Broken Vases

 

 

     “Broken Vases”

 

“A fine glass vase goes from treasure to trash, the moment it is broken.  Fortunately, something else happens to you and me.  Pick up your pieces.  Then, help me gather mine.”

Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

 

 

 

The kids and I are going on a road trip in July.  This is something that pre-pandemic we had done annually but we haven’t been able to since and we can’t wait.  Each year always saw the main focus of the trip landing us in Indiana at my best friend Liz’s house.  She and her family are our second family and it is always like a second homecoming.  This year is especially exciting because we are to attend her step-daughter’s wedding. 

Liz and I face-time over coffee most mornings, because who wouldn’t do that with their best friend if they could?  The other week she let me know that Kristi had requested Wren and I come with Liz on the morning of the wedding to help her get ready.  I mean, what an honor?  Liz then let me know that Kristi mentioned one of the reasons was that she said, “I feel like I need Fiona there to keep me calm.”  When I heard that I did an internal double-take.

I hear that a lot lately – that I am a calming influence.   I hear it from clients, from friends, from acquaintances and from my boyfriend.  Yes as a side-note I have a boyfriend… there will be more on him in later posts I’m sure.  When asked, he let me know that I could write about him as he trusts me but I feel like I want to keep him to myself for just a little bit longer.  Know I am incredibly happy and I never saw this relationship coming but I am choosing to follow the energy of it in the healthiest and most passionate way I know how.

To hear that people find me to be a calming influence is both an honor and immensely baffling at the same time.  I will just say that I have not traditionally been known for being even-keeled.  I would say that in the past my emotions have been all over the map and my actions followed suit.  A few weeks ago I wrote about what it is like for me to live in “the calm” and how it is both a blessing and a curse.  Mostly though it is a blessing and how it affects others in a positive way is one of those blessings.

The fact that I can now give a sense of peace to others brings me joy.  I could never have imagined that before.  I know that I can’t take credit for it though.  I know that credit is entirely due to my relationship with my higher power and my work with the steps.  I have rituals that I perform every morning without fail.  If I don’t perform these rituals I am of no use to myself of others. 

I start my day off by heading out my door and standing out on my deck – rain or shine.  I start my conversation out with Joe by a simple “Good morning” followed by a heart-felt expression of gratitude.  I recite a quote from Cervantes that has great meaning to me and then a quote of my own.  Then I talk to him.  I talk to him about the previous day and about the day to come.  I ask him every day to guide me.  I ask for patience and focus and ask that he allow me to help others in whatever way he sees fit.  Some days I talk about a client of two and what I struggle to understand about them and what is blocking me from being the best therapist to them that I can be.  Some days the answer to how I can best approach them comes in those moments on the deck.  The ritual ends with me reciting the Third Step Prayer.  Then I end the show I am sure my neighbors have seen a few times and questioned my sanity over, and I head inside.

This has now set me up to walk through the day in a measured and intention-filled way.  This is why I seem calm now to others… because I am.  I must radiate or broadcast this without realizing it.  The fact that it helps others is up to Joe but I am so pleased that it does and that he has chosen to use me in this fashion. 

So in July I will be heading to my second home to transmit some calm to a bride-to-be and I can’t think of a better way to spend a summer day.

 

The Tournament

 

 

     “The Tournament”

 

“Whatever you think you can do, or believe you can do, begin it, because action has magic, grace and power in it.”

Goethe

 

 

 

A few years ago Dermot asked us if he could join karate.  His buddy was taking it and he really wanted to try.  Now Dermot has always been a joiner.  Frank has a garage and basement full of discarded sports equipment to prove his enthusiasm for different things.  He gets excited about everything he lays his eyes on and REALLY wants to get involved.  Some of them stick, but not all (not most if we are honest).  We were hesitant until he created a PowerPoint presentation with said buddy and persuaded us he was serious - at least in the moment.  Karate stuck.  Boy did it stick.  Fast forward a few years and he has earned his junior black belt, is going on to work toward his first level senior black belt, has a job working at the studio instructing and just got offered another job at a new studio opening up to work as the director of admissions.  We could not be more proud of him and what karate has provided him in terms of self-confidence, discipline and structure.

