How I Became an Alcoholic

My previous post was about how I stopped being an alcoholic, so I figured I should write the companion piece of how I became one. 

My story of alcoholism doesn't start the same way as that of most alcoholics, who start as early as age ten or twelve, pilfering from their parents' liquor cabinet, which was the most common origin story I heard at Alcoholics Anonymous. I never once drank from their liquor stash, even when my seventeen year-old friends were doing it. My parents had been giving me sips of their beer and wine since I was young, and I'd never understood what all the fuss was about. 

I didn't drink that much in college, just a few beers at the occasional party because that's what you're supposed to do. I knew I was a two-beer-queer so I never pushed it. I had a few friends of friends who'd been in the hospital to get their stomachs pumped, and there was no way I wanted that to happen. I mean, ew. To this day I can count on one hand the number of times I've vomited from drinking.

Over the last year of university my drinking rose slowly but steadily, in no small part at my boyfriend's encouragement. He loved for us to frequent his favorite little neighborhood bar to watch baseball games. I hated watching baseball but I loved drinking Corona and people watching, especially drunk people watching. One day he said to me, "You've started drinking more than I do," with a tone of surprise. I clinked his bottle and carried on. 

Since I was now with someone who could afford top shelf drinks, I had also gotten used to my beloved platinum margaritas with a tequila floater on top. Even typing that just now gave my body a little zing of happiness, after seven years sober. 

I can tell you the exact day I knew I had a problem. Not just a drinking problem, but something bigger than me entirely. 

It was my graduation party at my favorite Tex-Mex restaurant, and I was tossing back the platinum margaritas with great determination. My boyfriend kept whispering in my ear that maybe I should slow down, but I just ate more food and said that was enough to keep me steady. He looked worried, and I'm sure I looked annoyed. 

It was the fourth platinum margarita with a tequila floater that did me in, as I ended up puking it up all over the floor between my feet right there at the table. My best friend rushed me to the bathroom in case more was on the way; meanwhile my boyfriend paid with a hefty tip in apology even though we weren't done eating. 

I remember leaving the restaurant in a lucid enough state (somehow) to think to myself, Well, fuck, where do I go from here? Because I knew that I was standing at the top of a very long downward spiral. And yet it never occurred to me to try and fight the fall, because I assumed I couldn't. 

It was already clear that I was clinically depressed, as I had been diagnosed three years earlier. An intern year in New York City only made that depression the more clear as I was away from friends and family and the ease of home, trying to make it on my own like Carrie Bradshaw on Sex and the City. This was when I first got a Xanax prescription, although it barely blunted the worst of my depression. It was simply another pill to add to my morning batch of antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds. 

When I told my mother that my boyfriend and I were moving in together during my final year of college, her response (instead of being "fine, just don't tell your grandmother," as I expected) was, "good, he needs to know what he's getting into." Because I was a problem to be solved, someone who needed pills to hope to pass for normal. And I wasn't, not by any stretch of the imagination. Not that I was that hurt over her answer, because I had known for years that I was a person to be tolerated, someone who would never be happy like others were.

At the time I thought my perfect boyfriend of a year was my saving grace: If anyone could save me from myself, surely he could. 

And yet--my boyfriend was beginning to annoy me in every little way that he did every little thing, from the braying way he laughed to how he wanted his coffee microwaved an extra thirty seconds, but he was hot, made good money, and had an Australian accent, so naturally we moved in together. We even had a dog together. 

We had gone as far as to discuss getting married and moving to Sydney, which was why I was doing my best to ignore that nagging voice in the back of my head that he wasn't right for me. All my friends and family kept telling me how amazing he was, so who was I to think any different? I didn't think I could do any better, and apparently neither did anyone else.

And so I drank, to silence the voice in the back of my head.

Additionally, I had just graduated from Rice University, one of the best architecture programs in the country, and I was feeling the pressure of that tuition bill to succeed. I had twelve years of prep school and another five years of private university hanging over my head. Those made for some damn heavy diplomas.

You have to understand, I came from a highly successful and ambitious family. My cousin has given a TED Talk, another founded an academic journal, both have received lots of awards for things I can't spell let alone understand, my brother has a resume containing SpaceEx and Tesla, my father has numerous patents, everyone are world travelers--I couldn't compete with anyone. My three degrees in architecture and art from a ritzy university were nothing special, but simply what was expected of me to be allowed a seat at the table.

And so I drank, to silence the expectations I doubted I'd ever be able to achieve.

The real trouble was that I no longer wanted to be an architect. I'd felt it in my gut for some time now, and I had no idea what to do. My mother knew I was wavering in my dedication to school so she said, "Just graduate, I don't care what your grades are. Graduate." So I popped Xanax like they were M&Ms and managed to graduate.

Meanwhile I was spending every Saturday and Sunday morning with my boyfriend at my favorite coffee shop, writing on my ancient laptop. Sometimes I wrote about the people at the cafe, making up stories for them. Other times I wrote about things that had happened to me during my intern year in Manhattan, which although depressing had also been full of dating stories I'd shared with my amused friends at the time, not knowing this would be a precursor to a very popular and award-winning dating and sex blog I wrote for years after college. 

