Tomorrow is my seven-year anniversary of sobriety. Well by the time it’s posted it’ll be ‘today’ or ‘yesterday’. But y’know what I mean. It’s weird. Seven years. It’s a long time, and then it’s also not. It also goes very fast when life passes by and one is not mindful or living in the present. I can honestly say that most of my recovery has been one big, long panic. Will I get loaded? Will I find a job? How am I going to pay the rent?
relapses Archive
11 Jun 2013
Make Recovery Your Own
I always say ‘I’ve been in recovery for…’ and then either go on to say ‘Just about two months’ if I’m talking about my eating disorder or ‘Just about seven years’ if I’m talking about alcoholism. I’m not sure why. I guess because I have come to believe that recovery is only recovery if I’ve been ‘clean’ for a length of time. I’m not sure why; I do not hold others to that standard. I’m pretty much alone in that category.
09 May 2013
A Different Approach
Once upon a time, there was me. I was a drunk. I wanted to die. I couldn’t handle the way I was living anymore. So I went into a recovery house. I failed. I went to another one. Three years into sobriety I had a mental breakdown. Things have been fucked ever since. But through it all I’ve also had this eating disorder, see. So it’s not enough to try to get my life back from mental illness. I’ve got an eating disorder too.
22 Mar 2013
“What do you have to be depressed over?”
Ugh. Stop. Seriously, stop. I don’t get why people keep asking why I’m depressed, or what I have to be depressed over. Really, it’s a dumb question. Ok, though, in fairness, maybe it’s not actually their fault – society is probably to blame here. People say that something is depressing, or they’re depressed, and what they really mean is that something happened, and it sucks, it’s a bummer, they’d prefer it didn’t happen.
28 Nov 2012
Sobriety & Resentments
No one ever said that this whole sobriety thing would be easy but I have found that it gets a whole lot harder the longer I go. I went to AA, I got a sponsor; I did everything that they told me to do. I even managed to go to a meeting a day. Yet at the same time the longer that I stay dry the more social situations that I find myself in where I am saying to myself, maybe one more would be okay. Take for example last night, I was asked over for a social occasion and it inevitably lead to me picking up, a beer in this case. But that beer lead to Tequila shots which led to, etc. etc. I got scary drunk, more drunk then I have gotten in a long time and while nothing bad happened, and I made it home safely and managed to crawl into bed. But see my alcoholic mentally ill mind tells me that because I did that, because nothing “bad” happened that it must be okay for me to drink again.
27 Sep 2012
My Recent Suicide Attempt
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.
29 Aug 2012
My Experience With Alcoholics Anonymous And Early Sobriety (Ava)
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.
27 Aug 2012
My Experience With Anorexia (Yael)
Trigger Warning: Mention of suicidal ideation
I don’t recall exactly when my battle with anorexia started, but I seem to remember other people noticing it when I was about fourteen. Maybe the fact that I had always been unhealthy due to multiple medical conditions that caused me to have to travel to Vancouver, British Columbia, almost monthly for often painful or at least uncomfortable tests to try and give a treatable diagnosis; a process that seemed to always be in vain.
01 Aug 2012
My Experience With Recovery (Breyonne)
Seven years ago I got tired of living my life the way I was. I couldn’t stop drinking, smoking, eating or doing drugs. I was sick constantly. I was living in harmful situations with toxic people, and each and every day was exactly the same. My only respite was to go out and get loaded again.