For Rebekah. Still. And Always.

My amazing friend Rebekah died one year ago today from an overdose.   I wrote the post below a few days after her death, reeling with shock and grief.  One year later and the pain now feels like a dull ache, like something missing, a shadowy darkness where her beautiful, bright presence on this earth used to be.

Heroin is killing our young people in record numbers.  Just in Southeastern Massachusetts, we had more than two overdose fatalities per day in 2015.  I hope, with all my heart, that these staggering numbers are helping us collectively move past the notion that it couldn't happen to our kids. Kids experiment with pain killers, usually found in someone's medicine cabinet, and within weeks, sometimes days, they are hooked, and it's only a matter of time (and not much time at that) before they turn to heroin. Forget any stereotypes you may have in your head about what  heroin addict looks like; it looks like the captain of the soccer team, the straight-A student, the talented musician. Heroin is in all our schools. It is everywhere.

Heroin destroys lives. Please, please know that your kid is at risk, no matter how much we all want to believe differently. Talk to your kids about how dangerous and addictive pain killers are. Watch for signs and symptoms of addiction; if you see a profound behavioral change in your kid, consider that drug use may be the reason why. We can't afford to keep our heads in the sand about this for one. more. second.

I miss her, every day. Her spirit lives on in me, and so many other lives she touched. She helps me stay sober, and I honor her memory by continuing to carry the torch, to break the stigma that surrounds addiction. If you are struggling, you are NOT alone. There is help; you just have to reach out and grab it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My Dear Rebekah,

It's your smile I think about most.  And that giggle.

I have never met anyone who loved to laugh more than you.  It was infectious.  No matter what my mood, you could pull a reluctant smile from my face, and I soon found my self erupting in laughter.

I want to say thank you.  Thank you for the cozy, late-night chats, the two of us snuggled in our beds. The darkened room and hushed corridors brought something out of us; a pure honesty, shared unvarnished truths.

We'd laugh, you and me, about our twenty-three year age difference.  How could someone so young be so wise, I'd ask.  You would pull a face, stick out your tongue.  See?  You'd say.  I'm just a kid.

But you weren't just a kid.  You were a soul sister, one who had been through so much and still with that smile.  OH, that smile.

Remember the two of us, duffel bags perched on our laps, heading to the next chapter of our journey with wide eyes?  Wondering what would happen next?  You grabbed my hand, as I recall, and said I'm glad I'm going with you. 

One time, as I schlepped up all those stairs to our room, I heard beautiful music playing.  I paused outside our door, listening.  I thought you had speakers for your iPod, and was going to chide you for keeping them secret.  But no, I saw as I opened the door, it was you playing your guitar and singing. Ethereal and melodious, your talent came from someplace deep inside you, someplace God-given. You sat up, startled, when I opened the door, and blushed.  I'm no good, you said and abruptly threw your guitar to the side, nobody is supposed to hear me. 

I stood speechless for a moment, awestruck.  That was beautiful, I said.  Please don't stop.  True to form, you picked up your guitar and belted out some crazy made-up tune, twangy and funny, and I jiggled around the room in my own middle-aged funky way.

Every morning you got up early.  Every morning.  You weren't going to miss that morning meeting for anything. While I mumbled and grumbled from the comfort of my blankets, arguing in favor of an evening meeting, you be-bopped around, humming.  Get up, girl, you'd say.  I got us a ride. 

You made fun of how all my shirts had stripes.  Is that some middle-aged Mom thing? Or just an Ellie thing? you'd grin.

Interesting coming from you of the eleventy-seven-hundred LOVE PINK sweatshirts, I'd grin right back.

Of all the girls in the house, you worked hardest at getting to meetings, chasing your recovery.  The minute you were eligible to get rides from other women in the program, you hit that pay phone and called and called and called until you got to a meeting.  You wanted this, badly.

Keeping a clean room, however, not so much.  You bounced into the kitchen one morning chirping about how you made your bed, how proud I should be.  Later that day, I smiled to myself when I saw the comforter pulled up over a pile of clothes, lumped up like a tiger sleeping under the covers.

I could make you bust out laughing by trying to be all hip (nobody says hip anymore, Ellie, you'd say).  I'd tell you I was feeling some kind of way, and you'd clutch your stomach laughing.  Sorry, you'd say, it just doesn't work coming from you.  I had to ask you want a 'snipe' was, which you found endlessly funny.  For those of you wondering, it's also called a 'put-out'.  Yeah, I had to ask, too.

A favorite memory is the day we were told to put on a skit about the counselors.  You picked one of the more colorful counselors, and groaned.  I can't act, you mumbled.  I'm not funny.  But then, your big entrance came, and you clacked in on borrowed  high heels, reading glasses (mine, of course) perched halfway down your nose and gave everyone a stern look before breaking into a dance and belting out "Because I'm happppyyyyy!" - a dead-on imitation.  I glanced over to the counselor you were portraying and she was wiping tears from her eyes she was laughing so hard.

And a proud moment:  when we put on a recovery version of the Wizard of Oz, and you bravely played your guitar and sang to the acoustic version of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow", facing one of your biggest fears:  putting your talent out there for all to see.  You were, of course, amazing.

You made friends everywhere you went. People were drawn to you, to your light.  Always quick with a hug and a smile, you had an eye for someone in pain.   You made people feel special - you made me feel special, the way you'd light up when you saw me.

Even after we were no longer roommates, you encouraged and inspired me.  We'd text inside jokes, check in on each other.  Your bubbly sweetness flowed through your words:

But nothing - NOTHING - compares to the way you loved your child.  Little Madisyn.  The way she would squirm and wiggle and dance when she saw you, then collapse into your arms and stay there for hours, perched on your lap like a queen ruling her subjects.  And just like her Mom, she would giggle and giggle and giggle, for hours.  Her little face so like your own, big eyes staring up at you with unadorned love.

My sweet friend, you left a gaping hole, a dark space devoid of light, when you left.  You are one of the great ones, those rare people I meet who slip into my life like a pair of comfortable slippers.  I owe you a huge debt, sweet girl, for being there for me during such difficult times, for buoying me up when I was sinking, for making me laugh in spite of - and at - myself when I needed it most.

Mere words fall short of how much I love you.  And I always will.

For Rebekah

It's your smile I think about most.  And that giggle.

I have never met anyone who loved to laugh more than you.  It was infectious.  No matter what my mood, you could pull a reluctant smile from my face, and I soon found my self erupting in laughter.

I want to say thank you.  Thank you for the cozy, late-night chats, the two of us snuggled in our beds. The darkened room and hushed corridors brought something out of us; a pure honesty, shared unvarnished truths.

We'd laugh, you and me, about our twenty-three year age difference.  How could someone so young be so wise, I'd ask.  You would pull a face, stick out your tongue.  See?  You'd say.  I'm just a kid.

But you weren't just a kid.  You were a soul sister, one who had been through so much and still with that smile.  OH, that smile.

Remember the two of us, duffel bags perched on our laps, heading to the next chapter of our journey with wide eyes?  Wondering what would happen next?  You grabbed my hand, as I recall, and said I'm glad I'm going with you. 

One time, as I schlepped up all those stairs to our room, I heard beautiful music playing.  I paused outside our door, listening.  I thought you had speakers for your iPod, and was going to chide you for keeping them secret.  But no, I saw as I opened the door, it was you playing your guitar and singing. Ethereal and melodious, your talent came from someplace deep inside you, someplace God-given. You sat up, startled, when I opened the door, and blushed.  I'm no good, you said and abruptly threw your guitar to the side, nobody is supposed to hear me. 

I stood speechless for a moment, awestruck.  That was beautiful, I said.  Please don't stop.  True to form, you picked up your guitar and belted out some crazy made-up tune, twangy and funny, and I jiggled around the room in my own middle-aged funky way.

Every morning you got up early.  Every morning.  You weren't going to miss that morning meeting for anything. While I mumbled and grumbled from the comfort of my blankets, arguing in favor of an evening meeting, you be-bopped around, humming.  Get up, girl, you'd say.  I got us a ride. 

