Tag: Alcoholics Anonymous

My Story: The Short Version

Posted on by Lisa

You know how some people have a more interesting story than others to tell? And you know how some of those stories have absolutely no relevancy to you at all? You get to the end and wish you hadn’t spent all that time reading?

Well, the short short version of my story is this: I was addicted to alcohol for a long time. Now I’m not, and I can tell you how sobriety happened, if you’re interested. There. Now you can leave if you want.

If the short short version hit a nerve, I may be your girl.

We all have a story, right? Some are more interesting than others, but we all have one. So, this is the short version of mine, and it sums up what’s important for you, so you don’t have to wade through a lot of words. Here goes.

What’s really important for you to know is that I was addicted to alcohol for over twenty years. I struggled mightily. I lost a lot, and at times, I wanted to die because of it. It nearly ruined the majority of the best years of my life.

Things are different now, but I need for you to know that I am “legit” when it comes to understanding this alcohol demon.

Over the years, as I tried to figure out why I drank, I swung back and forth like a pendulum, from the disease model to the non-disease model. I tried both philosophies on for size, among other approaches, but nothing really stuck until now.

I wanted to know why I drank, and I wanted secure sobriety.

A few years ago, I finally managed to quit drinking, but I still didn’t feel like it was over. I felt afraid that I was going to relapse at any minute.  I felt like my sobriety was dependent on something or someone outside myself. Sobriety felt too tenuous and uncertain for me to really be comfortable with it. And to be honest, I still had this “little plan” in the back of my mind, that if things got really bad, I might start drinking again.

 I didn’t understand why I drank, and until I understood it deep down, I didn’t feel like I could properly manage it. I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was sober, but it wasn’t the joyous and free sobriety I was hearing about and that I had expected to find.

12-Step meetings felt familiar and accepting; but relapse could be right around the next corner.

I was attending AA meetings, but I didn’t completely buy into the philosophy. I always felt accepted as I was, and at times the meetings felt familiar, in a weird way. I think they remind me of going to church when I was growing up.

Eventually, though, I starting needing to understand more about why I drank and how to have secure sobriety. I didn’t trust sobriety granted — or not — by a nebulous “Higher Power”.

Sitting in meetings, repeating words I didn’t fully believe, reminded me of growing up in the Catholic Church. And, frankly, if I was hoping for a “Spiritual Awakening” (AA believes this is necessary for recovery) from that God, I may be in trouble; we weren’t on good terms.

I stuck with it though. I completed all the steps, and got a 1-year chip. Once the drunk fog lifted, I started searching for the underlying reasons I drank.

I didn’t completely believe in the AA/12-Step concept that drinking was because of “character defects” – negative aspects of my personality like fear, selfishness, and dishonesty, which needed to be removed by a “Higher Power”. While I may feel these things at times, they’re normal human characteristics or emotions, and I believed there was more to it.

Who’s to blame?

I felt like putting the blame on my shoulders, even though I was the one doing the drinking, wasn’t effective. Looking for what was wrong with me, didn’t empower me. When people are already blaming themselves for something they can’t understand or even explain, blaming them doesn’t help.

Even after being sober for a year or so, I still felt the need to drink – not an uncontrollable craving or an urge, like when I first quit drinking. No, this was something deeper, underneath. Something was lacking in me, or needed to be filled, completed, made whole or something.

I worried that I would relapse.

And that’s when I realized that the reason I started drinking to begin with, was still there. I had just been covering it up with alcohol, all these years. I had a drinking problem, don’t get me wrong, no doubt. But once the alcohol was removed, the true need remained. That’s what I needed to address.

Fast forward to now, and I have discovered the underlying reasons I drank for all those years.  It seems obvious to me now, but at the time I was drinking, it felt far too complicated and entrenched for me to recognize, much less change.

The point of no return.

I am now not just sober, but I feel Better Than Sober, because I understand and can explain alcoholism. And as contrived and trite as that may sound to you (it would have sounded that way to me if I had read this when I was still addicted), it is truly how I feel.

I don’t crave alcohol. I don’t obsess about drinking anymore, and I’m not afraid to state that. This should be very clear – not feeling the need to drink is not a temporary thing.

It’s a brain thing! Good news: you have one of those.

Addiction is complicated. It can be all-consuming, and it can absolutely wreck your life. But when you understand alcoholism, and how your brain works in relation to it, everything changes. For me, there is no uncontrollable, capricious demon lurking in my psyche just waiting until I let my guard down so it can pounce on me.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. I believe there are other people like me, and I want them to feel like they’ve found someone who’s been in the trenches, found a way out, and can help them do the same.

