If you’re a teacher, you are working in a climate that has gotten exponentially more challenging with time. Summer was likely a great relief for many, but the lack of structure can lead to more unhealthy behaviors. If you already had a questionable relationship with alcohol, you might have been using your time off drinking even more than you did before. Now that it is time for many of you to start getting ready to return to your school buildings, you may be worrying if your drinking is a problem. Is your alcohol consumption at the point where you may need help but are scared that it’s too late to do anything about it because you can’t miss work?
“But, I’m a professional. I do well at work and take care of all my responsibilities (finances, kids, family, pets, etc.).” None of that is relevant. When it comes to alcohol abuse, what you accomplish despite your drinking does not negate the fact that your relationship with alcohol is a problem.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) uses guidelines to determine if a person falls on the spectrum of alcohol use disorder. It is essential to highlight the word spectrum because one person’s problems with alcohol may look drastically different from another. Identifying alcohol abuse is not about comparing your drinking to someone else’s and being tempted to say, “Well, I am not as bad as her, so I must not have a problem.” This analysis is about your health and your life. This reflection needs to be about you solely. Examine what your thought process is and what your behavior is when it comes to drinking. Is it an issue?
Here are some questions the NIH provides to ask regarding drinking.
In the past year, have you:
Had times when you ended up drinking more, or longer, than you intended? More than once wanted to cut down or stop drinking, or tried to, but couldn’t?
Spent a lot of time drinking? Or being sick or getting over other aftereffects?
Wanted a drink so badly you couldn’t think of anything else?
Found that drinking—or being sick from drinking—often interfered with taking care of your home or family? Or caused job troubles? Or school problems?
Continued to drink even though it was causing trouble with your family or friends?
Given up or cut back on activities that were important or interesting to you, or gave you pleasure, in order to drink?
More than once gotten into situations while or after drinking that increased your chances of getting hurt (such as driving, swimming, using machinery, walking in a dangerous area, or having unprotected sex)?
Continued to drink even though it was making you feel depressed or anxious or adding to another health problem? Or after having had a memory blackout?
Had to drink much more than you once did to get the effect you want? Or found that your usual number of drinks had much less effect than before?
Found that when the effects of alcohol were wearing off, you had withdrawal symptoms, such as trouble sleeping, shakiness, restlessness, nausea, sweating, a racing heart, or a seizure? Or sensed things that were not there?
If, after reading this list, you are uncomfortable with the fact that you may have a problem with alcohol, I first want to say that you’re not alone. I taught successfully for thirteen years and won numerous awards, and at the end of my drinking career, I drank a fifth of bourbon a night and excelled the next day at work. I’ve been sober since November 28, 2020, so I promise you that it gets better and that knowing you have an issue can only serve your higher good.
Maybe you have tried to stop drinking only to find that, for different reasons, you really could not control it on your own. You’ve heard of people going to treatment facilities, but now that school is around the corner, you feel like your opportunity to get assistance is gone. You think that you might have to wait for another break in the school year to come.
“Who is going to cover my classes?” “I don’t want to/don’t have the mental capacity to write these sub plans.” “I worry about my classroom.” “Will this go on file against me?” “I’ve never been to rehab. I’m scared to go.” “I don’t want to leave my kids at home.” “What if I lose my job?” “What if no one watches my children/pets at home?”
I, too, have said most of the above, but it is important to note that eventually if you don’t stop drinking, many of the fears listed will materialize anyway. You will decrease the likelihood of experiencing significant losses and consequences by going to treatment for a week or several weeks.
There are many resources and avenues for getting help outside of a treatment facility, and you can find those here. However, for those considering going into a facility, please be aware that if you have worked in the same district for over a year, you may be eligible to take advantage of the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) program with the U.S. Department of Labor. This program also applies to employees at agencies at the local, state, and federal levels. The specific line of the act that would apply to entering a treatment facility is “a serious health condition that makes the employee unable to perform the essential functions of his or her job.” Mental health IS health, so a problem with addiction IS a serious health issue. In my personal experience, I used FMLA as a public school teacher when I needed treatment.
