Sticky Fridge

As I was leaving my house this morning to have Mother’s Day breakfast with my husband and kids, I stopped to put the coffee creamer in the fridge. The top was loose and came off in my hand and I promptly splashed Vanilla Caramel Coffee-Mate on a wide variety of items in my refrigerator. Yes, a fabulous sticky mess running everywhere when we had ten minutes to make it to the restaurant that is exactly ten minutes across town.

When I was first married and trying to be the perfect wife and mother, this incident would have meant that I had to stop and clean everything right then, all the while chastising myself for being so stupid to have not checked that the lid was tight. I would have been late to breakfast and felt guilty for ruining everyone else’s Mother’s Day. Today, I didn’t have to do that.

When I was with my first husband, this incident would have resulting in him screaming obscenities at me for being so stupid not to have tightened the lid, now making him late for breakfast. I would have ended up in tears, and felt guilty for ruining everyone else’s Mother’s Day. Today, I didn’t have to do that.

Before my present husband got sober, how this incident played out would have depended on how much he had already had to drink that morning. Suffice it to say that regardless of how it occurred, I would have blamed myself for spilling the creamer, which led to the unrest that (I thought) caused my husband to drink more, ended up in tears and felt guilty for ruining everyone else’s Mother’s Day. Today, I didn’t have to do that.

Today, I grabbed some paper towels and mopped up the worst of the mess and said, “Eff it--we can clean the rest later, let’s go eat!” And we did. And no one, including me, cared that there was creamer spilled in the fridge. No one yelled. No one got angry. No one was drunk. There was no guilt. There was no blame. There was just breakfast, and laughter, and love.

I realize now that I had to do all of those things to understand that I didn’t HAVE to do those things. Today, I understand that it’s okay to put myself first sometimes. If in any one of the previous scenarios, had I chosen to put myself first and release my self-judgment around being stupid for spilling the creamer; they all would have diffused very quickly and there would have been no ugliness.  Today, I understand that unless I take care of Marti first, I have nothing to give anyone else anyway. And I am so very grateful to be me—now.

Take the time to put yourself first. Be kind to yourself. Love you, first; and everything else becomes so much easier. You will find strength you didn’t know you had, kindness where you least expect it, and love you never thought was possible.

You might even find out that there is no use crying over spilled creamer.

Sweet Surrender

I have some close friends who play in a rock & roll band on the club circuit. They were performing at a club in my town that I choose not to frequent because it’s a favorite hang-out of my first husband.  We’ve been divorced 13 years and I’ve been re-married for 12. Whatever animosity there may have been between us; I’m over it. He isn’t. There is inevitably drama if we’re in the same place and alcohol is served. So, I choose not to play.

One of the band wives shared with me the day after my friends had played this particular club, that she had met a woman named Donna and I quote, “She says you hate her.”  Now, interestingly enough, Donna and I have never met. Not once. Donna is my ex-husband’s present girlfriend.  I am aware of her only because I have a 20 year old daughter from my first marriage who has mentioned her dad’s girlfriend in passing.  Needless to say, I was completely taken aback.  How could someone with whom I have never exchanged a single word believe I hate them? Anyone who knows me will tell you that I don’t hate anyone. That’s just not who I am. Sure, there are people of whom I’m not particularly fond, but hate is just not something that is on my radar.

The term “hate” conjures up all sorts of emotion. It’s much more than dislike. It’s dislike charged with anger and frustration and, very often, fear. It’s a tidy little bundle of negative emotions packaged together. I must tell you that having this bundle mistakenly attached to me by someone I don’t even know left me both dismayed and enormously pissed off. I’m a fairly grounded and centered person most of the time and I can typically shake things like this off in a few moments. But this one bugged me; and the fact that I was allowing it to bug me, bugged me even more. Probably because it portrayed me as the exact opposite of who and what I am. I am a person who promotes love in the world, not hate. I am someone who strives to heal, never to harm. How could anyone, particularly someone who doesn’t know me say otherwise?

It occurred to me as I was working through releasing all this, that it; like many other frustrating situations I’ve encountered, comes down to control.  It bugged me so much because I couldn’t control it.  I couldn’t run interference with everyone Donna may have told her story to. I couldn’t convince Donna that I don’t hate her if she chose to believe otherwise. I had to give up trying to control the situation. I had to trust that the people that know me, know better and the people who don’t know me don’t matter. When I found that place, I was able to let it go.