Oftentimes, or should I say, most of the time, I wrote about how much I feared the end of the school year and my having to become an architect for real. I could barely deal with architecture in the safely confined design studio of university; how would I deal with multiple bosses, endless meetings, city codes, and contractors who automatically saw me as an adversary because of my position and gender?

And so I drank, to silence my growing dread of facing the architecture profession head-on.

There was a time I loved architecture, really, truly. My freshman year of college was the best year of my life because I was surrounded by people who shared my passion for art and architecture. We went to the local Museum District and gawked over exquisite handrails and clever wall detailing. These were my people. My collection of architecture books from those years prove my love for it was once genuine. But somewhere along the way, I either burned out or got burned. To this day I can't tell you where I went wrong. Maybe things would have been different if I'd never experienced depression. But as it was, I fell deeply out of love with architecture. 

Then there was my newfound love of writing--it made me happy, at least for a couple hours every weekend at that coffee shop. During my twelve-hour days of architecture studio all week I looked forward to those few precious hours I'd have to write. Writing just made me feel better, it was that plain and simple. I could say anything I wanted. I could cry or rage or complain or hope. I could just be. I could imagine a different life, one where I was happy. 

But what did I expect to do with that $250,000 degree? Change the entire course of my life so I could write? Seriously? That was no real-world endeavor, at least not to my family full of engineers, scientists, and medical professionals. 

And so I drank, to silence the new voice in the back of my head telling me to dare to follow my dreams anyway.

I started cutting myself as well, but I'll save that story for another post. 

Over my twenties my drinking expanded from beer and margaritas at Mexican restaurants to box wine (because it felt more dignified and less like being an alcoholic) at home to vodka sodas at clubs until I finally kept a full bar at home, having long ditched the Australian boyfriend for the better support system of white Russians, straight tequila, whiskey, or my poison of choice, the big 1.5 liter bottles of wine.

It seemed like every direction I looked, there was a reason to drink. Sometimes I wonder if I stood a chance at all of avoiding alcoholism, especially once you throw in the addiction gene on both sides of the family. Or maybe that's all just a big excuse for why I failed so miserably at fighting it for so many years. 

By age 25 my love was easily found in a glass, night after night, and always alone except for the voice in the back of my head. 

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If you can relate all too well to my story, feel free to email me vixoen@gmail.com. No judgement, full confidentiality, because I get it. 

7 Year Soberiversary

Today I have been sober for seven years, which is nothing short of a miracle given how much I was drinking eight years ago--roughly two bottles of wine a night (but only six glasses if I was on a date and ten glasses if I had nowhere to be the next morning and I was really into Vampire Diaries that night). 

A friend of mine recently asked me how I was staying sober while dealing with stage 4 cancer. Until he asked me that, it honestly hadn't crossed my mind to give in and drink to forget my well-earned worries for a night. I told him that at this point I didn't drink simply out of habit. Seven years of not drinking embeds those neural pathways pretty deep. Nowadays I'm able to live in a house with wine, beer, and whiskey in the cabinets and feel no temptation.

Getting to that point, however, sucked. The first day of sobriety is as hard as every day after it all added together. Anyone who has gotten sober and stayed that way has an iron will, no matter what they may say about themselves (including "it's all thanks to Jesus, my Higher Power." Yeah, right, I don't see Jesus coming down and wrestling the whiskey out of your hand in the middle of a tear-stricken night). 

Seven years ago I was spending Christmas and New Year's with my family at our lakehouse in Missouri. All my favorite people were there which means I was in a room full of PhDs, success, ambition, awards, and Google Scholar hits. I felt like a nobody because I had none of those things. 

So I drank. 

Every day I watched the clock and started drinking cheap wine the second the clock struck noon. One particularly difficult day I started drinking at eleven. My mother gave me a look and I just gave her the stink eye back: "I'm not waiting until noon today." 

The next day as I walked through the bustling kitchen with a freshly topped off glass of wine, my mother caught me by the elbow and said something to me that pierced through all my bullshit armor and excuses and hit me where I needed to hear it. "With your drinking, you are giving up your career, you are giving up finding a husband, and you are giving up having a child. You are giving up everything for your drinking." 

It shook me to my core. 

When Mom released my elbow she went back to her business mashing potatoes, and I had her words ringing in my ear like a gong. I was half-there for the rest of the day, but not because of the box wine. 

The next day I told Mom I wanted to get sober. I don't think she believed me but naturally she thought it was a great idea. I ordered some books on getting sober that would be waiting at my door when I got home. I played with the idea of Alcoholics Anonymous but I wasn't sure because it sounded like an awful lot of work, especially that step where you apologize to all the people you've wronged. Oh hellllllll no, I don't think so. Maybe I didn't need AA; I was smart, surely I could figure out how to get sober on my own. 