During one of the promotional months, parents could train for free and Dermot really wanted Frank and I to take advantage of that so we did.  Frank trains for half-marathons and gets his exercise else-where and it wasn’t really a fit for him so he didn’t keep going but I have.  I should say I did it for a while and dropped off while my life was in the upheaval of relapse but now I am back.  There is something about karate that speaks to me.  The camaraderie, the poetry of the motion of the katas, the confidence I gain from knowing the self-defense moves and the fact that I get to beat the shit out of wave masters when I have things to work through and get really sweaty makes all the difference in my life.  Me and exercise have never been friends but for some reason this works for me.  I wouldn’t say I am the most graceful, but I am determined and I am loud. 

Recently I entered my first tournament.  I never imagined that at the age of 49 I would be working toward getting a black belt and I would be sign myself up to compete in such a fashion.  I can’t tell you how nervous I was going into it.  I’d seen Dermot do it before, but competing myself was a whole different ball game.  I had to perform a kata for one category and in another I had to demonstrate two different self-defenses.  I froze on my first self-defense and nailed the second.  I earned a third place medal for the kata.      

Me being me, I immediately started listening to that evil little voice in my head that tells me I could have done better and that I should have practiced harder and that third is not as good as first.  I have abhorrent negative self-talk.  I managed to listen to the others around me and take in the congratulations and quiet the voice that always tells me that I am not good enough.  But that has taken me years of practice.  I will tell you that I could have practiced harder but now that I know what to expect I will and I will shoot for first place not so much to compete against others, but to aim for my own personal best.  When I started this process I could barely do a sit up, but now I can keep up with the class on those and I can plank for a full minute, though I feel like throwing up afterwards!

The thing with negative self-talk is that it is an ingrained voice.  It’s learned from old, but that also means that it can be unlearned.  I can laugh now at how insistent it is and how ridiculous it sounds.  I was talking to one of the groups I lead at work about this same topic the other day and we decided we would try to name our negative self-talk voices.  I decided to name mine “Moriarty” after Sherlock Holmes’s nemesis.  I can do battle against Moriarty when he rears his ugly head and that makes it somehow easier.

When self-doubt arises and makes me want to quit before I start I try to remember how far I have come in life.  I have to tell it that I can do a spinning side kick now and that makes me an official bad ass really.  When Moriarty starts to drone on I just have to remember who the fuck I am.

The Calm

 

     “The Calm”

 

“If you act anxiously to hasten your results you delay their arrival.  Calm poise reveals the shortest route home.”

Alan Cohen

 

 

For most of my adult life I have lived on a bit of an emotional roller coaster.  I have swung from high to low and seldom had the privilege of coasting in what I call “the calm” for any length of time.  I used to tell people that I hated the swing and that I longed to stay in the middle more.  But truth be told there was always a part of me that craved the Adrenalin rush of the highs and the maudlin familiarity of the lows, because when I was in the middle, I had to face too many things.

“The Calm” is where everyday life occurs and daily routines are established and play out.  It is where the basis for happy memories are established and it is where the foundation of successes are built.  But it is also where long-buried demons lay dormant.

In the highs, nothing negative could touch me.  In the lows, I felt at home, safe in the dank embrace of miserable immobility.  But in “the calm”, anything can happen at any time.  I used to feel on edge in the mundanity of the everyday, constantly on alert waiting for the other shoe to drop.  While in the soup aisle at the grocery store a dragon from the past would roar up unexpectedly out of nowhere and have me shaking with muscle memory and PTSD.  An innocent tap on the shoulder while in line at the check-out line turned into an attack from a potential predator and I would jump out of my skin.  One of my children entering my bedroom in the middle of the night to ask me a question would become my molester and I would scream, scaring us both.  On a long and boring commute my mind would wander and a creature of memory would rise from the murky depths to pull me under when I was all but defenseless.