It’s all about the surrender. When I surrendered to the fact that I couldn’t control any aspect of the situation, peace returned to me. It’s such a simple process and almost always the most difficult for us to do. We’re taught growing up that surrender is a sign of weakness, when in fact, it can be our greatest strength.  There is enormous power in choosing surrender over struggle. Usually, we’re so busy struggling that we can’t see a pathway out.  Upon surrendering, the doorways appear and the paths are illuminated.

It’s no different than the process we went through as our addicted loved-ones entered the process of treatment and recovery. They had to surrender to the fact that they were addicted before the healing could start. We had to surrender to the fact that they were addicted and that we couldn’t heal them before our healing could begin. It’s times like these that my present husband will usually remind me that it’s not an accident that the 12 step programs used in AA & NA; which include a process of daily surrender, are referred to as “A Design for Living”—and I have to surrender to the fact that he’s right.

Don’t you just hate when that happens?   *wink*

Minivans & Melted Ice Cream

I had just left the grocery store this afternoon and was putting the bags in my car when I heard a child crying. I looked around and realized the crying was coming from the minivan parked next to me.  The rear window was cracked about an inch, and inside the van were two small children in car seats without a parent in sight.

The younger one (less than two) was strapped into his seat crying. The older child, a girl who couldn’t possibly have been more than four or five, was attempting to console her brother.  Surely, I thought, the parent has just gone to return the shopping cart and will materialize momentarily.  I waited outside my car a few moments, but no parent came. I got in the car and put the key in the ignition, but I couldn’t turn the key.  Maybe because I’m a mother or maybe because I remember so clearly what it was like to feel small and alone; I couldn’t leave. This is silly, I thought.  I can’t really do anything. The kids are locked in the van; it will only scare them if I try to talk to them. But I had an overpowering feeling that I needed to stay. I resolved in that moment to stay there until the parent appeared or I had to call the cops or whatever.

I sat in my car and played on my smartphone, stealing glances at the children and hoping they wouldn’t be freaked out by the strange lady in the big sunglasses who kept looking at them. About five minutes into what felt like the longest 15 minutes of my life, I realized the little girl was watching me.  She had her face pressed against the van window. I took off my sunglasses and smiled and waved at her.  She smiled and waved back. Then she called to her brother to look my way and said, “Look, there’s a mom.” The little boy looked and his sister waved to me, and I waved back. In that moment, the little boy stopped crying, smiled and waved. Evidently, when your own mom is MIA, anybody’s will do to make you feel better.  I was alone with my groceries, so I don’t know how the little girl knew I was “a mom”; maybe I just put off that vibe.  Anyway, we smiled and waved at each other and the kids giggled and I realized why I had stayed.

The simple act of staying there with those kids had made all the difference in the world to them.  Just by staying put a few minutes, those children felt like they were not alone.  That’s what we all want, isn’t it? We all want to know that there is someone close by who cares about us.

When I made the decision to stay with my then actively addicted husband, it was a lot like my experience with those kids. I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing.  I didn’t know if it would even make any difference that I was there.  I wondered if I was just doing something that was going to cause me grief and aggravation in the long run. I thought that it might be easier to simply get in the car and drive away.  But the person next to me was hurting, and I had that same overpowering feeling that I needed to be there.  So, I stayed.

As those of you who have stayed with your own addicted loved ones know, it wasn’t as simple as evoking smiles and giggles on the journey through addiction and recovery. But I find that the emotions are the same.  We reached out to those people close to us who were feeling helpless, scared and alone; and we discovered that by doing so we helped to heal not only them, but ourselves as well.

P.S. The kid’s mom appeared with her recycled grocery bags after 15 minutes and all was once again right with the universe. I went home and made a milkshake out the ice cream that had melted while I stayed. So, it was a win-win.

Silent Sheens

Like many of you, for the past few weeks I’ve been watching the media circus surrounding actor Charlie Sheen’s gradual implosion from drugs and alcohol. The thing that has struck me most strongly hasn’t been Charlie’s rambling diatribes, his penchant for twenty-something porn stars, or his “tiger blood”; it’s been the silence of those closest to him.

His father, actor Martin Sheen and brother, actor/director Emilio Estevez, have issued only two brief statements: one in which they compare addiction to a cancer and one in which they asked the public to  “pray for him”.  The media has since blasted them for “not taking action” and “deserting Charlie in his darkest hour”.  What the media fails to acknowledge is the fact that Charlie’s family has been on this roller coaster ride with him for the past 25 years.  In that time, Martin Sheen, who is himself a recovering alcoholic, has turned Charlie in for drug related probation violations, held an intervention, ushered Charlie into numerous rehab programs, even cared for his infant grandchildren when Charlie’s home was too volatile a place for them.  The media makes only passing, if any, reference to these facts.

