Relapse, return and heartbreak.

I stopped posting here around May last year, which is approximately when my relapse process began. I did not immediately return to the horribly destructive behaviors which nearly killed me last time around. It actually took about 3 more months before I started to really use the way I was before. The beginning of the relapse though, was certainly the reason I stopped posting to this blog.

Let me back up a bit. I hadn’t shared this on my blog previously but I was involved in a relationship throughout my entire time as a heroin user. This person was my life partner and my strongest supporter. She provided a safety net for me when I spun out of control, repeatedly. She was there despite all the deceptions, mood swings, the thefts related to the late stages of using, everything. She was an island, a refuge in my bitter ocean of confusion, self-hatred and pain. 

Except, all was not okay with her. She began after a while to be so demanding of my time and attention that I literally had to start focusing 100% on her instead of on my recovery as I should have been doing at the time. I didn’t realize it while it was happening, but I began to spiral down. I stopped going to meetings, I stopped talking to the close friends I had in the fellowship that I had known from before things went to shit in our lives. I even stopped talking to my own parents, my siblings. My support system dropped away. I stopped posting my thoughts here on this blog (which should be private but wouldn’t have been with her there). I was completely isolated. From there, it was a relatively short step to an occasional use of a substance, then it became THE substance, that bad one. I quickly lost control as addicts do. Each time I lied, cheated and stole for my habit, it drove a wedge between us of mistrust. I never really stopped to think about her motivations for doing what she did … staying when she clearly should’ve left. I always assumed it was out of pure devotion and love toward me, and I certainly felt the same way about her. But the thing is, if someone is “normal” i.e., a non drug user, then it’s in fact pretty sick for them to latch onto an addict like that. It was all just one massive cycle of sick, fucked up behaviors.

Let me back up again. I started therapy in addition to my usual 12-step approach to recovery after I nearly died again this past April. That was a new thing for me. I had never talked to anyone, not even my drug counselors, about my relationship with her. I guess there was some sort of protective instinct there; maybe on a subconscious level I knew something wasn’t right? I don’t know. What I do know is that as soon as I started talking about it, first with my therapist and then with family members and friends, it became really clear to me just how dysfunctional we were. I also became aware (finally) that I was not the only fucked up one in the relationship. She had developed a vicious co-dependence with me, and it had to be broken off. I had to stop it because she never ever would do that on her own. My hand had been forced.

I decided to do it after she used a really nasty tactic with me to try to control my behavior. After it became clear I was going to go out without her one night after yet another argument, she called an ambulance and took herself to the psychiatric unit claiming “I can’t be alone”. I returned home to an empty house. I was beside myself. I immediately called the hospital after finding some info she’d left in an open browser window on her laptop.*** However, at this point I was able to consult my therapist and my family members on what to do about it and I was advised by multiple people to do the same thing: Back off. In other words, do NOT allow this to bring the situation back under her control, it isn’t healthy for either person involved. Finally I was able to see it (because of how dramatically it had escalated when I walked away). It hadn’t been the first time she’d threatened to kill herself and didn’t actually follow through. With me, if I hadn’t received the interventions that I had, the heroin would have killed me. I just know that from how much I was consuming; I couldn’t have survived it for very long.

That decision to end the relationship was about 10 days ago. I’m still trying as best I can to work a program but it has been made a thousand times more difficult than it ever has been before by this complicating factor. Each time I put my recovery first (where it should be), she attempts to sabotage it somehow. She’s exhibiting classic co-dependent behavior. I only wish that I could have seen it sooner, that I could have stopped it sooner. I could have spared us both some heartache, maybe.

Now, please don’t get me wrong here. I *love* this person. Present tense. I deeply wish her the best and most happy life she could have. I just don’t see it with me… There would always be that mistrust, the tension, control issues, guilt, anger … the list continues. I have to be the strong one despite my own weakened state. Despite her repeated attempts to sabotage what I am doing. First using guilt, then trying to use sex to manipulate, then anger, and now, finally, silence. I have had to remain stoic through all of it and somehow manage to hang on to what precious little sobriety I do have.

The last thing I’ll say is that I could NOT have done it, staying clean through this stuff, without my sponsor and my close friends and family members’ support. That’s one thing I know beyond a doubt now. When you take a support system away from somebody, it can destroy that person. The really sad thing for her is, because of her life choice to come to a foreign country for education, as well as her relationship with her parents being extremely dysfunctional, she has nowhere near the level of support and compassion in her life that I have. All she’s had for three years was just me, nobody else. Can you imagine? It kills me inside.

