Relapse is Almost Always Possible Because "Healing May Paper Over the Horror..."​

Like a punch in the gut, I re-read a recent Tweet: "Some people relapse starting with 'It couldn't have been that bad,' when, indeed, it was worse. Healing papers over part of the horror.... "

At one point, and it lasted for years, I felt as if I could not possibly exist without alcohol and that my life would be meaningless without it. I felt like a passenger on a plane that had been hijacked.

If it's going to crash, give me another drink as it spirals downward....

Now, happily living with many years of recovery under my belt, the very memory of the fact that I once thought I could not live without alcohol seems laughable. I have to remember that clearly, and in a healthy way. The (former) Relapse King (that's me!) must neither forget how bad it once was, nor diminish the long, hard road that has brought me to today. 

I dare not let healing paper over the horror of addiction's progressive descent. 

I have also learned to appreciate the many other memory-related problems that others endure, such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, in which an individual gets kind of stuck reliving the distress of emotions and circumstances no longer necessary or actual in the present reality. Rather than remembering, relearning, healing and moving on, the memory repeats itself on an endless loop with little or no healing occurring.

Clearly, I'm not a scientist, but I do have empathy for anyone who is suffering from or has suffered from PTSD. I suffered severe anxiety attacks when deep in my addiction to alcohol, but my anxiety in that dark place was a repeating loop-tape of a painful emptiness too difficult to quantify. If empathy isn't the right word, then perhaps the deepest of sympathies better describes my feelings for victims of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. 

I've been somewhere hear there. Luckily for me, my pain, relived, has softened over time.

Healing.

PTSD, for many soldiers, is a maladaptive response to the horrors of war. The horrors occurred and continue to reoccur in a way that is not helpful to neither them nor those around them.

My recovery has been about healing, too.

Normally, when a bone is broken, it heals, and the patient moves on. But in addiction, more than bones are broken. The healing is on a different level than strictly the physical (put aside damage done to every organ of the body, some permanent, some temporary). Sometimes the psychic healing is wallpapered over and the pains that addiction has caused wane over time (the built-in forgetter being sort of the antithesis of PTSD).

Again, healing done not quite right somehow.

"It couldn't have been that bad. I got over it." 

A person accumulates a certain longevity in recovery. Things may be going well. Perhaps too well. They stop picking at the scab. The scab heals and goes away until eventually only a few scars remain. Even the scars begin to fade. "Maybe I can drink again, now that the debris of my addiction has been dealt with. It couldn't have been that bad." At some point in the healing process that idle thought is apt to occur to almost anyone. 

There is no such thought allowed within my thick skull today. It was that bad. It always got worse. Longer and longer periods of sobriety followed by shorter and ever mor disastrous relapses. I will not let the healing process of recovery wallpaper over the horrors of addiction.

Instead of wallpapering over the pain, I think I'll stick to reading THE WRITING ON THE WALL: "Make no mistake, the Beast Inside is sleeping, Not Dead."

Oh... one last little thing...

It seems to me that my healing in recovery has surpassed the healing of a broken bone. A broken bone can heal only so well, back to its original form, at best. Recovery, seemingly, has this patient better off than I ever dreamed possible.

Impossible? No.

This (former) Relapse King is Living Proof. 

*****

Immerse yourself in my Descent into Addiction and eventual Recovery in my Autobiographical Fiction, ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal 

(Find it on Amazon. Book it here): https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c

Check out my NEW Non-Fiction, BECOMING UNBROKEN

#alcoholism #addiction #recovery #books: Reflections on Addiction and Recovery 

(Find it on Amazon, Book it here): https://lnkd.in/dkF767RT 

Valentine's Day Poem Free for You to Share: "I Want to Kiss You Everywhere!"​

[Written more than half a lifetime ago, I unearthed this gem recently. It shows a side of me from before the publication of "All Drinking Aside," my first book.]

"I Want to Kiss You EVERYWHERE!"

by

Jim Anders

I want to kiss you everywhere.