I get it. I’m guessing those of you who share your world with an addict do too.  Like Martin and Emilio, I’ve been on that roller coaster ride that seems to have no end.  Those of us who have stayed on the journey with our addicts can relate to the silence.  What is there to say, really? It’s all been said-most often numerous times. 

Silence becomes our refuge and the need for refuge is great.  When you stay in the trenches and fight the good fight in the battle to save the life of someone you love, you have to allow yourself a place to rest and recharge. As I’ve said in the past, making the decision to stay in the life of an addict is not for the meek or faint-hearted.  Keeping the strength to love an addict through their struggles requires self-love and self-preservation.  If you don’t take care of yourself, you have nothing to give them.  Love yourself enough to choose silence.  Not always, not forever; but when you feel you have come to that place of inner exhaustion, find solace in the silence. For it is in that silent place inside yourself that you connect to your own inner flame—that pilot light within you that fuels your strength.  Allowing yourself to go that place of peace within doesn’t mean you are turning your back.  It means you’re refueling to have the strength to get up and go another round in the fight.

It would be very easy for Martin & Emilio to jump on the media soap-box and cast aspersions against Charlie or issue pleas that he will, while immersed in his disease, ignore. Remaining silent, while supporting Charlie behind the scenes, is the much more difficult choice.  They have my applause.

Dirty Words

Understand that the “rest of the world” doesn’t understand

After years of working in recovery circles, the terms “alcoholic” and “addict” are no longer dirty words to me.  They’re simply terms that describe variations on a disease.  But I’m fully cognizant of the fact that those words, when used with the general public, evoke the sort of recoil that “leper” or “sex offender” do.   So, if you’ve decided to stick around you’re going to have to move past considering the opinion of the masses. This is especially true when “the masses” include your own extended family and friends.

I have a close friend whose partner is an active alcoholic.  We shared an email exchange in which he apologized to me for his partner’s drunken behavior at a party. I responded with, “Buddy, there is no need to apologize.  Believe me, I get it.  No one understands what it’s like to love a person with alcoholic tendencies more than I do.”  Now, mind you, the response I was expecting was something along the lines of, “Thanks. It’s nice to know that someone really understands.”  Instead, what I received was, “To be clear, Kelly is NOT alcoholic.  She simply doesn’t know when to stop drinking once she starts, and I have to babysit her.” Oh, okay dude, whatever. I had used the dreaded “A” word and he was not going to sit still for that, regardless of the support being offered.  He wasn’t going to have his lady branded with the “Scarlet Letter” of our time. These are people who are very dear to me, people I would very much like to help guide toward a solution to their misery.  But, they can’t hear me. The “words” get in the way.

Because addiction is most often treated as some sort of personality shortcoming by the mainstream media and in the court of public opinion, those outside the world of recovery seldom grasp the true nature of the disease.  For your own sanity, you have to get to the place where you’re okay with that.   This can be a tough one for us. As we become more educated about addiction and treatment, it becomes blatantly obvious that the largest hurdle in treating the disease is the misconception that it is not one.  We want to scream the truth from the mountain-top and make the rest of the world understand.  The thing is; the rest of the world won’t hear us. They are too immersed in their own fear.

The reason these words create such recoil is completely fear-based.  When you recognize that, it becomes much easier to feel compassion rather than contempt for this sort of response.  They’re afraid.

The general public is afraid of what they do not understand. They are also afraid of not knowing how to behave when the topic comes up.  Comedian Jim Gaffigan sums the reaction up succinctly.  He says,

“When you don't drink, people always need to know why. They're like, 'You don't drink? Why?' This never happens with anything else. 'You don't use mayonnaise? Why? Are you addicted to mayonnaise? Is it OK if I use mayonnaise? I could go outside.’”

Jim illustrates the general public’s reaction perfectly.  They are afraid of their own embarrassment at not knowing what to do or how to act.

The addicted person is afraid of the label not only because of the social stigma, but because it makes the problem “real”.  Before the label comes into play they can continue to use and believe they are fooling everyone.  Once the “words” are used the game changes-for everyone. 

The loved ones are afraid for a multitude of reasons.  Most are afraid that, in some form or another, they are to blame; and with THAT we can certainly identify—because we’ve been there.  Remember that paralyzing fear that you had been contributing to your person’s problem?  Remember the anger at yourself and stupidity that you felt when you realized that you hadn’t seen the problem for what it actually was? Remember knowing within yourself that your person probably had a problem and being terrified that someone would point it out? Remember having to analyze your own behavior and question whether you, yourself had a problem? Remember the fear that if you used the “words” with your person that they would abandon your relationship?  Of course you do.  We all do.

