Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Let's (Not) Drink to the New Year

In an effort to occasionally post something on my blog as I deal with my neck surgery, I have pulled some things out of my vault. The following post is an essay I wrote for a contest in 2011. In it is a scene reminiscent of Meg's visit to Casa Arboles in, "Living Through Charlie." I believe in that saying, "write what you know." The prompt for the essay contest was "I never thought I'd..."


Let’s (Not) Drink to the New Year
My friend, Roger likes to say that when I couldn’t remember who’d been eliminated on an episode of “America’s Next Top Model” I knew I’d hit bottom. While that’s not entirely true, I do know that Tivo allowed me to get away with being a blackout drinker far longer than would have been possible in the pre-DVR era.
            In my case, how I started drinking isn’t nearly as interesting as how I stopped. It rarely is. Parties in college, dates in bars, the bachelorette party, moms’ night out dinners, exotic cocktails on exotic vacations, a glass of wine while fixing the family dinner. Four glasses. A bottle. Two bottles. I think we can all agree that by the time Mommy can drink two bottles of wine every night and get up without any serious hangover symptoms to drive the carpool in the morning, that Mommy might have developed a bit of an alcohol problem. But like everything I do, my drinking was very organized. I had rules.
            I never drank before five o’clock. Other than an occasional mimosa with the girls at brunch, daytime drinking is simply unseemly. Besides, I was so efficient I could get through both bottles between five and ten thirty pm anyway. I never drank and drove. Ever. If the other middle school moms wondered why I was so anxious to drive the kids to the dance but never offered to pick them up, they never said anything. On the nights that my job as a Drama teacher had me working until ten o’clock, ten simply became the new five. With my superb organizational skills I kept the whole high functioning alcoholic thing going for quite awhile.
            I entertained a lot during my drinking years. I served red wine on Halloween, champagne on Christmas Eve, margaritas in the summer and vodka martinis in the nineties. Even now I can appreciate the beauty of the beverage as an accessory to a fine dining experience. I own thirty six pieces of hundred-dollar-a-stem-wedding-gift crystal. Even if I subtract the water goblets that’s still over two thousand dollars worth of booze vessels, right? I had to fill them with something.
            But drinking takes its toll. And keeping all of those balls in the air began to get harder. That’s where “America’s Next Top Model” comes in. My oldest daughter loved that show and I loved to watch it with her. Well, actually, I loved being with her and I loved watching “America’s Next Top Model,” but we weren’t necessarily watching it together. She tells me I discussed the show with her and I’m told I enjoyed it. I wouldn’t know. I was in an alcohol-induced blackout. The truth is I was recording the show and watching it the next morning when I was sober. That was the only way I knew which Tyra-wannabe had been sent back to the Midwest town she came from. Acknowledging what I was doing and why was my “rock-bottom.”
            Yeah, I know. My rock-bottom is lame. I should have crashed a car or started drinking on the job. I should have lost my kids, my house, my husband. Or maybe just starred in a youtube video eating a cheeseburger off the floor of a Vegas hotel room. But the damage caused by addiction isn’t always so obvious. Every day high-functioning alcoholics secretly reach that point where they just don’t think they can do it anymore. Or worse, they know if they don’t stop they’ll do it forever.
            It was October and my oldest daughter’s senior year of high school. Her college applications would be finished in December. My drama students would perform four plays for the annual “Winter Program” the last week before Christmas break. I went to the nearest rehab facility and informed them I’d be checking in on January first. I guess I thought you could make a reservation there. Like a spa. Apparently most addicts aren’t that well thought out, the “intake coordinator” wasn’t quite sure what to do with me. But once he saw that I was almost more upset about not being able to schedule my rehab than I was about admitting my alcoholism in the first place, he made a suggestion. While he couldn’t exactly save me a spot, he could recommend a psychologist who could. I saw the doctor and put “check into rehab” on my January first to-do list.
