Category Archives: Recovery

When The Marriage Has Given Up On You

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The majority of people who read this blog don’t have the historical knowledge of my life and, particularly, my marriage. So, for the benefit of the majority of you, I’ll give you a bit of a crash course and try to not make this post too heady.

We’ve been together for 17 years and married for 8 years of that. We have three kids, two of whom are 18+ and the youngest is in high school. 

(Right about now, you are maybe doing some math to figure out how old I am… I’ll help you out, we both started families when we were young.)

She’s a person who believes firmly that if a little of something is good then more is always better. This is a common theme that I’ve observed over time and, because of this tendency, she often steamrolls into (and through) situations making decisions contrary to what most people would regard as common sense. In doing this, she has gotten herself into hot water over and over again. Consequences of these poor decisions range from significant financial setbacks for the family to questionable parenting episodes to her personal safety being in serious jeopardy. 

In the vast majority of these situations, I’ve stepped in to pluck her from the fire because… well, that’s just what you do for your spouse and your family. Often, this comes at your own personal cost and is done thanklessly. I know this just as well as anyone who has found themselves in this role.

Now, fast forward to present day. 

You don’t have to scroll back very far in this blog to see that I’ve had struggles with alcohol. Drinking became a coping mechanism to compensate for my inability to cope with stress and loneliness. My relationship with the bottle finally culminated into me having a grand mal seizure while at work and being taken to the hospital.

It was at this time, while laying on a hospital bed and freshly swearing off booze, that my wife told me if I were to start drinking again… she was going to leave me. 

Going back a few posts in this blog, you’ll note that I dabbled with alcohol again. I’m the type of guy that lives by the adage ‘never say never’ so I generally don’t close a door on any possibility.  I felt like I needed to convince myself that, indeed, I had to close the door on my drinking past and walk away. 

This didn’t go by unnoticed, of course. My wife had no clue since we have been working opposite schedules for years now and rarely see each other. However, my youngest teenage son did notice and finally said something to her a few weeks ago. The very next day, she confronted me and said that she was leaving; stating that I’d had started drinking again that she couldn’t live with it anymore. 

Given the fact that we rarely see each other and that she admitted that she hadn’t even noticed, this statement felt disingenuous and the situation was being used as an excuse or, worse, an opportunity. 

Throughout this past ten months, I’ve felt angry and bitter toward my immediate family that there has been little to no support for me staying sober. I also feel that there has been little to no effort made by them to understand or appreciate how hard this is. So, this past ten months has felt like a gigantic slap in the face that highlights how unappreciated I’ve been for the previous 16+ years of bailing this family, and particularly my wife, out of trouble over and over again. 

Now, my natural tendency is to try to inject humour wherever I can and especially when it’s a painful subject for me. So, when I was reflecting on it at the end of a work day immediately following that weekend confrontation, I related this entire scene to an episode of The Simpsons. The episode in question is titled ‘$pringfield (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)’ where Mr. Burns opens a casino in Springfield and Marge ends up developing a gambling addiction.

Homer: You know, Marge, for the first time in our marriage I can finally look down my nose at you.You have a gambling problem!

Marge: That’s true. Will you forgive me?

Homer: Oh, sure! Remember when I got caught stealing all those watches from Sears? 

Marge: [ Groans ]

Homer: Well, that’s nothing, because you have a gambling problem! And remember when I let that escaped lunatic in the house ’cause he was dressed like Santa Claus?

Marge: [ Groans ] 

Homer: Well, you have a gambling problem!

The writers pretty much hit the nail on the head with this episode. I’m feeling a lot like Marge here. And my wife has been Homer for our entire marriage and I’ve never noticed it. 

Maybe this is why she hates The Simpsons. 

I Quit

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If you’ve followed this blog for a little while you’ll have an understanding of my battle with alcohol… and what I’ve been up to. 

For a little while, I have been experimenting with alcohol thinking that maybe I could re-introduce it into my life on a controlled basis. It has been a dangerous experiment and probably one that I thought I could do successfully. I may have talked myself into thinking I could do it because of my condition. 