I was never defended enough to live in that state for long.  Now, however, I have the tools I need.  After this last stay in rehab in July of 2021, I did a lot of work… a lot.  I participated in an intensive relapse prevention program that helped me to examine my patterns.  It helped me to identify the things I do way before I pick up a drink – in essence the relapse that happens before the relapse.  I also attended a trauma group that had me explore, through psychodrama, unresolved grief and guilt I had over Liam’s untimely death.  To speak aloud how I felt my body betrayed us both was like allowing Atlas’ burden to shrug from my own shoulders.  To lay that spectral pain down at my feet was so profound and the relief I felt from it was oceanic.

I also met with a psychiatrist who changed my medication and for the first time I felt my mind shift to a place of peace. I have been diagnosed and re-diagnosed with so many disorders over the years that I feel like mental health professionals have been spinning a veritable Wheel of Fortune and landing on something new each time I did an intake.  I no longer even care what the diagnoses is as long as this medication regimen stays put now.

One of the many things I learned in relapse prevention is that before I pick up a drink and relapse, I start taking on too many things.  I start believing I can do it all and saying “yes” to everything.  So in order to handle “the calm” and all that comes with it – the memories, nightmares and demons that rear up to be dealt with – I am moving slowly and with peaceful intention.

“The Calm” is now actually my happy place.  I get to be “me” here – my authentic self, awkward and content; full of love and grateful for every mundane and beautiful moment.  I have learned to slow down… Because life is so often lived in the moments lived between the lines.

"Look at All That I've Been Given"

     “Look at All That I’ve Been Given”

 

“I don’t care how many times you fall, if you trip, or if you’re pushed, even if you stumble over your own two feet… You’re a phoenix.  Just keep rising.”

Wren Purcell

 

 

 

I have a routine in the mornings now.  I get up and feed the cats because if I don’t, chaos ensues.  Then I make coffee and take it out onto my little wooden deck in the front of my house.  I look out across the Schuylkill River at the flashing red lights of the broadcast towers in Roxborough on the hill opposite and I talk to Joe.  I have conversations with him about the dreams I had and my worries or what makes me laugh.  I talk out loud because to do anything less makes it seem like it doesn’t count somehow.  Some days I talk for a long time and some days I don’t have much to say, but I do it every day now.  I always start the conversation out with, “Good morning Joe… Look at all that I’ve been given.”

I started doing that a few months ago because in the few minutes it takes me to wake up, get up, feed the cats and make coffee I had found that I could already get into a selfish headspace.  A headspace of ungratefulness and self-centeredness.  My thoughts could already start running on a hamster wheel of what was wrong with my life and how I was a victim of circumstance and how others had done me wrong.  Seriously, just five minutes or so and negativity would start to take over.  But if I go outside and look at the lights and the stars and say, “Look at all that I’ve been given.” I can course correct and reboot.  I start to think about how grateful I am for where I am and who I have in my life still and who loves me despite myself.  There are so many things I am blessed with and the things that don’t work or need fixing are like mosquito bites in the grander scheme of things. 

A month or so ago I was at a meeting and the topic centered around step seven which talks about shortcomings and humility.  The speaker was mentioning that he finds people with humility are the ones with gratitude and they are the ones who are most attractive as people.  Something about the topic and the shares moved me to tears.  I so want to be one of those people.  I want to be one of the humble who eschews thinking about what I have been through and thinking that I am somehow owed because of it.  I want so much to remember that I am blessed instead and reach my hands out to help others.

This past Saturday I turned 49.  My whole, lovely and whacky extended family took me out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant.  My daughter baked me a chocolate cake from an old recipe of my Aunt’s that was my favorite growing up.  They made me wear the cheesy sombrero while I blew out the candles and I got some really thoughtful gifts.  My sixteen-year-old son got a gift card for me for the movies so we can go on a mother-son date, “because we haven’t gone on a date to the movies in a long time mom”.  My fourteen-year-old daughter, besides baking the cake, painted the picture of the phoenix attached to the post and wrote the quote that goes with it.  Quite obviously I cried with happiness.

A year ago on my birthday I was hiding the fact that I was drinking and I didn’t think I was going to reach 50 at the time.  Now… well now I get to start my day saying, “look at all that I’ve been given.”

 

The Year of YES

 

     “The Year of YES”

 

The word “enthusiasm” comes from the Greek word “entheos” which means the God within. And the happiest, most interesting people are those who have found the secret of maintaining their enthusiasm, that God within.