So what is FMLA? It is a federal program that, upon approval, allows individuals to take up to twelve weeks (or twenty-six, it depends on the circumstances) off of work to take care of different medical needs. This time off is usually NOT paid time off (not ideal, I know). However, the employee keeps all their benefits, and their job is guaranteed for them when they return. You are also protected by confidentiality, so your employer cannot disclose the nature of your absence to others.
When I used it, my employer was only allowed to say that I was “on leave,” my accounts, such as my school email (your district may do something different), were put on pause until I returned. Also, when I say employer, I mean your human resources department. If you disclose your situation to your school principal, that is your choice, but the HR department cannot tell your principal why you are on leave. In my case, I did not write any lesson plans, either.
I share this information about FMLA because I was unaware I could use it when struggling with alcohol. I learned about it when I ended up in a hospital and the doctor on call recommended that I enter into treatment. My first reaction was, “No. I can’t. I’m a teacher.” He proceeded to explain FMLA to me, and when my family contacted my district’s human resources department, the HR staff confirmed that with the proper documentation, I was eligible for it.
Many teachers have lost their jobs due to drinking, and if they haven’t lost their jobs, they have suffered other consequences, too. When I taught, I built my schedule around alcohol so that I could teach, lesson plan, grade, drink, pass out and get up only to repeat the same cycle every day for years. Alcohol dictated everything for me, and it made me physically very sick, yet I still successfully put up appearances of doing well. I was quietly letting it kill me. You don’t have to spend another school year suffering if you are still teaching. I let my problem spiral to the point where I had to leave, but you don’t have to.
“Well, the funny thing is I didn’t tell him that I have the Holy Trinity.” Natalie cackled while talking to some of the twenty-somethings in the courtyard.
Off to the side of everyone chatting, I was sitting in a beat-up camping chair trying to mind my business and enjoy the sun and its warmth on my skin. Natalie’s voice carried over to my ears and I could feel them perk up. Holy Trinity? I wondered. Even though I initially wasn’t listening, her gleeful energy in between cigarette pulls caught everyone’s attention, including mine.
Photo from Unsplash.
“You know,” she said as the smoke slowly floated up from the side of her mouth, “Hep A, B, and C!”
Immediately my jaw dropped with a slight gasp and laugh. What? Then I had a flashback to the night before when I saw some of the “young ones,” as I like to call them, scurrying around the facility. They were trying to distract the techs from supervising so Natalie and some other kid could run off to have sex. What was another conquest for Natalie to brag about was about to become a really uncomfortable situation for that kid. Days later, he came back to us saying that he tested “positive.” Originally I thought it would be for hepatitis given Mother Teresa and her “Holy Trinity,” but it turned out to be some other STI. So maybe the joke was on Natalie? I don’t know. There were no condoms around because, of course, no one was supposed to have sex. Except they did, and clearly it was not safe.
I remember one morning coming back to my room after brushing my teeth. As I approached, I noticed that the lights were off. Hmm, did I do that? Our doors didn’t lock, so as I leaned on the door with my arms full of toiletries, I heard heavy breathing from the other side of the room and saw shuffling under the covers. It was my roommate with a particularly creepy man who made my skin crawl. I cringed when I heard him moan then loudly whisper in her ear. He definitely was not a twenty-something.
Do I interrupt? Do I tell a tech what’s happening? I knew the rules, but I didn’t know what was considered right and what was wrong. I was quickly learning during my stay that it wasn’t about the rules, it was about what I needed to get through those 35 days in peace. It hit me that my five weeks would quickly feel like ten if I had a conflict with anyone, so in that moment, I decided that I hadn’t seen or heard anything.
Before they noticed that I had walked in, I stepped out and took a seat in the common area. I exhaled, putting my face in the palm of my hand to wait. It only took a few minutes for him to come out of the room. I was not surprised.
While the techs occasionally played Whack-A-Mole trying to control the twenty-somethings, I found myself entertained in my own way thanks to another patient. No, I did not have sex with this man. I didn’t even touch him. But I still found myself distracted in his company. Our connection brought me comfort at a moment in my life when I was grieving the man I knew was permanently gone. He was no replacement, but he took me away from my pain. If I couldn’t have alcohol while in treatment, at least I could have some male attention. He was exactly what I needed for those five weeks.
