Guest Submission by Cathy Allen, veteran educator.
Audio
In my life, I have believed treat others as you would have them treat you. I spent my life loving others and treating others who I longed for to be there for me, to love me. Somewhere around 2007 2008, my coach said to ‘me, “They are not you.” I stepped back and realized I wanted my students to be those eager to please students that I was in school. I can now see that I was a little girl trying to earn my love. If I worked hard enough, did well enough, I would finally be loved the way I dreamed.
In the past almost 2 years, I have never had someone love me the way I loved because no one I loved was trying to earn my love. They just loved me or they didn’t. It was not about tote boards and or keeping count. Not about reciprocation. I could never earn the love that I was given because love is a choice, not a reward. Read that again, love is not a reward.
You mean, the people in my life love because they want to and not because I support them to a fault, that I gave my body up to have their children, that I am such a great teacher and make math so easy. I can see the narcissism as I right. I can see how egocentric love is in this atmosphere and how abandoned I felt when others did not show up for me. I can see how this adult woman kept giving till she almost died trying to be the woman that would finally be loved or treasured by her children or by her students or by the men in her life.
Ouch- this is such a painful truth to realize. And exhausting! I drank to keep up with the demands of earning love. I drank to manage the anxiety and overwhelm. I drank to deal with the stress of 18 hours days filled with teaching, mothering and girl friending. I didn’t eat to maintain my physical beauty because if I didn’t watch my weight, then I would get fat. And if I got fat, I would not be loved. You mean I had to be a size 10 while I was saving the children of the future and rear my children to be more loved than I was ever loved as a child?
The inescapable truth is that I was always disappointed. My students were pre teen and teenage jerks trying to live their clumsy life and respecting me was not their priority. Doing math – not their priority. I made that about me as their teacher not acknowledging they are in charge of their own choices and they are going to do what they will without thinking about what I want even once. My children were clumsily trying to figure out their own lives and loving me was not their top priority. Read that again, my children’s number one priority is not loving me. It is loving themselves.
That one truth right there – their number one priority is loving themselves. No one ever taught me to do that. Or that loving myself was even a thing. The truth is – if I don’t love myself, I will always be looking to someone else to love me and it was never going to be enough.
My favorite part about my daughter is that she unapologetically will not do anything for others because she is supposed to. She decides each day what her priority is and who she chooses to love. She says no when she can’t show up and be herself and she often leaves places that are not ready to celebrate all of her, even it is my family of origin. She follows through on her commitments, but if you are not someone for whom she greatly loves, it probably won’t happen. And I absolutely love that about her. Yes, it stung as I was healing and there were many times I felt alone. But, I needed to heal myself in the last two years. I was going to heal my heart, not anyone else in my life. That was painful and incredibly lonely. The lonely parts were filled with tears, but I am no longer looking to others to meet my needs. I ask for help when I need it, but I climb into bed knowing I was there to take care of myself today and I will do it for myself tomorrow. I have climbed into bed so many nights wanting someone there to hold me. That is me now. I now treat myself the way I wanted others to. Turns out it was me all along. Sure as hell was never alcohol.
I am a veteran teacher of 23 years and mother of two kids. One is grown and 24 years old, and the other is 14 years old. I got sober on August 11, 2020, after experiencing some scary blackout drunk moments during the pandemic. My anxiety at that point was through the roof, and increased anxiety medication was not helping. Out of desperation, I cut out alcohol. I did this seven days before school started and in August 2020. My first 100 days of sobriety were still filled with anxiety and insomnia. At that point, my body depended on alcohol to do either. It took till about Day 100 for that to begin to resolve. During, that time I got an addiction coach, I started therapy, and I joined the online sobriety community called The Luckiest Club started by Laura McKowen, author of We Are the Luckiest. I began my journey into acknowledging and healing the impact of my childhood trauma and my problematic drinking throughout adulthood. I began understanding the impact of generational trauma and began working to break the cycle. I started an online Facebook group supporting sober teachers because of the prevalence of alcohol offered as the only coping strategy to teachers. I started writing my recovery blog, The Teacher Mom Alcohol Lie in September 2020, and it became a vital tool in my recovery, processing all of my learning and healing. Through this work, I came to understand alcohol use disorder is a trauma response. I came to understand alcohol is an addictive substance and that using alcohol to cope is not a defect. It is a public health crisis in the United States and in the world. Many of the people I support in sobriety have a mother wound, and I’m still healing from mine. I am passionate about helping people shed the stigma of addiction and begin to understand their story of triumph in no longer using alcohol to manage their trauma and anxiety. As trauma and substance use disorder survivors, we are truly the bravest and strongest people I will ever know. I hope to become certified as a peer support person and shift to supporting people in recovery.
Jessica Vivian Dueñas, beloved teacher, community member, friend, sister, daughter, and aunt, passed away on May 25th, 2020 at the age of 35 in a tragic car accident. She had a great passion for education and community engagement, and a great dedication to her family. Jessica leaves behind her mother, Amable, her siblings, Sandra, Lorena, Grettel, Victor, and Sofia, and her friends, colleagues, students, and her dog, Cruz …
We have a lot of assignments in treatment designed to teach us to not drink or use drugs, but writing my own obituary wasn’t an activity given to everyone. A tech, this older lady named Lisa, felt I should write it given my “recklessness.” The process of starting to draft it was awkward and in fact painful. The thinking of those “left behind” knotted my stomach as I visualized each crying face. I could imagine my middle school student James. He was usually smiling, often with his hand over his mouth to stifle a laugh at something silly he just did or saw some other kid do. I pictured a woman, his mother, walking into the room he’s in and saying, “I’m so sorry baby. Ms. Dueñas died yesterday.”
Suddenly, his almost-shut-from-laughing squinted eyes soften, his cheeks that stood high from smiling drop down, and water wells up so much in his eyes that the single tear he was holding back slowly starts to roll down his face, past his nose, and onto his lip.
“Whatchu mean, Momma?”
She sniffles. “I’m sorry baby.” She leans over to embrace him and at that moment I’m so broken at the thought of another’s pain that I shake my head like a dog does to bring myself back into the present moment. Phew.
Photo from WDRB news, Louisville. With a student
I was in the fireplace room. Our women’s group usually did most of our sessions in that space. Today we had to meditate but instead, we were all doing different things. No one actually meditated because who knew how to sit still unless you were drunk or high and basically knocked out of consciousness?
Some women like Denise decided to take a nap because she was still detoxing. She ended up here after her husband found her on the floor next to a shattered bottle of wine. She had just shared in a group that she was a full-time mom in her thirties who loved “Mommy needs wine” jokes until she realized that in fact, Mommy needed wine. I’m not a mom, but I nodded my head as soon as she spoke because I knew that needing feeling well.
Shanika walked over to the bookshelf, pulled a book at random, sat down, and cracked it open. It was nice seeing her back from the other psych hospital. Calm and settled.
On her first day here she was under the influence of God knows what. She had the wildest eyes, looked at me and immediately said, “I know you! Where do I know you from?!” Oh no, no, no no no! My secret! I panicked. Then that same night at our evening meeting when we did our prayer circle to wrap up, Shanika grabbed my friend’s ass in the middle of the prayer with no hesitation. She just latched on. I saw his eyes open wide and then we made eye contact. Clearly he didn’t know what to do; shit, I didn’t know what to do, so I just looked at him, raised my eyebrows, and shrugged my shoulders. It was funny, to be honest. We were trapped in a circle of prayer, so what were we supposed to do?
