I'm thrilled. And a little stunned, actually. Also, I can't believe how fast it went by. Seriously.
Today is the first anniversary of the day I stopped drinking.
One year ago today I walked across town and in to an AA meeting on the far west side of Greenwich Village. I was not afraid. I was sad and scared and at once without hope and hopeful that I would find a way out of the mess my life had become. Little did I know I would change everything I had come to believe was true.
I had known for some time that things had gone horribly wrong. For the first time in over 40 years I actually contemplated ending my life. This is a monumental admission for someone like me. I always believed that life, that my life, was something worth living. I always had hope. I could always find the joy. Now, for the first time in my lifetime, being here, being anywhere, was no fun at all. I was physically exhausted and emotionally wrecked. Every day became a chore to get through and an exercise in futility. I was devoid of hope and without passion. Tragically, I had lost the ability to laugh. My sense of humor, my weapon and my lifeline, was lost to me. I only ate to live.
While my physical health had yet to deteriorate, my mental health was rapidly crumbling. I was plagued by phobias, irrational fears, a deep sense of foreboding and an inability to see in to any possible future. I had a series of panic attacks, and my social anxiety progressed from quirky to an inability to make or maintain even the simplest conversation or relationship. I literally could barely speak in intelligible sentences at times. The only emotion I could access besides despair was rage. But it was the rage I had turned inward upon myself that would almost prove to be my undoing.
I was (and am) tens of thousands of dollars in debt, as my disconnect with reality caused me to live far and away beyond what my limited earning power had become. I was reduced to a series of jobs that, without realizing it, I took thinking I could hide away and be left alone. Work became a means to an end, and finally even that facade crumbled. My ability to hold down even a menial job disappeared as I started spiraling more quickly. That in turn triggered more fear. Ultimately, my fear of losing absolutely everything finally helped to override everything else.
In the meantime, I did seek help or attempt to help myself. I quit smoking in reaction to how badly I was feeling physically. And it worked. For a time I felt better. Or, as I came to realize much later, I felt less bad. Later, I blamed a lot of my physical difficulties on being HIV+. In some cases that was true. To this day I still get nauseous from my medication most afternoons. I spoke openly to my doctors about my panic disorder and greedily gulped down whatever medication they prescribed. For a time I felt better. Yeah, it was actually less bad again. I managed to squeak a whole 'nother year out of drinking with my General Anxiety Disorder diagnosis. I finally even went in to therapy, which I found enormously beneficial. But here's a tip: therapy might help, but it won't make an alcoholic who doesn't want to discuss his alcoholism significantly better. Although it did serve to highlight how desperately hopelessly unhappy I had become. I still couldn't see what the problem was, and I couldn't conceive of a solution. I guess I didn't want to.
I still don't remember what it was that made me make the trip across town that day. Like every other major obstacle I've forced myself to tear down in my life, part of it seems to be as simple as finally being ready. But part of me thought maybe I would find or prove that alcohol wasn't really the cause of my problem. And that turns out to be true. Alcohol and my alcoholism was in reality a symptom of a much larger problem. A manifestation of my fear. Of all my fears. An outward expression of my rage and my desire to destroy myself. Whatever it was that propelled me, while it wasn't immediately apparent that day, within a week or two I knew I was exactly where I belonged. I listened to people that were nothing like me describe a litany of ways we were exactly alike. Every panic attack, every shame filled instance of bed-wetting, every episode of sleepwalking, every night spent week after week after month in a living room lit by a flickering TV screen and a few candles, alone in the company of a bottle of booze, every fear and insecurity and recrimination large and small was reflected back at me. Very quickly, and for the first time in years, I began to feel hope.
Coming up next ...
My recovery so far.
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