A typical day in active addiction

I regret my choices, and I'm stuck here

About 11 am on a Saturday. I was starting to get queasy.   Earlier I had enough vodka to allow me to eat food and try to appear “normal.”  But now, a couple hours later, I was starting to feel the withdrawal creep in.   My throat felt like it was shrinking somehow, and my fingertips were getting cold and numb.  I had about an hour before I started to wretch uncontrollably.   I slid my Amex card in my back jeans pocket (the only one my ex couldn’t monitor) and looked to see what he was doing.  Good – he was playing Call of Duty.  As cheerfully as I could muster, I announced I was taking the dog for a walk and slipped out quickly before he could ask any questions.  I stopped briefly to chat with the doorman – maintaining a friendly and carefree façade was critical to the entire hell I had created.  I then proceeded immediately across the street to the liquor store, there was no more time to waste.  The clerk was the usual one, and he had my two half pints of vodka waiting for me by the time I reached the counter.  He gave my dog a biscuit, I thanked him, and the entire thing was over in no more than forty-five seconds.  Any shame I felt would be over in a minute, I told myself.  I quickly crossed back over the street and headed to the service entrance of the building.   I was experienced at this so it only took a matter of seconds.  Remove the bottles from the bag, drain half of one right away and slip that bottle up the sleeve of my baggy hoodie, and put the full bottle in the waist of my jeans under the hoodie.  Then continue on to the park with my dog.  My nausea was gone immediately and I had a pleasant burning sensation in my stomach.  All of a sudden, I didn’t feel resentment or anger or sadness anymore.  I felt as if I had been released from a cage.  I didn’t feel trapped or hopeless.  I just felt bubbly and chatty, and when I went home later, I wasn’t even upset to see my boss had called.  Again. 

              I wasn’t surprised that things came up on the weekend so frequently.  That’s pretty much all you hear about in law school – how long the hours are going to be.  It’s a badge of honor when someone says they pulled an all-nighter or haven’t had a day off in weeks.  So I knew that was going to be the expectation going into the field.  Especially in New York City.  And I was so caught up in the praise and admiration to wonder whether or not this was actually me.   It’s hard to do any self-reflection when the world is telling you everyday that what you are doing is praiseworthy and impressive.  Especially with a very functional, albeit diseased, relationship with alcohol.  My ex thought the long hours and breakneck speed was incredible.  He told everyone what I hardass I was and made me sound like a superhero.  That kind of constant input comes with its own kind of intoxication, and it never occurred to me to doubt or question any of it.   As far as I was concerned at that point, my family and people in my circle thought I was a badass and they were all badasses by association.  Especially the ex.  It was his dream to be in a power couple, and at that point he didn’t care if I needed daily happy hours to keep the persona alive.   No one knew of course that this shining persona came at an incredible cost to me.  Even I didn’t know how much emotional debt I was accumulating because the lifestyle was a dream in many ways.   

In the times between alcohol highs, I was always miserable.  Not only because the effects of alcohol withdrawal are excruciating, but because I was left with my own thoughts.  Suddenly, without the lens of alcohol, things did not seem very shiny at all.  I was married to a man I no longer loved.  But I had grown accustomed to the constant praise, trips to Europe, escapes to the country house, and constant propaganda he spewed about how much better we were than other people.  Because we had a nice car.  Because I wore designer clothes.  Because I was a fancy NYC lawyer.  Because we didn’t have kids slowing us down.  But I had fallen out of love with him, and I had no idea what to do.  I was trapped by a series of choices heavily influenced by the promise of a fantasy.  With alcohol, I could keep the fantasy alive.  But sober, I was trapped in a marriage and a career I no longer wanted.  With no way out, I devised a smooth and predictable system to ensure I almost always had access to alcohol.  About two-thirds of which no one knew anything about.  Everyone knew I was a drinker, but at that time no one knew that I usually took my first drink when the liquor stores opened at 8am.  The ex thought that’s when I needed to be at work, when the other attorneys usually showed up at work between 9-10.   I got to look like a go-getter when the truth was I needed to get my first drink of alcohol at 8 am before I started getting sick.