I always looked forward to early evening when we could work on crossword puzzles by the tech desk. We chatted with each other and the techs, who, like Danielle, were all in recovery and helped remind us that getting better was possible.
Photo from Unsplash.
As it got close to 9 PM, I began to dread my nightly trip to the nurse’s station. As soon as I took my night meds, the clock started counting down. Slowly my eyelids got heavier and my head started to nod off, which annoyed me. It was a nice change, for once, to actually want to be awake, but those meds sapped my energy. I was finally laughing with others after not having done so in over a month, and even more surprising, I was smiling again. I didn’t want the meds to take that little bit of joy away from me early every evening.
As we worked on the crossword one time, I looked at him and wondered, why isn’t HE sleepy? It was then that I learned from the others how to “cheek” my meds. So that night I went into the nurse’s station, took the little paper cup with my medications, emptied it into my mouth and said “ahhh” like a little kid as I stuck my tongue out so the nurse could take a look. All the while, I tasted the bitterness of the pills hidden between my gums and cheek as they started to break down. I rushed to the bathroom to spit them out before they disintegrated, wrapped them up in tissue, stuffed them into my bra, and saved them for when I wanted to go to bed. Back to the crosswords!
I rapidly fell into the daily routine. I was so wrapped up with therapy, groups, and classes that I started to forget about the world outside, the world that treatment was shielding me from.
I was vaguely aware that it was a world that seemed to have fallen apart. Every now and then, someone would flip past a news channel while looking for another episode of Botched. I remember hearing snippets of COVID’s numbers going up as the TV abruptly switched to Naked and Afraid or some other reality show. I remember being allowed to watch TV briefly while the protests broke out around the country and just miles away from where we were. Then, as soon as gunshots rang out live on TV, it suddenly became silent. TV off. A part of me was relieved to be away from it all. Away from one unprecedented event after the other as well as the alcohol that waited patiently for me.
Every week I got thirty minutes to speak to someone from the outside on video chat. I always chose my sister, Sophie. It had hurt her so much to see me struggling that I wanted to show her how good I looked the longer I was in treatment.
“You have no idea how much at peace I feel knowing you’re safe. I’ve been taking the family support classes, and I’m learning a lot,” she’d say. The facility provided classes for both families and patients on addiction and how it is a disease and not a failure of character.
I still felt like a failure, but I didn’t have to think about that in treatment. Instead, I could just relax, like I was at a summer camp for dysfunctional adults. I knew what was waiting for me on the other side of the fence. It was the people outside, those people and their opinions, that ran chills down my spine.
“Mami doesn’t know where I am, right?” I asked.
Photo from Unsplash.
Each time I spoke to my sister, I asked if people had figured out where I was, fearful that my secret would be revealed. I just wanted people to think I was taking time for myself and “unplugging” after the loss. I didn’t want a soul to know that I was locked away in a treatment facility, that I was institutionalized.
The very idea of anyone knowing where I was made my heart race and my stomach sink fast, like a free fall with no end. I’d seen people get ripped apart publicly because of their secrets and I didn’t want that to be me. As I watched my sister chat on the screen about her days and what things have been like for her, my mind wandered to thoughts of how I would rather die than have others know where I was. I mean, how could I, this teacher loved by the community, be an alcoholic? How could I be such an extreme case that I couldn’t be trusted with my own life and had to be locked away? How could I be a good person but be hooked so badly?
It. Just. Didn’t. Make. Sense.
I didn’t tell my sister that those thoughts raced through my mind while we spoke. I didn’t tell my therapist when I looked her in her eyes across her desk. I didn’t tell anyone in my group sessions during those heavy pauses when I could have said something. I did not tell a single soul how torn I felt inside.
Even in those moments, surrounded by people just like me, I was alone.
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.
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’m now two months sober. But I’ve been through this too many times to say with even a shred of believable confidence that I won’t slip up again. Don’t get me wrong. I want this sobriety. I wanted it with equal sincerity every time in the past, too.
What did my last day of drinking look like? It was January 6, the day of the insurrection in the US. My quitting on that date was merely a coincidence. Rather handy, though, as I’ve never previously taken note of my last day.