            I revealed my plan and my diagnosis to my husband and children. “The bad news is that Mommy’s an alcoholic and plans to celebrate the new year in rehab. The good news is we’re having spaghetti for dinner! Dig in!” They were quite surprised. I’m sure you’re wondering how no one else in the house noticed that I was drinking two bottles of wine every night. How could my family live with an alcoholic and not know? They didn’t know because I didn’t want them to. And like everything else I do, I covered well. It was my full time job. The perfectionist in me took great pride in being the best closeted alcoholic I could be.
            The hospital I chose to go to is in Pasadena, California. I bring that up for two reasons. The first is that you may have seen it on TV. In the years following my stay, the rehab facility and its head doctor have become quite famous. The facility itself was pretty much what you’ve seen on TV but with fewer field trips and no puking super models. We had way uglier furniture back then too. The second reason I’m mentioning the city name is that January first is a tough day to get around in Pasadena. That Rose Parade really ties things up. My husband drove me to the famous hospital to meet the famous doctor on a street that runs parallel to the parade route. The giant floats and I both headed east. The floats to a park where they would be put on display, their flowers slowly wilting away until the ugly armature underneath is revealed. And I to a hospital where I would reveal mine as well.
            I am led to my room. It was kind of like a college dorm except one of my roommates was passed out and the other had left clothes all over the floor. Actually, I guess it was exactly like a college dorm. The nurse went through my bag and took my hairdryer and my cell phone. She told me that both could be “checked out” from the desk during the approved hours. I was grateful that I would see my blow-dryer in the morning. I didn’t want to detox with bad hair. After she left, I sat and watched the clock. For the first time in many years, five o’clock would come and go and I would be sober.
            My fellow addicts and I learned a lot about each other in those twenty eight days. And other than the fact that you can’t buy heroin at BevMo, we were more alike than different. In addition to our “process groups” we enjoyed art therapy and recreation. While the young, scary court-ordered guys chose to play basketball, we lady alcoholics favored afternoons of croquet. In a bizarre twist the same nurses who confiscated a glass vase from my seventy one year old mother, happily handed out large wooden mallets, pointy metal hoops and heavy balls every day. (They may have found Mom’s flowers but fortunately my husband was craftier when he snuck my cat in for a visit. I guess a squirming, yowling cat in a box is just easier to keep under the radar.) The chardonnay drinkers usually lost the croquet games to the prescription pill addicts but, frankly, they were a lot smarter than us. The elaborate scams they’d run to feed their habits were pretty impressive and no match to gals who only had to drive to the grocery store to feed ours.
            On January 1, 2011 I will have been sober for six years. How have the nondrinking years been? Good, great, horrible, wonderful, stressful, amazing- the typical ups and downs of the years of a growing family. But I’ve been here for them. I’ve been present. I feel all of the feelings whether I like them or not. And what are we here for if not to feel all of the feelings and to be present with one another so we can share them?
            Now that I’ve had six years to watch “America’s Next Top Model” while sober, I’m not sure I was missing all that much. But I do know this- somewhere tonight at 5:00 somebody’s mom is going to go into her kitchen and pour herself a drink. Not because she wants to but because she has to. I never thought I’d become an alcoholic. No one does. But sometimes we do.       
             

3 comments:

  1. "The chardonnay drinkers usually lost the croquet games to the prescription pill addicts but, frankly, they were a lot smarter than us. "
    We are smarter,....thats how we can hide it for so long!
    They don't sell vikes at BevMo either, gotta hustle those too! 3 1/2 years sober here. It is tough, but I lived with a "functioning alcoholic parent", and it's just not pretty.I learned addictive behavior from the best! Thank-you for your share as they say. My fantasy was the Betty Ford Center! alas it was low budget Kaiser for me!

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    Replies
    1. Congratulations! You pill gals are a force to be reckoned with!

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  2. What a superbly written (and brave) post. I applaud you and respect you more than you can know.

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