You made fun of how all my shirts had stripes.  Is that some middle-aged Mom thing? Or just an Ellie thing? you'd grin.

Interesting coming from you of the eleventy-seven-hundred LOVE PINK sweatshirts, I'd grin right back.

Of all the girls in the house, you worked hardest at getting to meetings, chasing your recovery.  The minute you were eligible to get rides from other women in the program, you hit that pay phone and called and called and called until you got to a meeting.  You wanted this, badly.

Keeping a clean room, however, not so much.  You bounced into the kitchen one morning chirping about how you made your bed, how proud I should be.  Later that day, I smiled to myself when I saw the comforter pulled up over a pile of clothes, lumped up like a tiger sleeping under the covers.

I could make you bust out laughing by trying to be all hip (nobody says hip anymore, Ellie, you'd say).  I'd tell you I was feeling some kind of way, and you'd clutch your stomach laughing.  Sorry, you'd say, it just doesn't work coming from you.  I had to ask you want a 'snipe' was, which you found endlessly funny.  For those of you wondering, it's also called a 'put-out'.  Yeah, I had to ask, too.

A favorite memory is the day we were told to put on a skit about the counselors.  You picked one of the more colorful counselors, and groaned.  I can't act, you mumbled.  I'm not funny.  But then, your big entrance came, and you clacked in on borrowed  high heels, reading glasses (mine, of course) perched halfway down your nose and gave everyone a stern look before breaking into a dance and belting out "Because I'm happppyyyyy!" - a dead-on imitation.  I glanced over to the counselor you were portraying and she was wiping tears from her eyes she was laughing so hard.

And a proud moment:  when we put on a recovery version of the Wizard of Oz, and you bravely played your guitar and sang to the acoustic version of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow", facing one of your biggest fears:  putting your talent out there for all to see.  You were, of course, amazing.

You made friends everywhere you went. People were drawn to you, to your light.  Always quick with a hug and a smile, you had an eye for someone in pain.   You made people feel special - you made me feel special, the way you'd light up when you saw me.

Even after we were no longer roommates, you encouraged and inspired me.  We'd text inside jokes, check in on each other.  Your bubbly sweetness flowed through your words:

But nothing - NOTHING - compares to the way you loved your child.  Little Madisyn.  The way she would squirm and wiggle and dance when she saw you, then collapse into your arms and stay there for hours, perched on your lap like a queen ruling her subjects.  And just like her Mom, she would giggle and giggle and giggle, for hours.  Her little face so like your own, big eyes staring up at you with unadorned love.

My sweet friend, you left a gaping hole, a dark space devoid of light, when you left.  You are one of the great ones, those rare people I meet who slip into my life like a pair of comfortable slippers.  I owe you a huge debt, sweet girl, for being there for me during such difficult times, for buoying me up when I was sinking, for making me laugh in spite of - and at - myself when I needed it most.

Mere words fall short of how much I love you.  And I always will.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My incredible friend Rebekah died on January 26th of an overdose.  I won't tell her story; it's not mine to tell.  But I know she would want me to say this, because she said it to me over and over:  if you are struggling, please reach out for help.   She posted just those words on her Facebook page only three weeks ago.

It's hard not to stamp our feet and ask why. I get it, because I live in this world.  Addiction is a confounding, baffling and insidious disease.  It doesn't hold back, doesn't discriminate, and it pounces the minute we are weak and alone.  I don't waste time wondering what happened, or why.  I know there isn't any reasoning that will help, or explain.

We have an epidemic in our country.  In my little part of the world - South Shore, Massachusetts - a person dies everyday from an overdose, and countless more are hospitalized, paralyzed, slip into comas.  The more affluent areas are hit the hardest; it starts with pills stolen from medicine cabinets, usually, and it's so addictive it leads people straight to heroin.  And it can be found everywhere.

No child is exempt from its reach: no amount of love, or money, or strict rules can spare a kid from its grip.

What we need is education; parents need to get educated on what is really happening in our middle schools and high schools.  It's so easy to think:  not my kid.  But by the age of 14 or 15 every kid will know someone who has tried opiates or heroin.  They will know where to get it.  They think they are immune from danger, as all teenagers do, and they are vulnerable.

Rebekah's love and light will live on in me and everyone she knew forever.  Her death is so tragic, and it saddens me beyond words, but it fuels my determination to keep on mission, get the word out there that addiction is all around us, and despite all the tragic tales there is so much hope.  But we can't fight something we can't face.

Talk to your kids.  If a friend seems off, ask if they are ok.  If you think someone is struggling with drinking or drugs, they probably are.  Reach out a hand.  If you are struggling yourself, know you aren't alone.

Asking for help isn't weak; it's the strongest thing anyone can do.

Pirouette On A Tightrope: On Addiction and Depression

I am emerging from my self-imposed break from writing because I feel an ache, a bubbling emotion that needs to come out in words.

Robin Williams' death hit us all hard. Just like in the wake of Phillip Seymour Hoffman's death, I feel
perplexed, gut-punched, incredulous.

Their deaths touch us because their talents were so massive, their performances so vulnerable, that we felt a kinship, a connection, with them.  The thing about that connection?  It only went one way.  The unrequited first row seat to their creative genius was the gift they gave us.  And, we know now, the pain driving those staggering performances - both comic and tragic - that hid behind all those characters.

At first glance Robin Williams appeared to be the opposite of vulnerable - full of crackling energy that surrounded him like a force field.  To be honest, his brand of humor always made me slightly nervous.  When I watched him interviewed, or hosting an award show, I felt as though I were watching through squinted eyes, waiting for the wheels to come off and the whole thing to fall apart.

This may sound like Monday morning quarterbacking - all "I saw it coming".   I didn't.  But I know now why his energy made me uncomfortable.  I recognized that pirouette on a tightrope, the thin veil between comedy and melancholy.  

How many of us thought, when we heard of his suicide, "WHY?  He had so much to live for?"

As someone who battles both depression and addiction, I understand that how much a person has to live for doesn't matter in the face of these potentially fatal illnesses.   Most of the people I know who have struggled with addiction also struggle with depression and/or anxiety.   Drinking or using drugs becomes the Band-Aid over the bullet hole.

I ended up relapsing after years of sobriety because of untreated depression and anxiety.  I learned a valuable lesson while in treatment:  I can build a strong castle of recovery - massive and impenetrable from the outside - but if it is built on a foundation of sand, it will eventually fall.  The issues behind my drinking - depression and anxiety - were the shifting sands underneath my recovery.  Unaddressed, they would eventually take me down. And they did.

I had no idea I was depressed. I thought depression meant you couldn't get out of bed, that your world went grey and meaningless, that you were filled with lethargy and despair.

Mine didn't manifest that way.  My depression came out as manic energy - impulsive, compulsive, obsessive.  I didn't stop from the moment I opened my eyes in the morning until the moment I fell into a fitful sleep.  My mind never, ever stopped.  To the outside world I looked on top of my game - productive, full of life, passion and drive.  Recovery is an inside job, and I stopped working on my insides. I took my validation from the outside in, and for someone like me that is dangerous ground.

If I started to feel those shifting sands under my feet I ran harder, faster. I started another venture or project. Without consciously knowing it, I was afraid to stop, like a beast was nipping at my heels and if I paused it would get me.

It got me. My addiction is my beast - it was waiting for me to run out of energy, skulking in the shadows and ready to pounce. 

When I see the recaps of Robin Williams' performances - especially the improvisational ones, or the interviews - I recognize that mad dance. He was larger than life - he was so, well, Robin Williams. How hard it must have been for him to let down that veneer, to ask for help.  His humor was his armor, and we loved him for it.  We craved that version of him, we validated it.  And he delivered, at his own peril.

Recently he checked himself into rehab, and according to his publicist it was a precautionary move, to help prevent relapse. As details emerge, it appears his depression had such a grip on him that this came too late.