Earl Nightingale

 

 

 

I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions.  They feel punitive and self-defeating to me and they always seem to imply we inherently feel we are doing something wrong and must fix ourselves.  I no longer subscribe to this self-flagellating ritual, doomed to fail that sets a tone of defeat at the beginning of every year.  What I do subscribe to is a theme for the coming year, a mantra of sorts.  Think of it as a gift you give yourself.  I have decided that 2022 will be my year of YES.  This year I plan to say “yes” more… to healthy things.

For example, I was doing karate up until I went into rehab in July.  I came out of rehab in August and have been slowly rebuilding my life.  I have not wanted to over-load myself since.  My schedule felt in balance for a while and work felt right etc.  Then last week, after a number of attempts to encourage me to come back, the karate instructor reached out to me again and asked if I would be interested in coming back in January.  I said “yes”.  I moved my work schedule around a little so I won’t sacrifice any of the meetings I regularly attend, and I said yes.

I have a new group of friends and we are determined to keep each other connected and have fun doing it.  We have a list of things to do when we need a pick-me-up, things to look forward to that we can pepper our calendar with throughout the year.  I am the keeper of the list and it contains things like axe-throwing and snow-tubing.  We have gone bowling and to a hockey game and had a Friendsgiving dinner.  I have to get it together now the holidays are over and start figuring out what the next thing will be, but these are all things to say YES to!

I figure if it isn’t something toxic for me and I can reasonable afford to do it, I will say yes to it.  I have already joined a book club and love that I have.  Life is already richer for it.  I have more things to look forward to, more connections have been made, more conversations have been had and more smiles have come across my face and I suspect many more will come.  Memories will be made and laughter will likely be had.  All this by uttering a three letter word.  Yes.

While I was in rehab, there was a lady there who had an infectious laugh.  She was one of those people who had a large presence but came in a small package.  She was always impeccably dressed and I asked her one day how many outfits she had brought with her (I had about four changes of clothes for 30 days).  She had brought two large suitcases with her and had coordinating jewelry for every outfit.  She told me, “If I have to be here, I’m going to look good doing it”.  This lady was going to meet me at a meeting the weekend before Friendsgiving and did not come.  She was supposed to come to Friendsgiving but did not come.  There were other meetings and events I am sure that she did not get to over the following weeks.  Places she was supposed to be, people she was supposed to meet up with and did not.  The day after Christmas she got into a car accident related to this terrible illness we share and she passed away.  I can’t help but think there were so many yesses she did not say over those weeks that might have helped steady her.  So many yesses that might have given her a little more strength, yesses that might have given her the connection and hope she needed.  She is sorely missed.  Her funeral is on Friday and I will be there to honor the space she filled on this earth and the laughter we shared.

Say “yes” this year and see what it brings into your life.  I’m going to.

AFTERTHOUGHT:  On New Year’s Eve I had dinner with a good friend.  Over dinner we broke open Christmas crackers (poppers here in the states).  The silly paper hats, the stupid dad jokes, the “prizes” (neither of us got the shoe horn) and charades.  I don’t think I have had that much fun doing charades with just two people before!  Then I offered up the idea that we could make shrink dink key chains…  Because why not?  He said yes to that as though it was one of the most natural things in the world for two adults to do on New Year’s Eve.  So we did.  I think we were of that generation for whom shrink dinks were one of the mysteries of the universe…  There was nothing like watching your master creation curl up via the light of the oven lamp and then flatten out as is shrinks to 75% of its original size to a hardened version of its paper self!  Turns out it is just as miraculous when you are 48 and 50.  So I think it is important to surround yourself with friends who say “yes” too.

 

“Joe’s Diner – Open 24/7”

 

                                             “Joe’s Diner – Open 24/7”

 

be easy,

take your time.

you are coming home.

to yourself.