So, when these situations arise where you find yourself on the receiving end of the “dirty word” recoil; remember the fear that you had. Your knee-jerk anger will melt into understanding, and the need to convince the “rest of world” for that moment will leave you.  You might even find that remembering where you used to be will remind you of how far you have come. And, at the risk of being horribly cliché, “You’ve come a long way, baby.”

Loving an Addict Without Losing Yourself - Part 2

Understand that they don’t understand.

There are two phrases that no longer have any meaning for the family of an alcoholic/addict who is actively using.  They are, “I’m sorry” and “I love you”.

We’ve heard it all before. They’re always sorry and they always love us when they are feeling ashamed of their behavior.  Not so much when they’re in the height of their disease.  Those phrases become as meaningless to us as “Have a nice day” is from the grocery clerk. But, here’s the thing; they don’t know that.  How would they, really?  When they were immersed in their addiction, they didn’t care and we certainly didn’t tell them.  Now that they’re in treatment and/or recovery they really mean those words. But the words are still very empty to us, particularly in the early stages of healing. 

Most often we don’t share the damage that has been done to us because we’re so focused on helping our addict recover.  We’re also afraid, in the beginning especially, that we will say something that will send them spiraling back out of control and into their addiction.  We don’t say that we’re afraid because we don’t want the healing addict to think they are hurting us.  For so long, our focus has been on the addict that we tend to take our own feelings out of the equation.  For a while, we had to; in order to survive the addiction ordeal.  The thing you have to remember is, just like the addiction involved you, the healing involves you also.  It is not only okay for you to share how you are feeling, it’s vital.

In most cases, the addict was so under the haze of their drug of choice that they have no idea of the havoc they were wreaking in the lives of their loved ones.  Imagine coming out of that haze and knowing you’ve done some things that hurt the ones you love, but not knowing what those things are.  You would want someone to tell you so that you could begin to make things right.  So tell them; share who you have become while they were using. 

I was having coffee one morning with a recovering alcoholic friend who was recuperating from surgery in our home. His wife was unwilling to let him return to theirs.  He had required the surgery as the result of a five week alcohol binge that had nearly ended his life. He was lamenting to me, “I don’t understand why Carol is being so stubborn.  I’ve told her how sorry I am over and over again.  She seems to want to punish me.” I said to him, “Dan, ‘I’m sorry’ has no meaning for Carol.”  He just stared at me.  I asked him, “How many times have you said that to Carol over the years?  Carol’s really tired of hearing ‘I’m sorry’ and having nothing change.  Carol has absolutely no reason to believe that this time will be any different than any of the others.  Your perspective may have changed, but hers hasn’t.”  There was more staring, and then he said to me with a look of complete disbelief, “That never occurred to me.” We sipped our coffee in silence for a while.  Then he said quietly, “Thanks for telling me that.”  My husband told me later that Dan had called his wife to tell her that he had never understood how much damage he was doing to her and that he thought he was only harming himself.  You see, he didn’t understand, she didn’t tell him. So they were living in that emotional limbo with which we are all so familiar.

It wasn’t until I had that conversation with Dan that I really came to comprehend how important it is for us as family of recovering addicts to consciously separate the person we love from the person in their disease.  Dan truly had no idea how used up his wife was feeling. I truly had no idea that Dan wouldn’t know that. The disease does that to us, to all of us.

When our addicts are immersed in their addictions they say and do things that they would most likely never do if they weren’t using.  The thing is, for the family, even though we may know that intellectually; it doesn’t make those things hurt any less.  My husband has been sober for six years. There all still times that I find myself filtering the things I say to him.  That filter comes from the ingrained fear that he will react the way he did when he was using; which was often very unpleasant for everyone.  He won’t react now in the way that he used to.  I know that in my head.  But my conditioned behavior from the years of living in the disease supersedes my intellect.  By taking the time to see my husband as that man he is now, which is really all that matters; I’m able to release that fear a little bit more each time it comes up.  And so, the healing continues.

Take a moment to consciously see the person you love. Give yourself that gift. If you can focus on the love between you and the aspects of the person that you adore, even for a few moments, the wounds heal.  The more often you can get to this place of seeing the person outside the disease and through the love you have for them, the faster the healing happens. Perhaps even more importantly, the more you focus on the love, the quicker you will find that place of peace inside yourself that we are all seeking.

Loving an Addict Without Losing Yourself

This article is addressed to those of you who are without addictions, but love an addicted person and are committed to being a part of that person’s life.

There are volumes upon volumes of published works on addictive behaviors, co-dependency, enabling and the like. This is not one.  This work simply seeks to help those partners, friends and family members of addicts who are navigating the treatment and recovery processes, while trying to live their daily lives.