My quitting didn’t come on the heels of a big epiphany. You see, I couldn’t go cold turkey. I was so interminably dependent upon alcohol that even after I knew to my bones that I could no longer drink, I had to continue to do so to prevent myself from dying from the withdrawal. I had to agonizingly cut back for weeks before I could cease entirely, which felt like sharing a bed with someone I knew wanted to kill me.
What My Alcoholism Looked Like Before I Quit
In a nutshell, I drank around the clock. I no longer drank for pleasure. I drank for relief from the agony of withdrawal, which would rear its head after barely more than an hour or two without alcohol.
I’d wake up in the middle of the night with what felt every bit like a panic attack – heart racing, an inability to catch my breath, sweating so much that my sheets adhered to my skin. I’d reach for the bottle I kept next to my bed and swallow and swallow until I’d get pulled under.
Middle of the night drinking would only last until 6am at best, when it was time to take another drag. If I didn’t drink in the wee hours, by the time the morning was to start, I’d be shaking so hard that I could no longer hold a glass at all, not even be able to use a straw, could barely walk for the shaking. Even after a drink, when the liquid heat would steady my tremor, I still needed two hands to hold a drink to my mouth. And so, when most people are listening for the first birds of the day, I was filling up on liquor.
Repeat at around 9am, before noon, middle of the afternoon, before dinnertime, after dinnertime, around 11pm, again closer to 1am until one day bleeds into the next.
I could maintain short bouts of consciousness when work needed my attention, cooking for my family, most of all for my trips to resupply. Other than that, my eyes would slide shut with the force of iron doors. I was horizontal for most hours of most days.
I was going through 3 handles of hard alcohol about every 4-4.5 days, no fewer than 24 units of alcohol per day, sometimes as much as 30.
Physical Symptoms that Were New During This Period of Extreme Dependence
Not only did I no longer have any quality of life, I could absolutely feel my body shutting down. Even when fully dosed, I still shook enough that it was hard to conceal. If I started to withdraw, the shaking was so out of control that you couldn’t put a drink in my hands without the entirety of its contents flying out of the glass like a volcano erupting. My hands weren’t the only thing shaking. I shook from my core, my whole body, out of control. The feeling was miserable and felt like it arose from a place of anxious compulsion, not like the neutral shivers of being too cold. My tremors were tinged with a metallic unease.
Both malnutrition and problems within my brain led to terrible problems with balance and walking, a problem much deeper and more complex than the drunken stumbling depicted in movies. The shaking met with muscle weakness and brain distortions to make me completely unsure on my own legs. I could no longer safely manage stairs. I couldn’t walk for any distance without support. Additionally, my depth perception was impaired, and my eyesight was blurred.
Standing for more than a few minutes at a time was impossible. Before long, I’d grow so tired that I’d have to lean over for support, gasping for breath. More times than I could count, I ended up sinking to the floor in a puddle of tears, unable to stand. Even sitting was out of the question, for the most part.
I’d started having tingling in my hands leading partway up to my elbows. My lips were also fuzzy with the prickles of tingling. My tongue was so raw from the alcohol that it burned 24 hours every day.
The drinking stole away my eyesight quickly. I could no longer see or read at all without my glasses, and words were often out of reach even with them. Between my eyes and my shaking, it was hard to communicate with anyone via messages. Even the simplest sentence would take a ridiculous effort to type.
The alcohol had left my nervous system too tightly wound. Even the smallest movement or sound, from the ding of a new message to a reflection in my glasses, would make me jump.
The swelling above my beltline had become painfully obvious as even my elastic-banded pants became too tight. When standing, I could feel my liver pressing up on my lungs, making it hard to breathe.
My sense of smell became perverted. Most everything smelled horrible. Especially food, but my clothing and bed sheets were not excluded. I also experienced phantom smells. The trouble with my sense of smell combined with a lack of appetite meant that I’d go days at a time without eating. Even when I tried, my throat would reject food. It would also reject water. My desire to drink enough alcohol to keep the withdrawal symptoms at bay and my constantly passing out meant that there were some days when I’d not even drink a whole glass of water.
It was entirely and abundantly clear that I’d succeeded in poisoning myself, and my body was disintegrating.
