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. A worthy milestone worth celebrating, especially this second time around. Once upon a time I reached five and half years- a significant amount of time that I felt was hard earned everyday. I made the decision to ‘go back out’ and the first lesson I was able to glean from that 5 years without a drink was that, even though I wasn’t getting drunk, I was still living my life like one. I spent most of those years not drinking, not working a program and instead, trying to work out questions like, if my drinking problem was mine or my moms; if I inherited the problem; if it was all the result of being the child of an alcoholic; if I’d ever be able to drink like a ‘normal’ person again.

With the exception of knowing that I didn’t feel good about a lot of the decsions and outcomes that had resutled from my drinking, I never took an honest look at myself and what led to that drinking.

Which is probably what made it easy to start drinking again. My life hadn’t gotten easier without alcohol. In fact, it got harder. Little thoughts like, clearly my drinking wasn’t the problem to begin with soon grew on themsleves. It didn’t long after that to begin dismantling what had been my main driving force to take it off the table to begin with — I didn’t want my kids to experience being the children of an alcoholic. But, in time, I was able to convince myself that my kids were ‘old enough’ for me to experiment with drinking again. They were teenagers and ‘didn’t need me’ the way they once did. It wouldn’t be possible for them to experience what I had.

To this day, there has been no greater gaslighter in my life than me.

The sickest truth was in discovering that there wasn’t room for my children to be the children of an alcoholic; I was too busy filling that role; forever the victim of my mothers drinking.

It may not come as a surprise to some of you reading this, but pretty much from the first day I took a drink, I spent the majority of the next three years trying not to. Taking breaks that lasted 30 days here, 90 days there, 3 weeks here, 4 days there. Finally my rule became I would drink less in the calendar year than I would consume. *if I put this kind of time in attention into my finances my life would look favortie different*

One day I was on a walk with a friend who was sober. I was telling her about the crippling anxiety I had experienced in the middle of the night after a couple of glasses of wine. At the same time I told her how much I was enjoying drinking— how much fun I was having.

“I’ve finally reached a place where I’m not being hard on myself or judging myself about it. Whatever ‘thinking problem’ I used to have about drinking is gone”

She stopped and looked at me, Ash, are you having fun? Because that’s not what your describing or what I’m hearing in your voice.

Was I having fun? In some ways, yes. It was the first time that I could remember not being hard on myself for being hungover; that I let myself be out late with friends; that I didn’t experience the volume of the inner dialogue talking to me while I was drinking, about my drinking.

But this ‘fun’ didn’t last long at all.

Aside from my sober friends, there was and contiunes to be a majority of people who knew me who don’t think or would ever think I had a drinking problem. What most of those people didn’t know or understand was that my alcholism doesn’t express itself outwardly. I can’t tell you the amount of times I heard over the years, ‘you’re not your Mother, Ashley’. People knew how much confusion I had around her alcoholism and addiction and mine.

And I understood where they were coming from. My moms addiction was the sort that you couldn’t miss even if you tried. It wrecked her, her life and the lives of some of us around her.

What people don’t realize was I would have a couple glasses of wine with friends at dinner and would then spend the second half of the night with my body and mind rejecting the alcohol. I was physically unable to process it. People knew I was drinking less and I would try to explain how sick I would feel. The joke soon became that Ash was a lightweight who couldn’t hold her Rosé. It was part of my charm! I won’t lie; I kind of relished in the attention everyone gave me.

What wasn’t cute was the anxiety that felt impossible to contend with. Hangovers that hung on for days. Lying on the floor of the shower while the world spun around me.

I started googling ‘signs that you are allergic to alcohol’.

Shortly there after, I found myself having a conversation with my anesthesiologist before a surgery. 

Wow, he said. Your blood pressure is really, really low. 

I know, I replied. I bet you’re going to ask me if I’m a runner.

A question that I had heard in response to the same blood pressure results for twenty years.

No, I was going to ask you if you’re a cheap date. With blood pressure this low, it’s close to impossible for your body to process narcotics and substances. 

Wait, what?! I said with wide eyes. I have been experiencing vertigo and vomiting after a glass or two of Rose and I feel like I’m going to have a heart attack when I should be sleeping. I thought I was allergic.

Nope. It’s your body unable to break it all down. 

I laid there in disbelief before going under. 

Here was my answer. Finally, After all this time. SCIENCE. It made so much sense. 

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 couldn’t mentally handle it either. I started thinking about what I’ve put my body through over the years. Not just drinking, but marathon training, burning through the days with stress and anxiety. How hard I’ve 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. 

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Of course, none of that mattered a couple of weeks following my surgery and the new information about my body not being able to process alcohol. I met a friend for happy hour. I told myself I would have one glass of Rose. What could it hurt. Which turned into two glasses of Rose? That rolled 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 before the room started turning on its side and I with it.

What I still remember all too well were the hours two am to six am. My heart was pounding out of my chest, my mind reeling. Convinced I was having a heart attack, I thought about calling 9-11. I thought I was dying. In a way I was wishing I was. I was consumed with terror. I chose instead to lay there, breathing, talking back to my brain and wait it out.

That morning I canceled my day. 

And drinking forever.

Since that day, I have not had any desire to drink.

The harder truth to face…

15 months into not drinking, I started looking at my alcohol free life. I could not for the life of me understand why things looked like they did; why I felt emotionally broken; why my life wasn’t getting better; why I wasn’t getting better?!

Worst of all, my brain was a never ending hell scape 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. Sober.

While sitting in the chair at my hairdressers, one of the women asked me; Ash, what have you had it with? 

My mind, I replied. 

She burst out laughing. 

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. 

“Being convinced that Self, manifested in various ways, was what had defeated us, we considered its common manifestations.”

Unlike the first time I gave up alcohol, I found myself not desiring a drink but desperate for help. *and slightly shocked that I didn’t want a drink considering how miserable I felt*

I sat on my sofa sobbing asking - begging - God for help.

I won’t go into all the ‘is odd or is it God’ moments that occurred almost immediately after that conversation with my H.P., but the people, literature and experiences that have been placed in front of me since, has been an answer.

Call it a paradigm shift, a change of mind or even a spiritual awakening but I am hearing what they are saying those rooms and it’s fucking wild. Mainly because I know they are talking about what they have always talked about- The Solution- but I couldn’t hear it.

Today I can. Loud and clear.

I didn’t see the denial I was in or the absolute gaslighting of Self or my inability to accept my problem. I didn’t work the steps. I didn’t spend time in service or fellowship with other sober people. I only called on Sky Daddy when I needed to get out of trouble or wanted to feel better.

I was all about me.

I’ve since 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 near my end at nineteen, I was able to get myself off the hard stuff, but I wouldn’t consider quitting alcohol until I was in my early thirties.

Who I’ve been and the choices I’ve made, clean, alcohol free or not, the behavior was all the same. My impulse to choose self and chaos only continued to bring me 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. 

My big break up of 2023. 

Admittedly, it’s not the easiest relationship to end. I’ve 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 her. I don’t know that ‘she’s’ ever really going anywhere. I used to say,

“the girl can leave the party, but the party doesn’t leave the girl”

But the part of me that was once crowded out has found her voice and here’s what I know:

I am an alcoholic and addict. 

It’s not my moms problem.

It’s separate from being the child of an alcoholic.

It doesn’t matter if I inherited it.

As much as I love my children and would do anything for them, they still weren’t enough to keep me from drinking.

I had to want it for me, first.

I will never be able to drink ‘like a normal person’.

That since the day I asked Sky Daddy to take the wheel, my life has opened up in ways I could have never imagined.