Shake the Disease – Can I Graduate? February 3, 2010
Posted by Coco in Life.Tags: alcoholism, I'm Your Huckleberry, recovery, Shake The Disease
21 comments
I realized something yesterday morning. Something besides the fact that Little Bit tore off part of one of her claws (ew. that actually sounds worse than it is)and bled all over the kitchen floor in tiny, red paw prints that looked like some kind of gruesome dance step guide, that is.*
*Don’t feel sorry for her. She never made a peep and has not slowed down one iota. When I tried to administer first aid, she clawed me most ungratefully, then bit my nose AGAIN. The bleeding has stopped. Hers and mine. All is as normal.
I’ve been sober for over 60 days. I’m not much of a date counter normally (in fact, I continually forget my mother’s birth year and I am still unsure how old she is, except I vaguely recall that she was around 23 when she had me), but as I was wiping up the paw prints it occurred to me that I wasn’t dizzy or headachey…and hadn’t been for some time now. My stomach wasn’t lurching from side to side and I had no need to guzzle a gallon of water before breakfast just to unglue my tongue from the roof of my mouth. The lack of at least a slight hangover was no longer such a rare occurrence.
It was not a spectacular epiphany where the heavens opened up and a choir sang. It was just a quiet moment where I was grumbling to myself about the floor and I suddenly recognized that I was getting used to being sober. It felt pretty good, actually.
I tucked that feeling in my pocket to take out and look over later, when a bad day might come along.
Last night was my final session with my group. We don’t do a lot of hoopla, but graduates get a certificate and the group takes a turn saying nice things about you. Oddly enough, that was one of the hardest parts. I’ve spent the majority of my life thinking that most other people barely notice me, that I don’t make much of an impression; my sense of me is warped by the reflection of the funhouse mirror in my head. So compliments make me feel surprised and sometimes, anxious. Like if you only knew what a fraud I am, I’m not the person you’re describing. That intense self-deprecation is ungracious and wretched, and I am doing my best to learn to accept those kind observations and enjoy them, enjoy that someone else sees something unique and charming in me and trying to do the same for myself.
See, I never really drank or anything to feel good. I did it to feel like anyone but myself, and later, to feel nothing. I’ve always felt too much; I’m the worrier, the let me ease your burdener, the fixer, the please-like-me-er. The stray mutt. It’s one consequence of being thrust (as a child) into the parent role your own parent is supposed to be managing.
It’s not easy to unlearn almost 40 years of that shit overnight. I forced myself not to be glib as I listened to my group talk to me, wish me well, tell me the things they saw in me. Empathy. Kindness. Insight. Twisted humor. It was funny and sweet and emotional. I swallowed hard and smiled and said thank you.
Baby steps.
Baby steps.
Part of my program includes some one-on one sessions with a therapist. J is one of those therapists who genuinely gives a good name to the profession. She is an empathetic listener, gently leading me into the shadowland where I have shut away the pains of my past.
Addiction has been a part of me for so long, a bitchy not-a-friend I neither liked nor respected, but couldn’t seem to shake completely. I never really connected the dots on all of it, because I am super great at seeing my life clearly. And by super great I mean piss-poor. J is helping me (re)discover it, deal with it, very slowly.
I talked to her about Lisa. From time to time, some of you still ask me if I’m ever going to post Part 8. Oh, God. I have tried a thousand times. You already know it did not end happily, right? Lisa died at the end of a needle almost before I could blink. Accidental, of course it was accidental, but it doesn’t matter in the end.
When I began writing the series about Lisa, I started dreaming about her. I woke up crying a lot. Believe it or not, I hadn’t clearly and consciously remembered Lisa until the moment that first sentence of the first post got typed out. Before I talked to J about her, I hadn’t spoken her name aloud in…eighteen years?
I talked to her about Pres, who was the second person I cared about that I lost to addiction. My roommate, my friend, the only one I had sometimes to talk me down from the awfulness my ex routinely and cheerfully put me through. Pres was the periennial nice guy. So smart and kind. He and I went out one Saturday to cheer me up after a particularly vicious fight between me and G. We went dancing, got home with the dawn, went to bed. He never got up again. He breathed in some cyanide gas to escape his crushing gambling addiction and debts of thousands and thousands owed to illegal bookies. I held his six and a half foot father in the cluttered kitchen of the house we’d all shared while he begged me to tell him why. I had no answers for him then. I still don’t.
I sat in that comfortable chair yesterday and I was back there, the days they both died. I could see myself.
I remembered it was summer when we buried Lisa, but I was so cold. I couldn’t feel my fingers or my feet. I never cried, not really, though a few acid tears slipped from my eyes and I swore my body was made of spun glass, set to shatter into glittering dust at any moment…I felt like I couldn’t grieve or I would have never been able to come back. It was like being outside myself.
I remembered the feel of the battered wooden table under my arms when the police came to take Pres away and question us all. No tears at all that time, just a kind of frozen horror; that being outside of me again.
I am ruthless in supressing my own pain. I can stuff it so far down that it almost seems like it happened to someone else. Except when it got to be too much, I self-medicated until it went away. The problem is, I went with it. Part of my staying sober is going to involve properly grieving for the past. I don’t think I have to tell you how much that is sucking right now.
Baby steps.