“I’m sorry to interrupt your connection with God here, but Shanika’s grabbing my ass?” Thankfully the circle eventually ended and off she went. He and I looked at each other and laughed, perhaps a bit uncomfortably.
It turned out Shanika was hallucinating and having a psychotic break. Her breaking point with our facility occurred when she climbed onto her roommate’s bed in the middle of the night and picked at her because she was covered in “ants.” The scuffle caused security to run to the room and quickly snatch her up. Shanika was gone for a few days to complete her detox in a higher-security psychiatric facility.
Those are the type of hospitals that take your bra from you so you don’t stab someone with your underwire. You can’t have shoelaces so you can’t hang yourself. It’s the type of place where techs have to lay eyes on you once every ten minutes even when you’re asleep to make sure you haven’t suddenly died. You’d be in a deeply medicated sleep and abruptly wake up to a flashlight in your face.
I’ve been in those places too.
So to see her back with us in the fireplace room, settled, calm, and quietly reading was a testament to how we can slowly come back from the dead after a few days of being in rehab. She didn’t “recognize” me anymore either. My secret was still safe.
Once we finished “meditating,” a social worker came to work with us to discuss relapse prevention planning. Essentially, we were going to sit there and outline everything that triggered us to get drunk or high, and then a list of ten things to do instead. As I listened to her I tilted my head to the side and scratched my scalp a little bit. I raised my hand.
“Yes, Jessica?” She turned to me.
“This isn’t my first time writing a relapse prevention plan, but I just don’t get how it’s supposed to work. I mean, I’ll be honest, if I want to drink, I’m not going to say, ‘Hmm, where is my prevention plan?’ That just doesn’t make sense,” I said.
She paused. “Sure, that’s a great point! So you put it on sticky notes and you place them all over your home!” Alrighty, I thought to myself, shaking my head.
Inside I wanted to scream, Don’t you get it? I’m addicted to alcohol, so my default setting is drinking! If not drinking were as easy as opening up some sort of almanac reference guide, filling out a handout, or looking at a sticky note, we wouldn’t be sitting here filling in the blanks on this paper in this treatment facility right now, would we?!
Instead, I just went ahead and started to fill it out.
Triggers:
grief, sadness, loneliness…anger, darkness…joy…light…anything! Better scratch those last few items. I didn’t want to keep them there and be accused of being cynical. I knew how these places operated. The social workers keep notes on patients, their behavior, their participation. Good behavior gets sent to the discharge team and puts folks on a go home list. Poor behavior keeps you around longer.
Removing my makeup to reveal a hidden black eye. I was always good at masking myself.
You can’t just leave treatment one day because you think you’re good to go. The only ways out are to either hop the fence and run, break the rules badly enough to get kicked out, run out of insurance, or wait until they let you go, and that is contingent on you finishing the program to their satisfaction.
I didn’t have the energy to run or rebel, and as a state employee I had good health insurance, so my only way out was to comply. I was down to my last couple of weeks and it was nice to be on a little sober vacation. I had actually made friends with some people, but I wanted to go home. However, I didn’t know if I was in fact ready to leave. I just knew that if I kept the social workers checking off the boxes on my discharge list, I’d be getting the green light to leave soon enough. I needed to get out and be on my own, away from everyone. Away from the cigarette smoke in the courtyard, the salt-less meals throughout the day, from the lack of privacy. That was my goal, I wanted to be in complete solitude, whether I was really ready or not.
Originally written by Jessica for Love & Literature Magazine.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” I said, narrowly opening my eyes, trying to make sense of what was happening while hanging upside down. It was the morning of May 25, 2020, and I had just gained consciousness after wrecking my car on Bardstown Rd in Louisville, Kentucky. I vaguely remembered that my dog Cruz and I were on our way to meet a friend for a walk. Instead, I found myself suspended in the air by my seatbelt, realizing that everything was upside down and feeling the pressure of blood rushing to my head. Awake and still alive, unfortunately.
Stock image of a flipped car. Mine was flipped in the same manner.
“Wait, my dog….” I started to mumble when I looked out, and there he was, tail still as if he was holding his breath waiting for me. Relief.
Then the waves hit my body one after the other. Not pain, but first fear. “What is happening to me?” Next, anger. “I shouldn’t be okay…I don’t want this!” Lastly, shame. “I’m awful. How could I want to die with my dog in the car? What kind of sick person am I? I deserve to die. I’m fucking hopeless.”
I wanted to walk away from the scene to escape the best way I knew how, racing to the bottom of a bottle of cheap bourbon. Still, first things first, these damn first responders weren’t letting me go if it wasn’t in an ambulance. I hadn’t even realized that I lacerated my elbow and had pieces of glass embedded throughout my skin like some sort of glittery decor.
“I don’t want any Goddamn help,” I muttered under my breath as I got into the ambulance. I had to answer the same rote questions I’ve responded to many times in ambulance rides. “Wait, how do you spell your last name?” “D for David, u, e for Edward…” until getting to the hospital.
Though I was furious and incredibly resentful at going to the hospital, there was one positive: Pain pills! My favorite mind-altering drug has always been alcohol, as I never had the “oomph” in me to work as hard as people do to get illicit drugs. However, I certainly wasn’t going to reject a nice prescription, either. I could already feel the euphoria just before blacking out with burning splashes of Evan Williams. I couldn’t wait to escape my misery and get away for a day or two.
“Here’s your prescription for Ibuprofen 800s.”
“Excuse me, IBUPROFEN?!” I felt myself clutching my nonexistent pearls.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“But, I just flipped my car over. I just got out of a terrible wreck.”
“Sorry, you aren’t experiencing enough pain for anything stronger.”
Wow. Immediately I wondered what the fuck someone would have to do to get a pain pill around here; I mean, lose a limb? Welp, there went any slight, “on the bright side,” feeling I was starting to have. My stomach started sinking again. I rolled my eyes and groaned.
Getting home from the hospital, I knew I would have to tell my sister what happened. I had already been hospitalized several times since April 28, when I found my then-boyfriend dead from a drug overdose. Ever since, I was trapped in what felt like a never-ending bender from Hell. In less than a month, I had already gone twice to detox. I had several emergency room visits with dangerously high blood alcohol levels. So to prepare myself for this call, I got a few liquor bottles dropped off thanks to alcohol delivery and opened one of the bottles. No need to pour it in a glass, I drank it like water.
“Jess, you’re dying. You need help. Please, go somewhere. I can’t handle this. Every time the phone rings, I’m terrified,” Sophie cried. I sighed and thought to myself, Damn, I don’t want to be hurting her like this. So I picked up the phone and called a local treatment facility inquiring about their five-week program. Deep down, I was hoping they wouldn’t have a bed open. Deep down, I wanted to just keep drinking and shut down. I was already dreading the feeling of detoxing and withdrawals. The woman on the phone said, “Yes! We can take you. How about we pick you up later today?” I went to clutch my imaginary pearls again.
“TODAY?! but I’m not packed.”
“That’s okay. Someone can drop clothes off for you.”
I tried to deflect. “I can’t come tomorrow?”
“Well, sweetheart, you CAN come tomorrow, but WILL you make it ’til then?” I sighed.
“FINE. But can you come in the evening?”
