Tag Archives: support

Recognizing Springtime Triggers

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Spring has finally sprung. If this is your first season change clean and sober I’m here to discuss a new trigger that is probably creating some discomfort for you. Sometimes it’s just reassuring to know that the weird shit tripping up your mood, your mind, and maybe even your overall wellbeing is nothing unusual in the realm of recovery. I always find comfort in knowing that my twisted assessment of my own mental health isn’t unique. In terms of recovery, identification is a step toward dismantling the power of disease-thinking (the stuff that can lead us away from recovery and toward relapse).Disease-thinking (our addict-mind) has a way of taking an hour of emotional discomfort and convincing us that these bad feelings are NEVER going to go away EVER, that life is going to suck always, that pain is here to stay. It’s almost comical when years into the recovery process you catch yourself investing in this lie until a light bulb goes on and you remember that you’re temporarily lost in a hall of mirrors and that – yes  – this too shall pass.

The number one heart-stopper for people in recovery seems to be the first sighting of outdoor cafés that serves liquor.  I mean – the whole package will hit you and wax poetic nostalgia – those balmy evenings or lazy Sunday afternoons lounging around killing a few margaritas or sangria or wine or beer or whatever you ever drank outside. In the memory you are peacefully alone and buzzed or having an amazing time with friends. You are younger, better looking, happier, fitter, richer, more playful – basically your memory will go back to a time when getting loaded was without consequences and when you really had your game on. And during that moment of memory you will feel your heart breaking and a voice will pop into your head that will tell you that this is where you draw the line. “How can you give up the outdoor summer partying? You will never stay sober. You will never again feel that happy.” The whole of your Being will be filled with longing. (Mind you – what I’m describing happens within seconds of catching a glimpse of that place from the corner of your eye but it will hit you with such force that it will be impossible to comprehend that it is simply a feeling and that it’s going to pass).

This is a perfect example of how the disease works. Total amnesia of all the pain and suffering that came along as a result of substance abuse. The focus is narrowed down to specific body memory of relaxation, joy, and probably a time where there was far less responsibility and accountability in your life. This is the siren song the Viking heard before he jumped ship.

I don’t know anyone clean who hasn’t felt this pull especially after a long winter. In a way there is some genuine grieving of youth involved and if you’re newly sober you will still be grieving the loss of your long -term relationship to drugs and alcohol.  It’s important to talk about these feelings with someone to take the power out of them. It is also important to believe that this feeling will pass.  I would suggest you begin creating new memories of outdoor cafes with sober friends and not to park yourself alone at one of your old haunts because – what’s that saying? If you hang around the barbershop too long, you’ll probably end up getting a haircut? In a few weeks you’ll cease to notice anything particularly seductive about these establishments.Until then, the initial sightings will trigger you the same way that passing your old drug-buying block or neighborhood bar did when you first got clean.

To snap out of the obsession find some nature – whether it’s a garden, a tree, the beach, the sky, or a green lawn and spend ten minutes there. Notice the details of the beautiful planet we get to live on. Take deep inhalations through your nose and pay attention to how the air feels entering your nostrils and how warm it feels when you exhale through your mouth. Make a mental gratitude list. Then get on with your day.

My first four years in recovery were spent in Los Angeles and weather never triggered me but ever since I moved back to NYC,  I experience nostalgia for long ago good times whenever there’s a radical change of weather. Outdoor patios, the cozy warmth of a moodily-lit bar during a snowstorm, and even the sound of the ice cream truck will remind me of how much I loved getting high. Luckily I can still access the much more detailed story of all the suffering that occurred on all the other days so I don’t get too seduced by my strolls down memory lane – but they do still hit me because I’m an addict and my disease is always looking for a way to invalidate my life in the present moment so that my fantasy life of this painless past can sing to me until it can get me to jump my Viking ship. I’ve gotta take my hat off to the determination of the disease of addiction. It might be weakened to a minimal heartbeat but that f**ker wants to get its power over me back. It’s not a quitter. This is how I know I am not cured.

Feelings are like our internal weather – the “nature” part of our human nature. Sun, clouds, rain, wind sun again.  Let them move through you and do not fear them. It is wonderful to be clean and alive and human. We are fortunate to be able to have feelings! After all, we know the price of the alternative.

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Is there a faster way to learn patience?

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Vigilance – the process of paying close and continuous attention; wakefulness, watchfulness

“Vigilance is especially susceptible to fatigue”

Staying in the recovery process requires vigilance. If change takes time and fatigue is the enemy of vigilance –what’s an addict to do? The answer is simple: we need to learn patience.

We want what we want when we want it and our society caters to this fact. The 60’s invented fast food drive-thru restaurants and instant add-water meals. God knows no one has time to wait for anything. If we don’t see results immediately, we lose interest in going to the gym. We can now get liposuction if we don’t have patience to diet. Who has the time to wash and cut vegetables, never mind prepare an entire meal? If we have to wait for anything our first thought is “What’s the point?” and then we lose interest – whether it’s in learning a new skill, preparing a healthy meal, or sitting to meditate. If we can’t be at yoga within minutes of leaving the house, forget it. And I’m not even factoring being a recovering addict into this rant. Everyone is born hungry.

While lacking patience can have consequences for anyone, for addicts impatience can lead to the “fuckits” – the precursor to relapse. This is why we have to keep being reminded that recovery is an ongoing process and that it requires vigilance.