― the becoming/wing

 

 

Forgive me friends, for I have been absent.  It has been 15 months since my last blog post.  I have not posted because I have been incapable of doing so for various reasons, the chief reason was that I refuse to post when I feel inauthentic.  I have been in and out of “the program” since the end of 2019.  Struggling since the DUI and the pandemic as many of us have.  I have been living so many months in a deep chasm of shame, guilt and remorse since my relapse that ended my 5 ½ years of sobriety and could never quite get my feet under me again.  Depression followed along with isolation and a profound betrayal of self and family that carried me through to July of this year.  Then drinking in front of my children and having them bravely intervene had me back in rehab for the third time in my life. 

I was away for a month and then spent time in PHP (partial hospitalization program) which is a day camp for mental health of sorts, stepped down to IOP (Intensive outpatient) and am now in weekly OP (outpatient therapy).  I started a new job as a therapist in September and love it.  I work only with mental health patients as I ethically feel I can’t treat anyone in drug and alcohol until I have a year or two under my belt again.  I have a new clan of friends from “the program” whom I met in rehab (something I have never had before) and I am slowly building things back up again.  I finally feel, at 4 plus months of sobriety, my authentic self again and I therefore can start writing for the blog.  This next piece was something I wrote while I was in treatment.

For those of you who are new to my blog, let me explain what the title is referring to.  “Joe” is the name I gave my conception of my higher power.  Joe is how I learned to approach God.  Joe has a diner in the sky and I can go and have coffee and eggs and talk things through with him and before I had gone back to treatment, I hadn’t visited him for a while…

Joe is still there.  I suppose not shockingly, he never left.  He’s been waiting patiently for me in his diner in the sky all this time with a cigarette hanging out the side of his mouth.  His tattoos seem to have changed I notice but as I open the door and step inside, he is wiping down the counter with a rag and my regular seat is waiting for me.  He greets me with a crinkly, weather-beaten smile and tells me he missed me as he hands me a mug of coffee just the way I like it.

His tattoo on his right arm now reads “Life is Suffering” and the one on the left says, “Utilize Your Army”.  Besides the tattoos all else is familiar and homey.  We talk about how I am back in treatment for alcoholism for the third time since 2012.  I tell him about how low I felt when I came in the door.  I say I feel I can’t believe I’m here again.  I unload about the pain I feel, the pain I’ve caused, the confusion, the shame.  I have a Masters for God’s sake… in this dammed field!  How the hell am I here AGAIN?  What do I not get?  Joe listens, nods and the cigarette never produces any smoke or ash and never gets any smaller I notice, but this seems completely normal.

As I spend more days in treatment I come back to Joe’s Diner more and more to visit Joe.  I check in with him and let him know what I am doing, how I am feeling and what I am learning.  I never miss a meeting, a lesson, a lecture.  I hear many things I have heard before, but I figure I have to attend and get as much out of it as I can, there must be something I am not getting, something I am not understanding.

My mind and heart are shifting from hopeless to seeing glimmers and shards of light.  I’m starting to think that the mirror I am so good at holding up for others to allow them to see where they may need to heal and forgive may need to be inverted so I can look at myself the same way. 

I have endless cups of coffee with Joe and not just a few plates of eggs at the counter.  I tell him about how since I’ve allowed my mind to settle down peacefully here, during the quiet moments – my first baby, Liam, who would have turned 18 this year, has flooded my body with memories both beautiful and soul-rending.  Perhaps it’s because his cousin Vivi, close to the same age, is about to go off to college, and it’s yet another milestone he never had a chance to reach.  I don’t know but he has washed over and through me a lot while I have been here in rehab.  Joe nods and holds my hand.

I tell him about the relapse prevention program I am in and about how at first, though I agreed to do it, I held little hope it would reveal anything to me about why I continue to relapse.  Then I come back and tell him how it’s actually helping me so much and how I’m learning a lot about hidden triggers and how I need to learn to ask for help and about how I have unearthed that at my core I feel unworthy.  Joe grins widely at this and reveals a gold tooth.

Then I start a trauma workshop.  The group is called, “Phoenix”.  My blog is called “Rising From the Ashes” and I have a phoenix tattooed on my arm.  I tell Joe this is quite a coincidence and he stifles a grin.  I keep talking and tell him I see this as a sign.  After the first session I report back to Joe that I liked it and that the facilitator is amazing – he’s like a trauma whisperer – a Mr. Rogers for grown-ups.