Alcoholism is a lonely existence that only you can change. But when you’re stuck in it, it’s really hard to see how to get yourself out of it. I get you. Keep reading. There is hope, I promise.

The Beginning of the End

Posted on by Lisa

Some people believe the addicted are weak. Little do such people realize how strong we must actually be. I know we are braver than even we believe, and more resilient than anyone could begin to imagine. For it is impossible to fathom the incredible strength and character required to be knocked down by your own hand; then get up and face “the enemy” in the mirror again, and again. Day after day . . . until you finally get yourself out of that perpetual self-defeating cycle.

You, my friend, are braver than you believe and stronger than you know.

For most, drinking is pleasant. For many, it becomes a conditioned and sub-conscious habit or association which gets carried away and derails them for a time. But for me, drinking was something much different.

It felt like security, and I don’t know how else to describe it. There were even times it felt like emotional survival. I couldn’t explain it then, but now, it’s very clear. There was a safeness–a surety–it gave me, which was lacking in myself.

I didn’t just look forward to it; I obsessed about it.  Not only did I plan my next drink, I knew the minute I was awake when I was going to feel more at ease with myself–and it couldn’t come soon enough. Once upon a time, I did reward myself with it; but by the time I’d gotten past the first failed rehab, I required it. I didn’t know another way.


Some drinkers know alcohol’s secret power, and we hide that truth with our other secrets.

It didn’t even scratch the surface to say I was “taking the edge off” or “relaxing” or using it as “social lubrication” as some people describe it. The fact that alcohol was so profoundly important to me was another secret to keep to myself. I was ashamed of it.

Drinking felt almost like survival

Look, I had long since departed from the realm of a nice buzz, ok? This was far and away a much more insidious need, with years of pain behind it. So much so that I – like many others – inexplicably, incrementally, and oh so reluctantly put alcohol before everything else. Even though, somewhere in our heart of hearts, we know better – and we want better. We just can’t access that part of us.

At one point or another, some of us put it before our marriages and children, our careers, our health, our safety, our self-respect – everything! Sex, food, personal care/safety – the basic foundations of existence for normal humans, become what feels like a matter of survival, almost, for some. And that was me.

So now for the “highlights” of the rest of my drinking days. If you’ve read the blogs before in this section, you can guess much of what life was like. I don’t feel the need to go into a great deal of detail, but suffice it to say that often it was hell for me, and I’ve no doubt, for those around me.  

A dubious list of shame, and only me  to blame.

  • After the first rehab debacle, I went back to Continuing Education – another thirty days on my own dime, this time. (Remember, I told you I’m a slow learner.) I was sober for a few months. Then not.
  • Consequently, my husband of twenty-two years lost all hope and gave up on me. 
  • My parents/family were bewildered and exasperated. I appeared to be a lost cause. 
  • I wrecked four vehicles, (fortunately, no one was ever injured), and was charged with DUI.
  • Because of the DUI, I did a brief stint in county jail (read that scintillating story here) Quite the experience for a sheltered housewife.
  • I tried SMART Recovery online – Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Program for addiction. Was sober for a few months. Then not.
  • Consequently, I wound up in ER one night with “lethal amount of alcohol” in my system.
  • Stayed drunk off/on for a few more years.
  • Wound up in the ER with broken ribs – don’t ask. Kept drinking.
  • I got another DUI.
  • Because of that, I halfheartedly attempted suicide trying to fix my problem.
  • As a result, I spent four days in a psych ward.
  • Went into a mandatory Twelve-Step Intensive Outpatient Program. I was sober for a while, using monthly injections of Vivitrol until Insurance quit paying for it.
  • I was drunk off/on again for a couple more years.
  • Finally, I went into the last rehab, where I learned something that began what I now call my personal paradigm shift. This was by no means over, but it was the beginning of the end of this shit-show. You can read what happened there to turn this upside down for me here.

It has indeed been a long, miserably difficult, dirt road.

Somewhere, somehow, I still had hope. Deep inside me, I knew there had to be more to me than this person everyone saw. On the other side of drunk was someone healthy, whole, and happy – I just knew it. We’re all born that way, after all. Aren’t we?

It’s difficult to describe how I felt through all of this. Frustration and fear? Yes.

Embarrassment and shame? Check.

Pain? Yes. A type of pain that you will either understand because you’ve felt it, or you never could. And if you’ve not quit reading yet, you might get it.

Those like me are carrying an inconceivably heavy burden. And we’ve been carrying it our entire lives. We believe it is, indeed, us – because we’ve never been separate from it. An ancient wound we seem to have been born with. It is a part of our personal fabric – who we are.