I wrote it out here not to make you feel sorry for me, but to remember them. To honor them. To say goodbye. It’s not a fucking picnic, trust me. Every bit of guilt and shame and crushing, shocking pain that has been throwing itself against the fences of my soul for almost my entire adult life rushes back in on me. But every time I vomit up a little bit of it, it gets the tiniest bit easier to breathe.
Dear Lisa, I miss you so.
Dear Pres, I wish I had known.
My sobriety is newly hatched, still so fragile, vulnerable. I hold on to it with both hands, keeping it close while we both stumble into this new life without my little bottle of Lethe. Perhaps someday, I will be able to soar with it.
Baby steps.
Shake The Disease, Weeks 6 (Redux), 7, and 8 – I Don’t Even Play An Instrument. January 26, 2010
Posted by Coco in Life.Tags: Shake The Disease
18 comments
Remember in Groundhog Day when Phil decides that he is going to win over the object of his affections, Rita, by becoming her “perfect” man? One of her qualifiers was that Mr. Perfect had to play an instrument. Phil finds the local piano teacher and gives her a thousand dollars to begin his lessons immediately. Of course, he winds up being a little bit better each day, even though to the teacher, it’s always his first lesson. Eventually, Phil becomes a talented jazz pianist and wows everyone at the Groundhog shindig, including the hapless Rita, who is none the wiser about Phil’s secret piano instruction.
When Dr. B came to talk to us a few weeks ago, he used a metaphor that reminded me of that part of the movie: if you were to practice the piano every day, 8 hours a day, in a year, you’d probably be pretty good at it. However, if you were to try and learn a new instrument every week for a year, including the piano, you might get some of the basics down, but you’re not going to be playing Carnegie Hall anytime soon.
As alcoholics, we are juggling jobs, families, school, daycare, soccer practice, dentist appointments, the dog’s shots, car troubles, mortgages, AND our disease. We’re trying to play a new instrument, sometimes multiple instruments, in the limited time we have in each day.
Addiction has only one thing to do. It plays the piano. It wants what it wants, and it has nothing but time to hone its craft in order to get it.
This really resonates with me, as I become a short-timer in my program and I am mulling over the first days of the rest of my life. I understand I have a disease. I am an alcoholic. My disease has been pushed back by support and treatment, and I feel clearer, better, more present and more satisfied with life. But the disease itself is still playing the piano. I get that.
There’s still the one thing I feel strongly about, though. I just don’t think AA is for me. I’ve tried very hard to be open minded about that program, and again, I don’t mean to take away from people who have found it to be their stepping stone to success, but the things that give me an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach are not going away.
AA claims that they are open and welcome to anyone who wants to stop drinking. However, in my opinion, the steps themselves are only thinly veiled Christian dogma. You can “Higher Power” and “God as you understand Him” me all you want, but when you are closing meetings with obvious Christian prayers (The Lord’s Prayer, to be precise. Not ever chanted by Buddhists. Sorry.), you are a Christian organization. Period. In itself, this would not be so troubling to me except for that insistence that AA is completely non-denominational and inclusive. Uh, no.
Personally, I have been feeling more and more irritated by the constant pressure, either subtle or overt, to join AA. “Ninety Meetings in Ninety Days!”, “Get a sponsor!”, “How many meetings did you attend this week?”, “Are you working the steps?”, “If you haven’t found a meeting you feel comfortable with by now, shame on you!” When is it enough?
Everyone all at once now: “You aren’t being honest with yourself”, “You’re in denial”, “That’s your disease talking”, “You’re not working your recovery”, “You’re already heading for a relapse”, etc., etc., etc. ad nauseum.
I have been attending group 3 hours a day, 3 days a week, for 8 weeks. It is work I have been glad to do, but it is work. I also have a full-time job, a 4-year-old, a husband, a house, a crazy cat, a geriatric cat with glandular issues, a teenage daughter struggling with being an adoptee and a teen and outside the godawful cookie-cutter ideal of feminine beauty, a mother who thinks she can relive our lives and somehow have the Hallmark moment-style mother-daughter relationship she now wishes she’d focused on from when I was a kid, and 6 fish who regularly try to commit suicide. I’m playing the entire reed section here. When, exactly, does AA propose I find the time to attend these 90 additional meetings? Or three to five meetings a week for the next two years? Ten years? Forever? Uh-huh.
“Sobriety comes first!” I am rebuked, as if I am a naughty child who keeps sneaking a favorite cookie before dinner, “Nothing is more important than that!”
You know, I am absolutely convinced that sobriety is vital to me and my health, both emotional and physical. I have admitted I have a disease, a medical condition, an addiction. As I mentioned before, I’m already planning to attend aftercare meetings (once a week, an hour and a half meetings) at Solutions. I’ve started using self-hypnosis techniques again. I am a member of an online support group. I have support from friends and family.
Yet I am supposed to blindly accept that without AA meetings ON TOP OF whatever else I am doing to support my recovery, I am doomed to failure. I am dishonest, I am looking for a way to drink and excuse it all away, I am not working a plan. Look, I’m all for calling bullshit on a bullshitter, but opening your meetings with “alcoholics who do not attend AA/follow the AA program are fundamentally incapable of being honest” does not a warm, fuzzy feeling make. And PLEASE do not tell me you didn’t hear that, or that wasn’t what the opening meant, or you took it wrong, or you just need to try out every meeting in the greater metro area until (hopefully) you find one that doesn’t make you want to cry miserably in despair when you leave. I heard what I heard. I’m an alcoholic, not an imbecile.
