Recovery - Step 1

Step 1

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.

It's been a year since I took my last drink and it seems fitting that on this day that I reflect on the steps I have done. Like coming full circle.

June 30th, 2010 was not the first time I had admitted this to myself. Well to be specific I had admitted I had a problem, but not that my life was unmanageable. "I can control it, I'll only have one and that's it, I have a problem but I will be okay.". This time though I knew not only that I was powerless over alcohol but that YES my life had become unmanageable. I was working at a catering company in Downtown Vancouver. A friend of mine lived only two blocks away, she was one of my drinking buddies. I was not in a good place mentally. I hadn't been for some time. I had miscarried in November 2009 and rather than actually feeling my grief, embracing it and then letting it go, I tried to drown it in booze. I had been thinking obsessively about drinking for almost a week. A little voice in the back of my mind, whispering, pleading, demanding. I had told my dear husband that I would be visiting for about an hour and then I would be home. The thing was I KNEW if I went to her house I could get beer, and if that ran out we would always get more, the liquor store was just a few blocks down the road. Two hours and 3 or 4 drinks in, my husband called me to ask if I was alright and when I was coming home. I said I would be leaving in 15 minutes. Which of course did not happen, such was the nature of my binges. The rest of the evening is lost in a haze. Around midnight I realized I had to leave otherwise I wouldn't get home. I had arrived at her place around 5pm. At this point I had turned OFF the volume on my cell to stop the incessant calls from my husband. I did not call him when I got to the bus stop, or the train stop. I got off at the usual station and started walking home. I was so drunk that I was weaving, vision beginning to haze over. I was dangerously close to passing out, not to mention I was walking in a sparsely populated area, right near the woods.

Not the smartest thing I've ever done. It turned out that my hubby had called said friend and asked where I was. She said I had gone home about 45 minutes ago. So in a panic he hopped in the car, heading to Vancouver to find me. As it happened, as I came around the first corner there he was in his care, getting ready to turn also. So I hopped in the car. We had a discussion I believe about how this was not okay, most definitely NOT okay. I can't remember most of it. Or any of it really. I DO remember waking up the next morning and feeling like death. As I opened my eyes and blinked, my hazy memories of the night before came back and I began to cry. Deep hard sobs, I cried for almost two hours, the intensity of it varying between snuffles and those wracking sobs. So I got up, brushed my teeth, grabbed a glass of water and sat in front of my computer, rabidly reading AA literature. I had done almost all those things that an alcoholic does when trying to remain ignorant to their problem. I'll only have 3, I'll only drink beer, I'll only drink with people I trust to tell me to stop. Which of course was just shifting the responsibility of my actions to someone else. When my husband came home from work I told him I was not going to drink anymore, and that I would be going to AA. This was not the first time he had come looking for me when I had disappeared on a binge, but I vowed to myself and to him that it would be the last time. He said he didn't think I was an alcoholic, but he would support me. Bless his heart. Over this past year he has been able to admit that yes, I have a problem. he did not drink for the last year either, saying it was an act of solidarity and support for me. Which I greatly appreciated.

Being a practising Pagan I did, and still do, had issues with the heavy monotheism present. But I choose to look to my Higher Power. My Gods, Ancestors, and Beloved Dead to guide me. The steps are still useful, regardless of what name they use for God. This has, unfortunately made it hard to go to meetings. I've only actually gone to one meeting and that was a speakers meeting. I keep telling myself to go to a beginners meeting. But maybe after a year of sobriety I should just go to a regular meeting.

Regardless I am immensely proud of myself for making it this far, one day at a time.