In early recovery, it feels like we’re constantly being hit by an onslaught of feelings. After years of dulling or numbing ourselves with substances, the reawakening of our emotions is new to us. Fear seems to lie underneath every sensation. Even joy can be accompanied by the sensation of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Anger makes us want to use, sadness makes us want to vanish from existence. We look at other people in recovery who seem to be at peace with themselves and we want to know how they got that way. We want to be like them right away. We expect recovery to give us instant results. “I worked my steps and go to therapy but I’m still a mess. What am I doing wrong?” Instead of accepting that change occurs over time, we blame ourselves.

Sometimes we can will things to happen – or so it seems. It could just be that everything aligned and we get what we want right away. Instead of it being an isolated incident, it makes us think if we don’t get things right away, we mustn’t be doing something right. Anxiety builds and patience evaporates. Enduring time passing is not the same as being patient. Being patient is an act of faith – faith that time will pass and things will change – however they will change. Patience is not counting the days and minutes.

People always ask, “What’s the trick? What work can I do to acquire patience quickly?” (Yes I’ve really been asked this). Translated, I think they’re admitting that they understand the concept “change happens slowly over time” but want to know how can they exist inside of this unknowable timeframe without having an anxiety attack or pulling their hair out. The trick is to create mindfulness habits so they can slow themselves down – whether it’s by quieting the mind or reducing physical anxiety. This makes not only the passage of time more bearable; it will probably be more enjoyable.

There is so much information readily available on mindfulness techniques and practices. A quick search of Google or YouTube can bring up thousands of links. When I was in early recovery I couldn’t focus my attention on anything for very long before I felt like I was crawling out of my skin. The idea of meditation was nice but I drank far too much coffee to attempt it. I’d overthink everything and believed I’d need to take a class, join a group or read a book on it before I could start. If I was going to meditate, I wanted to do it right. Truthfully, it was easier to sit in a café with my friends drinking coffee than it was to set aside 20 minutes to try to quiet my mind. No one ever explained to me that if I could set aside this time, I wouldn’t feel that “crawling out of my skin” feeling as often or as intensely. Had I known what the payoff was going to be I might have tried it sooner. I was resistant because, deep down, I equated meditation with edgelessness. Now I know that is not  the case.

There are a few quick tricks anyone can do throughout the day. They are pretty low-effort but you’ll feel results immediately. You can do them at any time, anywhere.

Start by taking a few deep breaths. Get on your tiptoes and reach up over your head and stretch out all the way through your arms to your fingertips and wiggle your fingers until you feel the stretch go all the way to through your fingertips. Lift one foot off the ground and rotate your ankles and stretch out your toes. Now do the other foot. Meanwhile flex and release your leg muscles. With one hand to the sky and the other pointing to the ground lean to the left and feel the stretch move down your sides. Do the opposite side. Tilt your pelvis forward and backward then rotate your hips in a circular motion and reverse the direction. Roll your shoulders in a circular motion and reverse. Tilt your head all the way forward and all the way back, and then try to touch each ear toward your shoulder. Roll your head slowly in a clockwise circle several times then reverse. Squeeze your shoulders up toward your ears and release. Do this several times. Now bend forward and let your arms hang. Swing from left to right and slowly move up your body, both arms swinging from side to side. Raise your arms over your head and bring your hands together and lower them toward your heart. By now your body should feel relaxed and energized. You can do all of this in less than 5 minutes as often throughout the day as you can remember. In fact, why not schedule it into your phone now to do 5 times during the day until it becomes a habit.

Take a look around. Pay attention to the immediate details to your surroundings. It doesn’t matter whether you’re standing at the back of a restaurant or on the sidewalk, pay attention to the colors, the light, and the sounds. This brings you into the moment. When you are in the moment, fear doesn’t have power over you. By existing in the moment, you’ll be less distracted by your thoughts.

Another quick decompressing trick you can do is to take ten deep slow breaths. Inhale through your nose until your lungs and belly have expanded as far as they can and then blow all this air out through your mouth until you are completely empty. You should be feeling the muscles in your chest and stomach relaxing with each inhalation and exhalation. It may feel like your heart is racing but it’s really just the awareness of your heart and your body. It’s nothing to worry about.

By stretching and breathing, you’ll become conscious of your body and breath so this next trick will be quite easy to do. Whether your eyes are open or closed, feel the air moving into your nostrils. It should feel slightly cool on its way in and warmer on its way out. Control it by inhaling and exhaling slightly longer. Most likely you’ll have to yawn several times. Feel the stretch in your jaw when you do. By doing this exercise you’re going to start noticing the way the air feels entering and exiting your nostrils throughout the day. You’re building a relationship with your physical body and an awareness of the moment you are in.

You’re probably wondering what any of this has to do with patience and vigilance. By creating these habits and incorporating them into your daily routine early in recovery, you are exercising some discipline over how time is being spent. It gives you control over how you want to feel physically and emotionally. Less anxiety means less fear. And fear is what sends signals that say, “If it’s going to feel like this, why bother ?” Less fear means less pain. Vigilance is not giving up.

We are like a porcelain vase that fell off a table and shattered across the floor. A lot of damage has been done. We gather up the pieces and enter recovery hoping someone will tell us how to put it back together. And people tell us how – but they also say, “It takes time.” We start going through all the pieces and start to figure out what fits where so we can put the vase back together again. It takes time and patience but we know the pieces will eventually all fit. If we approach this task in a hurried, stressed out way, we’ll make a mess of it and end up taking longer to get it done. By practicing some mindfulness, we are able to enjoy the process and we’ll feel excited when it begins to look like a vase again. It takes vigilance and patience to put ourselves back together. Honestly, if the payoff didn’t exceed the work we put into recovery, no one would stay clean. This payoff is why we keep blindly moving forward even when we can’t see what’s ahead. Patience teaches us that the real prize is the journey.