On your mouth. On the beach. On Tuesday.

On your neck. On the bus. Was it yesterday?

On your chest. Am I blessed? Can it be soon?

On your arms. Oh, your charms. Upon the moon.

And your waist, I can taste. And in June.

******

I want to kiss you everywhere.

Like a child, sometimes mild, sometimes not.

On your thighs. On your eyes. Damn, you're hot.

On your feet. On your cheek for all I've got.

On your wrist. And for a twist, in the park.

In the dark. In the light. On your heart.

*****

I want to kiss you everywhere.

Going downtown. Going all around. 

Kissing everywhere. In the kitchen. On the stair.

When you smile. Should you frown.

Show me how. Tell me where. Tell me when.

And then I'll kiss you everywhere again.

*****

[Feel FREE to SHARE! Maybe consider giving a Book of Recovery as a Gift!]

Immerse yourself in my Descent into Addiction and eventual Recovery in my Autobiographical Fiction, ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal 

(Find it on Amazon. Book it here): https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c

Check out my NEW Non-Fiction, BECOMING UNBROKEN

#alcoholism #addiction #recovery #books: Reflections on Addiction and Recovery 

(Find it on Amazon, Book it here): https://lnkd.in/dkF767RT 

We were never not in recovery.

 *****

Immerse yourself in my Descent into Addiction and eventual Recovery in my Autobiographical Fiction, ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal 

(Find it on Amazon. Book it here): https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c

Check out my NEW Non-Fiction, BECOMING UNBROKEN

#alcoholism #addiction #recovery #books: Reflections on Addiction and Recovery 

(Find it on Amazon, Book it here): https://lnkd.in/dkF767RT 

The Frontispiece to Becoming Unbroken: Reflections on Addiction & Recovery

 

Check out my NEW Non-Fiction, BECOMING UNBROKEN: Reflections on Addiction and Recovery 

(Find it on Amazon, Book it here): https://lnkd.in/dkF767RT 

Immerse yourself in my Descent into Addiction and eventual Recovery in my Autobiographical Fiction, ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal 

(Find it on Amazon. Book it here): https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c

#alcoholism #addiction #recovery #books

Both Books are Available in Print and Kindle Editions.

HUMANKIND: Be Kind. Be Kind. Be Kind.

 

Sometimes a writer can do no better than to leave wide gaps in expression knowing each reader will fill in the gaps based on their own experience. The title to this short post and the accompanying quote stills my beating heart.

I imagine a dying animal in the wild turned from predator to prey by a broken leg. 

As a Human Community, we celebrate accomplishments, we grieve losses. we express ourselves in words and actions. 

Be kind. Be kind. Be kind.

Kindness defines us.

We can do no better.  

They went around the circle at my first group meeting in the psychiatric hospital asking each of us in turn how we felt.

It wasn't long afterwards, as I recall, that I was prescribed psychiatric medication. 

Is anyone surprised that it took me eight years of relapsing on drugs and alcohol before I found 18 years of continuous recovery?

*****

Enjoy my Autobiographical Fiction, ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction and Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal. 

(Find it on Amazon. Book it here): https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c

 

Immerse yourself in my Descent into Addiction and eventual Recovery in my Autobiographical Fiction, ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal 

(Find it on Amazon. Book it here): https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c

PUTTING LIPSTICK ON A TWICE-BAKED POTATO.

 

As each day and year and lifetime passes, age consumes us.

The American Culture, and increasingly our human world-at-large, becomes more and more youth-oriented. And that leaves me becoming, increasing in age seemingly by leaps and bounds, day by day less visible. Embracing my inevitably increasing invisibility has become almost child's play to me.

For decades I shunned the spotlight, always the loner. The invisibility of ageism has been far easier for me than most. Embracing Invisibilities has become my stock-in-trade. The price one pays for living long is endured by gratitude. 

I suppose putting lipstick on a twice-baked potato shows my decline in creative abundance as I age, but humor has a way of salving wounds.

PASS THE SOUR CREAM. I am living the dream.