If I was diabetic (a favorite comparison to addiction in treatment, and in all fairness, one I agree with), no one (except possibly Pat Robertson, who is quite obviously out of his friggin’ gourd) would tell me it was a good idea to abandon insulin therapy, diet modifications, and blood sugar monitoring in favor of attending church and turning my diabetes over to God. So why are alcoholics told over and over and over that the only way to manage our disease is to do just that?
There is no cure for alcoholism. There is also no cure for diabetes. Hell, most cancers are said to be “in remission” rather than “cured”, and survivors are carefully monitored for the rest of their lives. However, they are NOT told that their cancer will come back and kill them if they don’t call a fellow survivor once a day and aren’t reading The Big Book Of Things That Are Carcinogens. If I have a disease, then I feel peer support is PART of managing my recovery, not the sum total of it. A chronic condition is something I have to be careful of, mindful of. I must respect its ability to come back upon me and I do…but I will not live my life isolated from everything but my disease. I find it depressing to think that I can only ever face the world cloaked by other addicts.
It IS comforting to find a group of people to whom addiction is old hat, and none of your stories will shock them. I have enjoyed meeting people with similar life experiences to me in group and I have tried to work very hard at making real changes. What is not comforting or acceptable or workable to me is to trade in constant drinking for constant meetings, putting my son and my husband and my life after them. I can’t help but wonder – how much of a change would that really be?
The disease can practice piano from here to eternity – I’m not about to engage in that with it. Instead, I will quietly hum my way through my recovery, seeking support where I need it, trying to be honest and careful, helping others where I can, and leaving the trumpet to those who need and appreciate it.
Another Hard-Hitting Aunt Becky Interview January 14, 2010
Posted by Coco in Life.Tags: Aunt Becky's Band of Merry Pranksters
17 comments
Today I am humping Aunt Becky’s leg even more than I normally do because she is giving away a $50 Amazon Gift Card in honor of realizing her dream of becoming Aunt Becky, Incorporated. *wipes away tear* My little girl is all grown up now!
Anyway, go visit my lovely Becky at her blog and enter the giveaway so my entry can clearly outshine yours we can all hold hands and sing songs together! There are even 3 ways to enter and NONE of them involve donkey butts. Woo!
Without further ado, here is my entry for Part III of the contest:
1) Dave and I have a long-standing feud over cheese in a can. He thinks it’s food of The Gods while I think it’s probably Of The Devil. Your take?
Everyone knows that Velveeta is the food of the Gods, Daver. If you worship at the altar of Eazy-Cheez we will be forced to burn you as a heretic.
2) Is there any way you can think of to make the elder Gosselins go away? I AM ALL EARS.
I vote for nuclear weapons, but I suspect that even that won’t get rid of Jon. He must be a cockroach. In fact, after the world ends, that’s what will be left. Annoying hair-plugged cockroaches wearing teeny Ed Hardy t-shirts and ignoring their offspring in favor of nubile teenage cockroach girls.
3) Who is your ridiculous “I can’t admit this to anyone in polite company lest I be banned from life” crush?
I have a HUGE crush on “The Rock”. Like I will sit through “The Scorpion King” over and OVER huge.
I used to think John Cena was wicked hot before I learned he’s a wanna-be rapper with the personality of a day-old used maxipad. That’s a dealbreaker for me even if we never actually never talked.
4) If you could fuck it all and pursue your dream (assuming, of course, you were going to be GOOD at it), what would that dream be?
I’d want to write and direct those Saturday Premier Movies for the SyFy Channel. My life would revolve around zombies, rubber dinosaurs, and sludge monsters. Bliss!
5) They say “living well is the best revenge.” I think they are wrong. Do you?
I suppose that depends on how well I’m living. Because I am all about personal sacrifice, I’m willing to discover exactly how much revenge can be had by living well through spending the next, say, forty years of my life alternating time between a private island with glorious sugar-sand beaches and the kind of “cottage” that has different climates, and an obscenely expensive ranch in Montana, complete with a River Running Through It, a gigantic (yet eco-friendly, because I love the earth too) log cabin, and several dozen glossy-coated steeds. With a matching cowboy to wrangle them for me. WHAT? I am doing this for RESEARCH, people. This is WORK, here.
6) What is the most humiliation you’ve experienced in public that you’d be willing to admit to The Internet?
Let me just look through the files. *shuffling paper*
Huh. You know, I generally privately humiliate myself. However, I did get so drunk at my first (and only) Sorority Formal in college that I spent the entire after-party throwing up violently and then I slept in the hotel room bathtub. Thank God no one else was sober enough to get any pictures.
7) Are you honest with The Internet? Like, if I came over to your house tonight (heh)(I’m coming over, yo)(heh) would I be surprised at who I found?
I think you’d find me pretty much as you imagined me. Unless you imagined me looking like Xena, Warrior Princess because then you will be very disappointed.
8 ) If you could have one talent that you don’t currently possess, what would it be?
Singing. I sing like a dying water buffalo.
9) There’s not always room for Jello. Is there?
Jello is made from the boiled hooves and bones of dead animals. So the answer, obviously, is Jello? HELL NO!
10) What’s your guiltiest of the guilty pleasures?
I hesitate to name them guilty pleasures, because I broadcast my love loud and proud, but I adore romance novels about the baddest of the bads. Fallen Angels. Demons. Vampires. Were-anythings. Evil But Charming Fae. You name it, I read it and keep it snuggled close to my heart at night. My latest sinful delights? Paranormal Scottish Highlander novels. Yes. Check out Karen Moning & Donna Grant’s bad, bad, bad boys. Instant panty pudding. Seriously. Nom nom nom.
