this post wasn’t exactly what i thought it was going to be

this here post will be about my other life as a sober, recovering alcoholic. if that makes ya itch, then you can click away. i won’t judge you for it.

i don’t write much about this aspect of life here publicly, b/c i’d hate for someone to catch me on a bad day and think i fully “represent” the whole aa program.  being sober is very important to me, it saved my life.  or, rather it gave me a life i never had.  my husband drinks alcohol, there is alcohol in my house, and no i’m never “tempted” to drink b/c it’s here.

i can drink alcohol if i choose to.  i know that choosing to drink would end up with me most likely dead and i absolutely cannot do that if only for the sake of my kids.

before i met the husband, i was very active in my recovery program here. i did a lot of service, sponsoring of women and heavy attendance at meetings. for people who think there is no life without alcohol and other stuff, you are sadly mistaken. my life really only began when i got sober. the first time i picked up that famous white chip, i was three months past my 21st birthday.

i had a few people around me that thought i’d lost my mind, and i got the old “leah is at it again, analyzing herself to death.” the main ones that had this reaction, were not the ones that really knew what was going on in my life. i was good at making it appear as if i was doing just dandy, part of how i did that is by lending a hand to others in need. i would use my helpfulness as a cover for my own addiction. this has a lot to do with why i go to both aa and al-anon meetings today. an alcoholic can hide behind anything in order to not face the truth.

sadly adult children of alcoholics tend to be very sick people despite the fact that they are not in fact, alcoholic themselves.  you cannot grow up in a family with alcoholism and not be touched by it.  sadly, the children in these families develop what some refer to as the “ism’s” without the alcohol.  unable to keep a job, lying, stealing, covering up one mess after another, spinning new webs here and there, and mainly blaming everyone else for all of their problems.

i consider myself pretty lucky to have hallowed the rooms of aa at such a young age. i’d been on my own for four years by then and i ran it as far as i could. at my age now, i have been sober longer than my drinking/using career.

at the time, i wasn’t sure how long the whole sober thing was going to last. i was only 21 and surely people don’t get pickled at 21 right? i learned that yep, they can pickle at any point. i remember going to meetings in which old timers would say, “i spilled more liquor than you ever coulda drunk”. due to my denseness, i would just smile and nod. the first few months of my being sober were really foggy. a day had not passed in my life for several years in which i was not high on something.

it was marijuana in the morning, again at lunch break, and for the drive home. often, the lunch break would surpass marijuana and move into bigger things like alcohol and cocaine. it was a given that once home, there would be more of whatever else was available.

all that time getting blasted was just a way for me to push “it” back down and not feel anything. i didn’t know that at the time, i just know that it provided an escape and i needed that escape in order to survive in the world. there were many shameful memories but one in particular comes to mind.

i was working a full time job, and a part time job. my part time job at night was in the shoe department at a now defunct corporation. (side note: worst job i’ve ever had, including cleaning up dog poop.) i came in one night and my manager was just leaving. i was clocking in, and she wrinkled up her nose and asked me if i had been smoking pot.

immediately, i felt the flush of embarrassment and shame. i told her that it wasn’t me, but my (at the time) druggie boyfriend who’d brought me in. i tried to throw her off by becoming dramatic and explaining that i’d been trying to talk to him about stopping but he wasn’t listening.

i had no intentions of writing this story tonight, i actually wanted to write about my “now” recovery but i guess this is something that was supposed to be written.

i was just telling someone about this story the other day.

i was at a friends house (drug dealer) that i used to hang out at. we’d sit around and watch porn, and trying to keep our buzz. no one actually did anything as a result of watching the porn, except watch more. that dealer had to leave town one time pretty quickly and he asked me if i could sit for his 8 foot burmese python. he knew i worked in a pet store and was very friendly with all critters.

i was just thrilled to be asked, knowing it took a lot of trust (trust from a drug dealer, how ironic) on his part to keep his snake safe. i had a really good time with that snake, walking around my neighborhood wearing it around my neck, scaring the crap out of people.

there are a lot more stories, some i don’t remember b/c they were told to me by other people. i’ve been sober at this point for 17 years.  i never want to forget what it was like being in active addiction. that is a big danger to recovering people, to forget. soon after you forget, you begin to think that just one drink won’t hurt you.

next thing you know, you could be dead. for an alcoholic, one is too many and a thousand never enough. i know death sounds dramatic but i’ve been to many funerals of people that thought just one wouldn’t hurt them. now that i am a mother, i take that death thing very seriously.

i mostly like to be immature and write entertaining posts for people to read when they stop by here, writing is something i’ve always wanted to do and this is my attempt to exercise that muscle.

one of the most frequent questions that gets asked of sober people is “why do you still go to meetings when you’ve been sober x amount of years”? that’s a relevant question. i keep going back b/c life doesn’t stop for us, life continues to be a challenging experience.  and i am in the camp of alcoholism being a disease, and my participation in aa is my treatment.

i wasn’t born with a set of tools to help me manage my way through life.  aa gave me a design for living, along with tools to get me through just about any life situation that i can encounter.

i can honestly tell you that getting sober was one of the best things  that ever happened to me.  being sober allows me to take chances where i never took them before, it allows me to go that extra mile, do that extra thing b/c really?  life is short and so what if people laugh at me, or think i’m an idiot?  really, does it matter to me that much?  most of the time, i can say it doesn’t.   it is why i reach out to people, b/c what if that person went through their whole life and no one told them how awesome or beautiful they were?

i subscribe to the idea that life is not a dress rehearsal, this is it and it’s on.  i want to be able to look myself in the mirror and know that i remained true to myself and my beliefs, and did the very best that i could in every situation.  i make mistakes, sometimes the same ones over and over.

living my life one day at a time has allowed me to have a much fuller life than i ever could have imagined.  before i got sober, i was living in a glass house afraid of everything.

i can also tell you that i am grateful to be an alcoholic. usually the response to that is a nose wrinkle and the question of “why would you say that?”

my reply is usually something along the lines of, “i have a beautiful life, a beautiful family, and i really like who i am”.  this was not always the case.  if you would have asked me what dreams i wanted to come true at 21, i would have short changed myself.

i don’t say that b/c i have a ton of money and no problems. i have quite a few (very) difficult life events. it’s just that most of the time, i can look at the big picture, remember how it used to be, and be grateful.