My Story

I was never comfortable in my own skin. People and social interaction threw me into a tailspin. As early as the first grade, I felt disconnected from myself, as well as from others. Feeling inadequate and less than were mainstay emotions that followed me everywhere. They were my constant companions for years. I sensed early on that this wasn't normal. I needed to camouflage it so I wouldn't be pointed out as God forbid, different than my peers. So I adapted by becoming a chameleon. This was my initial journey into compromising myself. I could be anything you wanted me to be. I could look like you, talk like you, and in each and every aspect of this charade, appear normal. I became so adept at it that no one would ever suspect that deep inside I was registering a seven on the Richter scale.

Since alcohol was a staple in our family, it held no strange fascination for Gerri and me. It was simply a dessert choice on life's menu. In the beginning, it was never the main entree. Growing up, we were never served it; we knew it was reserved for adults. But that didn't stop us from licking the head off an ice-cold beer or sneaking a taste of the red bubbly stuff served in the gold-rimmed goblets on special occasions.

In a hurry to be emancipated, I married at sixteen. Two and a half years and two babies later, I had acquired a new friend. It came disguised in brown quart bottles, and on holidays when we could afford something fancier, it beckoned to me in decorated decanters. Alcohol provided me one critical coping tool. One that I used to survive a twenty-two-year hostage situation otherwise referred to as a marriage. It provided me with an avenue of escape; at least in theory.

I had a high tolerance, and I tested it frequently. I could drink most of our friends under the table, including the men. I always thought a high tolerance was the earmark of a successful social drinker. It was the ones who couldn't hold their liquor that were destined for trouble! One of many fallacies that I subscribed to. In retrospect, the truth had a way of usurping a different shade of denial in every remembrance.

Early on, my drinking was limited to both opportunity and a tight budget. Family celebrations were enhanced by the thought of free-flowing booze. The probability that they might end in chaos as a result of that factor didn't matter. I just put that irritation on the back burner and drank it away. Monthly Bunco games, ladies night out, was another excuse to imbibe. We rotated turns hosting the games. The fact that I was the only one turning them into a drinking fest escaped me at the time.

Our first apartment was in a complex populated by young couples with children. On hot evenings, we would congregate outside, and I would usually provide the beer. Because money was scarce, I would sometimes load my son's over sized baby carriage with pop bottles and return them to the corner grocery store for refunds to buy that beer. I never gave that sight a second thought, it was a means to an end. I could unwind and maybe fit it. The weight of being the youngest and poorest of that group could be lifted with the twist of a cap.

I drank because...

Beginnings--
birthed in a family's womb
felt comfortable--protected,
the thought that any harm could come
oft simmered undetected.

Amongst
perceptions handed down,
engraved in tangled thinking
were fantasies embedded
in excuses spent on drinking.

I'm ill at ease--I don't fit in
It helps me to relax,
It certainly enhances
the way I play the sax;

The pain's too great--
my nerves are shot,
let's celebrate
the day's so hot.

I work so hard, I need a break
bring on the wine, forget the steak;
I feel depressed, I need that buzz
the reasoning is just because.

They sounded like good reasons
and made perfect sense to me
till my future found me flailing
lost in alcohol's Dead Sea.


Drinking to fit in and overcome my feelings of inferiority were superseded by an obsessive need to escape life in general and to medicate the emotional pain of being in an abusive marriage. As my drinking progressed, it took on a life of its own. I learned that I could use alcohol to alter my moods, bury the truth, or just mentally check out. If I shuffled the beer, wine, and hard liquor around, I could master the Universe.

I found the false courage to stand up to a rageaholic husband in a shot glass. The thought of the repercussions that would follow for incurring his wrath never entered my mind. They were floating around in the bottom of my third or fourth bourbon and soda.

Socialization skills came in handy after my divorce when I was making the bar scene, and could be suctioned out of a bottle of Chablis or Chianti. It was nothing for me to saddle up to the bar once my tongue had been loosened and my brain put on hold to join strangers, horning into their conversations. While I was drinking, I loved intellectual debates. It wasn't too long before everyone disappeared to the other side. I had managed to argue them right off of their stools.

And I loved to dance. I can remember my ex-husband, Steve, telling me that booze and music would be my downfall. Once the band shifted into some funky get-down beat, and I had chugged enough alcohol to shed my introvert persona, I became a raging exhibitionist on the dance floor. I could keep up with the best of them. Suddenly, I was the center of attention, especially those few times I took a spill.

Essential Elixir

Alcohol
as it became essential
began erasing my potential;
it
released my inhibitions
in grinding dance-floor exhibitions;
it
stripped away my last reserve,
loosed my tongue,
festooned me in flamboyant verve;
it
encouraged me
to place my trust
in liquid amber's fading dust.