I’m realizing that I can’t. I’d like to be able to still have that beer at a barbecue or a sporting event but I can’t. It’s just too much of a slippery slope that I inevitably fall down on and crash all the way to the bottom. Right now, I’m laying in bed and feeling like mental, emotional and physical hammered shit because I was drinking yesterday. I hate myself for doing what I did. My state of mind is one of futility and worthlessness and hopelessness. And I don’t want to feel this way. 

I was telling myself, as I lay here, that I have to quit doing this. To just stop. And then I realized my own trap… I’m saying that I have to quit this. That I haven’t made a decision or a change by recognizing this. I’m putting it off… delaying the decision. Instead… I am saying to myself… I choose to quit drinking. Right now. I quit.

Dangerous Experiment

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Geez, it’s been three weeks since I updated this site. I’m not exactly sure why, I guess it’s because I’ve been busy and making a point of trying to keep busy. I’ve been doing all kinds of yard work on the weekends now that it’s nice outside and also been tackling some indoor problems as well. Little by little, making improvements large and small. 

I guess my lack of updates could also come from me not wanting to write about admitting that I had a relapse, something that’s been on my radar to write about but hadn’t got around to doing. 

It was an intentional relapse; I wanted to see if I could have a casual drink and just slowly reintroduce alcohol as a possibility in my life. Booze is everywhere and I do enjoy the taste of a cold beer on a hot day with friends… that kind of thing. Just social events. I have this mental block that good times and beer are mutually exclusive, something I need to get past. 

Anyway, without getting into a ton of detail, I put myself to the test with some booze while everyone in my family was either away or out for the evening on a Sunday night. 

I found that I still have an issue with portion control. Stopping at one drink had been an issue for a long time. And after that single drink, I would eventually drink to excess. It wasn’t so much that I drank every day (until I was at the end) but that I couldn’t have only one drink. This time, my intentional relapse, proved to me that it’s still an issue… that it’s a very slippery slope between one drink and complete intoxication. 

So, I had effectively failed my test… which is kind of a no-brainer given the setting in which I conducted the test in the first place. (At home, alone etc.)

But the true measure of success for any experiment is the learnings that one takes away from it. I’m a man of science and post-experiment analysis is something that is necessary to offer up any kind of intelligent truths. 

I had to go to work the next day and, let me tell you, I was shocked by the fact that I used to go to work on a fairly regular basis feeling like that. 

I felt like SHIT. I was dehydrated all to hell. I was exhausted; both sleepy AND physically drained. My entire body ached down into my bones… like ACHED. I had a ravenous hunger ALL DAY that couldn’t be sated. My bowels were voicing their disdain with me by forcing me into notching a ‘shat-trick‘, all before the work whistle blew and I rode down the tail of a dinosaur to my car and left work. 

And the fucked up part is that I wasn’t even all that hungover by most standards. But after feeling straight and hangover free for months, I quickly got a wake up call about why I like sobriety so much. 

I very much prefer to never feel that way… ever. LOL I don’t care how good of a time it is, ain’t nuthin worth doing that again. It pretty much solidified my higher order thinking into the understanding and acceptance that I don’t want and don’t need alcohol in my life. And if I have a craving at some point in the future, I know that I have a moment in time to look back on and say to myself, “do you want to feel like that again? No sir, you certainly do not.”

Basically, I am not completely sure whether or not I answered my own question from the start of my experiment, ‘Can I have a casual relationship with alcohol?’ I anticipated a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer to the question. I discovered the real answer is that I don’t want to have any relationship with alcohol at all. 

Retail Therapy, Man-Style

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Looking back on it, yesterday was pretty hard for me… from a keeping sober perspective, anyway. 

Winter is on the decline and the sun was out, ushering in spring time… I was off work around noon and had all kinds of me time. I was euphoric and excited and stress-free, it was great! I wanted a drink though as this would have been a common way for me to celebrate a Friday afternoon of awesome freedom. And, ironically, this desire for a drink… be it a beer or a whiskey… was causing me stress on an otherwise stress-free day. 

Eventually, I’d get home and was kind of down in the dumps. For the past week and a bit, I have been supercharged for planning home renovations and organizing and cleaning up. Yesterday into the evening, I couldn’t put two and two together on anything like that. The kids were out for the evening and the wife was at work until the wee hours so it was all me at that point with my own thoughts. 

I was in Hell, gentlemen… let me assure you. 