And so we try to relieve it with alcohol. It almost works for a while, and it’s hard to quit something that almost works.

And we’ll continue until we get to the real problem. Or die with it. Because this feeling was there BEFORE we started drinking. The drink just covered it up, alleviating it briefly.

Deep down, the pain of

  • not being good enough,
  • or not fitting in,
  • not being wanted, accepted, or valued as we are,
  • feeling like something’s inherently wrong with us deep down,
  • and/or vague and persistent emptiness

This feeling is so familiar, and so pervasive, it’s just who we think we are. It has always been there. Read on, friend. I found a way out of that feeling and out of the alcohol cycle. Let me be your guide, we’ll hike this trail together.

An End to Alcoholism

Posted on by Lisa

Another rehab. To be honest, I wasn’t hopeful. This was a traditional program based on the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (from now on written as “12-Steps/AA” for brevity), which had never been my thing. But I had to do something.

Very few people in my life knew I’d gone in; I was embarrassed and ashamed, and most were weary of me, frankly. But I had proven inept at suicide, so there was nothing left to do, except keep trying. I still didn’t know how, but I had to figure out why I drank. I was convinced that discovering that and changing it was the only long-term solution for me.

I wished AA/12-Steps worked for me long-term.

From the first time I had tried it, I’d wanted Alcoholics Anonymous/12-Steps to work for me. I really did, because I live in a city with an extensive and strong AA Community. It would have been so much easier had it worked fifteen years ago, when I first ventured into “the rooms”.  

And even though I don’t agree with the philosophy, nor do I practice any of the steps now, I did “work” them all for about a year.

So, when I went into the last rehab (an Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP)), I did quit drinking for about a year with only two significant relapses — by far, the most success I’d experienced in over twenty years.

Over twenty plus years, ways I’ve tried to quit drinking:

  • Austere, self-imposed, punitive measures.
  • New (“pseudo”) science.
  • Hypnosis.
  • AA Meetings.
  • Counseling (lots of it).
  • Written contracts with myself.
  • First this church, then that one.
  • Home-study — non-disease based programs .
  • Residential non-disease based program (thirty days).
  • Continuing Education from the program above (thirty days again).
  • SMART Recovery online at-home (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Program).
  • Three different 12-Step-based facilities.
  •  Vivitrol injections for several months, coupled with individual therapy and a 12-Step program.
  • Buddhism for addiction.
  • Many many self-help books.
  • Bible studies and Big Book Studies.

Needless to say, none of these efforts had been permanently successful. The way I viewed it, it was about me. I had failed. The problem had always been mine to solve. I believed, “No one helps me get drunk, therefore, no one can help me get sober.”

That had always been my motto, and I still feel that way in large part. While I do believe a network can be helpful in myriad ways, it is ultimately between my ears where the magic or the torment lies.

As you can probably guess from looking over the list above, my life had been quite the shit show. Not all the time and not in all ways, however. I had managed to stay married for twenty-two years, raised three kiddos to nearly legal age, and started a somewhat successful home-based business. Today, my children insist they had a good and normal upbringing, and their lives weren’t the hell I remember in my mind, so I’m thankful for that.

What was wrong with me?

And here’s my quick recap of the negative consequences of my drinking problem.

  • I’ve wrecked four vehicles (to varying degrees of seriousness)  – miraculously, no one was ever injured or even involved except me.
  • I’ve been to the ER five times, twice with broken bones.
  • Far too many minor injuries to count, with little or no recollection of where they came from – huge bruises, cuts, burns, etc.
  • Divorce after twenty-two years (not all alcohol related – really, I swear! I did make it awfully convenient for him, though, didn’t I?).
  • County jail twice for DUIs  (you must read about my stint in jail as a sheltered stay-at-home mom/housewife here – crazy stuff).
  • One hundred hours of community service.
  • One hundred forty hours of mandated addiction “counseling”.
  • Two attempts at suicide (only one anyone actually knows about).
  • Wound up in psych ward for four days because of that.
  • And finally, I estimate I’ve spent approximately $150,000 on drinking-related expenses.

Could it get any worse?

Of course, this is only a list of the tangible consequences. There isn’t a way to account for the heartache, pain, anxiety, shame, anger and frustration or any other emotional toll that drinking has taken on me and those I love. They’re enumerable, unfathomable, and indescribable. I don’t have the words to describe how bad all of this felt at times.

So what? What does this mean for me?

So, why am I writing all this? Because it’s over, and I can! It’s really over. Done. I’m through it, and I live to talk about it, and share it.

