How I found that regret disappears when life becomes filled with reflection and support
I sit here typing this post while reflecting on a journal entry I made last week. Although I feel strong and confident in my recovery, I want to share this because I still have feelings that are low, dark, morose and depressing. In early sobriety, relapse came as often as the train through town. Like the train, each relapse came with the same whistle and earth trembling quake. My thoughts would get in the way and think too much about myself in reality. Russell Brand put it quite eloquently,
“Drug and alcohol are not my problem, reality is my problem- drugs and alcohol are my solution. If this seems odd to you, it is because you are not an alcoholic or a drug addict.”
For those who are alcoholics/ drug addicts this makes perfect sense. For those of you who are not drug addicts or alcoholics I can give you a few examples that have caused me to use or drink and maybe you can relate:
1) There is nothing going on today… I am bored…
2) This is going to be a long traffic jam…
3) I have a 45-minute drive home from work…
4) My wife wants to discuss some very difficult things when I get home…
5) I have not talked with my son in a couple of months and his mother said he could face-time tonight, I feel ashamed and nervous…
6) I wont be able to fall asleep tonight…
7) What if I get home and she wants to be romantic and intimate but I have all this stuff on my mind?
8) My meeting does not start for another 30 minutes…
9) 5 o’clock is 8 hours from now…
10) Today I will be floating on the river with people… All there is to do is sit and float…
11) The tailgate party starts at noon and the game is at 7:30 pm
12) I don’t have money to go do the activity everyone else is doing…
13) I just got divorced and my son is gone from my life
14) My grandfather passed away…
Ill stop at 14 because I think by now you catch my drift and I didn't want to stop at 13: Nearly anything and everything has an ounce of reality to it and anything with reality has a way of making me uneasy. Even floating on the river, going through rapids while fishing and looking at glacier national park includes little bits of reality. It involves some time of awkward silence, some rowing, putting the boat on the trailer, taking the boat off, cold water, too much sun, too little sun. If this sounds like complaining then it sounds right. But, how about the feelings that I speak about with respect to the death of a loved one? My grandfather was the only one who understood my struggle with addiction. What am I going to do without him being around to talk to? Going to the beach won’t be as fun because he won’t be there. What about divorce and loosing my son? Cooking sucks because there is no one else to eat it with, going to the park is pointless, going on hikes is dull, watching kid movies makes me sad, listening to the Beatles song, “Don’t let me down” reminds me of how he danced. These seem like more reasonable complaints. These seem like the common grief situations that make drinking justifiable. I sure used them.
But, really there is no difference between justifiable complaints and other complaints. One persons fear is another’s delight, which can be judged? Neither can be judged. Therefore, each of these thoughts, if you take away the emotional component, has the same whiney tone making me sound like an insatiable and obdurate child. Imagine if I didn’t first say the catastrophe that occurred before stating the effect. If I didn’t say my son was no longer around or my grandfather passed. What if I had just said, “I can’t watch kid movies,” “I can’t listen to a Beatles song,” “hikes are dull,” or “the beach isn’t as fun as it used to be.” Those statements in and of themselves sound like the sentiment of very pessimistic, despondent people. I have no interest in hanging out with those types of characters. Most people do not. This is the place that I would get with everything so the rationale follows, if I don’t want to be with people who say stuff like this all the time and I am saying this stuff all the time then technically I don’t want to be with myself. Oh what a horrible cycle that leads to miserable isolation and depression. This happened to me in my journal the other day.
The entry opens up, “Today I feel misery. I feel empty. I feel like a disgrace and a failure. I believe I have tried so hard and worked through so much to become a new man and all it has done is given people a way to walk over me, critique me, and hurt me because they know if I fight back I drink, I die.” I went on to say that there was no one to validate my feelings. That I had no room to share how I felt. For instance, if I was tired then the response would be, “you got plenty of sleep.” I then looked into my life and said the following ramble, “I’m not working hard enough for my son, I don’t have the job that brings in enough money, my goals and dreams set my family back with time constraints and financial demands, I spend too much money on things I don’t need, I don’t clean up enough, I don’t listen enough, I don’t work on things around the house enough, I over react about my asthma and forest fires, my truck is too expensive, I wake up too early, I play music too loud. I’m stuck, pinned up against the wall, strapped and being beat.”