 

 

 

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The Upside of Shame

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Regrets. I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention. (My Way, Frank Sinatra)

Wouldn’t you love to be able to hit rewind and delete entire episodes out of your past rather than have to deal with the fallout clean and sober?

When I used to try to kick dope, the physical withdrawal was nothing compared to the  movies playing non-stop in my head of every single thing I ever did or said that made me feel like shit. It always touched on the things that hurt or betrayed the people I loved (whether they knew it or not) like birthday money from my folks I’d blown on coke, the time my dad drove from Toronto to Buffalo to meet a flight I’d forgotten about, relationships I’d discarded, friends I’d lost, the time I left my dog in my apartment while I spent a weekend on the Virgin Islands. It was all there in living color, the shit I did, accompanied by a gnawing soul-sickness.

The behaviors we engage in that fuel the beast don’t completely disappear when we get clean. The “disease” gets a lot of mileage from shame. Whenever we act out in our selfish or thoughtless behaviors in recovery and feel bad, thoughts of using pop up – always an unconscious antidote to our negative feelings. The way out of this cycle is in repairing damage we have caused and learning how to do things differently. Recovery gives us the opportunity to change.

On a positive note, guilt and remorse are natural healthy feelings because they let us know we are not psychopaths.

It’s through these feelings that we build our moral backbone in recovery. This moral compass lets us know how far we have strayed from our own deepest beliefs and values. They teach us right from wrong, teach us how to be loving – toward ourselves and others, toward animals and nature. We don’t learn this by having debates, or philosophizing over coffee with our friends, or because family, religion or the courts shoved a moral code at us. We discover morality through our feelings. And they never lie. They let us know when we do something that betrays our very nature.

Shame is the real killer for addicts because shame is personal. It’s how we feel about ourselves in the privacy of our own mind. How are we supposed to take care of ourselves, love ourselves, if we believe we are worthless? “We are as sick as our secrets” is true because shame is so personal. Guilt says, “What you did was horrible.” Shame says, “ You are horrible.” Secrets nurture shame – so get rid of them.

Imagine – even at the peak of our addiction we could not escape regret, guilt, or shame when we acted out against our most heartfelt beliefs. That says a lot about the human spirit. Even when we believed we truly didn’t give a fuck our heart was storing up the memory to haunt us later. The human spirit is pretty amazing. Even the madness of addiction can’t reach in and completely rewire our conscience.

 

 

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“But mom, you know I can’t drink!” Holidays in Recovery

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I stopped eating meat in 1983 yet every few years my mom will say something like “It’s Thanksgiving. You can have turkey on Thanksgiving.” She isn’t opposed to my not eating meat, it’s that she can’t wrap her mind around it during holidays. I suppose the memories that make her warm, fuzzy and sentimental involve us all sharing the same meal.  I mention this because a lot of people in recovery will be going home for the holidays. Many are going to have an experience similar to mine but instead of turkey it will involve alcohol.

If you are new to recovery, you’re going to keep hearing people talking about how difficult the holidays will be and how many people will relapse. This is going to either scare the crap out of you or you’re going to dismiss it by thinking, “This doesn’t apply to me because I have absolutely no desire to drink or get high whatsoever.” The truth is – none of us can predict how we are going to feel ten minutes from now let alone during the holiday season. It’s better to enter the next few weeks prepared for anything. Have a solid recovery plan to increase your accountability to your support group, know where there are meetings ahead of time for wherever you will be traveling to, have people you can call at any hour, and make plans so you don’t spend the holidays in isolation or spend it exclusively in the company of people who are partying or who have the ability to push your buttons (family).  Basically whatever level of daily actions you now take to keep your recovery a priority, increase them until after January 1st. Better safe than sorry – and sorry does not mean relapse. It can mean emotional discomfort, living with heightened anxiety, or riding the roller-coaster of shame, remorse, or anger.

In most cases, your immediate family will be supportive of your recovery but they may not understand the disease. To them, you are doing so well they may not see any harm in a glass of wine at a toast or alcohol soaked desserts. It’s up to you to educate them beforehand on what you need. If you go to 12 Step meetings, tell them beforehand when you will be attending them so they aren’t disappointed if it conflicts with their plans. You don’t want to be in a position where you give up your meeting because your mother is upset. Also, let them know if going for a walk/run/yoga/gym is something you have to do for your mental and emotional well being so that you don’t get moody and lash out. If alcohol drenched sweets are part of the dessert ritual, make sure there is an alternative for you to enjoy. And most important – if your family’s idea of fun is getting sloshed together, know when it is time to leave. Don’t stick around for the insults on how you are now a stick in the mud or debates about whether or not you are an alcoholic.

Self-care and sobriety involves preparing for the holidays. While they are almost always a roller-coaster of the unknown to the newly clean and sober, those of us who have some time under our belt can still be hit with loneliness, grieving for those who are gone, feelings of inadequacy or whatever negative self-talk that can surface when we are the sober one at a party. Thank God, it does get easier. Holidays clean and sober really can be a blast. Even so, it is always good to have a recovery plan in place.

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“Am I going to be staring at glasses of wine for the rest of my life?”

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A friend of mine said when he finished his program he was “like a wet dog on a back porch. They couldn’t get rid of me.” They ended up offering him a job. For me, getting out of rehab was like being pushed out of the nest not knowing whether or not my wings would work. I’d have stayed there forever if they’d let me.  From the minute I was admitted into treatment the thought of “life after rehab” literally took my breath away.  After all, forty-two days in a program built around relapse prevention made one thing clear – this place didn’t give guarantees.