However, I have to draw the line at “Twilight” and all its incarnations. I mean, props to Stephenie Meyer and everything, because she obviously hit a nerve with her demographic, but I barely made it through book 1. This is what you do with eternity, Cullen Clan, et al? You re-live High School Biology over..and over…and OVER? Dudes. Come up with a slightly more imaginative plan. And WHAT is with the baseball?! BASEBALL? No. No, no, NO. Vampires bite. They seduce you. They dangle the forbidden in front of you until you are more than willing to embrace the darkness and they are so very, very happy to give it to you.
They do not pack up the sparkly-skinned family on a Sunday afternoon for some bizarre wimpy-vamp version of Field of Dreams. Sorry.
P.S. I just realized that I have invited several members of my group to visit my blog, including our therapist, who are all probably still laboring under the delusion that I am sensitive, quiet, introspective and mature…and THIS is the first post of mine they will likely read…containing references to panty pudding and leg humping. I win at life! So this might be my new answer to the “public humiliation” question above. Or not. Because personally, I still think any day I talk about humping Aunt Becky’s leg (theoretically) is a day worth getting out of bed for.
*waves* Hi guys! Welcome!
Um.
I hope this doesn’t make group all awkward now.
Helpless January 13, 2010
Posted by Coco in Life.Tags: Disaster, earthquake, Haiti
4 comments
In lieu of a smart-alecky post I had planned on, I think it is better, right now, for me to simply offer my thoughts and prayers for all the victims of the Haiti earthquake.
Tomorrow, I may appear outwardly blithe. But my heart will ache for those who have lost their entire world, in a place already facing some of the worst poverty anywhere on earth. Along with that, I will offer a donation to as many organizations I can to help those affected.
For information on what you can do to help, CNN has a comprehensive list here.
My Life, In One Act January 8, 2010
Posted by Coco in Life.Tags: The Wild Badger Chronicles
15 comments
SCENE: Kitchen, early evening. MOM, BADGER and LITTLE BIT are all stage left. BADGER is taunting LITTLE BIT with a toy.
Mom (calmly): Badger, please do not do that to the kitten.
Badger: *whacks Little Bit in the face with his Buzz Lightyear action figure* What?
Little Bit: *attacks Badger’s arm like a Tasmanian Devil in much-deserved retaliation*
Badger: WAHHHHHH! KITTY BITE ME! *tosses kitten four feet across the tile floor*
Mom (less calm now): Badger! What have I told you about throwing the cat?!
Badger: *crickets*
Mom (grinding teeth together): Go. Play. Somewhere. Else.
Badger: WAHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhh! (screeching trails off as he sees the look in Mom’s eye and retreats, wisely deciding discretion is the better part of valor for now)
Badger wanders to the playroom and begins crashing Buzz into Thomas the Tank Engine. Simulated explosion noises are heard. All seems well, unless you’re Buzz or Thomas. Approximately ten minutes pass. Little Bit is eating her food peacefully in the kitchen. Mom is in the family room sifting through the wreckage as she puts Christmas things away, looking for survivors. Suddenly:
Little Bit: EeeeeeeeYOOOOWwwwLLLLLL!
Mom sprints back to the kitchen. Badger has Little Bit in a death grip and is squeezing her until her little eyes bug out.
Mom (completely losing her shit): BADGER! PUT THE GOD DAMN CAT DOWN NOW!
Badger (bursts into tears): I AM putting the GOD DAMN CAT down! *drops Little Bit*
Mom looks stunned for a moment, struggles with emotions. Smothering laughter, goes to comfort Badger.
Mom: I’m sorry I yelled. You don’t say those words, OK? Mommy shouldn’t have said that either.
Badger: You go in time out, Mommy!
Oh, if only Mommy could.
Shake The Disease, Weeks 4, 5, and 6 – Have You Tried NOT Being a Mutant? *OR* Nobody Panic But I Am Turning Into Doc Holliday January 6, 2010
Posted by Coco in Life.Tags: I'm Your Huckleberry, Shake The Disease
28 comments
Never let it be said that I am an underachiever. The week before Christmas I caught a cold. It seemed to be going away after a few days and, aside from a random hack and a perennially stuffed nose, I didn’t think much of it. But I didn’t seem to be getting any better, and in fact, I began to suffer migraines that made me vomit and sob in despair, not necessarily in that order, as well as the kind of cough generally reserved for lifetime four-pack-a-day smokers with only one lung.
If you’ve been reading here or known me at all for any length of time, you’re already aware of two things about me: 1) I am atrociously stubborn and 2) I hate going to the doctor even when it’s glaringly apparent that Something Wicked This Way Comes. I have ignored pneumonia, an ovarian cyst the size of a grapefruit that burst (causing bleeding into my abdomen), a purple egg on my foot, alarming popping and grinding sounds in that same foot, and a host of other illnesses and complaints that would send many others screaming to the ER or at least to their nearest Urgent Care within a few days.
Much like my stoic ancestors (I’m guessing they were stoic, I really have no idea) I prefer to hold out until I look and sound like this:
I'm not just including this because I crush on Val Kilmer. Really.
So, after a couple weeks as The Phlegm Creature with crippling head pain that made me seriously consider drilling a hole in my skull a time or two, I finally broke down and went to Quick Care. It turns out I have bronchitis AND a sinus infection. No half-measures for me!