“Yes.”
Rubbing my hands together, I realized I had a few hours so that I could give myself one last hurrah before I went into this place. I couldn’t imagine five weeks without drinking. I dreaded the idea of having to feel everything, of only being unconscious to sleep. So I swallowed hard, I drank fast. I threw the Ibuprofen 800s in the trash. I vaguely remember a friend coming to get Cruz, and then everything went dark and silent. I couldn’t feel a thing. Things were exactly how I wanted them to be always and forever.
Intake picture from treatment. May 2020.
I came-to on a couch in an unfamiliar space. I looked around. There were people watching TV, others were playing games at a table, someone was writing in a notebook while reading out of what appeared to be a Bible. I could tell I needed a drink; my head was starting to throb, my hands were beginning to shake. I looked down. As I examined the dried blood on my clothes, I suddenly felt like my elbow was being stabbed. There were some rough stitches in there. The thick, black surgical thread stuck out of my elbow like a porcupine’s needles. I got up only to feel the room start spinning, and a woman, to this day I don’t remember who it was, grabbed my good arm and walked me to a room. She pointed me to a plainly dressed bed. Immediately I got in. Back to black. Relief.
I finally woke up with a clearer head in that same bed and walked out of the room. It looked like I was in a college dorm setup of some kind. I saw people sitting in a courtyard, cigarettes and vape pens in hand surrounded by a cloud of smoke to the left of me. In front of me, standing at the desk, a young woman looked at me and smiled, “Hi Jessica! How are you, love? I’m Danielle.” Danielle was a tech, so she was introducing herself to let me know that she, alongside the other techs, supervised the area to make sure that all was in order. She was also a few years in recovery from all kinds of drugs, and she just glowed.
Medical Bracelet while in treatment in Louisville, KY where I was hospitalized May-June of 2020.
As she walked me around the facility to give me a sense of where I was, she ran down basic things like the schedule, rules, and our responsibilities. Yes, we as the patients, had chores. Some people eagerly waved “hello” as we passed them. Others looked like they had just gotten there, too, and moved about like zombies.
“You know, my boyfriend died two years ago from a drug overdose, too.” I was immediately caught off guard. First, I wondered how she knew, then second, I felt a surge of relief. It had basically been a month since Ian died, and I had yet to hear that there was another soul on this earth who also had a boyfriend who died from a drug overdose. She sat me down and shared her story with me. There was so much I related to. I had to ask, “But, how did you live through it? How are you still here?”
In my mind, I thought this life experience was supposed to come with some sort of death sentence. That I would just bide my time until I killed myself or died of alcohol poisoning. But Danielle, here she was, joyful, glowing, and with some solid continuous sober time under her belt and proving me wrong.
“Oh, trust me, it was the worst experience of my life to date, and my heart is still broken. Eventually, you start to find your way in this world with grief. I promise you it gets better. I’m a testament to that.”
Immediately I felt a tiny shift in me, a butterfly in my stomach. Maybe it does, in fact, get better. I mean, if Danielle did it, perhaps I can, too. She gave me a hug, which also surprised me, and went off to finish her shift. Before leaving for the day, Danielle came back to find me and handed me a sheet she pulled from the tech desk printer. The paper read:
Page from my journal where I pasted the printout. June 2020.
People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.
A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.
A soul mate’s purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master…
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
I knew then that although it was going to be a long five weeks, that maybe this was exactly what I needed.
Originally written by Jessica for Love & Literature Magazine.
Transgender. Recovering alcoholic. Both labels carry stigmas. Coming out as each would change the way people viewed me. Both developments were positive, even cause to celebrate, in their own ways. There were also key differences, like the fact that I understand alcoholism as a disease, which transness definitely isn’t. But reflecting on the similarities between these parts of my narrative has helped me better understand why I stayed in the closet—in both senses—for as long as I did.
The first stage of coming out—as anything—is coming out to yourself. For many people, this stage is the hardest, because it means facing your internalized biases, your denial, and grieving the loss of a life you thought you’d have, or the person you believed yourself to be. For me, one major obstacle I faced in coming out to myself as trans—namely my tendency to avoid dealing with my own problems by comparing myself to others—was also a major obstacle on my path to sobriety.
I have a journal that dates back to six years ago, when I was first trying to get my drinking under control. Every other entry contained a new resolution. For example:
I will only drink x number of drinks per day
I will not start drinking before x o’clock
I will not drink alone
I will not drink more than x days per week
Two or three times a week I’d invent a new rule, because I’d break the previous rule by day two or three. The fascinating thing about these journal entries, is how blatantly obvious it is, looking at them now, that I was incapable of drinking in moderation.
But even though my alcoholism was right under my nose—and I was the one documenting it—I couldn’t see it. Hence, I just kept writing new resolutions, none of which involved getting sober. That was something only alcoholics did, and I wasn’t an alcoholic. I mean yes, I’d been trying unsuccessfully to moderate my drinking for years. Yes, I became a monster when I drank, who did and said awful things, then blacked out and woke up sick with remorse, only to do it all over again. But I knew real alcoholics, who’d gone to jail and rehab multiple times, and whose organs were literally shutting down. I wasn’t like them. They had a problem. They needed help. I just needed to learn better self-control.
That same notebook also documents the period of time when I was first trying to make sense of my “gender issues”: the feelings of discomfort I experienced when I looked in the mirror and saw a woman’s face. Or when I took off my clothes and saw a woman’s body. Or when someone would refer to me as “ma’am” or “miss.” Or when anyone tried to touch my chest or genitals during sex. It didn’t occur to me in any of these journal entries that I might be a trans man—after all, the trans men I had read about had always known they were trans. My story was not like theirs. It was not as linear, or as stereotypical. Those were trans people, people who actually had a reason to transition. I was just troubled, weird about gender, and would have to find some way to live with that weirdness.
So rather than allowing myself to name my true desires—i.e., the desire to transition and to claim a male identity—I drowned them in booze and sought external validation by sleeping with straight women, adopting toxically masculine traits, and hurting myself and a number of other people along the way. Looking back I wonder how much of this damage would have been prevented had someone told me that you could be trans without having a textbook trans narrative, that transness, like alcoholism, looks different on everyone.
There are so many obstacles that stand in the way of our growth, self-acceptance, and healing as queer and trans people: fear, stigma, guilt, shame, and social pressure just to name a few. The same goes for us addicts, alcoholics, and folks who struggle with substance abuse. The last thing we need is to make the journey any harder, or prolong our suffering by comparing ourselves to others. There are infinite possible trans narratives, gay narratives, and recovery narratives. None is better or truer than another. They all just are. And the sooner we can claim ours, the sooner we can heal, and share our light and hope with others.
Originally published at QueerKentucky
Adrian Silbernagel (he/him) is a queer transgender man who lives in Louisville, KY. He will have 5 years of continuous sobriety on September 28, 2022. Adrian is a writer, speaker, activist, and founding co-op member at Old Louisville Coffee Co-op: a late-night sober coffee shop that is opening soon in Louisville, KY.
Merideth, before and after starting her recovery journey.
I found recovery when I was 19 years old. I experimented with many substances including alcohol, benzodiazepines, and pain killers for five years. My battle with drugs and alcohol landed me in jail, hospitals, and a long-term treatment facility. For the first couple of years of my sober journey, I believed there was one way to recover: Go to meetings, get a sponsor, and work the steps. While this works for many people, we must remember that Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, created these solutions before the plague of opioid addiction.