Depression is such an elusive concept. Most of us, when we hear this word, think:  sad.

For those of us who struggle with depression we know sad is a woefully inadequate word.   Just like I can't really describe what addiction feels like, I don't know if I can find words to describe depression.

To me, it felt like a mad scramble. A desperation to keep moving while appearing focused and outwardly fine.  Like that analogy of the duck - calm on the surface and paddling madly beneath the water.

Like addiction, for me denial played a huge role.  It wasn't an active denial - nobody was saying, "Ellie, I think you're depressed" while I protested.   I didn't know what I didn't know.  And because I am an alcoholic, that disease got me before the depression did.  But, in time, I realize that untreated depression is just as deadly and insidious.

Today I view my recovery as a three-legged stool: a program of recovery, therapy and medication.   I have historically had two of the three legs:  program and medication, therapy and program, recovery and medication.  I teetered on two legs as long as I could, but of course I fell.  Medication is tricky in recovery, and it took a while to find a safe and effective dosage. 

Now, with all three in place, I feel grounded.  My outside life is somewhat chaotic, complicated, as I work on the wreckage of my active addiction.  But I will take outside chaos with inner peace over inside chaos and outer peace any day.

I am staggeringly lucky.  I was able to get treatment for 90 days, with a lot of help from my family and friends.  I know without that treatment my chances of making it were slim.  I also know that I wasn't able to ask for help because I was so deep into my depression and addiction that I was incapable of saving myself.  It was people around me who got me the help I needed.

Many people aren't that fortunate.  Many people struggle and don't even know that they are depressed. Many people turn to alcohol or drugs to ease the pain, and many of them become addicted as a result.

We are a society of quick fixes. We applaud drive, determination and outward appearances.  Vulnerability and fear sit in the back seat, shushed and scorned.

I don't know how to end this post, what kind of statement I'm making here, exactly.  I can only share my own experience and hope it touches others.  If you are struggling on the inside, ask for help. Find just ONE person to open up to.  Even if all you can say is "I don't feel okay", start there. 

And if someone asks you for help, please listen.  Resist the urge to tell them how great their life is, how much they have going for them.  Offer up pieces of your own struggles to help them feel not so alone. 

Enough.

How I wish I could find a way to share with you what the past nine weeks have been like. 

For once words fail me, because one of my greatest gifts - the gift of story - is also one of my greatest liabilities.

I love a happy ending; a hopeful garnish to ease the sting of pain.  

There is no room in my life for decorative flair these days. I am on a journey inside, to the unvarnished truth.  I am traveling through time and space, to the very core of me.   It is both a wondrous and terrifying experience.  I cannot afford to dodge unpleasantness or pain.  This is not to say I do not have hope or happiness; I have plenty of both. 

But I have learned that my preference for a neat, tidy, happy ending has allowed me to avoid uncomfortable truths about myself. 

I read my own words about the difficulties of the past three years, and I see a lot of grace, hope and gratitude.  I see myself weather the loss of my Dad, battle cancer, wrestle with depression, anxiety, and struggle with relapse.

The words I have written in this space are all true. I am skilled at finding grace in the darkness. 

It's what has not been on the page that matters now.  I wielded my words like a shield, hoping they would protect me from the increasingly shaky ground under my feet.  I didn't want to look down, at the cracks. I wanted to reach for the sky.

The thing about the sky?  It is unreachable.  What matters is what under my feet, a solid foundation. The parts that nobody sees, deep in the earth, are what holds everything else up. 

I don't know where I belong these days.

All I know is that it is impossible to go on a sacred internal journey and write about it for the world to see.  

But because I have written so publicly about recovery for so many years, I do want to share this:  I have spent the past 60 days at an all women's inpatient residential treatment center.  I completely stepped away from my life, my family, my kids, my world.   It is the hardest thing I have ever done, because I so want to be needed. I want to be the mortar that holds everything together. It is much easier to do that than to look at myself. 

Moms aren't supposed to do this, step away and focus only on ourselves.  We are hardwired, most of us, to sublimate our needs to help others.  We aren't supposed to put ourselves first - especially after the selfishness of addiction has held the whole family hostage. 

I have hurt a lot of people over the past few months.  I lost myself, and instead of asking for help, I thought I could tough my way through it on sheer force of will.  I was so, so scared, but I kept madly weaving myself a tale of strength and hope, instead of admitting that fear had me by the throat.  I would like to say I should have known better, but the irony is that all the knowledge in the world can't help against addiction.  I forgot about God. I took my will back.

When it comes to addiction, self-care is key.  In general, women struggle with this.  Women in recovery have an even greater struggle, because we wrestle with so much guilt, shame and remorse that we overcompensate and give even more of ourselves away.  At least I did.  Maybe this will sound familiar to some of you, too.

As much as I want to be with my kids, at the moment that is not fair to them, because they can't make me well.  It's an inside job.  I need to be here, among other recovering women, and I am no good to anyone, especially my kids, until I am on steadier ground.

So here I am, post treatment, sitting in a little room in a sober house on Cape Cod, living with four other recovering women.  I am taking it slowly this time, my re-entry into life.  I have lost a lot of things I used to take for granted, everything from driving to the privilege of being part of my kids' everyday lives. 

I don't know what my life will look like going forward. It's no longer up to me.  I am living moment-to-moment, praying, doing my best and letting go of the outcome.  I am sitting in lots of discomfort. I can't afford to wonder what people are thinking of me, if I am being judged or scorned.   I don't know what will happen.  All I know is that if I am sober it will all work out the way it is supposed to, and that may not be the way I would like it to.

My suburban life feels very far away at the moment.  I have spent two months living with people who are battling for their lives, and it changes my perspective on a lot of things.  I feel disconnected from the things that were so much a part of my identity: writing, blogging, advocacy, jewelry making. 

Those are things I do, but they aren't who I am.

I am a work in progress: a flawed, joyful, messy, broken, hopeful, grateful woman in recovery. 

And today, that is enough.

Shards

I wriggle in the over-stuffed chair, shifting my knees from side-to-side, searching for something to say to fill the silence.

My therapist gazes patiently at me. Long pauses don't bother her one bit.

"The thing is....", I begin.

She waits.

"The thing about blowing up your life is that you get to sift through the ashes, searching for the remains - the shards - that really mean something to you."

I speak in the second person, because it's too hard too say "me" or "I".  I pretend I'm speaking about some other person, a stranger I'm observing, perhaps.

"Interesting analogy", she says after a beat. "But it sound rehearsed, like you've said it before."

As usual, she's right. That little analogy is what I say to people who ask me how I'm doing.  I'm scrambling for the blessings in this mess, and that visual seems to relieve people of their worry.  They comment on how I'm being brave, how it's important to find the gifts in hardship.

With a sheepish grin, I nod.   "Yup."

"Tell me about the shards, then," she says.  "Which ones are most important to you?"

I brighten.  This is an easy one.  "My kids. My husband. My family. My friends."

"What isn't a shard that surprises you?"  she asks.

I think for a moment.  "My businesses. I mean, I still care deeply about Shining Strong, but it's in very capable hands. I want to keep making jewelry, but I feel so overwhelmed these days that I sit at my desk and just stare into space.  I'm done with all the crazy running around, and it's a relief."

She waits, poker faced, as I stare at my hands.  I sense I've answered wrong, and say so.

"Why do you think there is a right or wrong answer to my questions?" she asks in that infuriating rhetorical way that therapists have.

I look at her, helplessly, and shift my legs again.  I take a sip of tea.  "Well, because, you're clearly after something, and I don't know what it is."

"Ellie, we're talking about YOU.  Not me.  You do realize that, don't you?"

I stifle a surge of rage.  Of course I know we're talking about me. But, see, I don't know me very well anymore. I thought I did. I had it all worked out: mother, entrepreneur, recovery advocate, wife, daughter, friend.

She sighs. "I'm just wondering how come you aren't a shard, too", she says, quietly.