Therefore, I have sucked MAJOR at visiting your blogs, commenting on your absorbing and delightful entries, and replying to comments here, including my many new friends who have dropped by to leave me encouraging words. However, once the antibiotics kick in, I will be back to my old self, haunting your blogs, complimenting you, My Internet, on your witty repartee, and posting about mindless drivel.
All that notwithstanding, I am proud to say that I had still been faithfully attending my group except that one class when I first got sick and I didn’t think my fellow group members would appreciate my germy self infecting all the non-porous surfaces. And except this week, when I truly thought I might have pneumonia again. I have been dragging ass so bad I have road rash on my buttocks. Monday night I left the pharmacy in tears WITHOUT my meds and went home to soak in a scalding bath until my chest opened up enough to allow me to sob until I could crawl into bed. Today I feel only slightly less dead.
Yeah, yeah. The doctor visit was long overdue. I KNOW.
But anyway, as I make it past the halfway mark in treatment, I am learning more and more about myself and about addiction. I’m opening up a little more, although it is difficult for me. Despite the deluge of personal information I frequently drown you all in, I’m not particularly open IRL and I panic when I am forced to interact with people I don’t know well. I have a social phobia that rivals Greta Garbo’s.
How ironic that one of the suggestions most often given to those of us in early recovery is to attend 90 AA meetings in 90 days AND GET A NEW PHONE NUMBER at EVERY meeting. *faints* As if that’s not bad enough to make a borderline agoraphobic break out in hives, we are told we must actually CALL these strangers. *faints again* Good. God. I don’t even call my mother once a week.
Aside from my natural reticence, I have some other resistance to AA and some of the “steps”. I know these programs and ideals work for others and work well, and I offer my most sincere congratulations and respect to those who undertake them. However, I do take issue with the idea that recovery from addiction is only possible if one is heavily invested in 12-step groups, now and forever. One-size-fits-all addiction recovery doesn’t make sense to me any more than one-size-fits-all cancer treatment does.
While I haven’t written off AA altogether, and plan on attending at least a few meetings just to see if my outlook on it changes, I’m also looking into other options to assist me in my recovery and maintaining my sobriety, such as self-hypnosis, acupuncture, yoga, meditation, and private therapy. I have friends who have offered their ears and phone numbers as my support network. Once active treatment ends in a few weeks, I am already committed to attending the weekly aftercare programs at Solutions. Whether or not AA turns out to be a part of my recovery, I feel like I am working a recovery plan, and am participating in my treatment.
On that note, last week we had a noted addiction specialist visit our group to conduct a session on the medical and physiological aspects of addiction, with an emphasis on alcoholism. If you are not an addict, or someone who is versed in how addiction works, it can be almost impossible to understand how addicts can continue to use and abuse their drug of choice to the detriment of almost everything else in their lives. “Why don’t you just stop?” and “Have you tried not drinking?” are common questions tossed our way, as well as the lingering notions that addiction is a personal failing, a choice, or a moral issue.
Make no mistake – no one wakes up one morning and says, “I would really like to lose my job, home, and/or family in favor of vodka this year. Must put on my to-do list.” Even as an alcoholic myself, I had (and still have, at times) plenty of self-loathing to go around. Family history, lots of knowledge about addiction in general and still I was literally drinking my dinner, night after night. What the hell was wrong with me?
After hearing Dr. B talk, I came away with much more of a conviction than ever that alcoholism (and addiction in general) is genetically inheritable, it is a medical disease, and it is physiologically driven. Did you know that there are studies that show that, in the brain of an alcoholic, alcohol is broken down differently than in the brains of non-alcoholics? That alcohol is turned into a derivative of morphine, THIQ, that is a hundred times more addictive than morphine, and is physically addictive the first time one is exposed to it?* I didn’t.
Other interesting things I learned included: addiction specialists have isolated the place on the 11th chromosome that predisposes someone to become an alcoholic/addict.* The cycle of addiction actually creates small psychotic episodes in the brain that prevent the alcoholic or addict from being able to see their own behavior rationally, because addiction rests in the mid brain, and the frontal lobe is where we process logical thinking.* The urge to use travels in our minds, then, 7 times faster than we (addicts) can consciously come up with reasons why it’s a bad idea.* I learned that the dopamine receptors in my brain don’t work like the dopamine receptors in your brain, so I’d been medicating them with alcohol to get the same kind of chemical reward you do just by taking pleasure in everyday things.*
I learned that I could have had a seizure by just quitting cold turkey. I don’t regret doing so, but thank God, that didn’t happen. Especially while I was home alone with Badger.
For the alcoholic or addict, there is no such thing as just stopping.
There is, however, treatment, recovery, and sobriety. There is re-training my brain to live sober. There is being sober long enough to get my brain cleaned up and begin, like you, to enjoy the things I used to overlook so easily in search of an artificial feeling that was actually slowly poisoning me. There is accepting that being sober doesn’t mean life is perfect, tra-la-la, and nothing bad will ever happen, but trusting that we can and will face those things without the need for our crutch.
It seems to me, in the last month or so, that my son has been laughing a lot more. I wonder, is he actually happier, or am I just more aware of his laugh, of the way his voice lilts and fills with crackling joy as he begs for more singing, more playing, more reading, more hugs?
Either way, I’ll take these moments as my rewards.