For example, I am sure that Bill W. could not foresee Purdue Pharma’s introduction of Oxycontin in 1995 as a “less-addictive opioid pill.” This lie has led us to a public health crisis with an estimated death toll of 100,306 people annually, as reported by the CDC. I have seen hundreds go into the same meetings as me who did not make it back because they died later that day. I have witnessed far more of my friends dying in the “solution” (a term often used in 12 Step groups) than I did in my days of getting high. That is when I became open to different pathways to recovery.
These problems aren’t just about opiates, either. According to Mental Health America, alcoholism and co-occurring disorders have increased significantly in the last five years, with 95,000 people dying from alcohol-related causes annually and 132 people committing suicide each day. These are real numbers that include our family, friends, coworkers, and neighbors. So, what do we do?
I am no expert, but I know that I can no longer sit back and watch your son, daughter, mother, or father die from another overdose. I share my story as much as I can, and I recover out loud in hopes that I may change the way America sees recovery. I hope that we can eliminate the stigma surrounding harm reduction, medically assisted treatment, and drug liberalization. We need to make resources accessible and affordable. People should receive quality treatment regardless of their age, gender, race, or economic status. I dream of a day when substance use disorder and its co-occurring conditions are no longer the leading cause of death in America.
Achieving this reality takes ACTION.
We can start by having conversations in our homes, communities, and workplaces to bring about awareness. I encourage everyone to always carry Narcan, utilize your local needle exchange, and never use substances alone; we are in the business of saving lives.
Then we can discuss decriminalization. The decriminalization of substance use disorder is imperative because the “war on drugs” has not worked and will not work. Almost 90% of our prison population has the chronic disease of addiction and should be participating in treatment or re-entry programs rather than being punished. We need funding for local communities to grow substance use disorder services rather than financing “locking them up.” We need to accept people where they are because nobody can attend a meeting if they are dead. This means welcoming people into the recovery community regardless of what stage of their recovery they are in or what pathway they have chosen.
Merideth in her current role.
There are many ways to tackle this public health crisis, but I believe it is essential to focus on our communities and the part we play. We need to go to the polls to vote, share our stories often, and speak out about drug policy. Your voice is more powerful than you think, and you can make an impact! An old-timer in a meeting once said, “What you can’t do alone, we can accomplish together.”
If you have any questions about what you can do in your community or want to learn more about any topics discussed, please feel free to reach out to me.
Meredith Booth is located in Louisville, Kentucky. She has been in recovery for over five years and currently works as a treatment advocate in a rehabilitation facility. To contact her directly or for any inquiries, please email her at merideth.booth714@gmail.com.
Looking at different recovery options? Check out Getting Help.
Oxford defines recovery as “a return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength.” It also offers a second meaning, “the action or process of regaining possession or control of something stolen or lost.” For me, my recovery consists of moving to a functional state of good health and regaining control of myself. This has required complete abstinence from both drinking and teaching.
I’m Jessica. I was Kentucky’s State Teacher of the Year in 2019, and I’m also a recovering alcoholic. I’ve been sober since November 28th, 2020, and free from teaching since December 4th, 2020. I couldn’t tell you exactly when I lost myself. However, I can tell you my habit of avoiding feelings began when I was fat-shamed as a child. I learned to steal and hide the food I wanted to eat to avoid embarrassment. I ate like this for many years and dedicated myself to excelling as a student to feel better about being an overweight child and later a teen.
Eventually, my escapism transferred to alcohol and my career. After being called out at a happy hour for drinking too much, I decided to hide my alcohol consumption from others. “Whoa, you’re moving a little fast there, aren’t you?” I remember a fellow teacher said to me. My face was hot with shame, and from that day forward, unless I accidentally over-drank in front of others, I tried my best to not be caught drunker than the group I was with. I did well at work, so when I did slip and drink too much, no one could say I had a problem with alcohol because “look at how great Jessica is as an educator.”
Teacher of the Year Head Shot, 2019.
I hid my love for alcohol in many ways. A classic example is that I monitored how others drank at events to make sure that I matched everyone else drink for drink. If others had one glass, I had one. If they had four, I had four. I always knew something was wrong with me, but I gaslit myself. I convinced myself that there couldn’t be anything wrong with me because I went to college and then graduate school, twice. Alcoholics don’t get graduate degrees. They don’t successfully build relationships with kids and win awards for their work. There is no way that you can be named the top teacher in a state and be an alcoholic. But I was.
I lived a painful double life where every day I suffered and every day I chose to not tell anyone and drank instead. I eventually was physically dependent on alcohol, so I felt even worse about myself. How did I cope? I threw myself into teaching. I couldn’t be a bad person if I was a good educator, right?
My days were a non-stop Groundhog Day. I came home from whichever school I worked at and breathed a sigh of relief because I could be unbothered. I could drink without fear of judgment. Over the years, the amount of liquor I needed to escape and avoid withdrawal symptoms increased. I consumed a bit more than a fifth of liquor a day at the end of my drinking career. I ignored a diagnosis of alcoholic liver disease in 2019 and continued to drink. I allowed my health to decline as I drank more. I always had to lie as to why I felt sick. My students asked, “Why are you always going to the bathroom? Why are you always going to throw up?” I told them my stomach was just sensitive. However, no matter what, Ms. Dueñas was always doing her best.
My persona had two sides, and neither one was truly me. My teacher self took turns with my addicted self for years until April 28th of 2020, when my then-boyfriend relapsed and died from an overdose. That day between alcohol and teaching, the alcohol took over and controlled me fully until my current sobriety date.
Rehab, 2020.
For months, I barely worked as I was in and out of hospitals, staying in treatment facilities, and putting together a few weeks of fragile sobriety at a time before violently crashing. The day I left a five-week-long treatment program, I ordered alcohol delivery and faded away by myself. I wrecked my car, blew nearly a .5 blood alcohol level, and tried to purchase a gun to shoot myself with. I was hospitalized for the last time in November of 2020, which is when this recovery process truly started.
A psychiatrist at the hospital asked to evaluate me, and upon digging into my history, he diagnosed me with bipolar 2. The Mayo Clinic defines bipolar disorder as “a mental health condition that causes extreme mood swings that include emotional highs and lows.” With bipolar 2, “you’ve had at least one major depressive episode and at least one hypomanic (somewhat energized/euphoric) episode, but you’ve never had a manic episode (which is more severe).” So, for individuals with bipolar 2, there is never a psychotic episode, for example.
The doctor informed me of how frequently substance abuse went hand in hand with mental health conditions. He recommended that I try medication with a recovery program and therapy as part of my wellness plan. I accepted the recommendation. By then, things had gone too far. I wanted to die, but I was not dying, and my everyday existence had become unbearable. Something had to change. I needed to gain control of myself. I needed to get healthy. I needed to recover.
When I decided to accept help, I also realized that alcohol was not the only external factor controlling my life. It was not the only thing keeping me from being healthy. I allowed my teaching career to be just as much of an escape from myself as alcohol. No matter what chaos happened in my personal life, I was an excellent actor, and the classroom was my stage. I could only feel better about who I was if I helped others, but I never once helped myself. The teaching had to go as much as the alcohol needed to. I was reborn.
