“In the end, the very effect I loved so much about alcohol—its ability to mute existential fears—utterly betrayed me. It didn’t take all that long before the drug’s most reliable effect was to ensure the alienation, despair, and emptiness that I sought to medicate.”
~Never Enough, Judith Grisel
I can certainly agree with this.
However, I also don’t blame alcohol, believing it betrayed me, as it’s a neutral substance. It has been my abuse of it that has harmed me. Primarily, my abuse of it has interfered with my healing, grieving, doing all the necessary feeling that I needed to do for addressing my own wounds, and coping with my trauma.
I am reading Grisel’s book and it is quite shocking to read and realize just how many deaths are caused by and money spent to the treatment substance abuse. I mean, it makes sense, logically, of course, but—-
Twice as much as cancer.
Even diseases that we think are ubiquitous and the most expensive, and certainly, cancer patients pay exorbitant amounts even with insurance. (A friend of mine who recently had to undergo chemo and surgery for her cancer said that poor people just die.)
It makes me think about how the poor and uninsured, those who are unemployed and in the throes of addiction, don’t have the means to seek and receive help, without family or other means of support.
As I work to heal and writing my book, aware of my own trauma and alcohol abuse/times of active addiction, I also strive to understand what makes someone dependent on substance, what are the complex factors that cause that.
The book is written by a neurologist who is a former addict, and it certainly has made me more curious and sympathetic to those who had addictions to other substances that I have never touched (really beyond alcohol and cannabis, which I tried mostly for sleep.) Ones I always thought were really hard and amazed that people could fall into that—crack or coke or injections of heroin, covering their arms with “track marks,” etc, etc.
One of the lines in my book that really struck me was the following:
“Instead of saying I don’t know how to do this, I don’t know to live, instead of just saying that, I drink.”
~Dr. Gabor Mate
I think many addicts feel that way.
I mean we don’t cop to that—it sounds pathetic and something we feel that we should not be feeling or readily admit to—that we don’t know how to do this. So we may instead make excuses and continue to play the role of a crumbling dysfunctional adult.
Many of us don’t know how to live, to cope, with our individual and collective pain of this mundane existence, in this world that so often just seems to be crumbling around us, bereft of humanity and compassion.
I certainly understand people’s desire to escape from all of that.
But, again, then you end up in the cycle and full circle, much like how this newsletter began.
After abusing a substance, you (very temporarily) feel better, then to bring back despair and alienation and emptiness a hundred fold more.
But I am on no soapbox, believe me. I have simply found myself in the position to know that I cannot drink because I have used it to cope and manage the tragedies and traumas.
And it worked until it didn’t, as they say in AA.
Clearly I come from a long line of alcoholics and I find it intriguing how some people believe that they are born with the gene or allergy as they say in AA. Believing that they were alcoholics from the very first drink when they immediately wanted more and more, imbibing too much for the very beginning.
Others they say become that way through prolonged (ab)use of the drug, developing tolerance and abusing it to cope. Building the habit over time.
I am a pickle that can’t be made into a cucumber again. So sober life for me.
I know I have predisposition to it based on my family. But also, I drank as a normal person for many years. When I’ve been asked about my alcohol abuse I trace it back to helping my nerves and sleep after the deaths of my father, then helping my mother, then my brother.
Ultimately, perhaps, it doesn’t matter. Whatever the reason, I am going at this without substances, other than my mental health medications and sleep aides. It is challenging at points but greatly worth the effort in others.