***************



After my divorce in '82, my drinking career really took off. The two oldest of my kids, Luke and Jake, got out as fast as they could. Luke was already on his way to near annihilation. He moved down state and took a job as an assistant chef at a hotel where he was given free room and board. And Jake, at the ripe old age of nineteen, married his sixteen-year-old sweetheart and joined the military. Nick and I were on our own. The screaming and yelling came to an abrupt halt the day Steve left. I remember thinking that with him out of the picture, everything I touched would suddenly turn to gold and life would be great.

Yet I continued drinking!

Looking back on my alcohol dependency with the blinders off revealed some very pathetic behaviors. Leaving my fourteen-year-old son at home alone until the wee hours of the morning while I was out celebrating my new found independence suddenly seemed inexcusable. Laughing hysterically in the stall of a bathroom in an exclusive nightclub when I found myself unable to get up off the toilet seat because gravity kept pulling me backward; the restroom attendant didn't think that was particularly funny. And one of the images embedded in my heart forever; the devastating look of embarassement on Nick's face the night I bumped into his teacher at a fair and spilled beer all over her. In each of these instances, I was able to sluff it off. I was totally unaware of their improprieties.

But...here it comes the big but; the one-syllable word for justification. I never had a DUI; never went to jail, seldom staggered, maybe slurred my words once in a while, and didn't drink in the mornings. Yes, I may have graduated into daily drinking over the last three years. But during the week I was able to limit it to only three or four beers. Just enough to take the edge off. Not exactly my idea of an alcoholic

Flashback: An image of Gerri and I, dressed in stress after a grueling evening at our second job, pulling into the carry-out. Tom, a friend of Luke's, wearing that know-it-all grin would have the half gallon of Pink Chablis, our guaranteed stress reliever, already bagged and waiting. That went on for several months when Gerri and I worked for the magazine company.

When I married and left home, I hadn't realized that Gerri was devastated. I had left her alone to deal with Mom and Dad's carousel of alcoholic dysfunction. She developed serious abandonment issues that paved the way to her own addiction.

I was so wrapped up in my own journey that I wasn't aware of Gerri's problem until after my divorce when we moved in together. We both got our tickets to freedom within months of each other. Her youngest was a senior and decided to stay with his dad so he could finish out his last year of high school at John Marshall. Nick was the last of my three children still at home. Gerri moved in and together we drowned our miseries in twelve packs and gallons of wine.
During the day she taught, and I worked for a collection agency. We were both struggling financially so we supplemented our income telemarketing three nights a week. It was the lowest point in both our drinking careers. A fly-by-night company rented space from the collection agency where I was a supervisor. It was the perfect set up. The telephone and cubicles were already in place. The rental agreement had one stipulation; that I would be hired so I could oversee and protect the agency's interest.

Rule number one: No drinking in the building.

One week into the nightmare and I was sneaking in miniatures. People came and went faster than I could count them. We were selling $400 magazine contracts to people who couldn't afford a new pair of shoes, let alone four-year subscriptions to modern romance and sports periodicals. There was constant mental whip cracking disguised as cheer leading going on. Someone would troll behind the telemarketers snatching up sales that would then be turned over to a closer. Everyone that failed to close moved closer to their last pay check. My nerves were shot. By day, I was dunning people for money and by night pushing them further into debt. That conflict would cause anyone to drink. Right?

Delusion always ruled my world. I saw myself as the perfect mother. I worked two jobs, kept a clean house, cooked real meals, and above all loved my children. That was the smoke screen I hid behind. Make it all look good on the outside and pretend those little guffaws would go unnoticed.

Every time I was confronted with a situation that required an action or decision, I reached for that magic elixir that relieved me of all responsibility. The fear of making a wrong decision was replaced by a fantasy that I so often ascribed to; it will all be better tomorrow.

The Marriage

For a while,
delusion
served me well,
delivered me from days of hell;
when
truth would rear its ugly head
I'd tip the bottle--kill it dead,
when
pricked by pain
or
fraught with fear,
I'd drown it in another beer.
When
life demanded courage
then
hard liquor quelled that call,
prompting me to shelve it
in the shadows where I'd crawl.
Once
delusion married alcohol
the two were intertwined,
impossible to separate--
a cancer spreading through my mind.
Reality'assignment
doesn't grade one on charades
it reserves the stars
for lessons learned
untangling delusions' braids.


Most of my guilt concerning Luke's addiction was anchored to sins of omission, rather than commission. And it started before he ever picked up the first drink.

