Trigger warning: mentions of alcoholism, relapse, and sexual violence
Failure is built into the punitive, guilt-ridden fabric of AA. An archaic framework of Christian dogma marketed as the only way to get sober. If you fail it’s your fault. If you succeed it’s God’s miracle. Every meeting we recited that those who drink after AA are “naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty.” According to AA honesty in confession to unscrupulous strangers will keep you from drinking. That and the will of God.
When they asked us in rehab that March of 2013 what our spirituality consisted of, I said that is was “Somewhere between yoga and fireflies.” I was getting very into yoga. I felt that the states of greater transcendence I reached while practicing to be closest to the spiritual as I, a die-hard atheist, could get. I felt that the grandeur of nature and expanse of the universe was a higher power, but I couldn’t get behind the idea that the universe would have anything to do with me or want to help me. I felt insignificant in the galaxy, a mote of dust, a sheep, as AA professed.
My alcoholism reached a head in spring of 2013, brought to desperation by the death of my wife and my subsequent despair. By this point I was drinking from three pm onward everyday, first wine and then vodka, whiskey or rum. Nothing would bring her back, but I could annihilate myself. It was starting to dawn on me, though, that this was making me nothing but miserable. I wasn’t going anywhere or doing anything. I wasn’t socializing or running errands. I could barely cook. Being on disability, I wasn’t working. My full-time job was getting to the bottom of the bottle.
My wife died four months ago. We had fought the night before, ending with her saying she was taking a bunch of pills. I thought she was joking. I woke up next to a corpse. I woke up with a black eye I didn’t remember getting and spent five minutes trying to clean the vomit from around her mouth until I realized she was dead. Time stands still, memories fail. I called 911 and the person on the line tried to get me to move her from the bed to the floor. I tried, moving a women my same height to the floor, dancing with rigor mortis. A rush of urine. It was then, holding that corpse, that it first hit me.
Trigger Warning: Graphic account of a suicide attempt
I recently attempted suicide. At least I think I did, does it count if you don’t pull the trigger, so to speak, rather you try to get someone else to do it for you? I think it does, so I’m going to count this as an attempt rather than a para-suicidal gesture. At least in a rather sick way, I suppose, it makes me rather happy to count this as an attempt as it means I have tempted the fates and I am still alive and kicking.
My first experience drinking beer (well, aside from the time my mother’s brother gave me a drink when I was like five telling me it was soda – I spit it back out on him) was at a neighbor’s party when I was 20 or so. Up until that point, I’d never had a beer, and didn’t even like the smell of it. Over the next year and a half of knowing him, I found an affinity for beer, in relatively limited quantities, anyway.
I would like to welcome the newest member of our writing team, Chandler. In his first post with us, he tells his coming out story. Thanks for sharing with us, Cascadia!
When I was a young boy, I had the life of many. I played with toys, I broke stuff, I tried to fix stuff, I even stuck a knife into an electrical socket! All boys do this when they are young, they are adventurous and playful. Ages 0-9 were pretty normal or what one would call normal. At age 10 I knew something was up. I felt this weird attraction toward other boys of my same age. I didn’t know what it was so I shrugged it off. I went through all of my pre-teen and teen years knowing something wasn’t right with me. The boys in school turned me on. I hit puberty and all hell broke loose with me. There was a boy in my class, whose name was Brandon. I couldn’t stop looking at him! He made me feel weird inside.
Trigger Warning: alcoholism, addiction, mention of drug use
How many of my own garments shuffle
with the scrubs and hospital gowns
They feel disposable
But so do mine
As I prepare
As I prepare to leave the hospital
As I prepare to go to rehab
I listen to Amy Winehouse on my headphones.
She is dead.
That is enough
I say yes to everything but is it enough
In a recent article in Time magazine, Maia Szalavitz suggests that “Pro-Ana” blogs and websites can actually help some anorexics. On the periphery of Szalavitz’s argument, I can agree with much that she says, however when it gets to the core, I have to disagree with the fundamental principles of what she is suggesting.
Sobriety is a different forest, and one I am picking my way through carefully. The level of commitment that AA seems to require is daunting, as is the god issue. But I have seen people speak there that moved and affected me in a way that was more beneficial than any serenity prayer. Balancing cynicism and nihilism with the all-to-clear possibility of death, I’ve relapsed this month but I’m trying to embrace the program without losing myself. When I relapsed, my wife yelled at me to give her the rest of the bottle of vodka, and all I could say was, “I want something to myself, that is mine.” I gave her the bottle. I want to believe I have other things to hold onto, but the glacial heft of a glass bottle is a hand held.