Through my sharing, I want to give you hope if you haven’t figured out yet why you drink and how to stop. The end began when I learned about what happens in our brains and bodies during addiction.

The missing piece to a life-long puzzle.

What I learned made so much sense to me. It was the missing piece to a life-long puzzle of struggle. A paradigm shifted inside my head – understanding. Finally!  It gave me enough separation from my psyche, while explaining the physical symptoms I was experiencing, that I could actually understand what had been happening. This separation gave me enough pause to realize that maybe there wasn’t something terribly wrong with me, after all.

There is nothing wrong with us, and we have scientific proof.

Maybe I didn’t have a life-long progressive and irreversible disease. Maybe I wasn’t weak willed, or immoral, or blindly selfish either. Maybe this was even normal. WHAT?! And maybe it could be reversed, because our brains change, right? And that is my life-altering revelation about alcoholism!

Maybe this is actually normal, and there’s nothing wrong with me after all.

This cutting-edge, science-based understanding transformed me, and I want to help you. I haven’t looked back since, except of course, to write it all down.

I pursued this path further, after leaving the rehab, and in my pursuits, I’ve discovered:

(1) why we drink and how to control it.

(2) what alcoholism really is, so I can not only understand it, but I can explain why I do what I do.

And that, my friend, is the reason for this entire site. It is, for me, the discovery of my lifetime, and I want to help make it yours. If you’ve been struggling with alcoholism, you are so close to the end of it.

Now it’s your turn.

I want to become your guide to your transformation. I want you to become the hero of your own story. Wouldn’t that feel better?

How to do that? Email me, sign up for my post notifications, go to my Facebook page and watch some live videos — begin the connection, begin the journey with me. I’m with you every step of the way.

Only The Beginning

Posted on by Lisa

One morning I broke my wrist while drinking. In the big picture, breaking a wrist is relatively unimportant. But that event, after over fifteen years of drinking and trying unsuccessfully to quit, led me to my first rehab. And that was important.

In my first rehab, I became exposed to the idea that alcoholism is not disease based–very important revelation.

 Up to this point, I had not really experienced any significant negative consequences from drinking. No DUI’s or other legal matters, no failed relationships, no lost jobs, and no physical injuries, until that wrist snapped.

The first rehab is important in my narrative because it was a non-disease based program. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but there are various schools of thought as to what alcoholism really is. In 2010, there were really only two that I knew of. Is it either a disease and treated as such, or it’s not. I chose to believe the latter, and that’s why I opted for this particular rehab program.

First rehab – non-disease approach

It was a residential, out-of-state treatment center that cost around fourteen thousand dollars. I couldn’t afford it, so my wonderful parents paid for this for me. (The memory still brings tears to my eyes. Someday I will pay them back.)

The organizers of the program claimed an eighty percent success rate, which I now suspect may have been false or based on extremely loose statistics. The year before, I had completed their at-home independent study, which was based on the philosophy that addiction is a choice. The at-home version of the program did keep me sober for a few months that year, and I desperately wanted to stop drinking, so I thought upgrading to the residential program may just be the ticket. Full immersion.

My first rehab taught that addiction is a choice and not a disease.

So even with three kiddos (ages fifteen, thirteen, and twelve) and a successful home-based business, my family and I picked me up out of my life, and deposited me into the hands of this treatment center to “fix” me. Straightforward and simple, like having an appendectomy. We kept it as secret as possible.

We had to let some folks know, though, because they would be helping out logistically both with our kids, and with the retail store operated by me and my husband. (Ironically enough, the store was located in the “Bourbon Capital of the World” – no kidding. And no, bourbon wasn’t my drink of choice.)

So, is it a disease or not?

The counselors at my rehab taught that addiction was absolutely not a disease, it was a choice-driven behavior. And that most addicts were selfish individuals, who were emotionally immature, and had short-term gratification issues. Once you face that, grow up, and make a long-term sobriety plan, you’ll naturally and logically make better choices.

The tone of the promotional material –those pamphlets that led me to enroll — were more “client”-friendly and diplomatic. They billed themselves as the “alternative to Twelve Step Programs”, which resonated with me, since I was not hip on the religious twelve steps.

So I showed up and started the therapy. The first week I learned that disease-based Twelve Step Programs, though they are the mainstream choice, don’t work well for many. This place claimed that traditional Twelve Step Programs have an abysmally low success rate of around five percent.  (In other sources, I’ve seen as low as three percent (3%), and through Alcoholics Anonymous sponsored information and through word-of-mouth, I’ve heard anywhere from seventeen percent (17%) to thirty-six percent (36%.) It’s next to impossible to accurately cite, however, as attendance is voluntary and not tracked or recorded.

