Early Sobriety

Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay

I joined a women's sobriety group on Facebook since a few that I had joined over the years have gone fairly quiet. This group has more than 45,000 members which, needless to say, the group is VERY active. There is a wide array of experiences in the group. Some are starting out with an hour or two of sobriety, while the longest sobriety I have seen was well over 40 years. It has been interesting to see how everyone got to where they are and what they struggle with in this recovery process. It gets me thinking about my early recovery and how all the feelings and anger were so overwhelming. I see a lot of people experiencing this exact thing. What is early recovery like?

After I got through detox the first time in early 2010, I was actually feeling pretty decent. The detox was pretty difficult for me. I had drank for a long time and large amounts. Getting all that alcohol out of my system was a relief in some ways. I went into treatment, nervous, anxious, and CLEAR. I was seeing life as life was and I wasn't very sure how I was going to get through this process with never drinking again. If you are a long-time reader of my blog, you will remember me saying in more than one entry - I don't hate alcohol. I love it. Too much. More than anything at that moment I realized I was going to be in treatment for 3 weeks, I wanted to drink. I figured I could make it until the end of treatment. I was going to try. But no alcohol ever again was not in the cards. I couldn't see it yet.

After treatment, I looked better and I really did feel better. I was in the "pink cloud" part of my recovery. I feel so great! Wow! I can see the world again! Why didn't I do this sooner?! Everything is amazing! Professionally, I heard these words on several occasions and I said them myself more than once. Then, the anhedonia. This term, in a very simply way, means I cannot feel pleasure with anything. You could stick me in the world largest candy store with a $1,000 gift card and I might be able to crack a bit of a smile. Give that to me today? I would be jumping around like a 6 year-old kid in glee. Not then, though. My brain was a chemical mess. I went from feeding my brain chemicals to numb feelings only to have those same chemicals intensify them. My brain stopped naturally producing those chemicals because I overloaded my system with them. Bye, bye alcohol. Bye bye chemicals. Bye Bye happiness. It takes the brain about 6-12 months to re-regulate after addiction takes hold. The first year of recovery is the hardest, by far, because that hill is steep. 

Early recovery meant I HAD to look at the mess I made of my life. For me, I was three years post divorce, looking at foreclosing on my home with thousands of dollars of debt. The number of friends that ran from me when I went into treatment was extraordinarily painful. I felt very severe rejection during that time. My work life was stable and I did have a few friends. However, it was hard to see much of the positive at this point. After 60 days, I had a case of the "fuck-it"(s). If life is going to feel this bad and suck this bad, I should just drink. And I did. It didn't help. Treatment ruined my drinking. Well, in reality, drinking ruined my drinking but I was more than happy to blame it on treatment. 

Back and forth between home, work, and detox until the board of nursing monitoring program came into play. I am truly amazed by people who can get sober without much of external accountability or motivation. Not everyone needs someone breathing down their neck with a potentially catastrophic consequence to stay sober. I sure did. I didn't think enough of myself to think that I was worth staying sober for. I did, however, find it reasonable to stay sober for my nursing license. I loved nursing back then, and I love it now. Not a bad motivator and I am no longer ashamed to admit that it was the one thing that pulled me out of the horrid decision-making. I love my family and I love my friends. I couldn't figure out the way to get sober at that point for them. If I had asked for accountability from them, I am sure that I would have fared better. I didn't want to do that to them, nor was I ready for it. The board of nursing program "made" me ready. Ready or not! You have to do this if you want to practice! 

My first 12 months were a combination of "WOW - this is the longest I have been sober since I was 17" and "I hate everything". I was trying to be proud of staying sober, but I was doing it in a lot of secrecy. It was I think 6 or so months before I could be honest with my co=workers that I had been in treatment. I was really ashamed of that. They were generally pretty supportive. They would say things like "you? Really? I never would have guessed!" I was fairly decent at staying off of people's radars. I lived alone, I worked nights basically with limited human contact. I could get away with a lot. My brain always seemed to go there when people said that. Now, I try to stay away from the idea that I "got away with it" for so long. People knew something was wrong. Eventually I would have wound up in jail, fired, or worse. I was marching toward death.

I started to feel better around 6 months. I decided to stay in treatment and therapy for the longer-term. I don't think I could have worked through 30 years of stuff in 12 weeks of treatment. I had to build an entirely new foundation for myself. How was I going to deal with hard times? How was I going to deal with good times? What do I do with all these feelings I feel now? Who am I? I started to feel like recovery was possible and kind of exciting. I liked doing the reflection work and connecting with my value system again. It doesn't take long to disconnect from all of it when alcohol or drugs are involved. I was starting to look forward to some of the building I needed to do to get a solid path and move forward. At that time, I found AA helpful. I enjoyed the social aspect of it and being able to walk into a room where everyone just "knew" my life and I didn't have to try to explain all of the craziness. I didn't work the steps as formally as others. I worked on and off with a sponsor. During this period, though, I found DBT to be the most helpful for me. Some of the principles of AA overlap quite well with DBT so I used them together to figure out new ways to see and experience the world.

When I say this, I am absolutely not kidding -- At day 365 of being sober, I felt like I could finally breathe. I made it to my first year. My brain felt like it was functioning again and at my "normal". I still had a lot to work through. That being said, I worked so hard to build that foundation during that first year so that I could actually do that work. Having the external accountability got me there. I will tell you that there were many of times I thought about giving up and throwing in the towel. Having the monitoring program there help me to make good decisions until my brain could wrap itself around a life of not drinking. 

Thirteen years later, I don't think in terms of "never drinking again". I can't think of it like that or it becomes too overwhelming. What I know is that I don't want or need to drink today. I do know that if I go back, I will pick up right where I left off. My body will not be able to handle drinking again. So, when I wake up and look at whether or not I want to be sober today, my real decision is life or death. While that sounds dramatic, it is the reality in my recovery. 

Love to you all! 
Julie