Edit: *** I later figured out that the open web browser, the tortured notes, the begging for sex … those were all VERY CALCULATED and INTENTIONAL efforts to control me and my behavior. It’s just more of the same cycle of behaviors as before, only now it’s much more dramatic and obvious because I have stood my ground and she’s become desperate. All of this stuff makes me so incredibly sad still. I find myself suddenly becoming overwhelmed with emotions when my thoughts go there, despite my not wanting them to. It’s a journey I’m still taking and it hasn’t been that long, though time seems to stretch out from that decision point until now…

How Addiction Warps Us

This is dead on. Contemplating the emotional damage I have caused to my loved ones during my drug use is painful and uncomfortable, but a necessary part of moving forward.

A Walk on the Wild Side

From the film “Silver Lining Playbook” about mental illness

He was already high when I picked him up from the bus station to bring him home.

I’d hoped after a month in jail he’d be clean and sober and ready to make a fresh start on the road to recovery. That’s why we were letting him stay with us. He had nowhere else to go, and we wanted him to be safe until we could get him into rehab.

But it was already too late for safe, for clean, for a fresh start.

I could have refused to bring him home, of course. I could have left him at the bus stop. But I didn’t. I had my suspicions, but I wasn’t absolutely certain he was high.

I was sure a couple of days later though when, after I refused to give him a ride into town, he disappeared in…

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The Role of Religion in A.A.

Generally speaking, Alcoholics Anonymous is a program based on spiritual growth. So (in theory), any connection with spirituality should work to that end. This is the program’s official stance on spirituality, taken from the A.A. text and repeated at meetings every day across the country. In the day-to-day reality of my A.A. life however, this is seldom the case. On the surface, most people would quote the same thing I just said about spirituality when asked their opinion on it. I can tell though, that there are definite lines being drawn between the religious and the non-religious people inside the fellowship. In a really insane way, I actually envy the reverence of the bond shared by religious people. I also become extremely annoyed when people go from genuine interaction to what I would call “polite non-association”, as soon as this subject comes up in conversation. Of course, this type of behavior is not supposed to be encouraged at meetings and so as a result, nobody would ever own up to it if questioned. I guarantee it is happening though.

For the record, I think that any type of personal growth is a good thing and is an ideal we should all strive toward. I don’t see anyone’s faith in a higher power as being a problem for me, as long as I can be free to believe as I like as well. I do have a problem with the group being split along religious lines though. It is a phenomenon based purely on narrow-minded fear, and I just have a really hard time tolerating that. I feel reduced to making cryptic remarks at tables in the hopes of weeding out the few “fellow atheists” that I want to meet and talk to. I don’t even like looking at it that way but I almost feel forced to. As atheists, many of us feel the need to avoid being honest about our beliefs in order to fit in. This program is based heavily on the principles of honesty and integrity, so you can imagine the cognitive dissonance there! It makes my brain hurt just thinking about it.

6 Months – Sixth Step

I hit six months of sobriety on April 24th. Being clean feels amazing, and I am still working the steps as best I can. Recently, I finished steps 4 and 5. Becoming honest about my character flaws with my sponsor was not easy, but I’m told that’s a common experience for people the first time they do it. I felt a definite relief to have all of my bullshit laid out in one place for the first time ever in my life. At the same time, it was painful to have so many bad memories resurface. For years I had been trying to escape from those exact things.

An obvious issue for atheists in working the sixth step is this: How does God remove my defects of character when, in my mind, God does not exist? I have tried all sorts of ways to form an intellectualization of this, and I believe I have found something that will work for me. As I become more willing to be open about my character flaws to my peers in the AA fellowship, I will be able to gain a mindfulness about myself that will make it easier to work on those things. I fully believe that nobody else will do this work other than myself. It seems that some expect themselves to magically transform into better people upon taking this step and then are surprised when they find themselves still the same as they were. The cognitive dissonance surrounding these ideas is staggering. I will not allow myself to fall into this trap. Self-awareness is a HUGE component of recovery, and I hate when people say it’s not important. As I continue to become more aware of my own nature, I have the opportunity to grow and improve on myself.

When Thought Interferes With Action

Since the first time I came into contact with the program, my brain has been screwing things up for me.

That is to say, I have a lot of thoughts that interfere with my willingness to take the actions that are suggested to me. I’m still having some difficulty with this today. While nothing I’ve been asked to do is actually harmful to myself or anyone else, I find the idea of praying to be patently ridiculous. How does one pray to a god that does not exist? The whole process feels … I don’t know, just wrong. When I’m at the tables, I participate in the group prayers but I don’t feel anything special, as others clearly do. When am I supposed to feel a connection with something? Am I supposed to somehow trick myself into believing in what I’m doing? How does one do that, exactly?