16 Months Sober, 2022.
Since November 2020, I’ve embarked on this lifelong journey of becoming authentically me. My medications allow me to feel enough stability to use my recovery program and therapy to address my mental and spiritual needs. I now can face past traumas that I avoided. I journal daily, pray, meditate, and lean on my support group. I don’t isolate myself. I connect with others both in person and through social media. I try new things. I care less about other people’s opinions of me, and when I do care, because I’m a human, I have ways to check myself and my fears. I don’t worry about constantly meeting others’ needs. I have identified MY needs, and I ask myself if people and situations meet them, and when they don’t, I remove myself.
Today, my success is not measured by academic standards, standardized test results, or a score on an administrator’s observation rubric. My success is measured by the intangible, my ability to create a life I no longer need to escape. Not everyone is allowed to do so and I am incredibly grateful for my daily gifts. Happy Resurrection Day.
I’ve been doing the “right” things, engaging in support groups, therapy, exercise, eating healthier, using medication, and yet I’ve still been waking up this week with the sensation of a weight on my diaphragm. I spoke to my therapist about it, crying as I pleaded for an answer, for some guidance.
“What’s still wrong with me? Shouldn’t I be feeling better by now?”
He said, “Well, Jessica, you’re someone who has always lived in a state of chaos. Even when you were incredibly successful in your career and looked good to others, something was always happening in secret that was bringing you down. Now that you’ve been sober for almost seven months and things are calm, you’re feeling everything you never felt before because you were numb. You’re doubting things. Maybe you feel you don’t deserve the good in your life, so you’re waiting for it to disappear. Trauma has been the norm for your mind, and now that it is peaceful, your brain is going to look for other ways to stir the pot.”
My therapist was precisely right. Everything IS going well in my life. I’m living in a safe space with my family, I have been able to stay sober, I have healthy relationships with people who love and support me, I have solid employment, I’m healthy, and I have no drama in my life. I have everything to be grateful for, and my mind still finds things to worry about. My irrational thoughts become real to me. They feel valid. They make me feel a sick, sinking feeling at the bottom of my rib cage that I used to try to escape.
A few days ago, someone who took the time to travel for hundreds of miles to see me accidentally said something that was triggering. I didn’t need to, but I brought so much pain onto myself with my reaction because I jumped to interpreting it as a personal attack on me; I assumed that this person had an agenda when they had none. My brain literally created a whole scenario in my head where I was suddenly a victim again, except today, I’m NOT a victim. I don’t have to fear this relationship; this connection is not my past.
I hyper-focused on this trigger and blinded myself to the bigger picture. I didn’t stop to consider facts, to look at reality. I didn’t try to clear any assumptions I was making by asking questions. I took the whole statement personally. The truth was that there was no ill intention, only a word in a conversation.
Had I stopped to consider the facts, I would have stressed myself a lot less.
The fears that rise up don’t limit themselves just to relationships. For instance, a recent thing is when my mind takes stock of my appearance and tells me what I don’t have, it tells me what others have better than me.
I looked in the mirror today, and it hit me that I have become ungrateful for the temple I have. I lost sight of facts about my body. This is the same body that has sustained deadly alcohol levels, car wrecks, and assaults. These are the same bones that have never broken, the legs that carry me, and work hard despite multiple surgeries. My face still radiates my father’s smile. I could have completely destroyed it in numerous accidents and falls that I don’t remember, but instead, it carries only fading scars. In seven months of sobriety, this is the same body with a healed liver that no longer has alcoholic liver disease. My body is an amazing one. These are the actual facts.
This body carries the resilient spirit I have, and yet I still turn around and can be ungrateful for it. I can still falsely trick myself into thinking that others don’t appreciate me either. I can continue to believe one irrational thought after another until everything spirals down to eventually me drinking.
But. I. Can’t. Drink.
So what AM I doing about this to not stay stuck in these recent fears that are coming at me full force?
I know healing isn’t a “me” project, so I spoke to my therapist and to my mentor. My therapist suggested that every time I write about my painful thoughts that may be irrational, I need to write down the facts. For example, if I made a mistake at work and believe that I’m going to get fired, sure I can write that, “I have fear that I’ll get fired,” but I ALSO need to acknowledge, “I regularly do well, so I won’t actually get fired.” Is it an extra step in journaling? Yes, is it worth it to pause and “zoom-out” to see the facts? Also, yes.
I asked my mentor (sober 14 years) about her experience, and she let me know that even at HER length of sobriety, she still gets fears and has to work daily to not succumb to the negative voices in her head. Understanding that reminds me why I need to speak with her more often and share the fears that come up in my head. She’s been where I am at, makes me feel less isolated, and if she’s been sober for 14 years, I can get long-term sobriety, too. If I can get it, anyone reading this can get it, too.
So I don’t feel “good” right now, but I know that there are solutions to my mental health concerns. I know that these painful feelings I have are temporary. I don’t have to go through these feelings alone, and I can do things to process them. I’m not going to let my mental health get the best of me and get me to drink today, but I’m learning this really is a daily fight. Daily.
So I veered away from sharing another person’s story for this entry simply because I feel that it’s essential to highlight the hard times. I believe that when we share stories, we connect, and as I’ve heard many say before, connection is the opposite of addiction.
“I can’t post about my dating life! My dating life has nothing to do with my recovery,” I said.
My friend Chris very quickly responded, “But your recovery is more than just you recovering from being an alcoholic. Your message of recovery is the life that you live now, so even if that includes a boyfriend, or whatever that is, that is your message of recovery. You’ve recovered from where you were. From the heartache, from the death of Ian…and you’re moving on with your life. That’s the testimony and that’s the recovery that you’re in. So you’re still portraying the same message. The message of wholeness, the message of happiness, the message of joy, the message of love, like all that’s prevalent. Everything that you post as far as your recovery does not have to be directly about alcohol or the stuff that you’ve dealt with. Having a new relationship is just as much recovery as well.”
I never thought about it that way.
I got anxious thinking about my fear of judgment because I’m “breaking” yet another one of the invisible “rules” of early sobriety. You know, “don’t do this…,” and, “don’t do that…,” and everything in between. esp
Suddenly it dawned on me that when I tried to follow invisible rules, attempting to didn’t get me sober. Accepting help from above and those around me, cutting myself loose from my secret, THAT is what helped me get and stay sober a day at a time to this point.
My mentor often says, “you can do ANYTHING you want, as long as you’re sober. ANYTHING.” She’s definitely an admirable “rule-breaker” who has been sober for many years, so what she says is always something to really process.
Anything, right?
Well to that list of doing “anything” I want, I’ve added allowing my heart to mend.
My heart has been touched by someone, actually. My hope is restored and crazy enough, I’m feeling again. I don’t know where this journey will take me, or what it may mean for my future, but what it does mean is that today I’m healing.
We do recover from alcohol. We do recover from drugs.
Please note that Bottomless to Sober does not endorse any specific recovery program or path to recovery. Neither does it endorse meeting or not meeting in person during the pandemic.
My story is your story, and your story is mine. I see the value in sharing them. Actually, that’s an understatement; telling our stories, that’s the lifeblood of the recovery community. When we share our stories, we are participating in mutuality. Kertz Ketcham once discussed how we give by getting and we get by giving. Not a single part of my story has NOT already been told by the women who have gone before me. Like them, I too felt insecure and uncomfortable in my skin and used my drinking and drug use to cope. Like them, I, too, have trauma and relied on perfectionism to feel some semblance of control and appear put together. Like them, I, too, ultimately engaged in behavior that is morally reprehensible.