I went straight from rehab to a friend’s apartment in New Orleans’ Quarter. I would wander  the streets feeling as though I’d been skinned alive. I’d sit on a step at every corner, smoke a cigarette, and pray that I would stay clean for the next five minutes. The word “terror” doesn’t come close. My first two weeks in the real world consisted of laying on a sofa for hours trying to make sense of the third step, smoking cigarettes on random steps killing time between meetings, and going to bed – where sleep failed to come. The only thing I had on my side was that I had no personal history with New Orleans. I knew no one. Thank God.

Recently I was in a shopping mall with a client who’d just returned home from treatment. She suggested we grab lunch in a little restaurant on the ground floor. It wasn’t until we were seated that she casually mentioned she’d spent many afternoons there drinking martinis. I would have known even if she hadn’t told me because the place electrified her. I handed the wine list back to the waiter and a look of disappointment came over her face. She sunk behind her menu. “The food here is great. I totally forgot about the bar when I suggested this place. Honest!” I’m sure she had. I’m never surprised at the tricks the brain will play on the newly sober person. They’re unconsciously drawn to risky situations and, once there, begin to play a form of mental chicken. They test themselves – which is a really dangerous game to play. While she commented on the cocktails at nearby tables, her disposition flipped from euphoria to gloom. We ate quickly and skipped dessert. I knew there’d be emotional backlash. She’d either become surly or would want to crawl back into bed when we got home. The experience gave us a lot to work with and talk about – how to safely navigate through day to day life without setting yourself up for additional emotional fallout.

“Am I going to be staring at glasses of wine for the rest of my life?”

In early recovery, my stomach would flip every time I passed a freeway exit that lead to any bathroom I’d ever shot coke in. Some days all it took was the Hollywood Freeway South sign to constrict my chest.  It felt like I was losing my mind. If the whole world reminded me of using, how would I ever stay clean?

There will always be restaurants, parties, and work functions. There will be comedy clubs and rock shows. You get clean so you can become part of life – not hide from it.  In early recovery, the key is to not test oneself by going it alone.

It takes time to build sober memories. Things that used to send me over the edge seldom affect me now. The Hollywood Freeway South sign is now just a sign. When I see it I’m filled with pleasant memories of fun times I’ve had and people who have passed through my life in recovery. I no longer look at the underside of spoons. People drinking wine at the next table are simply strangers experiencing a moment in their own life.

I would have never believed that the haunting memories of people, places, and things connected to my drug days would ever be replaced by equally powerful memories of my life clean and sober. It happened when I wasn’t paying attention. It will happen for you too. Remember – it takes time to create a new history. In the meantime, be mindful not to play chicken by deliberately placing yourself situations that are going to push you out on an emotional ledge. If you have to go anywhere that you know will be slippery, don’t go it alone.

 

 

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National Survivors of Suicide Day

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National Survivor’s of Suicide Day November 17 2012

Today I spent time thinking about those I’ve lost to suicide and their families.

I got news this past week that another friend from my early recovery overdosed and died. This makes six friends since March. Five had been in recovery at one point for anywhere from one to twenty years before they decided that they could drink or smoke weed without getting caught up in old ways.  The news is never easy. Over the years I ‘ve been clean, there’s been a lot of death. Overdoses and suicide top the list followed closely by AIDS and Hepatitis C. I’ve spent a lot of time searching for meaning, contemplating life and death, and coming to terms with it in a way that makes sense to me personally. At one point I started to numb out. I would hear of a new death and mentally delete their number from my cell phone – gone! They were gone. Over! The end! I noticed my lack of emotional response and figured, really, how much death can one take? Nowadays, I’m back to feeling that funk land hard in my stomach and the sad sound as my head whispers “Fuck!”

My best friend committed suicide in the mid-80s. I wrote about her in an earlier blog on my other site http://www.pattypowersnyc.blogspot.com/2011/09/finding-one-day-at-time.html. That death hit me at a time when my own life was spiraling out of control. I felt I understood what she was feeling at the time -that feeling of not wanting to play anymore, of being tired, of not believing things would ever change. Little did I know that within three years I’d find recovery and my life would change radically.

I’ll confess that, for years, I held a little idea at the back of my most private thoughts: I would do this life-on-life’s-terms recovery thing as long as I could but if I ever got tired and want off the ride instead of getting high, suicide would be my way off.

At seven years clean I was hit by a depression I’d never experienced before – coming out of the blue and unattached to any plausible explanation. There was nothing going on in my life I could pin it to. I felt like I was inside a bubble preventing me from feeling a connection to anything or anyone.  I spent days laying on the sofa telling myself “This too shall pass.” The next day I’d awaken to realize nothing had changed. I had no desire to get high and wondered how long I could live this way.  When would enough be enough and I’d check out? I was also writing a novel where the main character would attempt suicide so a variety of methods were at my fingertips. Needless to say, it wasn’t a good time to spend days alone with my mind. Was this feeling ever going to pass?  The day I woke up feeling alive again was one of joy and relief. Shortly after this, a friend’s son hung himself.

While laying in my self-absorbed darkness fantasizing about suicide, it never occurred to me to consider how my death would affect others. Witnessing first hand how his suicide impacted the lives of his family and friends eradicated suicide as my exit strategy.

There was a hint that the latest death may have been intentional because of his history with depression.  Addiction and depression are closely linked. Perhaps this has played a role in all the earlier suicides. Much has been discovered and documented linking addiction and depression since my early years in recovery. Back then many recovering addicts shunned the idea of taking any sort of pill. Instead they believed in toughing it out, working a stronger program, finding a god. Many struggled with undiagnosed mental health issues for years, living in pain, until they finally sought help. It wasn’t that recovering addicts wanted to martyr themselves. Antidepressants were a new concept and many of us twelve-steppers were naïve and ill-informed.