These are questions that I have brought up to my sponsor, and being an atheist himself, he basically implied that I should just “act as if” (i.e: bullshit my way through it). Is this really the best solution there is for this problem? I want to do the work that makes up the core of the 12 steps, and don’t want this to get in my way. I think that’s a really reasonable expectation to have. There has to be a way to do that while still maintaining the honesty that’s so crucial to the rest of it.

The “Big Book” Clique

This is a subject that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. Now, it could be that I’m just socially retarded and don’t know how to make friends anyway, but I feel a distinct coldness coming from certain groups of people in the program. I’m not expecting anyone to become best friends with me overnight or anything, but when I come up and say hello and I’m met with derisive laughter (or worse, just straight up indifference), it brings up a bit of a resentment. This has happened several times in the last two weeks. Maybe it’s because I am new to the area’s recovery community, I don’t know. I thought it was supposed to be a fellowship? I understand that A.A. is a social group, and people are going to do what they normally do in social situations. This might be me being closed-minded again as well, but I notice a very definite correlation between those with this attitude and people I would call “big book fundamentalists” for lack of a better description. Because I tend to refrain from talking about the literature unless it directly relates to my life (which is not often, I’m afraid), I get the feeling that I’m being put into a box by these folks. Am I wrong?

5 months

5 months clean and sober today. I can’t help but notice the inscription on the coin: To thine own self be true. To me, this means holding on to the core beliefs and values that make me who I am. Not that I needed a coin to tell me that, I just think it’s interesting that for as much as A.A.’s tell people to avoid “self-will”, the coin says to do the opposite. Of course, I could be wrong and I’m sure there are many that would tell me so. I’d be interested to hear an explanation on that topic.

Powerlessness

“We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.”

Anyone who has suffered from addiction or its effects on a loved one can attest to the truth of this statement. There were so many days spent in absolute hopelessness, struggling in vain to control this disease. Hours of pure hell spent waiting for my fix on the days when I was too sick to go get it myself. Stealing from those who loved me the most, because it was easier than stealing from a stranger … eventually feeling like such a lowlife that shooting dope was my only relief. And so it went, one feeding onto the other until I no longer recognized myself.

In 12 Steps and 12 Traditions, the author mentions hitting rock bottom as a necessary part of the process of admitting powerlessness. I think there’s a certain logic to this, but it’s got a serious flaw. Many addicts will only take a certain amount of misery and world-rocking consequences before they say “that’s it, I’ve had enough”. This is not true for everyone though. Sometimes, the addict’s morals and values become so eroded over time by sustained substance use, that there is literally nothing that will shock them to the core and get them to admit defeat. They end up dying before they can ever get there. I consider myself to be one of those people.

I believe that what can move someone into a state of being receptive to the idea of recovery, more than brute force by fear, is unconditional love. I know that’s what allowed me to believe that I had something to live for. When I had no hope or faith in myself, others around me insisted that I was worth the effort. Where I could feel nothing but self-loathing, I was gently, repeatedly reminded of my value to those around me. Very slowly, I began to open up to the idea that I could live differently, that I could know a new freedom and a new happiness.

Return

When I first came into the program a few years ago, I was quickly repulsed by the overwhelming amount of references to God and spirituality. Despite some people insisting that A.A. was not a religious program, the evidence seemed to point out just the opposite. Having been a non-spiritual person for most of my teens and twenties, it was easy for me to dismiss the fellowship as being “cult-like” and “preachy”. Of course, I was also not quite ready to get sober at that time. I went back out and proceeded to destroy almost everything I hold dear, and very nearly killed myself in the process. I’ve since learned that I am a master of twisting stuff into rationalizations for my behavior.

This being said, I still feel much the same way about the program’s spiritual component. I still find myself cringing or staring at the ceiling when people begin to attribute everything under the sun to being “God’s Will”. So, what’s changed for me? To put it simply, I have refused to let my own beliefs about the nature of the universe (and my relationship to it) get in the way of my happiness and good health. One of the major tenets of the A.A. philosophy is that the only requirement for membership is the desire to stop drinking (In my case, it was heroin but it’s all the same). This desire has been a powerful motivator for me lately. It’s with this in mind that I have returned to the fellowship of A.A. and am now making an honest effort to work the steps and get the benefits from the program that I see so many others enjoying. I am convinced that I don’t have to compromise my values or core beliefs to make this happen.

This post will be the first of many documenting my experience as an atheist in recovery. As I muddle through the steps, I will be sharing my experience so that other addicts like myself can benefit from it.