Recovering
Photograph taken by Ally Draime on the Colorado Trail, 2020“There was this huge loneliness, crushing everything inside of me and everything outside of me,” Someone said from the corner of the room.
I knew exactly the sort of loneliness being talked about. It was a loneliness so penetrating and all-consuming, it had punched a hole right through my core—irreparably damaging both heart and spirit. An emptiness so unbearably great, it had driven me to consume relentlessly—anything to numb the ache, anything to fill what was ultimately un-fillable by physical means.
“Addiction is a spiritual Malady… People are just trying to fill the hole of the soul” –Lisa Boucher, registered nurse and women’s addiction counselor
I had tried to patch the hole—that miserable, empty ache— my own way, as we all do. Alone.
I began trying at a young age, when I refused to eat, when I ran laps compulsively around the house, when I checked my reflection obsessively in the mirror and pinched at my sides to see if fat had spontaneously bloomed or evaporated from my tiny frame.
I continued to try in high school, when I began to avoid human interaction for fear of being found out as a fraud; I ate lunch alone to escape from being seen by my peers. I lied to my friends when they asked me if I’d drank before or if I’d kissed a boy, I told them I had because I wanted to fit in, but the lying only made me feel more isolated.
I tried even harder when I was offered my first beer at the only party I’d ever been invited to, and again outside of a basketball game when a girl a grade older than me handed me a water bottle filled with liquor.
Alcohol appeared before me like the lost key to a door which stood between me and feeling less alone. It was passed to me by the hands of the people who I believed were the least alone, the most included, the fullest and the happiest.
I could not understand how these people had achieved such a profound and outward sense of belonging, so I reached for the only clue that was being handed to me, and I clung to it with every ounce of strength remaining in my lost and hungry soul.
Alcohol then eluded me for several years, until after I graduated high school and moved to a horse farm in Virginia, where I lived and worked with individuals many years my senior. Still believing alcohol was the answer to my problem, I sought it relentlessly.
My life and my empty disease evolved rapidly together, hand in hand, from one black out and meaningless interaction, to the next.
I searched viciously for love and belonging, tirelessly for distraction to numb the ever present hurt within me—the beginnings of which I could not, at that time, fathom.
Photograph taken by Emilio, Flag Mountain Summit, NM, 2020I hurt people in my quest; I collected partners like trophies until I ran out of room on the shelf to store them all, at which point I stopped remembering their names and began to forget their faces. I tried every drug I thought might take me somewhere new and exciting, any substance to lubricate challenging social interactions; I told myself I didn’t need to get wasted to have a good time, that I could just have one and still enjoy myself—lies I needed to believe in order to feel normal. I used every rejection I sustained as an excuse to bury myself and my feelings deeper; I manipulated my friends into situations where alcohol would be present, I drug them to parties until they refused to follow me anymore, and then I went alone. I found new friends that I had to work to keep up with, friends who’s drinking initially put mine to shame. I sustained physical and emotional wounds that would stick with me until this very day, perhaps forever, and at some point, I lost track of what it meant to have healthy relationships with family, friends, romantic partners, and myself. I was a ship without oars, a vessel without a sail, I was sinking. How much more complicated and devastating did my life have to become before I would be willing to change?
Everything in the world would not have been enough to fill the loneliness inside of me, but then, my problem was not born of this world. The love and belonging and sense of fullness I so desperately wanted would come from some other realm entirely, and in order to find it—and to appreciate it, if ever I did—I had a lot of work to do.
My recovery is ongoing—I will always be recovering because I will always be an alcoholic.
I suspect it is myself I am trying both to recover from and to uncover; after all, so much of who I am was buried for years under my disease.
Alcoholism is an intrinsic part of who I am, it is woven into the way I think, the way I view the world, the way I interact with it, but through recovery, I am able to think, and perceive, and interact in a more skillful manner. I am able to not only function, but also excel.
A lifetime’s worth of work lays ahead of me, for which I am grateful.
“For we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick” –find it in The Big Book
I crossed a line at the start of my journey, a line I remembered being a blurry one, a soft one; however, when I turned to look over my shoulder, after so many miles of trudging, I saw in its place an impenetrable wall, one I surely must have climbed. But how? It was clear there was no going back, my only option now was to move forward.
Photograph taken by Logan in The Joint, Needles District of Canyonlands NP, 2020I believe each of us has a path we must walk, and to a certain extent, it is up to us how long, or short, or hard, or easy our path will be. We make choices every day that either pave our way smooth or lead us through storms. Some storms cannot be avoided, though, and I believe those storms are our birthright; they began brewing long before our lives on earth began and now we, the lucky ones, are given a chance to find a better way through them, else they be passed forward, again and again.
I have also learned “alone” is a space I created in my mind, it isn’t a place of substance, it doesn’t have solid walls or boundaries and so it was easy for me to get lost inside of it. I allowed my loneliness to consume me and drive its blade through my heart, which I, in turn, used on the hearts of many around me. But my loneliness wasn’t real, only my notion of it was. We are all inextricably connected—to the planet, to each other, and beyond—we have pieces of the Universe embedded in our make-up. We are never truly alone.
And it is by coming to believe we are part of something Great, that our recovery begins.
I will never be cured of my alcoholism, I cannot double back on a path that has only ever extended in one direction, but I can come to know that I belong, and I can continue my journey of healing with every forward step I take.
I can continue recovering from all that has ever ailed me, and all that ever will.
Lama, New Mexico, 2020“If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through.
We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.
We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.
We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.
No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.
That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.
We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.
Self-seeking will slip away.
Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.
Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.
We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.
We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us - sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them”
find it in The Big Book
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