My eyes widen. "I didn't realize that was a option?" I stammer, as though her question were a multiple choice test.

"Exactly," she says.

As I drive home I realize the shard analogy is more than just a thing that I say to people. I feel shattered, stripped bare, raw. Things have happened. Things I won't talk about here.  Not yet.  I am keeping my life small, safe and very quiet.

I am trying to figure out how to just be.  Just be Ellie, whoever she is when the world isn't watching, when there are no demands for my time, when it's just me in my cozy home with my family.

I feel broken into a thousand shards myself, having fought as hard as I could against the pressures of the past few years, against my old nemeses depression and anxiety and addiction.

Words, for the first time I can remember, don't come easily.  All I know is that I give up.  And not in the scary way; in the healing way.  I feel like I have been trapped underwater, my foot tangled in weeds, with my lips mere inches from the surface.  I have struggled, kicked and thrashed as hard as I could thinking sweet freedom was just within my reach.

I didn't know that freedom would be mine if I would just stop kicking, let my body go limp and sink, loosening the hold these demons had on me.

I am a fighter. I've had to be.  For all the writing I have done about surrender, I missed something important: the bravest warriors know when to surrender.  Rushing headlong into a battle you can't win with brute force isn't courage, it's folly.

And so I sit. I sit in overstuffed chairs and wriggle. I sit in recovery meetings and listen. And cry. And talk.  I sit with the stillness of my life and the roaring silence in my mind.

And bit by bit, I pick up each shard, examine it, and ask myself where it fits with my life,  With me.

With whoever I am becoming.

Philip Seymour Hoffman: How COULD he?

I was scrolling mindlessly through my Facebook feed, the day the news broke, and I saw someone post "RIP Philip Seymour Hoffman. So sad."

My response was visceral and possessive:  WHAT? I thought.  MY Philip Seymour Hoffman?

I have no claim to him, of course. I never met him or even caught a glimpse of him in person.  It is a testimony to his strength as an actor that I felt such a connection with him.  His achingly beautiful performances, where he so often portrayed the dichotomies that lie within us all - sinner and saint, courageous and vulnerable - touched us all.

It is no surprise that he was such a talented character actor.  A hallmark of all addicts is that we're great chameleons.

His death effects me on another level, as someone who had recovery - good recovery - and then relapsed. It is hard to respond to the question how could he? because it is a question I ask myself, too.  How could I? With everything I know about addiction, with all the blessings in my life:  how could I? 

Let's start by talking about you for a moment.

Think back on resolutions you have made to yourself.  Perhaps to lose weight? Eat healthier?  Exercise three times a week?  All of the above?

You know, intellectually, that your life will improve if you stick to your plan. You come out of the gate going gangbusters.  It isn't hard to stick to your plan, because the benefits are immediate - hey! I have more energy! I'm sleeping better!  I can button these jeans!  My cholesterol went down! 

You are a disciplined, intelligent person, and you don't like to be bested by anything, so you stick with this plan.  For months.  You do this until the point where getting up in the morning and going to the gym is second nature. You reach for the carrot sticks instead of the cake without even thinking.   Friends compliment you on how good you look/feel.  The rewards for this healthier lifestyle make it easy to stick with it.

Over time, this healthier you is just, well, you.

One day you have an early morning meeting and you can't go to the gym. You haven't been scheduling early morning meetings, because it's your gym time, but hey, just this once won't matter. Things are nuts at work. The next day you decide you'll work out in the evenings because you got so much done at work early in the morning.  Except when you get home that night you're tired and don't go.  The next night there is a traffic jam and you get home too late to work out.

A few days, or maybe even weeks, later you skip your healthy home-brought salad and go out to lunch with co-workers.  While you're out at lunch, nibbling french fries, you think:  I should do this more often. It's important to socialize with work people. 

After a while, you're only bringing your healthy lunch once or twice a week, and you're only working out occasionally.  But you still feel good. Your clothes still fit.  You tell yourself you will amp up the workouts if your pants get tight.

One day you can't fit comfortably into your suit, so you head out and buy one - just one! - work outfit.  Just until you can take off the few extra pounds.

Weeks later you are mindlessly digging through your closet for your old two-sizes-bigger clothes.  It's just that you have been so busy.  You know what you need to do, and you've done it before, so you'll get back into shape when things calm down.  It's not like you're going to stay this weight.

Eventually you're not only back to your former weight, you're heavier.  How did this happen? Things were going so well!  You feel ashamed.  You feel like a failure. You feel so despondent.  Dieting doesn't work for me, you think.

Does any of this sound familiar?

What is so hard to see, in these situations, is that you didn't just end up heavy.  It all started the day you skipped your morning workout for what seemed like a perfectly good reason: work needed you.

It's death by a thousand paper cuts. It's a slow, almost invisible slide into old behaviors.

Recovering addicts need constant vigilance to stay sober. It's hard at first - everything (and I mean everything) feels different. Putting recovery before everything else is hard, counter-intuitive, because you are accustomed to letting the hectic pace of life to put the healthier, non-drinking you, last.

Eventually, though, with daily discipline, structure and support, being sober becomes second nature. You feel so good that you don't ever, ever want to go back to that dark, shameful, secretive place.

Someone who has worked hard to get fit doesn't want to go back to being heavy, either. But still it happens to almost all of us who try to lose weight. Very few of us do it once and keep fit for a lifetime.

With recovery it isn't a matter of what we want, either.  We all want to stay sober, but addiction is a brain disease, and what we want doesn't hold all the cards.

Put very simply - back when we (meaning addicts/alcoholics) first used alcohol or drugs, we triggered something in the primitive part of our brain - the part that governs survival instincts like shelter, reproduction, food, thirst.  Our addiction takes root in this primitive part of our brain, snuggled up next to the things we need to survive.  With time, as the addiction grows, our brain puts drinking first.  It moves up the ladder of needs - starting as an emotional addiction and ending as a physical one - and eventually it trumps everything. Active alcoholics will choose alcohol over food and hydration.

Their brain is literally telling them:  you need this to survive.

Additionally, the neocortex, the part of the brain responsible for rational thought, and the amygdala, which controls emotional processing, get hijacked.  The site youthcomm.org, which targets teens, explains it simply:

"...drugs and alcohol also affect a part of your brain called the neocortex that keeps you from doing dangerous things. Ira Moses, Ph.D., who used to run a drug abuse program, calls the neocortex “the brain’s brakes—it controls most of the brain’s functions.” The neocortex helps us think through consequences of our behavior, consider risks, and stop us from doing things that might feel good in the short run, but harm us or the ones we love in the long run. This part of the brain basically gets turned off by drugs and alcohol."

Once activated by drugs or alcohol, in an addict's brain the neocortex hands the reins over to the lizard/primitive brain, which is thinking:  alcohol first. drugs first.  The symptoms of addiction are behavioral, because the rational part of the brain isn't functioning.  This is why people around active alcoholics are astounded by the insane behavior we do when we're drinking. Because it is, quite literally, insane.  Our neocortex is out of the picture.

So, back to the original question:  how COULD Philip Seymour Hoffman relapse?  With all he had going for him?  With all that sobriety?

The same way I did.

There is no cure for addiction, but it can be treated; it can go into remission.  Treatment involves a daily regimented program of recovery of rigorous honesty, communicating with fellow addicts/alcoholics in recovery, self-care and - for many of us in recovery - spirituality.  It involves a daily surrender to the fact that we are powerless over our disease and all its manifestations.

Here's what I mean by that:  my relapse didn't start when I drank. It started about a year and a half before when, coming out of cancer treatments, I had drifted away from active recovery.  I stopped engaging in the daily self-care regime that treated my alcoholism on a daily basis:  meetings, yoga, exercise, asking for help, prayer.

I substituted my recovery for what looked and felt like healthy behavior -particularly in the crazy pace of today's world - workaholism.

Just like the ill-fated dieter in the example above, it was a long slow slide towards a drink.  Without my knowledge or permission, my disease was ramping up, because I wasn't tending to it on a daily basis.