How I Quit On My Own
Both because of my mother’s alcoholism and my own experience, I knew that a person dependent upon alcohol cannot safely go cold turkey (and I know of no professional who would advise doing this without medical supervision). Withdrawing from alcohol is incredibly dangerous, and potentially deadly.
Even though I knew it was explicitly killing me, I was equally well aware that I couldn’t just pour my supply down the drain and count my first day. I had to taper slowly and gently, all while enduring the grinding symptoms of withdrawal.
At first, I drank on the same schedule, as often as needed, but I’d only allow myself enough to ease the withdrawal symptoms. Instead of gulping until I’d pass out, I’d take deliberate drinks, then observe, drink and observe. This meant experiencing more shakes than I was comfortable with, and also more time awake with symptoms. This period lasted about a week.
The next step was to start to increase the length of the intervals between drinks. At first, only a little bit. Then, I’d stretch it an hour beyond comfort before allowing myself enough alcohol to relieve my symptoms.
I can remember how it felt like I’d made a big step when I “only” drank six times per day, and still in the middle of the night and first thing in the morning. Eventually, I moved down to four times per day.
The first time I went a whole overnight without drinking was another milestone.
Nearer to the end, I’d only drink after 5pm. And finally, only at bedtime. The last night, January 6th, I had just one drink before bed.
I felt no joy. I felt no pride. There were no balloons. I may have starved it of energy and attention, but my alcoholism, my monster, is still waiting quietly for me in the shadows. It is as patient as time.
“I still believe that voice telling me it was my last chance to this day. I knew it was my last chance.” Sara reflected on her sobriety date. After listening to her story, I stared at my phone in shock.
“How? How have you stayed sober continuously for 26 years? That’s an entire lifetime. I could barely get through a couple of weeks at a time last year!” Sara paused for a moment; I could hear her breath drawing in as she braced herself, “Well, let me tell you how it started…it’s a long story cause I’m old as fuck.”
Born and raised in Louisville, KY, Sara’s upbringing led her to believe that the only acceptable and valid family structure was the one she was brought up in. I definitely related to some parts of her experience when she talked about her childhood. She was bright, looked good to others, all-around excellent behavior and grades, and was an award-winning student. She was the type of child that any parent would be proud of. The only facet of her childhood that I couldn’t relate to was that she was a dedicated athlete to what felt like a laundry list of sports. Ice skating, swimming, she did it all. She should’ve walked around feeling good about herself, right?
She didn’t.
Sara and her mother had a turbulent relationship. Wherein Sara desperately sought her mother’s affirmations, love, attention, anything really, she received the opposite. Sara’s mom was usually too busy for her, on the phone, always telling Sara to “go away.” Sara paused her story. She wanted to clarify that despite what she was about to say about her upbringing, her parents took care of her physical needs. I laughed because I know that feeling, too. I also carry scars from my childhood. At this point, though, the best way for me to be at peace about my past is to accept that my parents, and frankly most parents, tried their best given the circumstances they were in. She proceeded to explain that she grew up with a roof over her head, food on the table, but she felt perpetually ignored or in trouble.
That didn’t make sense, “So, wait, how were you in trouble if she wasn’t even paying attention to you?”
Another breath.
“I remember being threatened to be taken away to an orphanage when I was 5. That was the beginning when that (getting in trouble) started happening. I had had a tantrum, and while in the shower, my mother dragged me out to the car, wet and naked, shampoo still in my hair. She had a suitcase packed telling me that she was going to take me to an orphanage…I shrieked in terror and threw a fit. Ever since, I always felt and believed that I was bad, you know, just bad. I wasn’t enough. I wasn’t good enough. Nothing I ever did after that was good enough.”
She carried those same feelings with her into middle and high school, where the awkwardness of teen behavior did nothing to help her feel like she belonged. Gossip and kids constantly turning their backs on one another didn’t provide Sara with any secure relationships with her peers. Her teachers loved her. That was about it. Around this time, Sara discovered cigarettes, and she was 12. Within a week of her first cigarette, she discovered marijuana (which Sara calls pot, so I’ll call it pot moving forward) and alcohol. Well, correction, Sara backtracked; it was more of a reunion; her father would let her have some of his nightly beer in an orange juice glass from the age of three. “‘More, more, more! I want more!’ From the very beginning, I knew that phenomenon of craving was in me.”