If this sound like complaining then it sounds right. None of these things were actually ever said to me- it’s just the way that I felt. Just like feelings like I’m not a good father because I haven’t talked to my son in a while. He has never told me that. Instead he gets on the phone and tells me how much he loves me. I choose the effect I want to listen to. Just like saying the beach is no fun any more, of course it is. But that is reality. I had serious problems with reality.
A year ago I could have sat down with a pen and paper and bled the same words out of my soul I did in that journal entry, just over a week ago. The only difference is I would not be here to reflect and write about it later. That is because the only escape I know of now is suicide by a bottle of Xanax, because that is where it took me during my last relapse 6 months ago. Before my last relapse I found a little bit of freedom from reality when I could smoke as much marijuana and pop as many pills as I could. Before my last relapse I was almost a year sober from alcohol- but still popping pills and smoking pot because that stuff was medicinal. Three years prior to this I found my freedom using intravenous opiates, preferable heroin, but 90 mgs of oxycontin would have sufficed until the good stuff was around. A year prior, in college, it would have been a groovy mix of ketamine, LSD, ecstasy, marijuana, Adderall and Xanax. After entering the working class I had to depart from those time consuming alternatives to consciousness. It never really mattered how much energy was zapped from me, I was prescribed enough Adderall through college that I could take enough for me, give some to friends and offer some for money on the side. Did I mention sex? Well, if the drugs and booze wasn’t working to aid in my departure from reality I would have dealt with it with sex. This started before college and stuck around till after, as some of you may have read in my first entry titled Nit and Grit: scared, molested, drugs, prostitution and lost https://www.trialstotriathlon.com/blog/2018/8/8/the-nit-grit-scared-molested-drugs-prostitution-and-lost
I used randoms, casual friends, internet rendezvous, solo web explorations, chat rooms, and adult stores or strip club (after I was old enough). I had enough Adderall for them too. Before this I remember huffing whip cream, glue and gas. I remember pressing the sides of my neck so tight I would pass out and wake up feeling fuzzy, AKA asphyxiation.
In short, discomfort was an intolerable norm for me and after 16 years of using drugs, alcohol and sex I had exhausted my options to ease the pain. So as I stated, I swallowed A MONTHS SUPPLY of Xanax and started walking down the street waiting for it to take, for me to slip into the oblivion I desperately spent every waking moment looking for, the space in which time disappeared, fears dissipated into the never from whence they came and pain had no definition.
From my first memories as to a year ago I did not want to be me. I had finally found the one solution. Therefore, I would not have been there to write and reflect on those feelings. I would have died, my story with me. My skeletons, my fears, my lockboxes, my closet, my love, my purpose- all would have vanished. This almost occurred in sobriety for me. This almost occurred not too long ago. Sobriety I have learned is very full of trials. Sobriety, in fact has just as many trials as my past. Triathlon has taught me something that saved my sobriety and therefore saved my life- hints the name from trials to triathlon. Triathlon taught me that when I start hurting and aching and thinking everything is going wrong that I don’t have to be alone. There is typically a water station near or another runner feeling the same way. I can choose therefore, to get wrapped up into my own head and feel that pain or I can look out and open my world to a much larger landscape. This landscape has arms of love around every corner. There is support and people who care. I used to think the escape from pain was with drugs. Giving up on the pain for a moment was all I needed. But it isn’t, it is pushing through and looking for support. That is what fills the soul That is what triathlon showed me and why I stick to sobriety now.
“Giving up is for the moment, glory is eternal.”
-Roberto Vieria- Ironman and Triathlete.