I don't remember actually drinking.  I was in an emotional blackout, I guess.  I was so far away from the healthy behaviors that kept my recovery alive that my disease took over, and I was without a single tool to resist it.

So where does personal responsibility factor in?  Especially as it pertains to relapse?

This is a dicey subject, so I offer here only my personal thoughts on the matter.

I view my alcoholism like I do my cancer:  a chronic, life-long and potentially fatal condition.  I didn't choose to have either one.

Neither one is my fault, but my recovery in both is my responsibility.

In my mind, my relapse is as if I found something troubling- perhaps a lump in my neck (where I had cancer before) - and I decided (consciously or unconsciously) that it was probably nothing and didn't see a doctor. Then, months later, I find out my cancer is back and it has spread.

The moment of responsibility lies with my knowledge that I am a cancer patient in remission and I can't afford not to have something checked out.

But, particularly when dealing with hard or scary things - it's human nature to dumb it down, file it away somewhere convenient or easy, or simply procrastinate.  Like our dieter.

With addiction, just like with cancer, we can't afford to file it away, though.  Once we have surrendered and know we are an alcoholic/addict, it is our responsibility to maintain that recovery.

BUT. Relapse happens. It happens with cancer. It happens with diets. It happens with addiction.  For all the reasons I described, alcoholics find themselves with a drink in their hand and no tools to resist.  Knowing alcohol is bad for you, that it could kill you in the end, doesn't factor in.  That bus left the station ages ago, when the first of the thousand paper cuts slid across your skin, seemingly without much impact.

When I am not active in a program of recovery, my addiction is untreated.

It is my responsibility to stay active in recovery.  I drifted away from it. I relapsed.

It is not a moral failing. It is my disease coming out of remission.  But, unlike cancer, I can choose to treat it on a daily basis and stay in recovery.  Cancer treatments cannot promise such a hopeful outcome. Hopefully I will be able to treat my addiction, daily, for the rest of my life.  I know this is confusing to people not in the world of addiction:  if you can choose it every day .. why don't you DO that every day?  I will politely refer back to the dieter.

Because we're also human.  And brains - all brains - are adept at side-stepping scary or unpleasant things.

So let's not wring our hands and ask why. Or how could he?  Philip Seymour Hoffman died because of his disease, not because he was weak, or willfully self-destructive or morally unfit. The argument "well, one doesn't just find oneself with a needle in one's arm" infuriates me. Because addicts do. Addicts who are not working a program of recovery find themselves with a needle in their arm and are just as baffled and saddened about it as those who love them. And once the drug is in their system, the sober person is just gone. And they can't get back without help.

And far too many addicts/alcoholics don't ask for help, because of the damn stigma.  Far too many addicts/alcoholics don't reach for a chance at recovery because they are too afraid of society's reaction to what they, too, perceive as a personal weakness or failing.

Lets band together to beat down the stigma of addiction that keeps alcoholics and addicts stuck in their fear of being judged.

I long for the day when addiction is viewed like cancer - without stigma and with the urgency of all potentially fatal conditions.

RIP, Philip.  May your tragic death in the spotlight help to bring more understanding to the disease of addiction.

Pride Is Not A Dirty Word

shame (SHām) noun

1.

  a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior.

~~~~

Probably the number one topic that comes up when I'm talking with my recovery friends is shame.

We all know what shame feels like; I feel it physically, in my gut, like a stone in my belly.

I carried that stone with me for years, both while I was drinking and after.   Even years into my recovery journey, I feel its weight sometimes, dragging me down.

Who do you think you are, is the most common theme shame whispers to me, now.  

I looked up synonyms for shame, and this is what I found:  abashment, dishonor, self-disgust, disrepute, self-reproach. 

It's easy, when I think about my drinking self, to feel these emotions.  How could you, I ask myself when my disease is speaking to me. 

In early recovery I learned that I needed to reconcile the things that made me feel shame in order to heal.  Memories, feelings, actions, behaviors that made me feel shameful led me right back to a drink as I struggled to get sober.  Lean into them, I was taught.  Feelings aren't facts. 

I learned about the difference between shame and guilt.  Guilt is feeling badly about something you did, shame is feeling badly about who you are.  I did a bad thing versus I am a bad person.  

The antonyms to shame are these:  esteem, honor, respect, pride.

That last one hits me hard.  Isn't pride bad?  Doesn't it smack of ego? 

Back to Google, The Oracle of all Things, and it tells me these are synonyms for pride:  self-confidence, self-respect, dignity, delight, joy, satisfaction. 

I feel all of those things today, and I felt exactly none of them when I was drinking.   

For years I wrote in excruciating detail about my addiction; I painted a colorful picture of what it felt like to be an active alcoholic.  But I didn't write much about what it is like to be a recovering person, because that felt prideful, and I assumed that was inherently bad.

Lately I have felt frozen when it comes to writing about addiction, and it took me a while to figure out why.... and the answer makes me twitch a little.  I don't want to write about alcoholism anymore.  I want to write about recovery.  It makes me twitch because I am afraid of pride.  I was taught pride = ego, and ego will lead me back to a drink.

I have learned that pride and ego are not synonymous, and feeling proud of my recovery is a better antidote to wanting to drink than anything else I have found. 

My life today surpasses my wildest dreams, but I don't know how to write about that.

So let me show you a picture instead:

 

This is me, with my best friend of 35 years, Amanda.  Drinking was all fun and games back then, but seeing this picture makes me want to scream at them to STOP.   But we didn't stop.  We kept right on going until alcohol brought us both to our knees, twenty plus years later.

I found this picture recently, as I was clearing out my digital photo file. Immediately, I felt that stone in my belly.  Oh God, I thought.  We could have avoided so much pain, if only we knew then what we know now.

But, of course, life doesn't work that way.  We rarely learn the hard life lessons the easy way.  Every moment - every shameful moment, every regrettable decision, every bit of denial and secrecy, led me to where I am today.  

I stared at this picture and told those girls that I loved them.  My shame voice lost confidence, and another voice took its place:  who would have thought, it said, that you are looking at women who would grow up to be sober women of dignity and honor (both synonyms for pride).  Who would have thought we'd run a non-profit together, and make it our life's mission to break the stigma of addiction and celebrate recovery from the rooftops. 

I am proud of my recovery. Not in the I'm-better-than-you sense, but in the I-overcame sense.  I don't feel shame about being in recovery from cancer.  And I don't feel shame for being in recovery from alcoholism, either. 

For years, when I said I was an alcoholic in recovery, the subtitles in my head thought: I'm admitting to a weakness, I'm revealing that I used to drink a shameful amount.   But recovery is all about moving forward. Now, when I say I'm in recovery, there are no subtitles.  There is no shame.  

Here we are today; this picture was taken at Amanda's three year recovery anniversary:

The antidote to shame is pride. It is action, involvement in your recovery.  We found honor, self-confidence, joy and delight in being women in recovery.

And we aren't going to keep it to ourselves.

~~~~~~~~

Shining Strong is proud to announce the opening of our new Shopify store!   Amanda and I have both been wearing our "I Am Not An Anonymous Person" T-shirts, and have been asked again and again, "how can I get one?"   We are so proud to be part of recovery advocacy with The Anonymous People and are excited to offer the official Anonymous People T-shirt in our new store!  All proceeds go to help Shining Strong and our advocacy and outreach in the recovery community, including our websites The Bubble Hour and Crying Out Now.  If you want to join us in breaking down the stigma of recovery and proudly wear one of these T-shirts, head on over and purchase one for $15!  Click HERE to go directly to the listing in our shop.

You can find other Shining Strong goodies there, too - a tote bag and coffee mug for starters (more to come), and you can purchase a copy of my book Let Me Get This Straight there, too. Again, all proceeds go directly to Shining Strong.

We appreciate your help, your advocacy and your support.  Thank you.

  

The Power of Story

 

He presses the little white pill into her hand and says, “Ever had an Oxy?”
 