On and on.
I regularly engaged in swaps, giving a piece of myself, of dignity, trust, or consent away to others when I was in no position to give these things away. I would give anything in exchange for whatever was going to give me that sweet, sweet buzz. People who don’t feel whole ought not to go about giving bits of themselves away. Alas, that is what we all do. What alcoholic/addict would know NOT to do this? We do not know what we do not know.
We can describe the myriad of chaos and endless examples of the insanity of the disease through our stories. Of all that we did to get that freeing feeling. Frankly, thank God for that relief. That reprieve is how I got to feel better, sometimes, back then. How could I progressively move through MYlife feeling the way Idid without the respite from the chaos and the insanity that being glazed provided?! Using became the only thing that provided me relief. And it did…until it didn’t.
That anyone gets and stays sober is an absolute miracle. People do it. I did it. I’ve been clean and sober as of writing this for twelve years. That is a miracle.
I needed drugs and alcohol to live. So when I stopped using them, I thought to myself, “I had better replace them with something that works, and it better feel good!” To both of these proposals, I say they do!
If sharing our stories is the lifeblood of recovery, then living recovery is spiritual oxygen. This oxygen can only be inhaled by the community.
Saint Francis, the 12th-century mystic, taught that the antidote to confusion and paralysis is always a return to simplicity, to what is right in front of us, to the nakedly obvious (Rohr, 2020).
It’s simple. We need to stop using, but we need others to help us. In turn, we need to help others so that we stay “stopped.” As trite as this sounds, we must go to meetings, get into the literature of recovery, and not drink or use in between meetings. Only then can we hear what we need to learn. We will hear what we need to do when we are ready for it. But we won’t if we are not at meetings or in recovery literature.
We live in an extraordinarily technologically advanced times. Options are infinite in terms of the recovery spaces and resources that exist today. I am not suggesting that the sheer magnitude of the amount of these offerings is a bad thing, hardly at all. Someone could get overwhelmed though looking for help.
Psychological theories and self-Help books abound. Have you noticed how large that section of the book store is? It’s huge. There are many talking heads and experts. Treatment centers are everywhere. Podcasts and Youtube channels. However, these offerings would not exist without what has been called “the most significant phenomenon in the history of ideas in the 20th century” (Kurtz & Ketcham, 1992). This, of course, is the Twelve Step recovery program outlined in The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Therefore, as St Francis encouraged, let us get back to simplicity and back to basics. Let’s get back to The Big Book.
While returning to simplicity sounds just as it is, simple, it is in no way easy. What The Big Book offers takes time and work. This is difficult to accept in this instant gratification world we inhabit. The Big Book unequivocally emphasizes the absolute importance of community. Within the community of recovery, we become acquainted with ourselves by getting acquainted with others.
Cosette, provided by author
Thank God we live in this technologically advanced age where we can connect with others online. That said, I would be remiss if I did not pointedly suggest that our online community must be supplemented with actual in-person connection and regular study of the literature. It is in this space where that spiritual oxygen can be exchanged. If the space is not physically shared by individuals, how then can this essence be transmitted? It can’t. It is not lost on me that as I write this, the global community has been rocked by an airborne pandemic. We have been prohibited, by law in some cases, to come together in our fellowship. All the more important that we come together again when we can as soon as we can.
One may very successfully stay dry or clean solely utilizing what is available at their fingertips and without crossing the threshold of their home. However, one might be denying themselves the opportunity of a type of quality of sobriety which creates the ultimate motivation to no longer use drugs and alcohol. That is the development of emotional sobriety. And it is thisemotional sobriety that feels good. It takes time to obtain, but it is possible, and it is there for the taking for anyone who has the capacity to be honest, and works for it.
**Please consult with a medical provider when seeking treatment for drug addiction.*
Audio
Life in active addiction is difficult. Getting sober can be nearly impossible for some, and a sober life does not necessarily equal an easy life. Ana’s story is full of countless challenges, lots of falls, and even more comebacks.
“Sobriety’s been a challenge, but I wouldn’t trade my life today for anything.”
Raised by her abusive mother. Ana’s childhood only increased in chaos as she grew. She described her mother as, “The older she got, the crazier she got. I mean, she caught herself on fire.” Yes, Ana meant this literally. “What about your dad, Ana?” Ana’s dad was primarily absent from her childhood. “My dad, I saw him a handful of times growing up. I always wanted to be with him, especially because my mother was constantly hurting us. She hurt us a lot. My dad had a wreck drinking and driving. He actually killed someone, so he went to prison.” Ana’s a fast talker and can get a lot out in a single breath, so she paused then continued, “There was always something that was causing me trauma, and I didn’t even know, I didn’t understand that it was happening to me. I didn’t understand any of it. I wasn’t allowed to kiss my mother, hug my mother, tell her I loved her. I just couldn’t find the love. I was a good kid. I wasn’t a bad kid.”
“When I was 16, that’s when I found alcohol and drugs. My first drink felt like I could breathe. I felt that people cared about me. The people that did drugs and alcohol didn’t judge me. They didn’t make fun of how I looked. I fit right in.” Ana described how drugs and alcohol brought her the peace and comfort she yearned for since early childhood. Her life was really chaotic and confusing, so for her to escape was bliss. I assumed that since her mother had been so abusive, that her doing drugs would have only brought on more chaos at home.
“How was your relationship with your mother now that you were older and she found out that you were doing drugs?” Ana chuckled, “At that time we started using together, it brought the relationship to a different level. I finally had something she wanted, she started to be nice to me, it was good. She started liking my friends, too. She just was easier to be around.”
This new bond didn’t last long. One day her mother had Ana drive up to her mother’s boyfriend’s house. As she got out of the car, she turned to Ana and said in a harsh yet hushed tone, “don’t get out of the car, don’t say anything, and shut your mouth,” Ana recalled. Her mother went into the house and rushed out shortly after, taking Ana straight home. Ana’s mom had just robbed her own boyfriend. As they heard a call pull up, the boyfriend’s car, they went and hid in the back. Ana recalled watching the car slowly pull into the driveway and pausing. They held still, watching him. Steadily, he put the car in reverse and backed away, driving off as he had come in. Had he gone a “hair further,” he would have seen them.
Once he was gone, her mother went through the house, ransacking it, searching for all the drugs in the home, including what she stole, making sure not to leave a fraction of an ounce of weed, and balancing the beer that remained in the fridge. She walked out. They didn’t see her again for about four months,
“So you must have been devastated, right?” I asked.
Wrong.
Ana and her sister, ages 16 and 14, respectively, were alone for a week. The “wicked witch was gone.” So they partied, had friends over, they were distracting themselves. Yes, they thought about their mother, they wondered where she went, but they also felt relief. No one was in the house who could hurt them. Shortly after her mother’s departure, the family got involved. It happened to be that her father was wrapping up his prison sentence. As soon as he got out, he pulled the girls out of school to live with him and his girlfriend, her two kids, plus the additional two kids who would come over every other weekend. Eight people in a one-bedroom apartment. It was tight, but her father eventually got them into a house where they had room to stretch. With her mother gone and her father back in the picture, Ana looked forward to having a dad around. The time lost while he was away now could be made up. Hope filled Ana’s heart as she started this new life with her father.