I think a lot about my friends who’ve died, wondering how many of those overdoses were suicide.  How many kept their depression a guarded secret in recovery? How could we have helped?

That is the biggest question survivors of suicide torment themselves with – “What could I have done?” It’s heartbreaking to see and hear the grief lingering years later, wrapped around them like a blanket for the remainder of their lives. If a loved one has committed suicide please find support groups and professional counseling. The impact of suicide can be trauma.

For anyone who is considering suicide I will pass on something someone said to me during a particularly difficult time:

Patty, life is like a long phonograph and right now the needle is skipping but there is still a long beautiful song left to play. I know the pain is so big you can’t breath and it feels like it will never go away but this is really just one moment in time of a very long story and when you get past it, you will always look back and remember this period as a hard one but you won’t even be able to connect with the pain that right now feels like its going to kill you.  It will just be a memory that things were rough. While you’re in it, it feels so much more meaningful – but it’s really a just rough patch in a skipping record. Not worth killing yourself over. Because then it’s over forever.

Hang on and ask for help!

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Safe Sex Anyone?

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The past few months have been extremely busy and I have been traveling a lot which has made it difficult to post weekly recovery blogs. My last entry was on the importance of taking the risk to share the vulnerable feelings you are most frightened to share – especially in early recovery. That story was also written in conjunction with a live video public discussion I was hosting with Dan Griffin on SEX IN RECOVERY for the website www.intherooms.com. Now a second SEX IN RECOVERY discussion is set for October 17th at 9pm EST so you’re about to read yet another blog entry on sex. The style is more along the lines I post on my www.pattypowers.blogspot.com blog (since it’s more of a personal story than a “recovery tips” piece)  but hopefully the recovery stuff in it resonates okay for this blog. Anyway, this is  my “warning – sexual content” disclaimer.

“After everything I‘ve lived through, I’d feel ridiculous if I tested HIV-positive because I had lousy sex one afternoon with someone I decided I hated an hour later.”  This was my contribution to a Safe Sex public service announcement on Canadian television in the early 90s.

I’m lucky I was living with my husband in New York from ’82 until ’87. This meant one sexual partner. And because he wasn’t an addict, I took extra care to clean my syringes with bleach.  I say “lucky” because during those years, my exposure to the AIDS virus was minimal, if any. However, as soon as the marriage ended, my old self-destructive reckless nature took over. The year we split up I took risks with needles that, when I flash back on certain situations, haunt me to this day. Thankfully, by then I was so deep into my addiction sex no longer interested me.

No one was more surprised than I was when I managed to miraculously come out of New York’s needle-sharing early-80s HIV-negative, especially considering people I shared needles with before I was married started dying from the virus in 1983.  Not only did I survive the times – I managed to get clean. It was now my responsibility to remain HIV-negative. This meant using condoms.

Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Except for one thing – I had no experience using condoms. When I became sexually active, the only fear connected to sex was unwanted pregnancy. This was back in the day when cocaine “wasn’t addictive” and sex couldn’t kill you. STDs came and went but that was just how it was in the 70s- nothing  that a few days of antibiotics couldn’t cure.  At 14 I went on the pill.  At 28 I had to start using condoms.

The first thing I did when I got clean was to go off the pill. This was my strategy:  I knew my commitment to birth control would keep condom use in the forefront of my mind in case my judgment fell to the wayside. I didn’t know then that I wasn’t prepared emotionally for the responsibility of safe sex. It meant having the self-esteem and confidence to hold a firm line – condoms or no sex. Newcomer flesh is weak.

I’m an addict. This means if something can change the way I feel, I start negotiating with myself.  How high is the risk? What is considered low risk on a scale of no risk and high-risk behavior? If he says he’s been tested, do I believe him because he is in recovery? Can the pull out method really work? What about not swallowing- is that low risk or no risk? I took all my questions to my gay male friends since they were the only ones who seemed safe sex aware. It never occurred to me that, they too, would be renegotiating terms with themselves. Just because we were all in recovery, didn’t mean we played by the rules. We hadn’t ever played by any rules before recovery. We were all facing new life and death choices yet safe sex was a subject rarely discussed.

When I decided to get clean, I chose life.  It was that simple. I understood that unsafe sex was suicidal behavior and could never slip into denial about this fact. Any time I took any sort of risk – whether it was choosing pull out method over condoms or going on the pill too early in a relationship to know if I could trust my partner to be faithful, my gut always let me know when I screwed up. There is nothing worse than having a headful of recovery and carrying the inner turmoil and disappointment over failing myself once again.

Other than my sexual partners, I wondered if I was the only one slipping up. Was everybody talking the talk really walking the walk?

If I spoke about my feelings connected to bad decisions I made during sex, people shifted in their seats, women searched through their handbags. Everyone sent out the vibe for me to shut up. I was single and freewheeling. Many of my friends had the “commitment talk” after the second or third date. I met a lot of serial monogamists in short-term relationships who didn’t use condoms. Friends began getting pregnant. It felt like I was the only one speaking openly about feelings that came up whenever I acted out in low risk sexual behavior. I was trying hard to remain open and honest.

Early in recovery I went to the LGBT Center for an AIDS test. The doctor was very clear – there was safe sex and there was unsafe sex. The degrees of high and low risk behavior didn’t count.  The truth will set you free and an absence of denial will torment you until you become willing to change.

Change came for me through honest sharing and outside help. As my self-respect and self-esteem developed in certain areas of my life, I abandoned myself less in others.  Personal experience has taught me that I am most at risk of screwing up when I have incredible sexual chemistry with someone. The experience is too transformative – like a drug- and it’s easy for me to start engaging in risky behaviors.  The other is when I start to   fall for someone.  The “high” from feeling romantically “swept away” can impair my judgment. In both cases I must remain vigilant and practice safe sex no matter what my brain and body want to negotiate.