She stares at the pill in her palm; a small, harmless looking thing.

Sensing her hesitation, he says, “I stole it from my Mom’s medicine cabinet.  It’s not like I’m some drug dealer or anything.”

She smiles shyly up at him, not wanting to act like a loser in front of an 

upperclassman.  As a starter on the high school’s soccer team she rarely drinks and stays away from illegal drugs like ecstasy, heroin and cocaine. 

“Don’t worry,” he says. “It doesn’t make you act all drunk or anything.  It just, like, takes away pain, you know?”

How bad can it be, she thinks as she pops the pill in her mouth, if it was in his Mom’s cabinet?

~~~~

This scene seems, on the outside, like one from my own high school years.  Except instead of an Oxy, it was a drink pressed into my hand.  

The desire to seem cool was the same, as was the fact that we raided some parent’s stash to get it. 

I couldn’t have known back then that I would become an alcoholic, and that it would take me decades to shake the grip alcohol had on my life.  All I knew back then was that everyone I knew was drinking, even the athletes and the A students, and it didn’t seem like that big of a deal.   

Sure, there were campaigns aimed at educating us about drugs and alcohol.  Mostly they told us “just don’t do it”.   I listened to the lectures.  I signed the contract saying I’d call my parents if I felt pressured to drink.  The thing is?  I just didn’t think the bad stuff applied to me.  I don’t think many teenagers do, because they are hardwired to believe they are exempt from consequence.

Alcohol was everywhere, and occasionally something bad would happen to someone else, but I never thought it could happen to me.

I drank alcoholically for years without realizing I had a problem.  Eventually, in my mid 30s, my drinking escalated to a point where I could barely function.  I ended up in rehab at the age of thirty-seven, with two young children at home and one very fed up husband.  It was a 30 day program, attended by those who had, generally speaking, not been successful at their other rehab attempts.   I had two under my belt – each lasting less than two weeks, and drank almost immediately after coming home.  The 30 day program was my last shot. 

What struck me immediately, when I looked around the circle at my fellow patients, was how young everyone was.  The average age of the 40 people in attendance was twenty-one.  TWENTY-ONE.   This rehab was packed with kids not even old enough to legally drink yet. 

It didn’t take long for me to figure out that these kids were here because of prescription medicine abuse.  Like me, they raided their parents’ and friends parents’ cabinets for their supply.  Except these kids weren’t sneaking liquor – they were stealing pain killers and anti-anxiety medications left over from adults’ injuries, child births and various other ailments. 

They also experimented with alcohol, but what brought them to their knees - in mere months - was prescription medicine abuse.   A painkiller snuck here or there became a regular habit at parties, and as their need increased they found it readily available for purchase in every town.  When their stash , or the money (prescription medicine bought on the street is expensive) ran out, these kids turned to heroin, meth or crack, more affordable ways to feed what had become a full blown addiction.

And that girl at the party who took the Oxy?  It didn’t matter that she was an athlete, an A student and came from a stable home.    She ended up, seven months later, with a needle in her arm, shooting heroin.   She didn’t set out to end up there, any more than I set out to become an alcoholic after my first sip of beer. 

Addiction doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t care about your ethnic, academic or economic background.  

It is an epidemic, and it is everywhere.   

The best way to combat this epidemic is to talk about it.  Talk about it with your friends. Ask your kids if they know about medicine abuse.  Just like you’d lock a liquor cabinet, lock or empty out your medicine cabinet and dispose of expired or unused medicines safely.   

We cannot afford to turn a blind eye to this, thinking that somehow our kids are immune.   The leading cause of accidental death in the United States is unintentional drug poisoning… even more than car accidents.   

ONE in FOUR teens admit to misusing  or abusing prescription medicines at least once in their lifetime, and more than 40% of teens get these prescription medicines from their parent’s supply.  Twenty percent of teens abuse prescription medicines before the age of fourteen. 

I sit in recovery meetings every week with people struggling to recover from prescription medicine abuse.   Some of them are only in their mid teens, and all of them know someone who has died because of this epidemic.  

We can do something about this, though, and it starts right here.  Right now. 

  ~~~~~


I was so honored to participate in a live-streaming event on Tuesday night, and it was an incredibly powerful and moving experience.  These are women I admire and adore, and they all shared from their heart about their personal experiences with addiction and recovery.

You can watch these powerful videos in these three-part episodes in the links below (I am in Part Two):

P
 



You can read their posts by clicking on the links below. Their stories are incredible and inspiring:

Janelle Hanchett – http://www.renegademothering.com
Brandi Jeter – http://mamaknowsitall.com
Sherri Kuhn – http://oldtweener.com
Heather King – http://www.extraordinary-ordinary.net
Lyz Lenz – http://www.lyzlenz.com/
Judy Miller – http://judymmiller.com
Lisa Page Rosenberg – http://www.smacksy.com
Alexandra Rosas – http://www.gooddayregularpeople.com
Melisa Wells – http://suburbanscrawl.com 

Together we are making a difference.  One Story At A Time.

This post is sponsored by The Partnership at Drugfree.org as part of a blog tour with listentoyourmothershow.com in an effort to #EndMedicineAbuse

Medicine Abuse Is An Epidemic. We Have The Power To End It.

I am so honored to be part of this event with some of the best writers and biggest hearts on the internet.  PLEASE tune in if you can.  Medicine Abuse is an epidemic, and it's in your backyard, too.  But we have the power to end it.  It starts right at home.

 Here is the information you need to know:

Date: The evening of Tuesday, September 10th, 2013
Time: 9 PM EST
RSVP (optional for Google + users)
View live: http://www.youtube.com/user/LTYMShow/live

For the first time, LTYM has joined forces with The Partnership at Drugfree.org to host an exclusive live-streaming event via Google Hangout On Air, taking place on Tuesday, September 10 at 9 p.m. EST. The live readings will feature 11 leading women voices on the subject of medicine abuse – a health issue that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now calls an “epidemic.”

These readings will feature new and original work about each of the women’s personal connections to addiction, substance use, and/or what they want children to know about the medicine abuse epidemic in a powerful story-sharing hour. Join us at this engaging kickoff to a blog post tour featuring these wonderful writers. Watch the livestream broadcast at the Listen To Your Mother YouTube channel
(http://www.youtube.com/user/LTYMShow/live ) beginning at 9 pm EST.

This live event will feature:

Janelle Hanchett – http://www.renegademothering.com
Brandi Jeter – http://mamaknowsitall.com
Sherri Kuhn – http://oldtweener.com
Heather King – http://www.extraordinary-ordinary.net
Lyz Lenz – http://www.lyzlenz.com/
Judy Miller – http://judymmiller.com
Lisa Page Rosenberg – http://www.smacksy.com
Alexandra Rosas – http://www.gooddayregularpeople.com
Ellie Schoenberger – http://www.onecraftymother.com
Zakary Watson – http://www.raisingcolorado.com
Melisa Wells – http://suburbanscrawl.com

For more information and to join:
RSVP on the Google Event Page
and/or join us at http://www.youtube.com/user/LTYMShow/live

The Medicine Abuse Project is a multi-year initiative of the national nonprofit, The Partnership at Drugfree.org. Its goal is to prevent half a million teens from abusing medicine by 2017. The Project provides comprehensive resources to parents, educators, health care providers, law enforcement officials and others about the growing problem of teen medicine abuse. The effort aims to mobilize parents and the public at large to take action. This includes learning about the issue, talking with their kids about the dangers of misuse and abuse of prescription drugs and properly monitoring, safeguarding and disposing of excess Rx drugs in their homes.

Please join us to empower many families across the country to take action and end medicine abuse.

To learn more about The Medicine Abuse Project, visit drugfree.org/medicineabuseproject and follow the conversation online at #endmedicineabuse

This live event and blog tour are sponsored by The Partnership for Drugfree.org, LTYM’s 2013 National Video Sponsor.