She said, “I wanted my dad my entire life. But when I finally got my dad, I didn’t have my dad at all. He was focused on his girlfriend and her sons. All the strangers were getting the affection. So one day, I came home high on weed. Then he called the police on me! They didn’t do anything, so I did it again. I was so angry. All these years, you abandoned me, and you hadn’t been around. And now I’m still not good enough.” Things weren’t any better at her new high school either. “I had been to ten schools, and that was the worst school I had ever been in.” As a teacher, I’ve seen my fair share of parents who would come to school and raise hell if they suspected their daughter was being bullied. Instead, her father pulled her out of school senior year. “I didn’t get to go to prom, walk at graduation, participate in any senior trips. Instead, I spent my senior year in a treatment facility.”
Like Sara, despite being the youngest in the facility, Ana adjusted fairly well, but she was furious and felt betrayed. “I didn’t need to be around strangers; I needed someone to show me that they cared, but he just sent me there. I didn’t get a yearbook when I was 17. I got a Big Book. I got a Big Book with everyone’s signatures.” When her time in treatment was up at age 18, Ana prepared to go back home only to find that her stepmother was sending her to another facility instead of letting her come back into the home. At this point, Ana’s mother had reappeared. She also had gone to treatment herself. When Ana was getting transferred to the new facility, she escaped and hid from the police dispatched to find her. “I walked in the snow, knocking door to door, hoping someone would let me in so I could avoid the cops.” No one let her in, but Ana did eventually get a hold of her mother. Her mom had a place to stay, so she let Ana stay with her. Though they each had just completed treatment programs, they didn’t stay clean. Ana didn’t live with her mother for long either.
The next years of her life were a blur. “I don’t remember what happened, I just know that shit happened, and it was all bad.” Her drug use got worse, crack, homelessness, moving around to different cities hoping to get her life together.
She lucked out when her aunt gave her a chance, and she moved into an apartment with her cousin in a new city. She was grateful. Her drug use slowed down as a result, which was positive, but her drinking continued and along with it, so did her depression. One day, on her birthday, she hit a low point.
Ana attempted suicide.
In the hours leading to the attempt, Ana went out drinking for her birthday, hoping to find someone to spend the night with. She had the apartment to herself as her cousin was away on a camping trip. When she didn’t connect with anyone, she came home drunk, upset, rejected. Two dozen bright red roses were sitting still, waiting for her when she arrived. They were a gift from her sister.
Ana snapped. She scrambled around the apartment, looking for anything with a sharp edge. Razors, knives, whatever she thought would cut her flesh. She laid in bed preparing to rip at her wrists when the doorknob rattled. She heard the door squeak and then a shriek. Her cousin had walked in. Seeing Ana lying with the blade against her wrist, her cousin leaped onto the bed. When she landed, her cousin felt a poke and ripped the sheet up off of Ana, revealing every sharp tool in the apartment laid around her. She called 911, and Ana went straight to the hospital again.
“I was pissed. I always wanted to D-I-E,” she spelled out the word die, being mindful of her son possibly being within earshot as she spoke. “I felt horrible, I wanted to die, and no one even let me try. I would pray to God, I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to be here anymore. I have always asked God since I was a kid. I never had any love, no kindness. I couldn’t take it. I just didn’t want to keep going through life. It was too overwhelming and hard.”
After her suicide attempt in the apartment, Ana’s aunt didn’t allow her to return. Ana eventually ended up back home and moved in with a friend. She did find her way back to drugs, but this time not for long.
When she moved in, she met John, “the boy next door.” He later became her husband. Ana had a habit of attracting younger men, so throughout our conversation, she occasionally referred to them as “boys.” Her connection with John filled a void for Ana, and she found herself willing to give up everything for him. The drugs, the alcohol, even cigarettes. “Those were the rules that I wanted him to live by, and I was willing to do the same. He was okay with it! He chose me! He gave up all of his comforts with his family for the sake of being with me; I felt loved.”
For the duration of her marriage, about six years, Ana didn’t touch alcohol or drugs. Toward the end of their relationship, she started stealing his grandmother’s prescriptions. Though the pill use appeared minor at the time, this was a slip that would lead to an eventual landslide. When they divorced, Ana was happy to move on. In her married years, she did well for herself and was ready to be an independent single woman. Outside of those few pills she was sneaking, everything was great.
Ana was recently divorced and 30 when she met up with some friends at a festival. She hadn’t had a drink in seven years, and her friends were excited to taste wine. Ana said, “I thought to myself, I’m grown, I’m a woman now. I know right from wrong. I mean, I drive a Mercedes. Certainly, I’m not going to drink and drive in a Mercedes! I had become sophisticated!”
On day one of drinking after seven dry years, she went straight from tasting wine to pounding drinks at a bar past 2 in the morning. Shortly after, drugs came right back into the picture.
So much of what Ana gained in those seven years that she was sober, vanished, or was at risk of being ruined. Nothing in Ana’s life was steady except for the hold of drugs and alcohol on her.
During an attempt to get sober in 2015, Ana moved into a halfway house and met a “boy.” He was eleven years younger than her and was barely a few months sober. Things moved quickly. It was August, they met. October came, and they moved in together. Come November Ana’s pregnant. By the end of the year, Eddie relapsed and left town after he robbed a local heroin dealer.
Ana was alone briefly, but she followed after Eddie because “I wanted my baby hell or high water to have a mom AND a dad there.” Eddie couldn’t stay out of jail, nor could he stay sober. Once Bryson was born, Ana couldn’t stay sober either. In the years that followed, there were attempts at getting clean. They tried to get it together. They moved cities, looked for different environments, but no matter where they went, they couldn’t escape their addiction.
The following years consisted of breakups, attempts to get sober, broken promises, and increasingly worse drug use. Then things took a turn for the worse.
They pulled in from having bought some spice. They looked at their money. In front of them were only five one-dollar bills. They looked at each other. They knew what to do. Sure they had just come from buying the drugs, but why not be efficient and get the five dollars’ worth NOW so that they wouldn’t have to turn around and worry about it later?
The last thing that Ana remembered was putting the car in reverse.
She opened her eyes to find herself surrounded by white smoke. It was choking her. Her entire body was throbbing. She didn’t realize where she was until she looked up, and as she focused her eyes, a tree came into view as the smoke cleared. Ana had swerved into oncoming traffic, crossed four lanes, and crashed into a tree on the side of the road. Eddie was in the car with her.
So was their son.
I figured this is the part of the story where the arrest happens. “So, did you get arrested there?” I asked. “No, I woke up real quick. I made up this whole story about how I had to swerve to avoid someone who looked like they were on the phone, and so to avoid hitting that driver, I said that I lost control of my car. They believed me: no ticket, no arrest, nothing. I didn’t even have insurance or any papers for the car. Nobody was even hurt, but I took that as a sign, and I left Eddie again.”
Though she was briefly clean, Ana connected with another “boy” with who she had gone to elementary school, Jason. She obsessed over him for a year, and after much anticipation, upon meeting, she immediately felt something. She said, “Something was not right, I thought, ‘Jason’s probably not sober.’” She continued to describe the moment, “It was something about the way his head was cocked to the side, oh, and he asked me for money, too. I knew I shouldn’t have talked to him, Jessica. The problem with me is that it never matters. If I want something, I’m gonna get something. I just don’t care.”