Sara learned to sneak around with alcohol after that. Now sneaking, that I know all too well. She replaced liquor with water in her parents’ bar, filled nail polish bottles with it, and would snatch her dad’s beer when he wasn’t paying attention, anything she could do to get to her drink. I couldn’t help but laugh, “it’s so funny to me how we’re all so good at hiding things when we need to. We’re so creative!” It’s true; we addicts and alcoholics are a bright bunch. Too bad that smarts don’t save us from our own disease.
Older teens and adults started to take an interest in Sara once she crossed over to drinking and using. Suddenly she found herself “not giving a shit. I didn’t care if they (her classmates) liked me or didn’t like me. I just started partying really hard. In the 70s, people called them the ‘freaks.’ That’s what I was, a ‘freak.’” The feeling of rejection from her mother and then her peers quickly disappeared. Alcohol and drugs started to give Sara a feeling of power, a sense of belonging, a false sense of maturity. She described the “relief” she felt of no longer worrying about anyone else, of their judgments. She felt at that time like she was in control of herself, of her feelings.
Of course, that relief was only temporary.
Sara started to hang around gas stations with her girlfriends, waiting for creepy uncle types who would be willing to buy them alcohol. Any and every party that she was invited to, she attended, using and drinking whatever she was offered. “So, you’ve talked a lot about quaaludes, pot, and alcohol. Where was heroin in all this?” I was so curious about the late 70s, early 80s, considering that today overdoses with opiates are so prevalent. “Heroin got big after ‘big pharma’ got everyone hooked on pain pills. That was way after I got sober. Back then, people died from drunk driving or on occasion from suicide, not from overdoses, not like today.”
Sara was spot on. According to the CDC, in the US in 1980, the number of people who died from drug overdoses was 6,100. By 2019, it was 70,630. Out of that number, 49,860 died from opiates, including pain pills and heroin.
Drugs and alcohol had become so instrumental to Sara’s stability that she leaned on them through what would be anyone’s worst nightmare, rape.
While on a liquor run, she ran into some older friends who invited her to a boat party. There were over a hundred people who crowded this boat, older kids. Sara drank the whiskey fast, smoked some pot. All the while, someone at the party had targeted her.
“This guy came and grabbed me. He pulled me off of the boat, and it was dark. It was night. I had a swim meet earlier that day, and this girl on my team French-braided my hair; I left the French braids in….anyway, I remember I escaped from this guy, I got back on the boat and hid from him. He came in there and he found me and he dragged me out. I was screaming, screaming to all these people, ‘Help me!’ And nobody would help me. They just let him take me away. He took me out there and he raped me. Then this other guy raped me. I think I knew who one of the guys was, and possibly the other guy. They were in on it together.”
My heart broke for her. I was scared to ask if this was her first time. It was.
“They beat me up. They ripped my hair out. I was covered in dirt, in pee, their pee, grass stains, mud. They tried to shove gravel down my throat to keep me from screaming. I was left there for dead and someone from my neighborhood found me and dumped me on my lawn. My brother found me out there, carried me inside, put me in my room and closed the door. I came to the next day, my parents never noticed. They didn’t even know. I woke up torn up. I think that was my first hangover. I was 14. That was the first time I felt true fear, horror, how awful everything was. So I put my clothes on, snuck out, and went back to the gas station to get more liquor. I went to another party, did acid and quaaludes. I knew then I shouldn’t go around these people anymore, my soul told me not to, but I would do it anyway. After that, I left my body mentally every time I had sex. I just felt like men were always going to take it, anyway.”
I hated it, and though I don’t share the horrifying experience that Sara just described, I recognized the feeling of the pain, the dread, and the need to drown it out. The need to cope through oblivion. The feeling of knowing better yet being driven to do the exact opposite.