*Note: I didn’t write all this shit down, so I’m reciting from memory here. Any errors are purely my own.
Cat Scratch Fever December 28, 2009
Posted by Coco in Life.Tags: The Crazy Cat Lady Training Program
14 comments
I am a cat person.
I grew up with dogs, but as cute as puppies are, and as lovable as I find many dogs (except dogs that bark incessantly) (or dogs that eat people), I belong firmly in the Cat Camp and I have since I moved out on my own. I am, indeed, probably going to end up becoming a Crazy Cat Lady.
Dogs, despite their endearing wiggly bodies and waggly tails and large, melting eyes, tend to be a bit too much for my tastes. They bark. They jump. They track mud. They eat their own poo and then want to lick your face. They need walkies and anal gland squeezing (!!!!) and more walkies and they crap all over the yard and I hate scooping dog crap worse than I hate “High School Musical” in all its incarnations. Which is a lot.
Before my dog-loving friends (or cat-hating trolls, whichever) hasten to remind me that cats have their own issues, rest assured I know this. I’ve stepped on juicy vomit balls at 3 am. I’ve had to all but cauterize cat scratches that became infected. I’ve dealt with hairballs and shredded belongings, cat hair all over my newly dry-cleaned black pants, and incessant meowing at godforsaken hours of the night. I’ve dug more cat crap out of the litterbox than Captain Jack Sparrow has dug stashes of rum out of the Carribean. I know. But, because I am a Cat Person, I overlook them the same way Dog People overlook the poo breath face licks.
As usual, I promise I’m going somewhere with this.
Some of you know I lost poor Diva earlier this fall, and although she was ready to go, I was heartbroken and lonely. Plus, Mama had been a bit off her feed with no one to boss around. So I started looking around for a new addition to our Crazy Cat family.
I had planned on hitting a shelter, because, duh. But then the husband knew a lady who had taken in a lovely little stray and she couldn’t keep it and so we were going to take her home. Except she ran away the day she was supposed to come home. We looked for hours. I was extremely distressed, and even though I hadn’t even met her yet, I made flyers and posted an ad on Craigslist…yes, even though much of what one finds on Craigslist is slightly unsettling at best, and downright SyFy Saturday Premier Movie at worst, and the odds of someone sane, honest, and kind actually finding my almost-kitty and returning her to me via Craigslist were about as good as Khloe Kardashian’s odds of becoming a pediatric brain surgeon within the next twelve months. Nevertheless, a snowball’s chance in hell is still a chance, right?
So of course while I’m there, the ad jumped out at me: “Sweet kitty free to good home”. That is like a siren song to Crazy Cat Ladies. Then I saw the little wee kitten face peering mournfully out of the pictures and I called. Just to see. Was she still available? Yes she was, and the girl I talked to actually sounded lucid enough that I was relatively convinced she wasn’t luring me to my doom at the hands of any inbred cannibal relatives hiding in her attic. I told my husband that I was going to see a kitten, and he already knew that by “see her”, I really meant “I am going to be coming home with another kitty today” . Bless his heart. (I did make sure to give him the address, just in case I was wrong about the attic-dwelling cannibals.)
When I got to the reassuringly normal townhome where the free kitty currently resided, I was greeted by a tiny tabby cat who was barely bigger than my hand, though I was assured she was about ten weeks old. The people who had rescued her (who turned out to be a very nice young couple with a cute baby and absolutely no cannibals as far as I could tell) said she’d been wandering alone at only a few weeks old, obviously having lost her mommy and any littermates way too early. They’d actually been hand-feeding her with baby formula, but they were at their limit with pets space-and-budget-wise and couldn’t keep her. Of course that broke my heart and of course there was no way I would have left her even if I hadn’t already decided she would come home with me the second I saw her picture.
Thus, the newly-christened Little Bit joined our family early in October. Though likely saved by the emergency TLC adminstered by her rescuers, she was runty and a bit bedraggled, with runny eyes and a persistent sneezing problem that I knew signaled a respiratory infection, but she was also a scrapper. After a two hundred dollar introductory vet visit to treat the URI, and a couple months’ worth of some heavy-duty eating, she has gone from puny and scraggly to a sleek, shiny little ocelot with a beautiful tawny coat and topaz eyes.
Of course, I would not be a TRUE Crazy Cat Lady unless I attracted Crazy Cats, and Little Bit is fulfilling her destiny spectacularly.
She bothers poor Mama to death, springing on her at inopportune moments and elicting many annoyed hisses and growls from our little old lady. It’s the feline equivalent of “You kids get off my lawn!”, I think.
She is a dedicated hater of all things Toe and Foot, launching stealth attacks in the wee hours of the morning whereupon she will attach herself securely to one’s foot and gnaw frantically on any exposed piggies or ankles like a zombie gnaws on teenage skulls. Word to the wise – wear your slippers, houseguests. She’s got teeth like tiny hypodermic needles.
This next one’s actually cute, and very understandable, but still indicative of OCCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Cat Disorder) – Little Bit has designated two of Badger’s stuffed animals as her surrogate “mothers”, nursing on their bedraggled coats as she purrs and kneads them. She is, of course, long since weaned, but obviously has an oral fixation from losing her mama at such a tender age, and our vet said it’s possible she will nurse on her monkey and bear for the rest of her life.
She also hogs the electric throw blanket downstairs, sleeps under the covers until she decides to bite my nose at 2 AM, is trying desperately to break into the fish tank, and hides the tie to my robe – apparently, it strongly resembles prey, and she must kill it over and over.
