My sobriety date is October 30, 2011. I picked up my second white chip that day and I am so grateful that I have not had to pick up a third...yet.
I'm not sure that there is anyone who, in the beginning, wholeheartedly wanted to attend a 12-Step program. I didn't. I knew that I should go and that I needed to go, but I didn't want to have to go. Walking through those doors and taking a seat meant total and absolute defeat. It signified an immeasurable weakness that I feared would define me like a hideous mask that I would not be able to remove- everyone would see it; everyone would know.
I also knew that I was an alcoholic. I knew that I had a problem. A problem I could not figure out how to fix or solve on my own. I wanted so badly to fix it: to control my drinking, to get a handle on it, to prove that I wasn't an alcoholic, and that I could drink normally like all the other 'normal' people. I was a survivor, why couldn't I beat this thing? I thought that I had overcome so much trauma and adversity in my life and this one thing kept getting the better of me- I could not control it. In fact, the more I tried to control my drinking the more I drank.
It was a devastating blow to my ego, to the resilient and invincible person I tried to convince myself and everyone else that I was, to have to ask for help. And it wasn't that I was just asking for help, but begging for it. I was so desperate that I was begging for help from a roomful of strangers. I thought I had reached the definitive depiction of shame and humiliation. It was unnerving; it made physically ill to have to sit there and admit, out loud, to myself and these other people that I was an alcoholic and I couldn't solve my drinking problem.
My drinking, and the lack of control over it, was embarrassing. It wasn't something I readily talked about. It wasn't something I wanted anyone to know about. I hid it as best I could as my disease progressed. There were a few people in my life who maybe suspected or sensed that I was drinking too much, but nobody other than myself knew the extent of my addiction and how destructive it had become. I had isolated in the end. I would avoid phone calls when I thought my voice might be slurred; and sometimes, I avoided calls over the guilt I felt from drinking especially if I had indulged in the afternoon. If I was caught in an inopportune moment I played it off- at least in my mind I thought I had played it off. There were a few instances I was called out- smelling of it or displaying lack of emotional or physical control from absolute drunkenness- and of course, my thought process was to vow to try harder to hide it better; to not get caught in those situations again. Isolating myself and alienating others was the best way to do that. That was the solution I came up with which my mind obviously thought was totally ingenious!
There was, however, a very small train of rational thought that told me what I was doing was sick, it wasn't healthy or normal. And that little snippet drove the fear of anyone discovering what I had become straight home. Most of the people who were close to me were not alcoholics. Even though I come from a long line of drinkers, the people I associated with did not have problems and the ones that did I kept far away- I wanted nothing to do with anyone I viewed as an alcoholic. I don't think that was as much a double standard as it was the fact that I didn't want my own disease mirrored back at me and I didn't want there to be any possibility of being affiliated with drunks . But in doing this, I surrounded myself with people who I didn't think would understand what I was going through or what was happening to me. I had all of these devastatingly negative fears of how they would judge me, what they would think of me, and what they would say about me if they found out. I was so afraid that people wouldn't like me once they realized I wasn't the person I had portrayed myself to be: the survivor, the fighter, the one who had it all together. Privately, I was so disappointed in myself, I was so full of shame and self-hate. I didn't want people to see that part of me- to expose myself like that, to be that vulnerable was unacceptable. I couldn't see that my drinking had taken me to a place of indescribable aloneness- it was dark and bleak and empty. I had no one to honestly talk to about the things that were eating me up inside. I had no one with whom I could openly relate or communicate the overwhelming sense of misery that had enveloped my entire existence.
It has only been through the meetings that I attend that I have met other people that do understand and that I can relate to and communicate with. I cannot begin to express how comforting it is to hear another person tell my story. To be in a place that feels safe around people that understand me is very important to my recovery. It is in these meetings that I have discovered that I am not alone- there are people there who understand and care, they are not there to judge or condemn. In sharing their experiences, they helped me find the courage and trust I needed to share my own experiences. I have not only found hope in the rooms, but I have discovered a better way of life, too. I am so thankful to be where I am right now and I am so grateful that I don't have to live the life I used to live.
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