To Those Who Love An Alcoholic

Addiction is an insidious disease, and it destroys lives.

It doesn't simply effect the life of the addict/alcoholic, it seeps into the lives of everyone who cares about them.  It makes everyone feels helpless.  People search madly for a reason why - why is this person destroying their life?  Why do they continue to drink/use when nothing but misery follows?

This isn't a post about the disease of addiction and the myriad of reasons someone continues on a path of self-destruction when all the evidence points to an obvious solution ... just stop.  It boils down to the frustrating fact that an addict in the throes of their addiction can no more stop on their own than a diabetic can force their body to produce insulin, or a cancer patient can will rogue cells to stop multiplying.

This is a post for those who love an addict/alcoholic.

It's not your fault.

Addiction can hit anyone; it doesn't matter what your ethnic, economic or educational background is .. addiction doesn't discriminate.  Some environmental factors do come into play, of course. If you grow up surrounded by drugs and/or drinking, the chance that you will use yourself increase dramatically.

But you can grow up comfortably, in a loving and supportive family, and addiction can still find you.

I am a case in point.  I was raised by loving and supportive parents in a very stable home environment, financially comfortable, ivy-league educated and not surrounded by drugs or drinking at all when I grew up, and alcoholism got me anyway.

It's the way we're hardwired.  My last post about fear and how it fueled my addiction elicited some interesting responses.  My inbox filled with messages from people struggling with this disease, who said: me too. I don't know why I have always had this hole in the middle of me. I don't know why I try to hide from myself.

I also got emails from people who love an alcoholic, saying: I don't understand. What made you so afraid, why did you want to hide?

The answer is frustrating:  I don't know.   

What I know for sure is that I speak to thousands of alcoholics and addicts every year, and we're all programmed the same way.  A sixty year old male cocaine addict feels the same on the inside as I do.

We're hardwired differently, us addicts.  Life seems pointier, louder, brighter to us.  We suffer from an odd combination of competence and profound insecurity.  We seek validation from the outside in when we're actively drinking/using. We don't understand how to love ourselves.

If you love an addict, this is confounding. Most addicts/alcoholics are intelligent, compassionate and loving people. We have supportive family and friends. We are successful in our jobs. We're creative, innovative and outgoing.  We look fine on the outside.  We are teachers, physicians, pilots, parents, CEOs, pastors.

Recovery isn't just about stopping drinking or using.  Recovery is about digging deep, staring at the insides we've spent a lifetime avoiding.  Recovery teaches us to find acceptance, to love ourselves as we are.  And as long as we don't ignite our disease by drinking or using, we heal.  We recover.  We find peace of mind and learn to face the hard stuff like fear.

But if you love an active alcoholic or addict, what do you do?

The first thing to know is you can't fix them. They have to fix themselves.

They have to admit that they are powerless against drugs/alcohol and that their life is unmanageable.  This can be astonishingly hard for an addict to do. We can lose jobs, our license, the love of our family and friends, and we still refuse to see that it is alcohol that is at the root of it all.  We search madly for any other reason - ANY other reason - than stopping drinking.  We point madly about, blaming our job (or lack thereof), money (or lack thereof), heartbreak, grief, depression, anxiety.  ANYTHING but alcohol.  We'd rather be called crazy than alcoholic.  Why?  Because we think the thing that is actually destroying us is holding us together.  This is the illogical thought pattern of an active alcoholic.

And so we lie. We exaggerate or minimize. We steal. We take advantage of love and support, turning into evidence that we can't be that bad.  We break hearts.  We behave in ways the sober us would never, ever behave.

All too often, the only way to help an alcoholic is to start shutting doors.  This doesn't mean you don't love and care about someone; in fact, it means the opposite. You can love an alcoholic to death. Give an alcoholic a place to live, or money, or even love, and they will stay stuck in their disease.  Very often the only thing that gets an alcoholic to get help is for them to have a moment of lucidity and realize that everyone is gone, and that they are the common denominator of their own misery.

I heard a line on the show Intervention, and it has stuck with me.  The interventionist was coaching a family on what to say to a woman who was a mother, sister, daughter and friend, and she wouldn't stop drinking despite some dire consequences in her life.  The interventionist told the family to say to her:  "I will do anything to help you stop, but I will no longer participate in your self-destruction".   I've heard it said another way:  "I love you unconditionally, but I don't have to have unconditional acceptance of your actions".

It's hard, loving an alcoholic. Just like the alcoholic is searching desperately for something they can do to get out of their spiral (other than surrender), loved ones are searching just as desperately for something they can do to help.  Get them into rehab?  Give them money so they can afford gas in order to find a job?  Send them to a counselor?

The sad truth is that if the alcoholic doesn't admit they have a problem and ask for the help, these things don't work.  Recovery is an inside job.

So please, stop thinking you have done something (or not done something) to create an alcoholic.  We aren't created, we're made this way.  We are the only ones who can fix ourselves.  We have to ask for help.  We have to throw our hands up and surrender and say we'll do anything - ANYTHING - to stop.  If you tell an alcoholic they need to go to rehab and you hear things like:  "But my kids need me" or "But I have to work" -- they aren't ready.   If you tell an alcoholic to get help and they tell you "I know I have a problem, I'm working on it.  I'm only drinking on (insert futile attempt to control here)"... they aren't ready.

The best thing you can do, as someone who loves an addict, is face some hard truths of your own, and plan for the worst.   Don't lose yourself to blame or guilt, because you could no more make someone an alcoholic than you can get them to stop. Put boundaries around yourself, keep yourself emotionally and physically safe. Cut them out of your life until they ask for help and are ready to do anything to stop.  If that means they have no place to live, no money, no friends -- so be it.

Trying to save an alcoholic from consequences keeps them sick.  I know it's heartbreaking.  It's like watching a train racing 100 mph towards a brick wall and the engineer is stepping on the gas instead of the brakes. But if you saw a train about to hit a wall, you wouldn't get between the train and the wall.  You'd pray like mad and hope there were pieces left to pick up, that the engineer survives and finally realizes he needs help.

Be ready to get that phone call, the one that says your loved one is in jail, or the hospital. Or, God forbid, dead.  Make peace with the fact that you can't do anything to prevent someone's rock bottom until that person asks for help.

We hit bottom when we stop digging, not when someone yanks the shovel out of our hand.

I wish I had better news. I wish there was a magical cure for addiction.

Lastly - find your own support system. Al-Anon, or online forums, or trusted friends, or others who have lived through loving an addict.  So much love, energy and time is poured into an active alcoholic.  Loved ones need the same kind of support.  They suffer from the same stigma - nobody wants their wife/daughter/sister/friend to be an alcoholic.

Loved ones are NOT alone.  65% of American adults are impacted by addiction either directly or indirectly.

Find the help you deserve, and don't try to do this alone.

The Most Important Post I've Ever Written About Addiction and Recovery

I went to a screening of "The Anonymous People" movie on Saturday.  I met up with nine others, including my best friend and a co-host of The Bubble Hour, Amanda:



Amanda, Ellie, Holly, Jaclyn, Kylee

Here's where I could insert the usual rhetoric of "do they look like alcoholics or drug addicts to you?"

But I'm not.

Because The Anonymous People is at the front end of a movement - a Recovery Advocacy movement - and we're changing the vernacular, the way we talk about addiction.

That is a picture of people in Long Term Recovery.

The shining, smiling people in the photo above all have a chronic, progressive disease that if left untreated will kill us.

"Addiction is a disease without a cure, but WITH A SOLUTION."  (William Cope Moyers)

When someone remarks on the fact that I'm not drinking and I say I'm an alcoholic, even if I quickly add "in recovery" right after, I already know that the word 'alcoholic' has connoted something for them.  We all have a picture of what an alcoholic looks like in our mind's eye.  If I say, however, "I don't drink because I'm in recovery", there is a smile and usually a "good for you!".

Everyone likes a good redemption story, and being in remission from addiction is right up there with being in remission from cancer or other chronic diseases.