And of course, in the time-honored tradition of Crazy Cats everywhere, she has mastered the art of Christmas Tree Deconstruction of the most advanced caliber, and was happily attacking ornaments Christmas morning.
All of these things have done nothing but endear her to our little clan, particularly Badger, who finally seems to have found a friend who can give as well as she gets in the “love hurts” department. Of course, it’s hard to be angry for long at a little creature who defied the odds and lies purring in my lap while she hogs the warm blanket, belly-up and kicking her little dusky paws with dreams of ornaments as yet unbroken.
At Casa Coco, there’s always room for a little one.
Even if she is crazy.
An Eternity In the Blink of An Eye December 21, 2009
Posted by Coco in Life.Tags: Christmas, The Wild Badger Chronicles
11 comments
We had Badger’s 4th birthday party this weekend. He is not quite 4 yet, of course, my just-past-Christmas-almost-New Year’s-baby, but the cake was made (slightly lopsided but with love by Mom, as is the tradition at least until homemade cakes become tatamount to Intolerable Geekery), the candles lit and the birthday song sung. Bittersweet moments.
My only son. My very last baby. I look and look for that baby, the one I carried and fretted over all during pregnancy, the soft, downy-haired creature who felt like a sack of feathers in my eager arms, the deceptively cherubic infant who alternately clung to me and needed my every waking moment, then seemed determined to scare me out of ten years of my life every five minutes…but that baby exists only in photographs and memories now. He has been somehow replaced by my big boy, who rode Peanut the pony (birthday party pony rides – my childhood dream come true! – if I wasn’t too damn big I would SO have been on that pony) after only a brief bout of apprehension, who played outside with the other eight screaming hoydens for hours, who was then able to host the 3 neighbor children (with no screaming or crying by any of the parties – a major feat even for some adults I know) long after the other guests had gone home. The husband and I exchanged bemused glances as the oldest girl attempted to teach Badger the nuances of Connect Four and was utterly patient with him when he only wanted to put all the black checkers in, followed by all the red ones, over and over. Meanwhile, the middle girl and their little brother played another game. Our son had friends over. With no other parents present. It totally felt like we were, you know, parents or something. Yeah. WEIRD.
He is totally excited about Santa Claus, because he really gets it this year, and it makes me so very happy that he is happy. I know lots of people choose not to tell the Santa story even if they do celebrate Christmas, for whatever reason. I respect that, but to me, having Santa to believe in was part and parcel of the magic of the season, and I am choosing to share that with my child, too. There will be plenty of time for him to understand that the world can be a cruel and unforgiving place, especially to children, the most vulnerable of the its citizens. Plenty of time to know that to many children Santa is a fairy tale that never comes true. In the meantime, I fill his head with visions of sugarplums, and I do what I can to ensure that at least a few other kids’ holiday dreams come true, talking to him in a general way about why we give even if he can’t fully comprehend it just yet. He pats my hair and leans against me as I pack gifts in a box to send away. “Fa la fa fa fa, Santa holly!” he sings, gleefully mixing words and verses as he unwinds 75 yards of ribbon up and down the stairs, and the new kitten, who seems fated to be as crazy as all our other pets, climbs the Christmas tree and knocks ornaments about willy-nilly, seeming offended by their very presence on any branch she can reach.
I grab every second I can, even as the brightness of them dims the very instant that the moment is over, and I clutch it tight. Too soon, too soon, there will be a tenth Christmas, and an eighteenth, and then one day, an emptier house where there used to be childish laughter, because my little boy has grown up and gone skiing with his girlfriend for the holidays.
It seems melancholy, but it’s not, not really, because that empty-ish house will be the sign that we have done our job well as parents. Our baby will have gone, but with love and some luck, a man with compassion, strength, and integrity will someday return to it, holding another bundle that will feel impossibly small to me, as he kisses my cheek and says “Merry Christmas, Grandma. Say hello to your grandbaby.”
It seems like that day will never come, but it always does, on the quietest rush of wings.
Happy Birthday, Badger. Mommy loves you now and always.
Shake the Disease, Weeks 2 & 3 – Merry and Bright December 16, 2009
Posted by Coco in Life.Tags: alcoholism, Christmas, Hark! Some Guy Named Harold Angel is Going To Sing, recovery, Shake The Disease, treatment
19 comments
Last week in group we talked about depression and the holidays. I am not someone who gets the holiday blues, generally speaking. I happen to love Christmas and my house looks like a Ralph Jones store threw up on it. Winter is my time of year. Lately it has been cold and blustery and I am in HEAVEN. I bake, I put on the fireplace, I drink hot chocolate. I wear ugly fuzzy socks and baggy pajamas and I watch those deliciously awful Hallmark Channel holiday movies.
I’m both humbled and proud to say I’ve been sober now for 24 days. The significance of that number also being the date of Christmas Eve seems somehow mystical, though my inner skeptic keeps me doubting the whole holy trinity most of the rest of the year, during Christmas, I am somehow more than able to throw myself into the notion of Behold, I Bring You Tidings of Great Joy.
Great Joy. Those are words I haven’t applied to myself in a long time.
This year, I have great joy.
I am giving my son a sober mom for Christmas, and though the portent of that will be lost for him among the bicycle emblazoned with Buzz Lightyear and the glittery lure of wrapping and bows and a stocking full of M & M’s (his very favorite treat, which we have to ration out like Methadone, lest he eat his way into a sugar coma – hey, that was a recovering addict joke, folks! I’ll be here all week! Try the veal.), it is monumental for me.