I used to think that safe sex was difficult for those of us who became sexually active before the onset of AIDS but I think it is simply difficult for addicts because of our destructive nature. We change and heal gradually through the recovery process.  If you aren’t having safe sex start talking about it – there is no shame in wanting your actions to mirror the self worth we strive for in recovery.

We come into recovery with our individual stories. It has taken me personally a lot of work and a long time to integrate sex and emotional intimacy. Change came slowly because the thrill seeking persona I held onto didn’t leave much room for growth in this area. I will say it was fun when it was working but when it stopped, it was because I had changed.  Sometimes I miss the old me and sometimes I feel like I’m still in the middle of a transformation and the best is yet to come.

 

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What – me vulnerable? Sex & Recovery

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I arrived in Hollywood California with 69 days clean and $100. I went directly from the Greyhound Bus terminal to a meeting.  I’d gained forty pounds in rehab, had one outfit and a bag of stripper costumes. It was going to be a rough road but I was determined to put a life together for myself  - clean. After the first meeting, I killed time with a bunch of recovering bikers at an IHOP. One handed me keys to his apartment. He was going to New York City and said for thirty bucks  I could stay at his place for a month but he was clear about one thing – if I ripped anything off,  he would find me and kill me. It was my first miracle. Seriously – who gives keys to a newcomer they just met? I will forever be grateful to this man who I never saw again.

All the girls in Hollywood meetings were young, gorgeous, slim, and well dressed. At least that’s how it appeared to me. I sucked it up and pretended I didn’t feel as awkward and insecure as I did.  I wanted to fit in and needed friends. We ran from meeting to meeting stopping for coffee in between. An exciting Friday night was to hit a meeting in Venice to check out skateboarders and surfers or go to late-night where the cute rocker guys were. We might have planned our nights around “where the boys were” but mainly we were our own happy little crew. We were like a gang of teenagers having fun.

One night after a meeting, my girls were chatting with a gorgeous soon-to-be-famous actor.  They’d all grown up in Hollywood so pretty much anyone they talked to they’d known since high school. It was a little alienating for a displaced New Yorker. His friend from New York saw me standing off to the side.  I was thrilled to connect to another New Yorker. The humor was familiar. Too bad he wasn’t my type.

For eight days this guy pursued me hardcore. It was weird and amusing. Everywhere I went, there he was. Finally one night I caved and let him drive me home. I’d decided I was going to sleep with him even though I was indifferent. Maybe there’d be some medicinal value – like stress relief. At least it would give me a break from another evening of 12-step literature. Anything could happen – maybe it would be fun or the sex would blow my mind.  I’d had a few encounters when I got out of rehab in New Orleans but it was mostly an attempt to have fun. That was it – I was letting this guy come upstairs in an attempt to have fun and to connect to my wild side. My husband had abandoned me a year earlier. Now that I was clean, I wasn’t sure if that relationship would mend, if I wanted it to, or what I felt. The area of love and romance was still an open wound. I knew I didn’t want a new relationship. But I could have sex.  We parked and he came inside.

I tried to get into it or at least appear to be into it but, for me, the sex was forgettable as it was happening. I enjoyed the company. When it was over and he was getting dressed I felt relieved. It was what it was. I certainly didn’t want him sleeping over. Besides, it was time to read my 12-step stuff. Once it was obvious I wasn’t trying to keep him there, he relaxed and we started talking about movies we both liked. “Tomorrow let’s go to a movie. Will you be at the meeting?” He wanted to see me again. I liked hanging with him but was afraid he liked me. I just wanted a friend. I didn’t even care if we slept together again. As he walked out the door, the date was made. Tomorrow night.

Throughout the day I began fantasizing about our date. It was nice to be pursued and he made me laugh. It was nice to look forward to an evening that was different from meetings and coffee.

During the meeting I kept peeking outside for signs of him. When he didn’t show, I skipped coffee and went home in case he called or dropped by. Nothing. I was devastated. I felt tricked especially since I hadn’t even liked him and would have been fine if he’d gotten dressed and left the night before. Maybe something happened. Surely he wouldn’t have invested so much time into me just to blow me off.  It made no sense. By the third day I was a mess. I felt like a sucker, angry I’d been played. Confused he even bothered when it wasn’t necessary. I must have been delusional to have thought I was attractive, fun, sexy or whatever I’d felt while he was in hot pursuit. I was delusional to have seen myself that way. I felt worthless. I couldn’t even get this loser to like me.

All I felt was pain and confusion and knew if I didn’t talk about it I would probably use. I knew I had to tell my girls but the idea horrified me. It was the ultimate humiliation. Surely they would think I was “that” girl – needy, clingy, waiting for a guy to make her whole. A girl you couldn’t fuck without her turning into a psycho stalker.  The list of my negative self-judging thoughts was endless. And my disease turned that inner self-hating dialogue up a thousand notches as I prepared to meet my friends. It was going to kill me to admit that a guy I didn’t even like blew me off and that it was hurting me this badly. And to admit this to a group of girls who would probably talk about this among themselves. Ugh.

To my surprise, they shared their similar stories. They were compassionate and kind. I felt I could trust them. No one mocked me except me. I went home feeling better.

I wish I could say that was the end of it, that I woke up happy joyous and free but that wasn’t the case. I continued to have obsessive thoughts about the guy and my self-worth. My confidence had been crushed and I couldn’t let it go. My disease had me. So – I continued to talk about it to these same women day in and day out for thirteen days. The craziest part of this story is that in my heart, I knew this whole thing was not about the guy.  My armor had cracked  with seventy-five days clean and these feelings of vulnerability were new to me. Without the support of these women, I believe I wouldn’t have stayed clean.