Invisibly.

Triggers

Connection with others is my Trigger to Recovery.

Of course, it didn't start out that way. When I first got Clean & Sober, after all the substances left by bloodstream and my brain, a certain residue remained. I was an addict and an alcoholic without the drugs. After 30 years of daily alcohol and drug use, I was left grasping at straws, and swizzle sticks- tell the truth. Everything reminded me of drinks and drugs. The only thing in my toolbox was a half-gallon plastic bottle of the world's cheapest vodka followed by almost anything else available as each day and night progressed.

When everything is a Trigger, nothing is a Trigger. Yes, I was that burned out and hopeless. Not drinking felt like a form of punishment to me. That I could not drink and drug and live seemed obvious. Eight years of multiple relapses was my form of slowly tapering off the drugs and the lifestyle. As a matter of fact, I was a bartender for my very first year sober.

Somehow, a drink found its way into my hands and there began 7 years of drinking and not drinking, on and off the wagon with broken wheels. 

The many broken promises and a thousand lame excuses behind me, I thought I could never carve myself a life in recovery that could fill up what had become the empty glass of a broken life.

Which brings me to now, after a sigh, a pause and a renewed breath.

Everything was a Trigger, truly, at first. My drunk dreams lasted for months, daily, seriously daily. Emotions, internal, stuffed deep down by denial slowly released themselves. Internal and external triggers were everywhere. Memories, every sight and sound, took me back to wanting a drink I knew I had to grow beyond. 

Eighteen years later, the pop sound of opening a can of soda still sounds like a can of beer to my alcoholic ear, despite the fact I didn't really care that much for beer but would drink it in the shower from a sippy cup to sober up while showering and readying myself for work, when I had work. Home, when I had a home. Self, when I had a self. 

It was bad.

I would learn to replace my triggers with actions. Nature abhors a vacuum. The mere absence of drugs and alcohol could never be enough. Replacement of everything I did drunk, which was everything, would have to be replaced, slowly, by what became a life lived fully in recovery.

Trigger>Thought>Craving>Use.

I had to learn to stop such thoughts in their tracks by taking action, doing something until such thoughts were dispelled. I've heard that doing something, anything, for 20 minutes, will clear the mind of triggers until the next one crops up. Reading, writing, singing, dancing, taking a walk, whatever it takes, take it.

Parties, sporting events, concerts, so much as passing a liquor store or a certain highway exit, on and on, were all triggers for me at first because before I got sober, every activity included a dozen drinks before, after and during,

A Gratitude List and a Daily Commitment to Recovery helped me train my impulsiveness. 

The knowledge of my powerlessness over drugs and alcohol slowly were replaced by power over my own choices and behaviors. 

Time and dedication of purpose.

Today, triggers make me snicker. I'm a Trigger Snicker-er. OMG (spelled J-O-Y), I am so happy to have travelled the long haul to today.

Let me end where I started: "Connection with others is my Trigger to Recovery."

My Gratitude and Many Thanks to my Facebook friends who gave me much help and inspiration for this post. Last Names are Not Included because I must protect the Anonymity of any who might choose it. Thank you, Claire A, Calvin G, Hazel I, Mike M, Neil V, Lori B, Kimberly J, Linda L, James S, Kyli L, James R, Nicole S. Maggie B, Jode F, Misty L, Pat O, Danny J, Peter S and Linda C & Peggy C. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE & MANY OF YOU KNOW EACH OTHER, So, One and All, I Thank You One and All!

All of you are MY CONNECTIONS TO RECOVERY.  Woo-hoo!

*****

Immerse yourself in my Descent into Addiction and eventual Recovery in my Autobiographical Fiction, ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal 

(Find it on Amazon. Book it here): https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c

Check out my NEW Non-Fiction, BECOMING UNBROKEN

#alcoholism #addiction #recovery #books: Reflections on Addiction and Recovery 

(Find it on Amazon, Book it here): https://lnkd.in/dkF767RT 

Both Books are Available in Print and Kindle Editions.

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