I feel my head clearing, the fog I drew around me like a shroud falling away as I learn to face all my pain, a slow step at a time. My therapist L told me last night she is proud of me, proud of the soul-searching I am doing in group, the new choices and direction I am steering myself in. I feel determination and pride. I want to beat the odds. Statistics and pure anecdotal evidence tells us that only one in ten addicts entering treatment successfully complete it. One in ten. That should be a shocking image of how powerful addiction is.
In my two and a half weeks in treatment, I have already seen two people simply disappear. Understand that I’m painfully aware that I am neither better nor worse than they. I feel no superiority because I am still going to group, because it could so easily be me who vanished back into my shadowy self when that staggering pain of facing my demons sober hit like a tidal wave. I am lucky, lucky, lucky that my husband didn’t simply divorce me and take my son, but begged me to get help, and is lovingly standing by me. I am lucky to have great insurance that means I can get the treatment I need at a minimal cost to me. I am lucky to have a home, to have never been to jail, to have never lost my job or hurt myself or anyone else while I was drinking. All pure luck, not any merit of mine. I’m an addict and I was acting like one; selfish, absorbed in my substance of choice even when I appeared to be present elsewhere, a specter haunting my own house.
Treatment is hard. Recovery is hard. Addiction is a fucking juggernaut and it can feel like you’re swimming up Niagara Falls every minute of every day. Gradually, however, the swim becomes slightly easier. With the support I get in treatment, I find that I’m thinking about drinking less and less often. I’m able to be around people who are having a few drinks without feeling as anxious and resentful and deprived.
Gradually, I am beginning to feel more at ease in my own skin. I can’t make up for my past, but I can make new, better choices going forward. I am not responsible for my disease, but as with any chronic illness, I am responsible for my treatment and my recovery. That idea, that I have a medical condition, gives me a concrete goal and a new perspective on being sober. I can work on my recovery as a lifetime quest to be as healthy as I can and avoid the things that make my illness flare up, i.e. alcohol. I can focus on facing the pains that have made me want to disappear inside myself and letting go of their hold on me – because the drinking dulls things for a time but the hurts still hold you fast until you let them go, to drift away from you like balloons on shiny red ribbons until they can’t make you double over any more.
One by one. Day by day. I am climbing out of hell and back up into the light. And the thing that holds me fast when I despair that the climb will never end is this little face, the boy who thinks the sun rises and sets on me:
To all of you and yours, Internet – I wish you peace and great joy.
Where I Open My Whore Mouth December 4, 2009
Posted by Coco in Life.Tags: Aunt Becky's Band of Merry Pranksters
6 comments
Aunt Becky likes to use the phrase “You shut your whore mouth” a lot, which is one of the things I find most endearing about her. However, this week, Becks wants to interview her Internet as part of a little contest she’s sponsoring. In essence, she wants us to open our whore mouths! Well, I like few things better than talking about me with the potential to win something added in, so here’s your chance to learn some new useless trivia about me, Internet.
1) Do you like sprinkles on your ice cream?
I like sprinkles on everything. Especially Clive Owen. 
Could I have a double scoop of Clive Owen with sprinkles in a waffle cone, please? No, I don’t need a spoon. I’ll just use my…wait. What were we talking about again? I lost my train of thought.
2) If you had to choose one word to banish from the English language, what would it be and why?
Cellulite. Of course, if we’re banning the word, the ass cheese has to go with it.
3) If you were a flavor, what would it be?
I can haz flavor?
(Sorry. I couldn’t resist.)
My flavor is dark chocolate raspberry, naturally. With sprinkles.
4) What’s the most pointless annoying chore you can think of that you do on a daily/weekly basis?
Shaving my extremities. Who came up with this shit? And why am I still buying into it? We were meant to be furry, dammit.
5) Of all the nicknames I’ve ever had in my life, Aunt Becky is the most widely known and probably my favorite. What’s your favorite nickname? (for yourself)
Coco is obviously my favorite nickname, but my husband rarely calls me that anymore. I had an unfortunate period of being “Stinky” early on in our relationship (no, I don’t actually stink (much), and no, I don’t know where he came up with it), which I’ve since (also unfortunately) transferred to Badger. Yes, my child answers to Stinky. Don’t judge me.
6) You’re stuck on a desert island with the collective works of 5 (and only five) musical artists for the rest of your life. Who are they?
I can only pick 5? I guess I’ll have to go with:
David Bowie
Echo & The Bunnymen
The Rolling Stones
Tori Amos
Neko Case
7) Everything is better with bacon. True or false?
Is this a trick question, Aunt Becky? Because TRUE. I could eat bacon until my arteries crawled out through my nose to escape.
8 ) If I could go back in time and tell Young Aunt Becky one thing, it would be that out of chaos, order will emerge. Also: tutus go with everything. What would you tell your young self?
- Most guys will have sex with a tree stump if it’s reasonably attractive – and they’ll say just about anything to get sex. Sex is not love.
- Don’t “take a year off college to save money”. You’ll never go back.
- Stay away from that boy who is fighting a paternity suit. PLEASE.
- Don’t use “deep mahogany” hair dye – it turns your hair fuschia.
Check out Aunt Becky’s giveaway and Open Your OWN Whore Mouth!