The tension in our home vacillated between thunderheads of simmering silence or lightning bolt rants. Steve used these tactics to keep everyone in line. We all lived in fear of the next explosion.

By the time Luke was twelve years old, he was looking for an escape hatch. I later learned that his drinking began around that age.

Steve was relentless in his verbal abuse. Luke and I bared the brunt of it. We were his targets. Luke couldn't ever do anything right. Steve ridiculed him at every opportunity shredding to pieces what little self-esteem Luke may have had.  I took another drink to drown that spreading cancer in my gut that said I should have stood up to Steve and protected my son. Jake and Nick escaped most of their father's wrath. They were left dangling out there on the periphery. There was no room in the cauldron for their emotional needs to rise to the surface. And I was too busy dodging the next bullet to notice.

The ability of a mind dependent on alcohol to cope with problems by simply eradicating the truth is incredible. When Luke was around fifteen, he started hanging out with an older crowd. Ones who had easy access to booze. They weren't bad kids, but they were well into their alcohol and drug addictions. I told myself different things to cope. Maybe they do drink too much, but at least Luke made a connection with friends who really cared about him and who he felt he could trust. I'd certainly proven that he couldn't trust me.

How bizarre is that? I had turned my son over to the care of alcoholics and addicts to give him the so-called nurturing that I couldn't. I justified it, because every time I questioned that reasoning, I could make it go away--obliterate it.

***************

Exhausted at 3:00 a.m., I finally put the notebook down, called it quits and tried to go to sleep. A kaleidoscope of previously denied scenarios kept fluttering across the periphery of yesterday's mindset. I was morphing into something, but I wasn't sure exactly what. I tossed and turned during what remained of that tell-tale night, haunted by what the exercise had revealed.

The next day, following my purging, that same therapist who we fondly referred to as the Flying Nun dismissed the others and asked me to remain. I could sense a one-on-one discussion hovering in the works. I was okay with that. She didn't intimidate me. She impressed me as being the real thing. Unlike the ones who were always flapping their wings and spewing their holiness about when I attended St Joseph's High School.

This woman shared openly, the details of her own downward spiral into addiction and it resonated with me. If it could happen to a nun, I guess it could happen to anyone. It made my reality a little easier to swallow.
She threw me a cushion and motioned for me to join her on the floor. I sat down beside her, and she turned her pillow around so we were facing each other.

"Dallas, how did you feel about what you shared today?" She asked.

I began drumming my fingers on the hardwood floor. I didn't know what to say. Life, as I had always believed it to be, was coming apart at the seams. The proof was in the tear-stained journal. Yesterday's perceptions were being unraveled like a ball of yarn. The game was over. The horse was out of the gate, and I knew right then, there was no turning back.

I lifted my head and looked her dead in the eye. "Reality bites."

Claudia, that was her name, took my hand and preceded to tell me what I really didn't want to hear.

"I believe that somewhere, Dallas, and it doesn't matter when, that you have crossed that invisible line into alcoholic drinking."

I held her gaze, my lips quivering. The drumming became louder and more rapid. I knew exactly when it escalated. It was after the divorce. Luke and Jake, who were ten and eight years older than their brother, Nick, had escaped as soon as they turned eighteen. Suddenly, I saw my opportunity and seized it. I began hitting the bar scene every weekend, leaving Nick to fend for himself. He was almost fourteen, I rationalized, beyond needing a babysitter. My mom and dad lived right next door. He would be fine.

She grabbed my free hand and stilled it. "I think you should incorporate some AA meetings into your Adult Children recovery schedule.

She waited for a response, and when she didn't get it, she added, "As a matter of fact, I think AA should be your primary recovery program."

I spent the rest of the week clothed in an uncomfortable persona. I had entered the lion's den an innocent victim, and somehow, with the flip of a switch, I had become part of the pride; a threat to myself as well as to the ones I loved. It was a lot to assimilate, but with the help of the group and Claudia, an invisible weight lifted. Out of nowhere, tucked away inside the truth, a ray of hope began to materialize.

The week grounded to a halt. Everyone gathered in the community room. As we spilled tears of relief and affection, we bid our counselors and each other goodbye. Addresses and telephone numbers were exchanged, along with fervent vows to keep in touch. The photographer took a curtain call and miraculously coaxed forth the joy reflected in the promise of new beginnings.

Suitcase in hand, I stood under the weeping willow and watched as Gerri turned the bend at the bottom of the hill. A flood of emotions fought their way to the surface. Fear of what lay ahead jockeyed with the joy of a second chance; love, faith, and the rebirth of spirit washed over me. But the overriding sentiment that rustled the breeze and invited the sunshine that day was the love and gratitude I felt for my sister. The first one in our family to break the mold and enter recovery.

**************