These same women continue to be in my life almost 24 years later. We have shared our recovery together – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Looking back, taking that risk of exposing my true feelings, as humiliating as it felt at the time, was probably the first truly important risk I took in recovery. It opened the door for me to trust. There wasn’t anything I couldn’t share with other recovering addicts.

For the record, I never ran into that guy again. The experience probably hardened me with cynicism when it came to men and casual sex for a number of years but it didn’t stop me from being a willing participant until I was able to finally shed a little more armor.  Connecting sex, love, and emotional intimacy has been a slow process for me. I held onto image and thrill seeking as long as I could. It’s funny how the many forms fear can take. I can honestly say that sticking around long enough, recovery has changed me in spite of myself.

The reason I chose this particular story to share is because I believe if I held back all of these feelings in the secret chamber in my heart (the – “taking this one to my grave” chamber) my pride would have had me suffering in private until I was in the emotional corner where drugs would have seemed like the only solution to the pain. I believe we all come into recovery unprepared for the types of feelings that will surface once we are clean. Sometimes they are appropriate to the situation and sometimes they cling to whatever they can while the disease continues to use them to paralyze us into eventual submission. The only solution for me (and many others who have stayed clean) is to walk through the fear and expose our true selves to another human being. You can start out by doing this as an experiment. If you feel worse afterward you can simply move on to new people – the rooms are full of them. That’s how I did it – when I told my story to these women, my back-up plan was to start going to meetings in another part of Los Angeles if I felt too uncomfortable facing them again. As you can see – that was not the case and it probably won’t be for you either.

 

On Sunday September 16th, Dan Griffin and I are hosting an open forum public discussion on Sex and Recovery at 9pm on www.intherooms.com. It will be a live video chat/participation. If you are not a member, you can sign in as a guest. People tuned in will not be seen live unless they decide to share. People can send in comments and questions via instant messenger for complete anonymity. The goal of this forum is to create a space free of judgment to create a dialogue about the feelings, secrets, and behaviors we engage in related to sex once we are in recovery. It is a subject that affects us all yet one that many people do not put a voice to.

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I didn’t get clean for this sh*t! Unmanageability.

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This has been a crazy summer for me. Not “crazy” in a wild and fun way either (sorry to say) but crazy in an unmanageable “life on life’s terms” way. This is my first summer in New York City without air conditioning and the hottest recorded summer since the 1800s. They decided to re-wire my building (an old brownstone in the Village) and hired one electrician to do all the work. I struggled through one major heatwave after another, sitting inside my apartment feeling like a dog locked inside a car with the windows rolled up.  I found myself crying at my desk for no reason. I’ve discovered that severe conditions can bring on feelings of despair and depression – go figure! I had to turn down several clients because I was in no shape to help anyone and writing was impossible. Instead, I went to visit my folks in Canada for a couple weeks and expected to come back to air conditioning. Well – what do you know – Con Edison went on strike so there is no one to do the inspection. There will be no air conditioning this year. The upside is that I knew enough to leave town to rejuvenate my spirit and have since put myself on graveyard hours so that I can bike in the cooler evening breeze for fresh air, write at night, and see as many matinees as I possible. I’m making my situation as manageable as I can because my mental health matters to me. I am powerless over the circumstances but not powerless over my ability to make choices to improve my situation. I needed topics for this blog to simplify my workload so I asked for help.I got a lot of suggestions. Phil wrote me this, which I felt was appropriate to use first:

Recovering addicts are always asking as to what they can expect to “manage” in the sober future and what they cant.  -Phil

When we look back at the unmanageability of our lives during our using days the list goes something like this: jobs lost, apartment evictions, regularly living without a phone or electricity, calls from collection agencies, owing everyone we know money, significant others leaving after many tears, fights and drama. Our health deteriorates and there are trips to hospitals, jails, and psych wards. Paramedics bring us back to life and even this doesn’t strike us unusual. What’s worse than the exterior unmanageability is our inner life – we can’t handle experiencing negatives feelings yet they seem to be the only feelings we have. Our only coping mechanism was to keep using in the hope of finding some inner peace.

Clean and sober, unmanageability in our lives can look like this: jobs lost, apartment evictions, regularly living without a phone or electricity, calls from collection agencies, owing everyone we know money, significant others leaving after many tears, fights, and drama. From neglecting our health there can be   trips to hospitals. If we don’t change our behaviors we can end up in jail and there could even be times we end up in psych wards.

In recovery, even when our external life can remain manageable, our inner life can be filled with anxiety, self-loathing, pain and torment. “Why is this happening to me?” we cry as our thoughts return to the old solution – getting high.

Recovery is the process of changing our behaviors and our response to situations so that we don’t back ourselves into an emotional corner where getting high seems to be the only way out. If any addict stays in pain long enough, s/he will use.

It’s our responsibility to manage every area of our life in a way to keep chaos and drama at a minimal, We learn to start paying bills on time, communicating honestly, become willing to renegotiate or compromise in relationships, We address health and mental health issues, earn money the old fashioned way of working for a living. The hilarious thing writing this is that I know everyone reading it is thinking “Of course we have to do this. Tell me something I don’t know.” It sounds easy to live an upright, ethical, honest life clean – but is it? I mean – really?