Twelve Steps Programs successes are below one-third.

My counselors at rehab drove home the belief that these numbers are low because the very nature of the disease model weakens us. When you endorses the disease model, you start to behave like you’re diseased and powerless and then become addicted, in essence, to meetings and sponsors without actually addressing your real problems. Plus, the founders were personally not into the “God thing”. They believed the Twelve Steps approach was detrimental to your success, and they spent a good week (out of four) convincing us of this.

In 1956, AA was the only game in town, and alcoholism was becoming a significant problem. To address the issue, the American Medical Association and the U.S. government endorsed the disease concept because there wasn’t another option. Labeling the behavior as a disease — just like any other legitimate disease — meant that legislation could be pushed to force employers to cover recovery costs for their employees.

Couple that with the judicial system mandating participation in approved Twelve Steps Programs for anyone who got a DUI offense, and this approach to addiction became the prevailing model of treatment and a multi-billion dollar industry. (www.forbes.com, “Inside the $35 Billion Addiction Treatment Industry”, April 27, 2015).

So, in 1989, the creators of this treatment center developed their own private program, organized it under non-profit status, and charge a reasonable arm and leg, as an alternative to traditional Twelve Steps Programs.

Their program’s core beliefs

Good news! I didn’t have a disease. Secure in that knowledge, I excelled in the program. I wrote my whole life’s narrative, looking for patterns of behavior, so I could change them. Then I created a sobriety plan based on the program’s principles:

  • You are what you think.
  • Human beings are ultimately motivated by happiness.
  • There are no shortcuts to lasting happiness (such as drugs/alcohol).
  • And the only constant is change.

Then I went home.

I looked good. I sounded positive. I was optimistic. This was the fresh start I had been needing, and now I understood what the problem was. Yes, yes, yes! I had indeed behaved, at times, selfishly. And I could be quite emotional, so that made sense. My long-term perspective had been weak, clearly, because I didn’t seem to care what drinking today meant for my tomorrow. Check that box. So, now things would be different.

An educated woman, armed with knowledge, and I was good to go.

Everyone at home was counting on me, and I was confident. My husband had educated the entire family — on both sides — on how alcoholism wasn’t a disease, and it was simply up to me to follow my sobriety plan into a happy and sober future.

But something happened about 6 months later, and I drank again. I don’t remember the circumstances surrounding that first drink now. I’m sure it made perfect sense to me at the time; but to wake up, hungover again and so soon, was abject demoralizing. I remember it like it was yesterday.

Bewildering frustration and hopelessness – can you guess?

The very first seconds of consciousness–a stirring behind my eyelids, and then groggily coming awake. Throbbing at my temples, parched mouth, upset stomach, in a fog, half awake/half asleep. Drifting in and out.

Then it hit! I see the bottle, remember buying it, and see myself hiding it in the bottom of my daughter’s closet, and, worst of all, I see myself drinking it. My husband busting me! Embarrassment. Anger. Defiance. Storming out. Driving. It came to me in bits and pieces. You know how it goes, each memory worse than the one before, bringing with it dread and incredulous realization.

Maybe it was a dream (or a nightmare). But then I saw a wrecked car in the driveway. Proof! The taste of guilt, shame and liquor in my mouth. Disgust. Despair. Bewilderment. I can’t bear or name all the horrible thoughts I had about myself. I wanted to disappear. I deserved to die. Did I really do this again?!

After so much money that someone else put into me; and after experiencing so much willingness, effort, and resolve to change; after feeling so much hope upon returning–just for me to selfishly disregard it all for a fleeting high–how could I do this? To my parents, my husband, my children and … myself. (But honestly, who really cares about herself at this point? Isn’t that really the greatest challenge?) Betrayal and shock.

That, my friend, was genuine suffering. Oh, how I hated myself. No one can hate you more profoundly than you can hate yourself.

Right there between my shoulders it laid, like a heavy weighted blanket of blame and disgust. Who the hell else is there to blame? Would I never change? 

Drinking again after rehab was one of the worst lows I can remember..

It was the agony of hurting people whom you love and who are trying to love you back, which was the most shameful. Then having to manipulate, lie, and sneak to get this substance which wielded such bewildering power over me that was the problem. What to do?

How could I live with myself now, without drinking away my shame and self-disgust? I couldn’t. It wasn’t possible. And so it began again, and a grave beginning it was. Yet, this was only the beginning, and it continued for longer than I care to recall.