Needless to say, Sara’s behavior continued to spiral. Once again, she was betrayed by friends and nearly drowned when she drunkenly fell off a boat and into a river while hanging out. “You’re going to drown by the time we get to you!” they shouted. Panicked that even her swimming experience couldn’t save her, she felt herself swallowing water and was prepared to give up when she heard a voice reminding her to do the dead man’s float. She survived, but her risky behavior led others to think she wouldn’t live to her next birthday, and they contacted her parents. Sara’s mother and father acted like they were shocked. Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t, but Sara ended up in treatment and got sober for the first time.
I remember that I was terrified my first time in treatment, and that was being a grown woman. By the 8th time, I was just tired of it, but what was it like for a teenage girl? To Sara, it was okay. She got used to it, and being a sober high schooler wasn’t bad. She had a tiny circle of sober friends, and they did fun normal teenage things. She remembers going to meetings with people who now have over forty years of sobriety. Things got steady for Sara. She finished high school, kept her good grades, and started college. It was not long before things fell apart, again.
Sara managed to stay sober the first semester of her freshman year, but the day she moved on campus, literally semester two day one, she got drunk. This time around, Sara didn’t go back to drug use. She stuck only to alcohol.
“You knew being sober worked. Why did you go back out?” I asked, knowing damn well why she did, because she’s an alcoholic, enough said. Nothing we do ever seems to make sense.
“I wanted to fit in. When I was younger, I didn’t want to fit in with my peers, this time, I did.” The classmates she hadn’t cared for had now grown into classic binge drinking, partying college students, Sara’s kind of people. At this time, Sara knew she had a problem, she just ignored it. She started having run-ins with the police. Despite her increasing number of arrests, she had about six of them for public intoxication, what felt like never-ending community services that the judges kept giving her, and nearly getting expelled from school, she didn’t stop drinking. She was horribly sick every morning, barely taking “nights off” of drinking. At this point in her story, I figured she must have dropped out of school.
I could envision the smirk on her face. “I’m smart, I still got good grades. I was on the Dean’s list, and also on the dean’s list, for my conduct.” she laughed. I chuckled, too. Come to think of it, if I wasn’t naturally bright myself, I don’t know that I would have ever finished any schooling, either. Sara got by with taking night classes to accommodate her drinking schedule and eventually graduated, arrests and all.
“I didn’t know what living like a normal person was,” Sara told me as she described the sound of the dot matrix printer as it printed her arrest record, page after page after page. I later Googled what a dot matrix printer was and what it sounded like. The funny thing about addiction is that despite us being from entirely different generations, the undercurrent remains the same. A disease is a disease, diabetes doesn’t change from one person to another. It was the same disease thirty years ago as it is today. Our experiences are our own, but the disease of addiction remains the same.
After college, Sara met her husband, who she stated became her “new drug.” She still drank, just not as much. She was now getting validation from him and not just the bottle. He joined the military, and they lived what appeared to be a beautiful life in Florida by the beach. It was like a return to her childhood, everything on the outside looked “perfect,” but on the inside, she felt far from it. She still lived in fear, and she still had an emotional and spiritual emptiness. Even skimming her high school yearbook, she realized that though her classmates described her as joyful and cheerful, she knew even then that she had a void that she always needed to fill.
While married, she became a periodic drinker instead of a daily one. Though she could stay away from alcohol for periods at a time, when she had the first drink, she couldn’t stop. Sara required an intervention each time she drank in order to stop. She wanted to seek help but her husband at the time discouraged her, telling her that she didn’t have a problem despite getting angry with her every time she got drunk at his suggestion and then couldn’t be his designated driver. Sara knew better, but she ignored what she knew because she valued her husband’s word as the end all be all, even when he became verbally abusive. Once again, she lived with low self-worth. She suffered in silence daily until he abruptly divorced her before getting stationed in Japan. She returned to Kentucky, and her drinking picked back up.
Sara started drunk driving, losing cars on weekends, waking up with the sick feeling in her stomach, dreading the unknown. Had she hit something? She vaguely remembers several near-death experiences, and then in July of 1994 (a few months before her sobriety date), she got her first DUI. She should have gone to jail, but on her fifth court date in September, the arresting officer did not show, and the DUI dropped down to a misdemeanor. Did Sara stop and think, “Maybe I should stop?” Not at all. That night, Sara got drunk and drove to celebrate getting out of her DUI situation.
