Ā
Worst of all, my brain was a never ending hellscape and my worst enemy. Constantly choosing chaos or creating it. Paranoid that everyone hated me. In a constant state of anxious apartness. On and on and on.Ā
While sitting in the chair at my hairdressers, one of the women asked me; Ash, what have you had it with?Ā
My mind, I replied.Ā
She burst out laughing.Ā
I know! I said, but seriously! I can barely handle the shit my brain makes up about what is going on. Which was true. I had reached an emotional and mental rock bottom.Ā
āBeing convinced that Self, manifested in various ways, was what had defeated us, we considered its common manifestations.ā
I started taking a long hard look at my drinking and drug use over the last twenty five years. I had my first drink and got drunk at fourteen. I was using hard drugs by the time I was fifteen. Strung out, and at my end at nineteen I was able to get myself off the hard stuff, but I wouldnāt consider quitting alcohol until I was in my early thirties.
Who Iāve been and the choices Iāve made. Clean, alcohol free or not, the behavior was all the same. My instinct to choose self and chaos and continue to end up where I started: on my knees begging for help, convinced I would never figure any of this out.
So the next thing I quit was me.Ā
My big break up of 2023.Ā
Admittedly, itās not the easiest relationship to end. Iāve always said that the part of me that chooses drugs and alcohol, to lie and cheat, to escape feeling the discomfort of herself or feeling in general, is the part of me that got me through surviving life. Making sure she is not shamed, but loved harder than anyone ever knew how and taken care of and accepted is crucial. Reminding her that what she thinks is fun, in reality, is literally not fun for us.Ā
I donāt know that sheās ever really going anywhere. So itās a process of learning to co-exist, but taking away any and all rights to have a voice at the table.Ā
When that voice tries to insert itself, I simply reply with, I love you, and no.Ā
Followed by, Sky Daddyā¦ Take the Wheel.Ā
It works. If you work it.
What a powerful narrative! Thank you for sharing your journey to a sobriety beyond alcohol and narcotics. I always admire the combination of open-veined vulnerability and painfully-gained insight you share with us.
Well said. I'm happy for you! "to thine own self be true"