I have a second session and it’s a psychodrama.  We are asked to pick a topic to work on and if anyone wants to volunteer to be the protagonist – this person will be the center of the work.  I volunteer with two others and we each give our topics.  The group picks mine which is to try and resolve feelings of grief – specifically for me my feelings of grief over Liam’s death as I have some unresolved issues.  Somewhere in the darkest forbidden recesses of my mind I have it stored that somehow my body betrayed me and I caused his heart and lung conditions and therefore his ultimate death.  This has been an unspoken belief I have been flagellating myself with for the past near 18 years.  We go through the psychodrama and at the end I have a conversation with Liam and he with me.  I am able to see through his eyes and through the eyes of my other two beautiful children, Dermot and Wren that this is an ugly untruth, and that he knows he was, is and always will be loved.  I let it go, like smoke evaporating into the bright blue sky.  I tell Joe this and he hugs me hard and long.  I linger in his embrace until I walk out the doors of rehab with my back just a little straighter and my head tilted just a little higher.

I wrote all this in rehab.  Visiting Joe got me through and allowed me to process throughout my stay.  I went from hopeless to being able to see a spark of myself again.  I am now home and moving forward slowly.  I am now talking to Joe daily.  Lots of coffee and conversations later and I am full of hope.

I wanted to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving and I would guess that Joe does too.

The Elephant in My Head

     “The Elephant in My Head”

“Think like a queen.  A queen is not afraid to fail.  Failure is another stepping stone to greatness.”
― Oprah Winfrey

I drank.

A little over seven months ago now I relapsed for a night.  Some will call that a slip, some will call it moral failure on my part, some will call it shameful; I have been calling it a relapse.

Whatever you or I want to call it, it has thrown me completely for a loop and I have not been myself since.  I haven’t been able to write about it until now and not writing about it has made me feel like I have had an elephant living in my head taking up too much space and all my energy.  Like the image attached I have spent an inordinate amount of time tending to the relapse; trying to figure out what happened and why I did what I did because I have to tell you it feels as though it came out of left field.  I would have, in the past, characterized myself as a former chronic relapser, but I thought those days behind me.  This relapse was not the same as the others though.  I did not start thinking about it days in advance.  I did not start planning on that first drink and fantasizing about how it would taste or how I would get away with it.  I simply got to an intersection on the way to class one night early and instead of turning right to go to campus I turned left and went to the liquor store as if on auto-pilot.

When I think back to why I started this blog in the first place it was to write about my journey in recovery and I promised myself I would write honestly about the good the bad and the ugly so I don’t feel as though I can stop now.  I had a lot of victories for a long time and now I have an “ugly” to write about and process with everyone.

The night I drank back in December I went to the liquor store and then to class.  I left class early because I was supposed to go to Wren’s choral concert.  I never made it because I started drinking.  I ended up getting a DUI.  That is something I will forever be ashamed of.  I was on the side of the road but the car was still running and in drive and I could have hurt someone, but mercifully I did not.  I let my daughter down, disappointed my family - scared them and frankly horrified myself.  Being arrested is no fun.

I had to and still have to face a lot of consequences from that one decision to turn left instead of right.  I built back a lot of trust over five plus years and now…   I also lost my self-respect and a lot of my confidence.  I had to face my children and Frank and the rest of my extended family.  Fortunately for me, my family is versed on the disease of addiction so they understand the ins and outs better than most and they are loving and understanding so, though they were not happy, they have been incredibly supportive and forgiving.  I immediately got back to working through my fourth step with my sponsor.  I contacted my sponsor daily while and made sure that my home group knew what was going on.

I went to both my internship and the counseling job at the methadone clinic the next week and informed them both about what had happened.  This was incredibly difficult to do as you might imagine.  But I could not in good conscience continue to counsel others as a substance abuse therapist without telling them and allowing them to let me go if that was their decision.  I had seen a TED talk a few weeks prior with some of the patients at the internship site.  The premise was that addicts in recovery have to do three things.  They must be authentic, they must do uncomfortable work and then they must surrender the outcome.  I kept thinking about those three tings when I explained about my relapse and subsequent DUI.  Both sites thanked me for my honesty and told me they would let me know in a few days.  They both decided to allow me to stay, though I was let go from the methadone clinic later for billing reasons after a state audit and ironically it was the agency’s error.  The one caveat they both gave me was that I could not let any of the patients know about the relapse and I could not write about it on the blog because some of the patients read the blog.  I have only now been given permission to divulge my relapse as I am no longer at either site and am no longer counseling anyone.