Understand that you cannot understand.  That’s the first hurdle.

If you do not have addictive tendencies yourself, you will never truly understand what it’s like for the person who does.  Sure, you can educate yourself about addiction. You can sympathize, and empathize and support and love; but you can never really understand. No more than you can understand what it is to be black when you’re white; or gay when you’re straight, can you actually understand what it means to be an addict when you are not.

My husband is an alcoholic/addict. I am not.  We have been together 13 years.  In that time, we have taken the journey from the depths of his addictions to his eventual long-term recovery.  We have been “in the trenches” together. I’ve helped him off the floor when he was wasted, held his hand in treatment, been through family counseling, ushered our children through his recovery, and have been to more 12-step meetings than most non-addicts I know.  We’ve had addicts detox in our basement. I’ve washed their clothes, cleaned their vomit, confiscated their booze or drugs, consoled, counseled and commiserated with their loved ones.  My point being, if there is any non-addict on the planet who knows what it is to be addicted, it should be me.  It isn’t.

I can drink half a glass of wine and leave the rest. I can socially smoke. I can recreationally smoke pot. I can take opiates for pain and not become dependent. Why can‘t they? Oh, I know the answer. Intellectually, I know the answer.  There is a phenomenon of craving that takes place in the alcoholic/addict when these substances are introduced that does not occur in the non-addicted person.  Simple enough, right?  Yeah, right. But here’s the thing; even though I know that, I’ve never experienced that craving, nor will I ever.  So, after many years of making myself crazy trying to comprehend it, I have come to the understanding that I will never understand.  Which, in and of itself, is life-giving.

It’s in our nature to want to understand someone when we love them.  We want to be on the same level.  We want them to know that we get them. That we, above all others, know them as well as they know themselves. When you’re a non-addict who loves an addicted person, not being able to achieve this state of knowing the other can be maddening.  You can read all the books, attend all the seminars, go to meetings with them, abstain from substances yourself and still you can’t say that you know what it’s like for them.  It’s beyond frustrating.  So, how about you give yourself a break and admit to yourself that you can’t understand…and that’s okay.

Think of it this way.  If the person you love had cancer, would you beat up on yourself for being unable to feel their pain? Would you lay awake at night trying to figure out what it was like to have cancer? Of course you wouldn’t. You would be there to support them emotionally. You would let them know that you love them, no matter what. You would try to get them the best possible treatment you could find. You would help them to battle their disease in any way possible.  You would be grateful when the cancer went into remission and ever watchful and guarded against its possible return.  You would go to any length to be certain your loved one followed up with any on-going treatment to keep them in remission.

It’s no different with the disease of addiction.  Don’t be fooled. Untreated addiction is every bit the terminal disease that cancer can be.  Because addiction is a disease that centers in the mind, we discount it.  We find ourselves making statements like:  “No one chooses to have cancer, my loved one chose to drink or use to excess.”  Bullshit, if you’ll pardon my expression.  No matter how intelligent, how educated, how wealthy, how well-connected they may be, they have no choice.

Your addicted loved one has no more choice about the way they drink or use than the cancer patient has about the cancer cells growing in their body. THAT is the thing that you need to understand.

  Understand that addiction is a disease and treat it as such. That’s next.

You’ve spent all this time trying to understand what it’s like to be an addict. Now that we’ve established that you need to give that up to keep your sanity, take a look at the things you CAN understand.

Understand that your loved one has a disease. Understand that their disease centers in the mind. Understand that they have no choice about the way they drink or use.  Give this disease the same psycho-emotional treatment you would if it were cancer or heart disease. If your loved one had any other life-threatening disease; you would not be ashamed, you would just help them treat it. So do that.

Understand that their disease has nothing to do with you.

You can no more cause your loved one’s addiction than you could cause them to have cancer.  Let that go.  Blaming yourself will do nothing other than make both of you miserable.  The addict carries enough guilt and shame about their addiction to last several lifetimes.  Watching you blame yourself for their struggles only amplifies that guilt and aggravates every aspect of the issues they are trying to overcome.

Understand that their disease is treatable, but not by you.

We’ve already established that you cannot understand what it’s like to be an addict. So what would make you think that you can cure one?  Guess what? You CAN’T. But there are plenty of addiction specialists out there who can. Whether its in-patient treatment in a rehab center or your local AA or NA group, there are people who DO know what it is to be an addict that can help. Help your loved one seek them out with the same discernment you would use in choosing a surgeon.  Most importantly, stop beating yourself up because you can’t fix them!