Believing in a life without alcohol
It is possible!
Understatement: Getting sober is really fucking hard.
You don’t just stop drinking. If only it was that easy.
Achieving sobriety involves a number of steps that take place over an indeterminate period of time. Each step is essential in its own way.
Admitting you have a problem (that old classic).
Accepting a version of your future without alcohol in it.
Surrendering by conceding that you need help, then asking for help, and finally accepting help.
The actual process of drying out.
Staying sober by not drinking again.
Learning how to live and cope with life anew. Some people refer to this as emotional sobriety.
Each individual will find one or some of these steps harder than the others.
By early 2013 my life as I knew it was all but destroyed by alcohol addiction. I was drinking or drunk 24/7. I drank, I passed out. I woke up, I drank, I passed out. That was the sum of my existence. I was drinking vodka straight or mixed with neat cordial to disguise the taste so I wouldn’t gag or vomit. I didn’t want anyone around me for two reasons. I was so ashamed of what I had become that I didn’t want anyone to witness it. And my addiction addled brain did not want anyone near me because I knew they would try to stop me from drinking and there was no way I could allow that to happen. I knew I couldn’t continue living like this, but I couldn’t see a way out.
A major hurdle for me was being able to imagine how I could live my life without alcohol. Not because I loved drinking, I unequivocally hated it by this point, but because I had used alcohol as a crutch my entire adult life. A life without alcohol was something I had never known. How would I cope?
This problem was compounded by the very real fear I had of detoxing from alcohol. I knew this could be potentially life threatening and I was terrified.
Psychologically and physically, alcohol addiction had a vice like grip on me. When the effects of alcohol started to wear off, my hands would shake and my whole body would tremble. Some days my legs felt like jelly and just walking across the room would be a challenge. Raising the bottle, cup or glass to my lips, my arm would shake uncontrollably. My heart pounded in my chest, my head spun, and my mind was crowded with panic. The only thing that mattered in that moment was satiating my body’s need for alcohol as quickly as possible in order to soothe my physical and mental distress. There was no time to stop and breathe or attempt to use rationale to calm my mind. These moments were filled with terror, and I remember them all too clearly. I knew I needed professional medical help.
My husband Mike was amazing throughout and did everything he could to research addiction and find ways he could help. I am so incredibly lucky to have someone willing to fight for me and bring me back to life. If you, like Mike, have a loved one consumed by addiction, do not give up! You are going to need an infinite amount of patience, compassion and love. But please know that by simply showing them that you love them and giving them something or someone to live for, that you can help them recover. You need to understand that their behaviour is being driven and controlled by the part of the brain that has been altered by addiction, and there is still the beautiful soul you once loved inside, screaming to get out.
We’d tried to get help before and discovered that there is very little available support and most of the support was largely ineffective. In the preceding months I had managed to sober up for a few days at a time, but I could never fight the addiction for long. With my husband’s support I’d been to see my GP in the UK. This doctor told me not to go cold turkey. She advised that I try drinking less. I believe she even said, “instead of drinking a full bottle of vodka, try just drinking half”. Great idea in theory but unfortunately that is just not how alcohol addiction works. For those of you who are still not getting it, what alcoholism does is tell you after you have had that first, second or third drink, that what you really want, need, and have to do next, is take another drink. Telling an alcoholic to just drink less is like telling a block of ice not to melt on a hot summer’s day.
After visiting my GP, looking into extremely expensive rehabs that I wasn’t convinced would work, and attending failed private therapy sessions, I didn’t know how would ever escape addiction. What alcoholics need is a place they can go; at the exact time they decide they are ready to get well again. If that moment is missed, and professional help isn’t forthcoming, that moment may never present itself again. By some stroke of good fortune (read: miracle), I got the help I needed at the exact moment that I needed it.
It was early evening on Tuesday 12 March 2013, and I was slumped on the sofa in the apartment my husband was renting for us in the UK. I was beginning to sober up and I had a problem. I had no alcohol, and I had no money. This was my moment of surrender. I wanted out. I told Mike that I wanted to go to the hospital and get help. We tried the psychiatric hospital over the road first but after circling the building several times we gave up trying to find the entrance! Seriously! Next, we went to Accident and Emergency at the city hospital. I sat on a plastic chair under the artificial strip lights in the sterile waiting room while Mike spoke with the admissions team. I hung my head and tried not to panic. The doctor who assessed me told me that she only admitted me because she could see the utter desperation in my eyes, and because, (and this is unusual) that there was a spare bed on the ward. I have no idea what we would have done that night if I had been sent home.
I spent almost a week in hospital. A few hours after I had been admitted to the ward, I suffered an alcohol-withdrawal induced seizure. I don’t know what they medicated me with but a few days later, I remember waking up from a long restful sleep and feeling the most profound sense of calm I had ever felt in my life. I knew it was over. I never wanted to drink again.
Never give up hope. We do recover.