That was the night of her last drink.
She remembers waking up in the morning at home. She didn’t know where her car was. She really didn’t remember much of the night before. However, she was incredibly sick, and she dragged herself into the bath, barely able to hold herself up. She sat down in the tub as the water washed over her, that same voice that saved her from drowning spoke to her again. This time it said, “This is your last chance. You better take it.” Sara said, “I believe that voice to this day. I knew it was my last chance.” It was the voice of God. It was September 23, 1994. The Tuesday after, she went to her first recovery meeting since her teenage sober years. Her reception was not a warm one.
She decided then that she would be sober despite others’ attitudes or behaviors toward her. Even if they didn’t reach their hand out to help her, she was going to stay sober and stay alive. Sara had gotten through the worst of times in the past when people betrayed her, and she was going to stay sober, even if it was just her and God carrying her through. It was a moment of clarity. She thought to herself, “this is the end. There is nowhere else to go. I couldn’t drink; I had no other choice. Am I going to do this or not do this?”
It’s been twenty-six years of sober living since.
We were running short on time, but considering that she has at this point lived more years as a sober woman than as an actively drunk/high woman, I had to have her share about living sober.
Jokingly she said that her first motivator to stay sober was the desire to stay out of jail, “that’s the easy reason,” she chuckled.
Seriously though, she described her first two years as the hardest. At 105 days sober, she looked at herself in the mirror, and it was the first time she could see herself. “I actually was present. My soul, body, and mind converged into one for the first time.” St. Patrick’s Day and other days that people celebrate by drinking weren’t easy to get through. “I was salivating, craving. I remember getting off work at five. I was going to get off the expressway to go to a bar, and I said, ‘well, guess this is it.’ But while driving, I remembered someone saying to pray for cravings to be removed, and while I prayed to God, I ended up missing the exit.”
For Sara, staying sober isn’t all about the fellowship, the socializing. Being around other sober people is definitely important, but she needed to break her codependent tendencies. She spent her life using the external to being her internal joy, and it was always fleeting. Working with a sponsor, building her spiritual base, and her connection with her higher power, which for her is God, has filled that void she had felt all those years ago.
Sobriety isn’t easy. Sara wanted to make sure that anyone who reads her story understands that. We did not get to cover twenty-six years of her life, but she’s dealt with life on life’s terms. Death, heartbreak, loss, ailments, Sara’s lived through all of it, and she’s stayed sober. For Sara, staying sober means having power. It means knowing that she’s enough. She has freedom. She has peace. Anytime she’s been triggered, she asks herself, “If I drink, what will my life look like in six months?” Suddenly, whatever trivial thing was triggering her becomes insignificant in the grand scheme of things. “Whatever is going on, you won’t remember what pissed you off in six months. It’s not worth it. It’s temporary. I ask myself every day what is worth more than my peace and serenity. Nothing is. I’m willing to give up everything to have peace and serenity.”
When I heard Sara say that, I felt inspired. It was a hope shot for me. I literally just gave up everything in December to have my own peace and serenity, and hearing a woman with twenty-six years of sobriety essentially say the same thing lets me know that I need to keep doing what I’m doing. Maybe one day I’ll be like her, telling my story to a newly sober person.
So, after all she’s lived through, how does Sara feel moving forward?
“If you’re a victim, you’re never free. You’re never happy. Everything you feel is always dependent on what someone else does, says, doesn’t do, or doesn’t say. I don’t want to be dependent on other people for my happiness anymore. I learned to write a new story. I mean, I always used to tell my story with a negative connotation. That was who I was. I always framed it as something that kept me from succeeding. I was held back by self-pity because I kept blaming everything that happened. Telling that same old negative story kept me stuck in it. I tell a new story now. My story is now about me living how I want things to be. I firmly believe that anything is possible with God. There is power in our words. If you say you can, if you say you can’t, you’re right. Even if things aren’t how I want them to be right now, I’m still going to speak them into existence in the way I want them to be.”
“Sara” participated in Bottomless to Sober anonymously, but her story, like all of our stories, carries a message of hope.
We don’t need to know who it was to know that we do recover.
Thank you for sharing your experience, strength, and hope.