“He was a heroin user, and at this point, I was no longer scared of the high. I wanted to know exactly what everyone was talking about. He didn’t want me to try it, so I told him that either he get me heroin and would help me use it, or I was going to go out there, find it myself and probably die trying because I wouldn’t do it right. I told him, ‘I’ll die, and it’ll be on your conscience.’ That was enough to have him get me the heroin.” From then on, they used heroin together, always in secret. It was fun at first, she said. “I was high all the time. I pretended to be a mom, I pretended to be present, but I was high all the time.” The one thing she didn’t do was put a needle in her arm. She only snorted it. “I was almost at the point of shooting up, but then my mom died, and that changed everything.”
Ana was going to her mother’s house one day with her son, she was heading to work, and her mother was going to babysit. “I don’t know what happened to her, I walked in with my kid, and she was dead on the floor. I think when my momma went to Heaven, she found out what I was doing and shifted things, so I had to stop heroin.”
Ana had not experienced “dope sickness” because she never ran out of heroin. Then one day, the “jump out boys” got her and Jason. She started to explain, “The police officer came to my car.” At that moment, I thought, “Oh, okay, so THIS is the part of her story where she gets arrested.”
I was still wrong. She got off with a warning, but she had to give all of the drugs she had over to the police officer. She described the moment saying, “I said, ‘Here you go sir, I’m sorry.’ And he let me go. Then, as soon as he walked away, it hit me that not once in my life did I ever have to go get drugs.” Finding heroin was practically impossible, it seemed. People would sell her fake drugs. It got bad enough that she had to find a former sponsee who had also relapsed to get her drugs. Eventually, Ana grew tired of the struggle. She decided that she needed to get off of heroin, and she left Jason.
“Did you go to treatment to get off heroin?” I asked.
“No, I smoked meth for four days.” She responded.
For four days, she stayed in the bathroom, using meth to help her get through the dope sickness that heroin withdrawal brought on. All the while, her son was home. “I made sure to check on him, feed him, leave him, and go retreat into the bathroom to stay high in there. I made sure he ate, he had a toy, the TV on, anything to keep him entertained while I hid in the bathroom.”
When she learned what long-term meth use does, she freaked out and got sober. Again.
Then Eddie called.
Just like before, he came with promises, waving the white flag of so-called sobriety, that he was “just” using CBD. Curious, Ana tried some when he offered. As soon as she hit the pipe, she felt the smoke flow into her lungs, and suddenly her heart sank. It wasn’t CBD. It was THC.
They were driving, and when Eddie saw her face overcome with worry, laughing, he said, “Let’s make a stopover at this house. We need to pick up something.” Angrily, she cried as they picked up drugs. She cried as she watched him go mad in her house, taking things apart, being obsessive, being compulsive. He had to leave.
Eddie finally left, and Ana felt she needed to take the edge off and drink, so she picked up two wine bottles. She uncorked one, sipped some, and as she felt the buzz start, she realized, “I don’t want to do this.” She opened the other wine bottle, and she poured all she had left down the sink. This was on July 18, 2019. “I pray to God that was the last time I picked up a white chip.”
So, how has Ana stayed sober ever since?
“I have stayed away from men. My thinker doesn’t work when I’m around them. I only have made bad decisions. I decided to focus only on my recovery.” Then she paused. “But things changed recently,” she said.
“Mark, a family friend who was going through a divorce, started reaching out. For months I refused each invite to dinner, to a movie, to a walk.” Then one day, after a long work week, she agreed to go to a movie. “From there, it was perfect. We connected on a deeper level than any I felt before. He told me he would take care of me, of my son, that he wanted to have a baby with me. He even told my father. I thought to myself, ‘I’ve been patient, I’m finally gonna get something good!’” As Ana spoke, her voice picked up an enthusiastic note. I even got excited for her. I thought, “Yes! She’s been so patient, now she’s getting the love she’s been waiting for!”
Her tone changed. “Then one day, I get a call at work.” I cringed and immediately braced myself, “Oh God,” I thought.
“He told me to come and get my things, that his wife was coming back. That he didn’t love me anymore, that he loves his wife. I didn’t have anywhere safe to go, my roommate had relapsed, and I couldn’t go back there with my son. So I stayed with a friend in the program.”
This all happened three weeks before we met. Thankfully Ana did just find a home recently, so she now has a safe space for her son. “It’s the most beautiful home I’ve ever lived in. It’s unlike anything I’ve seen before.”
Despite this heartbreak, Ana stayed sober. She maintained optimism and was ready to move on and not let this set her back. Yes, she was hurt and reeling from the shock, but she was grateful to have a home and be safe.
Then she started to feel sick.
She felt different, so she took a pregnancy test.
It was positive. She took more. Each one was positive.
“Mark called me, telling me to meet him at the clinic to get rid of it. I’ve done too much in my life to go get an abortion. I told him to get fucked and hung up.” For days he persisted, calling her phone, calling her at work. “I told him not to worry, I don’t want him. This isn’t a trap. I’m a grown woman. I made my bed, I’m going to lie in it and take care of my kid. So that’s where I’m at.” Ana spoke firmly with strong resolve.
“So, how are you feeling now?” I asked her. “Well, I’ve never made it to two years while trying to be in recovery on my own. The fact that I have a baby inside me makes me feel hopeful that I will make it. So far, I have a good history of not doing drugs while pregnant, so I think I’ll make it.” She laughed. “This baby is a blessing. This baby has saved my life.”
The baby is due in October of 2021. “Mark’s tried to deny that it’s his, but he’s just in denial. He begged for this baby for two months, and now he’s trying to deny it. I can’t WAIT to meet my baby. I have all the love to give this baby that I didn’t get.”
So a few wrap-up questions. “Where’s Eddie?” I asked. He’s in prison. Though Ana knows they won’t have the family she once dreamed of, she prays for him. She wants her son to have his father. “I’m scared for Eddie. He’s not using when he’s in there. When people sober up for a while, and then they go shooting up, it’s too strong for them, and they’re dying. I want my son to have his father. I don’t want Eddie to die when he gets out.” Ana’s right. That is too often a common story in recent years.
What’s next for Ana? “Well, I never got to finish music school when I was younger, but one thing that I will be doing is offering voice lessons. I can’t wait. I’m really excited to do that here in the next few months. I’m working on a book. I have a lot of goals. I’m really taking care of myself this time. I’m not letting my sorrow, my emotions, or my pain get the best of me. I cope differently today. I don’t cope with a bottle, a pill, or heroin. I cope with serenity, with God, with my support group, with music, with walking. Anything and everything, without putting some shit in my body. I refuse it. I’m definitely not above it though, when this break-up first happened, I was really close to getting myself a bottle, but thank God. Today, I think everything through. I think, think, think. I think about my life and how I will go right back to where I was if I put anything in my body. I just can’t. I’ve got two kids to think about now. I’ve got a future that I want to have.”
What about work? Actually, Ana’s been a nurse for 12 years. She completed college and nursing school during those different periods of sobriety she’s had throughout the years. Did I intentionally leave out the fact that she’s a nurse? Maybe, but to be honest, her line of work never came up in the conversation until the end. Ana is and has always been a professional. A mother. Addiction doesn’t target any specific group of people. A disease is a disease, and it manifests in the same way regardless of the host. So be mindful in your daily interactions with others because you don’t know what you don’t see.