            So why did it happen?  Many people in and out of the recovery community have opinions as to why and some have not been shy to share what they think I was or was not doing.  I have been told I was not attending enough meetings.  I have been told I was holding onto too many resentments.  I have been told I was not praying often enough, or hard enough, or correctly.  I have been told I wasn’t helping enough other addicts or alcoholics.  I have been told I was doing too many things at once.  I have been told I should have been doing more things.  I have spent the past seven months going over and over what went wrong and the simple answer is I have no idea exactly why I drank.

            What I can tell you is that there is a lot of stigma about addiction.  This is something we all knew.  I can now tell you, there is a lot of stigma about relapse also.  I feel it, have felt it and just like I write about addiction because I want to break down the stigma surrounding it, I am writing about relapse in the same vein.  I don’t want people who relapse to be afraid to reach out for help because of shame.  I hesitated myself.  As much as I wanted to write this because I know it brings me back to my authentic self, I am also afraid because being this authentic and vulnerable can sometimes come with consequences.  I get it.  But if I can relapse and get help and get better again, then so can others.  If I can write about it and be vulnerable and normalize this very human experience than someone else may not feel so alone.  Relapse does not have to be a part of addiction and recovery but it often is and I am here to tell you that if it happens to you, you are not alone.  I am here and I understand your pain.

            Being a psychologist now I know that addiction is a biopsychosocial disease.  That means that genes play a part in my disease as do my emotions and hormones and so does stress, environment and trauma.  I have addiction in my family tree and I certainly have trauma in my past.  Those things were there before.  But this past fall three other things happened that I now believe played a part. 

I shifted into peri-menopause.  Hormonal shifts are important to speak about for people in recovery, especially women.  I read one article recently that women’s hormonal cycles have a role in their addiction and in their relapse rates.  I also read that when women relapse it is often during PMS.   

I got a new diagnosis in the bi-polar family (last post I mentioned I am bi-polar II – it has since been changed to cyclothymic) which came with a change in medication that I had a severe reaction to.  I was put on Effexor (an SNRI).  I started on the medication just before the relapse and I had such a severe reaction to it that I eventually started having tremors and began to have slight hallucinations where my vision shifted around the edges of my periphery.  It was a mild form of serotonin syndrome and I had to be titrated off of the medication.  It was horrifying.

I was also extremely busy with work and school and my schedule was packed with recovery activities and activities speaking, volunteering and promoting the book.  So throw that altogether and I was a hot mess.           

Does that excuse the action I took and the effect it had on my family?  No it does not, but does it help me explain some of the reasons behind it to myself?  Yes, I think it does.  It helps me understand that I can’t go at break-neck speed like I was going.  If you remember my post in November was even entitled “The Center Cannot Hold” so somewhere inside I knew it was too much.  It helps me to see that hormones and co-occurring mental health disorders are a part of my life as well and have to be managed. That is not something I can “pray away” as much as I and well-meaning others may want to be the case.  It helps me to be able to share that with other women who are on this journey with me now or will come along after me.

I have been wallowing for a long time since December.  I have not been myself.  I have been looking at this as a failure and to be sure it is nothing to be proud of.  However, today I am choosing to think like a queen and look at this as a stepping stone to greatness.  Getting a job in the current climate is far from easy for me and countless others.  Getting a job with a DUI on your record when you planned to work as a substance abuse counselor makes it even harder but I have gained a great deal of insight and empathy about relapse and what it does to your self-esteem and your confidence.  I see what it takes to dig yourself out of depression and shame and how hard it is to make amends again and again and again.  I know what it takes to embrace a brain that is both creative and fascinating but also capable of betrayal and torture.  I am slowly seeing my way forward to holding my head up high again and straightening my tiara.