I was not going to write about recovery today, I really wasn’t. I was prepared to write about the first stop on the Preschool for Mimi Grand Tour, which began at 7:30 this morning at our local Waldorf school.
However.
I have been seized by the nastiest cravings. I have no idea why they’ve struck now. I bought a beer at the grocery store for Jon on Monday. I am staring down 10 months’ sobriety. I feel guilty that I have not yet gotten a sponsor. My rehab center’s annual reunion is in three weeks’ time. Things are stressful. Things are great.
I certainly know by now that cravings are capricious and strike when the occasion suits them. These have been notable because there have been so many in such a short time, and they’ve been so sneaky. They have been the nastiest kind, too, the ‘it’s okay, just one won’t hurt’ kind. Not an hour ago I was perusing cooking schools on-line and one place noted that they serve wine with all of their classes and my mind was already choosing between a cab and a shiraz before the rest of my brain caught up enough to put on the brakes. That. Was. Spooky.
So, I am now turning my thoughts away from the Waldorf school and to strategies to deal with this, and I hope to find one or two that do not require vats of ice cream.
I was tooling around the internet this morning and I stumbled on this post by Jane, who wrote:
Wow, 8 lbs lost since the summer! My head was full of glee. I immediately thought, “Just 7 more pounds and I’ll be at my goal weight of 115. If I stop eating for a while I could get there!”. Wait, I’m going to go back and bold the key part of that sentance… Yes, I thought, “If I stop eating.” Not, “If I eat healthier” or “If I go on a diet” or “If I start exercising”. See CRAZY.
and this:
Not eating makes me feel powerful. And a little naughty. Like I have a secret strength that no one else has. Kind of like when I had my secret bottle of wine for strength and support? Hmmm, maybe. Looking back, I can see that my “pickyness” as a child/teen had a lot to do with control.
Yikes. I SO could have written this. Right down to the “intestinal problem” which she wisely declined to elaborate on, as will I.
When we brought Mimi home, by train (across Russia) and plane (across the Atlantic) and automobile (across Phoenix), I was overwrought, encountering more emotion in a few weeks than I’d probably felt in my whole life. Plus I always lose weight when I travel, choosing to subsist on bottled water and crackers. Jon, on the other hand, has a stomach of titanium, eating everything including the whole boiled fish we were served on the train. Seriously: the man can eat Russian train fish.
But this time the weight didn’t come back once I was home. Sheer terror, I think, kept it going down for a while. But reading Jane’s post up there helped me to realize how much of that weight loss was also about control. I’d never considered that becoming a mother would make me feel so out of control and powerless. I’d expected to feel powerful, now that I was responsible for keeping this little being alive, all by myself for hours at a time. I’d expected to rise to the occasion and flex my mommy muscles and lift up the world.
I didn’t. I shrank.
By Christmas, I looked awful, but my sick brain told me I looked fine. My clothes were falling off. I was close to 100 lbs, which at 5′ 6″ is not good. I preferred photos taken from a distance, like this one:
This morning when I was pouring my first cup of coffee, I realized how much I had been looking forward to it. The smell, the warmth as it slides down my throat, the little kick…
Uh-oh.
As an addict I am always looking forward to something, always anticipating the sensation that hits when the [insert drug of choice] first nuzzles our brains. Any addict or alcoholic can describe it for you, in brilliant detail. It’s as if the addicted brain releases just a fraction of feel-good chemicals to ensure that we’ll keep doing whatever we have to do to get the rest.
Recovery teaches the danger that can hide in this, the danger that we’ll find ourselves in a place where we’re never in the now, never experiencing a moment as it really is. Anticipation is most useful for the first few notes of the bridal march, the last half mile of the marathon. It’s sort of like trading in a roller coaster for a scenic drive: riveting ups and stomach-churning downs for steady and manageable and pleasant.
I never have been good at living in the moment. It’s too scary, too raw, too precarious to actually experience life as it comes, however it comes. It’s something I work on every day. I’m told that worrying about my morning coffee is overreacting (I am, after all, a founding member of Overreactors Anonymous) but it’s okay. Where I come from there’s a saying, advice to “arm for bear and hope for bunnies.” As with many things Southern it doesn’t completely make sense but the gist of it comes through.
So I’m trying. I’m working on it. I’m getting used to the scary, the raw, the precarious; learning to appreciate the quiet and known. The moments. It’s always about the moments.
I had pneumonia last December, and I shared here about my decision to take prescription cough medicine. I’d like to say I took it, it helped, life went on, and it did, but first the addict who lives in my head woke up and started running in the hamster wheel. One day, for no apparent reason, I had an impulse to grab a gulp. I cooked up a whole scheme in which I’d buy some safe cough medicine, pour it out, replace it with the … OH MY GOD. So I found a meeting, shared these impulses with a roomful of strangers, was comforted by their nods and smiles. Recovery, after all, relies on human connections. There’s a saying: to get better we have to change “people, places, and things.” A counselor at my treatment center used to say that what “people, places, and things” really came down to was “people, people, and people.”
So, people, people, and people, welcome to my accountability circle. I hope I can do the same for you.
This time, it’s a narcotic for pain relief. An old shoulder injury that usually annoys intermittently has flared up into real pain. The muscles around my shoulder tightened and have started to regularly spasm, and since it’s no fun to spasm alone they’ve invited my neck and back muscles along. Last weekend found me hunched over to the right, trying not to use any muscles from my waist up, my body shaped like a C. I was going from heat to ice and back, and I could not sleep. I got a massage, which went on for two hours before the therapist gave up trying to loosen the muscles. So we went to the doctor, who looked at my hunchback shape and asked if I had been under any stress. Oh, boy. Where do I start?
She handed me a prescription. I told her I was in recovery and she said it was up to me to take the medicine or not. She wished me luck. Immediately I felt lousy. Just knowing those prescriptions were in my purse threw me back to my bad old days when prescriptions were just the ticket. Plotting, hiding, hoarding, figuring out ways to get more, and counting. The ENDLESS counting. Do I have enough to get through the weekend? It’s a long flight, I’d better bring extra. How many here…. okay, put a few in the pillbox… it’s been two hours since I took one, hang on for another two…
But pain is a powerful motivator. We got the medicine, and I have taken it. Exactly as prescribed. I don’t hurt anymore and I can stand up straight. Jon keeps the medicine in a safe in his closet, which is awkward, he feels like a warden, but we both feel it is important that we do this. I am deeply aware of the dangers, of what I am capable of doing once I get a taste of my drug. I’ve done it all before, right in front of people — the special privilege of the pill-popper — so yes, I know.
I can’t claim that the hamsters in my head are quiet, no, not at all. I am glad that they will not let me forget what I am, what I can do to myself. I will see the specialist tomorrow. This is a new doctor and she will take a new history and once again I’ll tell my story to a new person. I’ll share: with the doctor, with you, in meetings, especially with Jon. We are a team, and together we’ll be okay.
Please take a look at this article about women abusing prescription pills. Switch occupations and hair color and this woman could be me. She could be anybody.
