This post was originally published on April 1, 2015.
I’m one of the stupid ones who had to lose everything to get sober and stay sober. I had to relapse, I had to keep digging for a deeper bottom, and the crazy thing is I never had a physical dependency on alcohol.
No, I never woke up and guzzled booze first thing in the morning to ward off a bad case of the shakes. My favorite way to abuse alcohol was to binge drink and engage in extremely destructive behaviors and drive all over LA totally trashed. So when I walked into my first psychiatrist’s office at 22, and she asked me how often I drank and how much, I told her about my patterns candidly. I was shocked when she asked, “Have you ever thought about going to AA?”
She must have been insane. AA? The place for jobless gutter drunks? Was she kidding? I didn’t have a drinking problem! I just liked to have fun (and throw bottles at people here and there).
The fun kept on through my 20s, but for every terrific night out, there’d be a tragic night out. Sometimes I’d puke on myself in places like the Sky Bar or the rooftop of the Standard in downtown LA, sometimes I’d get into verbal fights with random bitches on the dance floor, sometimes I’d assault bouncers, and sometimes I’d come home and slice up my thighs with a butcher knife in stupor of self-hatred. (Thankfully, I have no scars and the huge slashes didn’t get infected.)
By the time I was 28, the drinking got so out of hand that my new shrink referred me to a dual diagnosis intensive outpatient program at Cedar Sinai. I refused to go, telling her I didn’t have a drinking problem. Then she gave me an ultimatum: If you can’t stay sober for 30 days, then you’ve got a problem and you must go to AA, or I’ll stop treating you.
What a quack! She, like the previous psychiatrist, was insane. What would I do with myself if I wasn’t drinking? My entire social life revolved around booze. But I was kind of scared of her—she was this fiery Romanian who meant business—so I really exerted myself to stay sober for 30 days to prove her wrong.
Things went well for two whole days! I went out dancing with my best friend to our favorite club that blasted 80’s Brit Pop, and it was so lovely to wake up the next day without a hangover. Plus I didn’t binge on Carl’s Jr. at 2 am.
But two days later, and for a reason I still can’t pinpoint, I decided to get good and drunk again. Really hammered, so hammered that I destroyed my car. And a few days after that, I ended up in the ICU at Cedars Sinai having overdosed on 500 pills in an attempt to end my life.
And once again, the docs told me I couldn’t drink. In fact, it was a whole panel of medical professionals—nurses, a medical doctor, two psychiatrists, a clinical social worker and a psychotherapist—who told me I had to lay off the sauce or else.
“I can’t go into a nice restaurant and not have a glass of wine!” I yelled at them, as though that was how I drank. Right. Every time I drank, I made sure to not eat so I’d get drunker faster.
But they forced me to go to AA panels in the psych unit. And in the AA panels, I had a bad attitude. I refused to participate, I refused to read the stupid steps when they asked me to, and I refused to hold hands and say the dumb Serenity Prayer. Still, when I got out of the unit I considered what they said and decided I’d try to stop drinking for a bit, and then maybe I’d take it up again after I’d gotten it under control. I also decided to hit a meeting, if only out of morbid curiosity.
Prior to seeing those panels come in full of well-dressed, showered and stable people, I had no idea AA actually worked. I always thought meetings were made up of five or so haggard 50-somethings with weathered skin and dirt behind their nails who reeked of alcohol and couldn’t get sober.
But the meetings were nothing like that. They were filled with lucid, intelligent and educated people, hip people, both young and old, people filled with a mix of sincere joy and irreverent humor. Plus they smoked a lot and drank loads of coffee and ate tons of Oreos. That alone was enough to keep me coming back.
After staying sober for 11 months, I unfortunately relapsed on some beer. Though I’d been working the steps with my sponsor, I for some reason couldn’t handle the break-up I experienced with my new boyfriend. Of course I was advised to steer clear of getting romantically involved in early sobriety, but I like to learn the hard way.
This relapse led to plenty more relapses for two-and-a-half years. After more suicide attempts and more trips to the psych unit, I ended up losing many jobs, destroying yet another car and, without any money, I had no phone and no place to stay. Then I went from shitty halfway house to halfway house to prostituting myself just to afford Top Ramen and Pall Mall cigarettes.
My last drink was in an alley in Van Nuys, in broad daylight. I guzzled a huge bottle of Miller High Life out of a paper bag, having impulsively bought alcohol from a gas station because the bus was taking too long. For some reason, while drinking in that alley, I had a genuine moment of clarity.
“An alley in Van Nuys? Really Tracy? Yeah, I think you’ve hit bottom.”
It took a long time for me to get my shit together and dig myself out of that financial hole. I ended up going to a free county-run rehab so I’d simply have a place to stay. It was awful, and when a disability check came in the mail, I went AWOL immediately.
Five-and-a-half years have passed, and I haven’t touched a drop of liquor. I’m pretty sure that, in addition to being an active member in AA, hitting that low, having to sleep with disgusting men and give blow jobs for $20 with guys ripping my hair out just to eat, also made me wake up.
I refuse to go back to that terrible place. I’m done.
I never really thought I’d get a life together though. My first four months of sobriety I’d sleep all day in my Sober Living and wander around after meetings depressed, convinced I’d never ever write again or make anything of myself. But, one day at a time, I started making something of myself, getting an income, getting a phone, getting mentally stable, and eventually becoming truly joyful and content. I’m even writing for a living, which is a dream come true. And my finances are in such order that I’m paying for my first trip to Europe in the fall.
I’ll be in Barcelona for my six-year sober anniversary. I plan to take a medallion at a meeting in Spanish or Catalan, instead of slipping on Sangria or Rioja as some people do when they go to Europe. I’m just not interested in seeing the insides of a Spanish psych unit—I’d rather spend my time gazing up at the surrealist architecture in the Gaudí buildings…without the spins.
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