This is what I have seen over the years: some addicts gets clean and lives a very rigid life – so rigid and fearful of making errors that the first chance they get to let their hair down, they get loaded. Then there’s the addict who continues acting out deviously in some areas all the while spewing wisdom of recovery louder than anyone else. I call this the “Spiritual giant who goes home and beats his wife and kicks the dog”-syndrome” (not gender-specific) who, without change, will also eventually gets loaded. And then there’s the middle ground – the category that most of us fall into – we hold onto old behaviors as long as they work for us before we become willing to change. And we only are motivated to change by pain.

I didn’t learn how to pay parking tickets until my car was towed, pay my phone bill on time until I got sick of losing money to reconnection fees. It’s true – there are a lot of people in the world who don’t go to the dentist until they are in excruciating pain but for addicts being in pain brings a cry for drugs. Non-addicts experience unmanageability the same as we do. The difference is that they will not respond to it by self-destructing.

It’s important to understand how the disease of addiction gains ground. It LOVES when we are angry with ourselves. No one can ever treat us as badly as we treat ourselves inside the privacy of our own mind. This is why we need the love and support of other recovering addicts. They remind us to give ourselves a break, teach us how to find working solutions to the problems of daily life, let us know that our fantastic idea on how to beat the system is insane, talk us out of that one last heist, help us recognize when the criteria for a boyfriend is different from the criteria for a sugar daddy. Recovery teaches us how to live without being motivated by the fear that if we let go of our old hustles and irresponsible behaviors, our need to get over on the system, that we won’t make it.

It’s unrealistic to expect to come into recovery and immediately live a life 100% according to new recovery principles. We do our best.  We grow in leaps and bounds in some areas and stay sick and stuck in others. The pain from unmanageability in the form of drama, chaos, and from the consequences of our actions is what teaches us who we really are –in our hearts not in our minds. We discover that don’t want to keep hurting ourselves by living this way and this gives us the strength and courage to change. This is a good thing. Because we don’t want to suffer, we learn how to do things differently.

In recovery we can be free. Not just free from the enslavement of addiction but free from senseless self-made suffering. The calm and inner peace we feel by living a life of less drama and unmanageability will eventually guide us in all our affairs. Nonetheless, shit does happen – economies crash, people die, lovers leave, personalities clash. Sometimes we may have a long string of bad luck and feel like life is not fair. We cry, “Why me?” and an old voice will whisper back, “Fuck this shit. You didn’t feel this bad when you were using. Fuck this recovery bullshit.” Yep – the disease never gives up, always waiting for a moment of weakness, always quick to point out the hopelessness of it all. During these times lean into recovering friends for support, love and guidance.  When times get dark hang on because this too shall pass. It will and it does.

Recovery is harm reduction for day to day living.

 

 

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How can I tell if I’m heading toward a relapse?

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Last week I had the fun experience of being a guest “speaker” on a Twitter addiction chat. I had no idea how I was supposed to be a  “speaker” in 140 characters or less. Luckily it turned out to be a Q&A. The final question  “How can a person tell if they’re starting to relapse and how can they stop themselves?” seemed like a good topic for this week’s blog post.

The interesting thing about a relapse is that afterward the addict will swear, “I made the decision to use” when really, “I made the decision a while ago and using was the anticipated outcome” is more likely the case. When we’re clean we always have a choice. By the time the “decision” to use comes along, we’ve already given up that choice by not recognizing and correcting the behaviors that were leading us toward a relapse in the first place. When we are in the disease clean, the window of opportunity to choose recovery gets smaller and smaller until our disease is stronger than our recovery and we use.  We forget we are powerless once we use. Almost every addict who has relapsed tells me immediately afterward, “If it gets bad, I’ll get clean again”. Really? If it was that easy to get clean, why wouldn’t I use one day a year?  They get amnesia about what it took for them to ever have had the desperation to get clean in the first place.

So what are these behaviors we need to watch out for and take seriously that have the power to eventually lead us back to using?

We start to come up with reasonable sounding reasons to start missing meetings (or IOP or whatever support group you are part of).

We start finding our recovery/sober friends annoying. We don’t feel like being around people and are much happier when we’re alone.

We feel a general crankiness toward everything.

We feel an endless hunger for anything (food, shopping, money, power, sex, attention, caffeine, tattoos, seductive pain) outside of ourselves to make us feel better, to feel excited, to feel alive. We long for euphoria.

We stop doing things we used to enjoy in our fellowship such as service, group activities, fellowship, stop working the steps (usually after step 5), stop talking to our sponsor/sponsees. In fact we start feeling judgmental toward both.

We start acting out in asshole behaviors without noticing such as gossip, anger, deceit, and righteousness. We nurture our resentments and start keeping secrets. Consequences include shame, remorse and guilt yet we do not talk about these feelings or their source to anyone.

We’re Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired.  We take no action to remedy it.

We start hanging out with people who are not in recovery more often than people who are. Watching our friends who are not addicts use and drink starts making us have thoughts that we can do it too. We tell no one this.

We hang with using addicts and alcoholics and enjoy it. We believe it is not affecting us. We make less time for friends in recovery.

We act out in self-destructive behaviors such as cutting, eating disorders, sexual       compulsion, unsafe sex, compulsive Internet cruising and tell no one.

We isolate in abusive or unhealthy romantic relationships wanting someone who         doesn’t want us yet going back time and again expecting different results.

If you are doing ANYTHING that your head says is nobody’s business (not even the person you trust most with your recovery) LOOK AT IT.

I really believe that if an addict stays in emotional pain long enough the only solution guaranteed to bring relieve will be using.

A relapse can usually be traced back to a combination of these behaviors occurring over a period of time. If you see any combination of these happening in your life, start taking the opposite action. This can be as simple as removing yourself from the situation, recommitting to meetings, service, reconnecting to your support group and being thoroughly honest about devious thoughts and actions.

 

 

 

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