It turned out Mom wasn't my only mini-intervention. My favorite cousin got me alone (with a bottle of white wine as a bribe, the clever lass) and told me she was worried about me. I lowered my head and said, Yeah, I know. It's time to do something. I just hope I can. What if it was too late?

When I made it back to Portland I continued drinking for a couple days. The sobriety books lay in a stack on the coffee table, unread. Finally my mother asked if I'd been to AA and I said no. She said, "but you promised you'd get sober." Once again, it was her words that cut through all my excuses: my problem isn't that bad, I have it under control, it doesn't affect anyone else, I never black out so how bad can I really be, I never puke, almost nothing bad ever happens to me, these tremors aren't that noticeable, withdrawal isn't that big a deal. But Mom was right, I had promised her, and I owed it to her to follow through. 

Besides, maybe her words were exactly what I needed to save me from myself. 

After a couple days I decided, okay, it's time to get real. I went online and found a website listing all the Portland-area AA meetings for that day. I picked one that was close by and decided to read a memoir of getting sober until then. At the last minute I decided to go to a woman-only meeting instead that was a little farther away, figuring it would be a little less intimidating. 

Thank goodness I did, because if I had gone to the first meeting I'd found, I might never have gone back to AA. I attended this one a couple months later and it was everything unappealing you see about Alcoholics Anonymous in the movies: dark church room, shitty coffee in styrofoam cups, broken metal folding chairs, and a group of people who looked equally broken. Not inspiring at first glance.

Now I am NOT saying all AA meetings are like this, in fact most are not so don't let my experience deter you, but what I'm saying is that this particular meeting would have scared my already very squirrelly disposition away from AA because I didn't know any better and didn't have the determination or motivation to stick it out and see all the good things about it I later saw. Like how much conviction it takes to show up to an AA meeting when all you want to do is drive to the liquor store. 

Instead, I went to an all women's meeting. It was in a very cozy sitting room in a church, full of couches and fluffy pillows. They lit a candle and greeted me with a smile, their name, and a hug. They were THRILLED to be my first AA meeting ever and treated me like a treasured guest because of it. They gave me a free copy of the AA book. It was as pleasant an experience as I could have hoped for for my first time. 

During the meeting they gave me the coveted and hard-won gold 24 hour coin for my first day sober and told me to keep coming back so I could earn my silver 1 month coin. A few women offered to be my sponsor although I wasn't ready to decide yet because I wanted to see a couple other meetings first. It was thanks to this meeting that I dove into AA as a major factor in my getting sober. 

I attended meetings for my first year and a half. Yes, many if not most took place in grungy church rooms with shitty coffee. That's just how AA is, because that's all they can afford. Their job isn't to pamper you; on the contrary, AA's job is to kick you in the ass and keep you sober, one day at a time. And it works. My sponsors were two of the most bullshit-proof women I've ever encountered in my life. One was a former meth head stripper, the other was a Harvard grad working in finance. I learned a ton from both. 

I became a far better person because of AA and my sponsors, and there's no denying I became a better, less self-absorbed and less selfish person because I stopped drinking. I know my family finds me a lot more pleasant to be around now.

What you can't appreciate until you're out the other side is how much easier sobriety is. You're not always worried about your next drink or your next bottle or FUCK, the liquor store is closed. You don't have to worry about pacing yourself on a first date or at the office happy hour so you don't look like the raging alcoholic that you secretly know you are. You don't make self-deprecating jokes about being a high- (or not-so-high) functioning alcoholic and get nervous when others don't laugh because there's no hiding what you really are. 

My main concern--and main reason for not quitting already (or was this just the lie I told myself?)--was that I was convinced drinking made me more creative. If I stopped drinking, I thought I'd lose my ability to brainstorm and write so well. Never mind that I was barely doing either. Friends pointed this out to me and said if I was such a great a writer as I thought I was, I'd be able to write stone cold sober as well. And the smug bastards were right, of course, because progress on my fantasy book improved fivefold when I stopped drinking. 

What's the biggest truth I didn't know about getting sober? 

When I stopped drinking, I was able to stop hating myself. My Xanax usage went way down, which was no small feat in itself. I realized if I got sober, maybe next year I wouldn't be hissing at anyone who asks if they can have a glass of my box wine because ALCOHOLICS DON'T SHARESIES. 

A journal entry I came across recently that shot me straight back to the time of hating everything about myself was this: "3 a.m. face in hands, whiskey on ice." I remember writing that. I remember how much I was hurting and wishing I could change, but I was convinced I wasn't strong enough to do so. 

Of course that was bullshit. I was strong enough the entire time, I just didn't know it was in me to look at a bottle of wine and choose to pour it down the drain. If I had then maybe today I'd be celebrating my 15 year soberiversary instead of 7. 

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If you want to talk more about getting sober, please email me vixoen@gmail.com. No judgment, full confidentiality. I know I wish I'd had someone to talk to about all this years ago, so really, message me.