Here is my sad and sorry tale, with lows and highs and the eventual cure. I know it's long even though these are only the main beats. 30 years of drunken misery requires more than a couple of paragraphs. I hope some of you read it anyway, because I think it's important for people to know that even people with deep and longstanding addictions can be cured.
My Salad Days, Apparently With Alcoholic DressingIn early adulthood, I drank like a fish. I loved the effect of alcohol as soon as I tasted it, and it was only two years or so until it was my only real purpose in living. I lived to drink. There was no distinction between daily drinking and binge drinking, because it was daily binging until unconsciousness. Eventually a DUI and a few disorderly conduct charges shook me out of it enough to want to change, even though "change" only meant not getting arrested.
[Side note: The Sinclair Method was still in clinical trial, over in Finland. It was not yet deployed in practice. I think I would have rejected it even if I had known about it. I wanted to get bombed.] I still had no real goals other than intoxication. I sought help, but the only so-called help I found was Stepping, and even that was offered in such a smug and arrogant manner that it was clearly a poor option for someone already struggling to justify continued existence. I just muddled along, sometimes drinking more and sometimes less.
After my second DUI, I was forced into "treatment" by the court. This was the same old Minnesota Model, basically just getting Stepped on for a month. I abstained after that because I didn't want to repeat the experience of so-called treatment.
Trying to Be a Functional AddictA few more years ticked by. I tried abusing cold medicine, but that was not as fun. I went back to alcohol. Third DUI. This time I tried to be a little more assertive, and I traveled to a mental hospital in Illinois which offered RR-based therapy as well as Stepping. I abstained for a while after that, but again it was more to avoid repeating the experience than because the therapy had been effective.
A few more years ticked by, and I moved to Albuquerque. I remained desperately unhappy and lonely, so guess what I did?
[The Sinclair Method existed and was being used successfully in other countries. I would have embraced it eagerly if it had been available to me. By that point, it was clear that I was caught in a trap. Everything past this point DID NOT HAVE TO HAPPEN. I would have been thrilled to have a cure.]I got a fourth DUI, although they treated it as a first because they didn't know about the others. The charge was dismissed because the cops didn't show up in court -- I still have no idea what happened there.
I more or less had a lid on it until I lost my job (for unrelated reasons). At that point, with no external restraint, it got quite bad again. On one especially rotten occasion, I woke up passed out on the floor at 6:00 in the evening, a tipped-over bottle beside me, and with no memory of anything past the previous evening at maybe 9:00 or so. That was an unusually bad night, but that was basically my life.
Sooooo, I soon acquired my fifth DUI which was also miscategorized as a first. There was more first-time DUI preaching. It was Step-based and as useless as ever.
A Chance at a New Life, But I Blew ItI moved to Massachusetts and continued my drinking ways. By this time I was getting plastered only three times a week or so instead of every single night, but it still wasn't good. It wasn't so much that I had cut down as that I was no longer physically able to tolerate alcohol every night.
Sometimes I showed up to work with a hangover so bad that I could barely function. Sometimes I didn't show up. I wet the bed. I kept a bucket and towel nearby when I drank, so that I could puke without having to leave the alcohol.
I met a wonderful man, concealed the extent of my drinking from him, and knew love for the first time in my life. I started practicing harm reduction, but imperfectly, and got a sixth DUI.
That's a lot of DUIs.
Again, they didn't look out-of-state and treated it as a first DUI. I recommend that hardcore drunks move around a lot.
The first-DUI stuff was quite familiar at that point, but I had to drive in an emergency situation, and I was caught. Massachusetts is quite serious about not driving while a license is suspended for DUI. I was sentenced to two months in prison.
My wonderful then-boyfriend stood by me through this. He didn't realize the extent of my addiction. He knew about one DUI in Albuquerque but thought that the Massachusetts one was my second rather than my sixth. I did not disabuse him because I was too afraid of losing him.
I survived prison, and eventually moved in with my love. I had a starry-eyed assumption that I could easily abstain when we lived together, since of course I would not want to put him through that or torpedo the relationship. Both of those things were true, but unfortunately addiction does not work that way.
I tried SMART, Down Your Drink, other stuff. It didn't work.
[I would have traded my right eye for a cure.]Through some miracle, he did not leave me. Perhaps he sensed how hard I struggled. We eventually wed, but that did not provide a miracle cure. I did, however, discover my own cure of sorts.
What the Heck Is This?I got pregnant.
Suddenly, abstaining was no trouble at all. There was no effort, no reminding myself about the fetus, no anything. I didn't drink and didn't want to. My brain had changed.
It stayed changed after my son's birth. We had alcohol in the house, and I didn't want it or touch it. I even had a drink once in a great while without resuming problem drinking. My son was a difficult baby who grew into a problem child, but I did not drink. I began having crippling panic attacks, but I did not drink. This was no virtue on my part. I didn't want to.
Uh-OhWhen my son was six or seven years old, I slid back into heavy drinking. It's probably no coincidence that this is the same time that "mommy brain" wears off in other respects.
I struggled. My husband supported me and tried to help me. I practiced harm reduction rules with religious ferocity. We tried to protect our son. By dint of truly heroic effort on my part, things didn't get absolutely horrible until about 18 months before I sat down to write this. At that point, the addiction won the struggle.
[I would have given my right eye, my voice, and twenty years of my remaining lifespan for a cure.]Drowning in Alcohol, Finding a Life JacketThe battle continued. It got worse. It got scarier. I became desperate. I knew that Stepping didn't help, knew that RR/SMART had not been useful before, and didn't know what else to try. I gave LifeRing a shot -- I liked the people, but it was no more useful than any of the other self-help programs and support groups. None of them broke the addiction which had me so thoroughly in thrall.
My only shred of hope was that the addiction had vanished during my pregnancy and early motherhood.
That clue led me to targeted naltrexone, aka the Sinclair Method. I considered baclofen as well, but TSM was clearly preferable in several respects.
As you can see from my presence on the Cured list, it worked.
I am cured.
Hey, Wait a Minute . . . .The real kick in the shorts was that I had this idea on my own. Lo these many years ago, while confined in the Minnesota Model rehab and listening to them rattle on about Higher Powers and dopamine somehow affecting each other, I asked if a dopamine blocker wouldn't take care of this dopamine excess problem. The big bad addiction rehab expert said no, not unless you took it before you drank . . . which was, of course, precisely what I was asking. He was just too hung up on Stepping to understand the question.
The other kicker is that knowledge that TSM has been deployed clinically since 1991. Although I would have rejected TSM in early youth, DUIs 3-6 did not have to happen. The career stall did not have to happen. The prison term did not have to happen. The frantic internal struggles did not have to happen. The threat to the deepest and most meaningful relationship of my life did not have to happen. Whatever damage my drinking did to my son's preexisting problems did not have to happen.
None of it had to happen.
One pill. Five weeks with one pill.
Three decades. Five weeks.
Five. F*cking. Weeks.
So . . . yeah. I'm cured.
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I'm on my 5th week. Not cured yet, but doing better.