Did you notice the word "remission"?  That's because I'll never be cured.  I am a Double Winner - someone with both cancer and alcoholism - and I know that I'll never be fully "cured" of either.  But I also know my chances of staying in remission go up the longer BOTH my diseases are inactive.

Do you have a picture in your mind's eye about what recovery looks like?  Most people don't, because recovery has long been kept in the shadows.  Because of the stigma, most addicts and alcoholics do not speak openly about their recovery.  The media is full of addiction horror stories, but there are very few recovery stories, and we're trying to change that.

Addiction is a disease.  It has been recognized as a disease by the medical community for decades.

While the choice to take a drink or use a drug is voluntary, what happens to my brain vs. a "normal" person's brain is completely different.  If a comparison to cancer or diabetes or other chronic diseases makes you uncomfortable, think of it like an allergy.  My body reacts differently to alcohol, triggering compulsive behaviors (like wanting more) despite any negative consequences that may occur as a result of drinking.

So, people may say, "Just don't drink!!  If you were allergic to peanuts, you'd stay away from peanuts!"

Here is the root of the stigma, I think, because the symptoms of the disease of alcoholism are behavioral.  When someone is stuck in the cycle of addiction, they aren't trying to ruin their lives, or drink more than a normal person.  They are trying to just have one or two, but since their bodies are hard-wired to respond differently, it just isn't possible.  We call it "being born without an 'off' switch".  It can take decades for the disease to take root, so evidence of addiction isn't always readily apparent.

By the time someone realizes there is a problem, they are usually caught in the emotional addiction (if not the physical one) and can't get out on their own.  Their thinking is the problem - it's a brain disease - whether it's denial or the belief that if they try hard enough they can cut back or stop altogether.

An addict can no more think their way out of addiction than a cancer patient can think their way out of cancer.

Would you tell a cancer patient to 'stop' having cancer?  Or a diabetic to start controlling their insulin on their own? 

It sounds like I'm being facetious, but I'm not. 

The "Just Say No" campaign in the eighties - arguably well intentioned- exacerbated the stigma of addiction in very harmful ways.  While the campaign itself did little to curb addiction and addiction related problems in society and the economy, it cemented in the public's eye that it's possible to simply say NO to addiction.   It furthered the belief that addiction is a moral failing or lack of willpower.

Willpower has absolutely nothing to do with addiction. If it did, addiction related issues wouldn't cost the US economy over $360 BILLION per year.  If "just saying no" were enough, those of us suffering at the hands of addiction would have said no a long time ago.

What we need is vast policy change, healthcare reform, enough treatment beds and more reimbursement for treating addiction.  The system is reluctant to "dump" money into rehabilitation, with the mistaken belief that addicts and alcoholics don't get better, or at least most of them don't.  We should be treating the addiction problem in the US like any other health crisis, like cancer and obesity.  But we aren't.  WHY?

Here are some startling facts:

• 63% of Americans are impacted by addiction
• 67% of Americans observe a stigma towards addiction (this includes the addict themselves, who are trying desperately to 'cure' themselves of the problem, thinking they are weak or morally corrupt).
• 74% of addicts/alcoholics are ashamed to talk about addiction in their family
• 80% of people in prison are there due to addiction related issues
• Addiction (alcohol and illegal drugs) cost the US economy $366 BILLION in 2004. Add in prescription drug abuse which has reached EPIDEMIC proportions and that number goes WAY up.
• Over 20 million people struggle with addiction. 
• THERE ARE OVER 23 MILLION PEOPLE IN LONG TERM RECOVERY IN AMERICA ALONE

That last bullet point is the one I want to focus on. Changing the public's perception of addiction by TALKING ABOUT RECOVERY.  Because, everyone, RECOVERY WORKS.  There are more people in recovery from addiction than there are suffering from it.

Here's the rub, though. People don't recover on their own.  Every single recovery program focuses on community - on finding other addicts and alcoholics who understand where you are and can help you navigate life without alcohol or drugs. 

It doesn't matter what program of recovery you follow. Recovery advocacy is for EVERYONE.

You don't have to talk about HOW you recovery, just THAT you recover.

For those of us in programs that have anonymity as a tradition and who are confused about breaking this tradition, this point is KEY.  How you stay sober isn't relevant.  You do not have to be a mouthpiece for an individual program of recovery.  You can talk about recovery without ever mentioning how you do it.  When someone who is suffering asks you how you stay sober (and if you talk about recovery they will ask, I guarantee it), then you are free to share - in the sacredness of a one-on-one (or group) setting - how you do it.

But until the public understands that RECOVERY HAPPENS, people are going to stay stuck in addiction.  People are going to misunderstand what addiction means.  People aren't going to know it is quite literally on every street in America.  Every street has someone stuck in the darkness and isolation of addiction, and every street has someone thriving in recovery.  We have enough coverage of the destruction of addiction.  We sensationalize the stories of celebrities crashing cars, going in and out of rehab.  We condemn the havoc alcoholism and addiction bring to society.

We are sensationalizing the wrong thing. Let's sensationalize recovery.

How? How do we do this?  Not everyone needs to stand on a hilltop and tell the world they are in recovery.  For the same reason lots of people choose not to talk openly about their cancer, diabetes or other chronic illness, because it's personal.  But usually a cancer or diabetes sufferer isn't ashamed (I know there are cases where shame comes into play in these diseases, too).  An addict is almost always ashamed until - if they are lucky - they find their way into a program of recovery and discover they are NOT ALONE and there IS hope.

What we need are healthcare and policy changes that support an addict or alcoholic wanting help.  If you decide you want help - even if you're forced to get help - it's astonishingly hard to get a bed in treatment.  LONG TERM treatment is needed, whether it's inpatient or out, to start on the path to recovery.  Even if you DO find a treatment program, it's usually prohibitively expensive. 

To sum up: today in our society a person stuck in the cycle of addiction has to work their way past the stigma and shame, ask for help (and the statistic above shows that most people don't even want to tell their family) and then FIND that help.  And then pay for it.

The system is BROKEN.

If we channeled money into prevention and treatment that $360 billion would go DOWN.  Parents, this involves you, too. Prescription drug abuse is everywhere. Literally. Kids of every economic and ethnic background are trying these drugs, and for those that have the disease of addiction it is killing them.  They don't just try an Oxy at a "Pharma-Party", they end up mere WEEKS later addicted to heroin.  It's happening in YOUR community. It is not a reflection on your parenting.

It is an epidemic.

If you want to become involved in Recovery Advocacy, there are many places to go.  Google recovery organizations in your state.  Go to Faces and Voices of Recovery and see what they are doing there.  Check out the trailer below for The Anonymous People. 

There are other ways, too.  If you have a family member who is struggling, open your heart and mind and realize they have a disease.  This doesn't excuse behavior.  Consequences of addiction needs to be acknowledge and amends to society and loved ones paid.  I look at it this way:

Addiction is not my fault, but recovery is my responsibility.

Unless the public's perception of alcoholism and addiction changes, and more resources are dedicated to helping addicts as patients who have a disease, we will stay rooted in fear, stigma and reacting to this problem instead of being proactive.

Remember "Silence = Death"?  The gay community recognized that the stigma surrounding their community was going to kill them unless they changed the public's perception of HIV. They came out of the shadows, stared down that stigma, and changed how the public (and policy makers) view HIV.

Addicts and alcoholics are in the same position.  We DIE of this disease.. the one so may of us can't talk about.  It will KILL us.

If you are an alcoholic in recovery, try changing the way you talk openly about your disease.  You are a Person In Recovery.  Even if you only have one day.  Welcome.  You are a miracle.  Be proud.

Please watch this trailer- it's only 3 minutes.  If you are in a position to do so - and I hope in the future many, many more of us will be in that position, SHOUT to everyone you know to watch this. If you have a loved one or friend who struggles or who is in recovery, this effects you, too.  If you pay taxes this effects you. 

Addiction impacts EVERYONE.

Get informed. Get active.  Get well.