I had almost given myself permission to go out for a drink at a nearby bar/pub and the time was coming up on 8:00 pm. I was conflicted about the thoughts and decided that sitting around thinking about it was not the way to go. I got my clothes on, jumped in my Jeep and drove my ass down to Cabela’s. 

  I have been gearing up for doing more family camping and to also start doing some backpacking trips this summer. I know that I need a few more specialized items for backpacking rather than just camping; one of those things being a tent of more appropriate size. The one I bought at the start of this whole gearing up process was done in a hurry and from an uneducated headspace. 

  Also, I started playing Airsoft with my 14 year old son last year. After getting a gift card at Cabela’s for Christmas, I went out and bought my own gun to play with. However, to be able to play with the piece I bought, I’m going to need a second clip for ammunition since reloading a clip during a match is a good way to get yourself shot.

  Finally, I have been trying to find ways to save money and trim up our finances at home. We have grown accustomed to a lifestyle of excess and waste… I am guilty as well. I decided to stop buying Starbucks coffee every morning and start making my own at home. However, I don’t have a reliable vessel to transport my morning wake-up juice in so I was on the market for an insulated Thermos. 

So I bought these three items while at Cabela’s. The tent was showing as discontinued in their system and the only one left in the store was the floor model… so I bought the floor model with a $20 discount off list price. 

After I left the store, my focus was on getting into nature and doing positive things rather than on drinking. As I drove out of the parking lot, I passed a liquor store… and just kept on driving, with a smile on my face I might add. 

Here’s What Happens To Alcoholics’ Brains When They Quit Drinking

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This is a very interesting article about the brain and alcohol by Ben Taub over at I Fucking Love Science with some scientific backing from a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) study.

http://www.iflscience.com/brain/what-happens-alcoholics-brains-when-they-quit-drinking

We All Began As Something Else

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I’ve decided to go off my anti-depressant medication.

I was winding down on all of my medications while we were in Hawaii and was due for a refill on everything when we got back. I had about ten capsules left of the half dose on my Effexor and I thought, “why do I even take these now?” I thought some more about it; I became an alcoholic while on these pills so they couldn’t have really been doing anything for me anyway.

I’m weaning off my full dosage for the next two weeks by taking only one of the half dose pills and then will spend (hopefully) two weeks of weaning off the half dose by taking nothing at all. My brain and I could be totally clean by the middle of March.

  Also, I’m thinking about getting another tattoo. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time and struggled with what I should get because I feel like the tattoo should have meaning. So I haven’t ever got any ink done because I couldn’t figure that part out. But, with this recent vacation to Hawaii and exposure to Hawaiian/Polynesian culture, I think I have inspiration.

It was during the aquarium luau that I felt the most challenged since quitting drinking back in November. It was really hard but I feel like getting through it was a real success for me… that it was a battle won. It was a moment where my inner strength exceeded the challenge.

I remember watching the Polynesian show after dinner where the tattooed performers danced various traditional Polynesian dances. Eventually, they got around to New Zealand and did a Maori haka which really struck a chord in me.

Now, if you haven’t ever seen a Maori haka… well, you’re missing out. The haka is an ancestral dance described as both a war cry and a challenge at the same time. I’m no expert on it so I’ll leave it up to you to Google it for information but it’s my opinion that there aren’t any words that can effectively portray it. Now, I believe that the vast majority of hakas that are performed are purely that, a performance. One of the few times you’re probably going to get to see an actual war haka is one performed by New Zealand’s All-Blacks rugby team immediately prior to a match. I’ll let you decide what you think about a haka performed by two dozen big fucking rugby dudes who want to dislodge your head from your body playing one of the roughest sports on the planet:

https://youtu.be/bUZJyZldy10

Anyway, getting back on topic; it all seemed fitting, to capture this struggle with a tattoo as Polynesians invented the tattoo and my first real battle would happen in Hawaii. I feel that I should embrace the culture and its impact on me by marking my body with a sign of my power and inner strength as a reminder of that day. 

I know that the luau won’t be my only challenge for the rest of my life. I have been thinking of making my body a journal the battles in my war against alcoholism. My goal isn’t to turn myself into a walking tattoo man (I do have a full time career) but rather to permanently document my war.

Surviving The Luau

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You don’t fully appreciate how engrained alcohol is in our culture until you’ve taken a step back from consuming it.

I went to a luau at the Honolulu Aquarium with my family last week. My parents renewed their vows on the beach the day prior and invited my brother and his family, my sister and her family and me with my family to be there with them. They also arranged and paid for the luau; it was great value with music and activities for the kids followed by fantastic food and a great show after dinner. There was also lots of booze.

Everyone in my family was drinking… right away, as soon as you come in, it’s one free Mai Tai – alcoholic on one side and non-alcoholic on the other side. Everyone in my immediate area feels the need to point out that I should be having a non-alcoholic one. I don’t know if they think they are helping me but it pissed me off a little.

Shortly after we sat down at our table, my wife went up to the bar and literally got a drink for everyone in my household but me. Alcoholic beverages for her and my eldest son and non-alcoholic beverages for my younger two sons. I made a comment to my brother-in-law (who is cool as fuck, by the way) about my ‘loving wife forgetting to get me a drink.’ I wasn’t meaning a boozy beverage, just something to sip on while sitting around shooting the shit.

(He misunderstood and said, “I’d give you one of these but I’d get in trouble,” thinking that I mean an alcoholic drink. He played it ok in my books but I clarified the next day that I meant a drink in general and that I wouldn’t put him in that position. If I was going to fall off the wagon, I don’t think that I would get anyone else involved in that mess.)

Now, I could deflect my feelings and swallow my anger by saying that I’m a big boy and that I am capable of getting my own drink or giving her an excuse that she already had four drinks and couldn’t manage a fifth… but I’m not going to do that here. Swallowing my anger is what I did in the moment and is a chronic behaviour that has landed me where I am today.

It really pissed me off. She had been making a point of excluding me from all kinds of stuff which stuck in my mind. She wants a picture here with her boys. A picture there with her boys. No mention or inclusion of me in that. And this omission was the last straw… plus, I was already under duress with the whole free Mai Tai thing when we got there.

I had to step away from the table where everyone was sitting. I went over to the outdoor fish tank and watched some tropical fish swim about, trying to calm down. Then I moved to the seal habitat and watched the seal sunning himself on a rock. Eventually, I moved over to a third exhibit when my wife came to check on me. I almost completely broke down into tears. When she asked me what was wrong, I said that I didn’t know what was wrong. But I did know. I was angry and frustrated and hurt and completely overwhelmed with emotion.

She followed me as I went indoors to watch some more fish swimming in some aquariums; I told her that I may leave the luau and to just tell everyone that I wasn’t feeling well. I asked for some time alone as I needed to regroup and centre myself.

During this time, I recorded various types of tropical fish on video and had been recording this weird-looking Nautilus when they started serving dinner. I decided that I had sufficiently collected myself and opted to rejoin everyone for dinner rather than make a scene that I would have to deal with later by leaving.

Members of my family who had noticed that I was absent asked me how I was feeling, my wife had shared the story that I wasn’t feeling well. We all ate dinner together and I tried to just get back to normal as if nothing had happened… which was difficult.

The next day, members of my family were talking to me here and there about the evening. I guess it took some time for everyone to put two and two together about my disappearance at the luau. I heard things like it was maybe ‘tough on me’ and that I had ‘incredible willpower’ to have made it through the evening. Everyone was supportive and no one made a big scene over it which I was thankful for.

The question that I ask myself is… where was the tipping point between being uncomfortable around the drinking and my anger at my spouse for excluding me? Would I have eventually needed to step away from the table if she had brought me a drink? I’ve been around people consuming alcohol before the luau and it didn’t have this effect.

I guess it’s a question that I can’t answer for certain but it is more evidence that I have anger management issues that I need to deal with and need to deal with them to be able to get healthy.

‘Liquid State’ by Muse

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Take me for a ride
Break me up and steal what’s left inside
And hope and pray iniquity has died inside and left a scar
I’m on red alert
Bring me peace and wash away my dirt
Spin me round and help me to divert and walk into the light
Warm my heart tonight
Hold my head up high
Help me to survive
Kick me when I’m down
Feed me poison, fill me till I drown
Wake me up before I get pushed out and fall into the night
Warm my heart tonight
(Force me to lose control)
Hold my head up high
(Watch as I lose my soul)
Help me to survive
(Push me until I fall)