Hospitals

Strangely enough, in spite of my numerous hospitalizations, I never became addicted to bensodiazepam. I knew how they worked, they were heavenly when I really needed them. As I mentioned in previous posts, I suffered severe panic anxiety due to booze. I knew the panic would go away if I only stayed sober for a couple of weeks, but my sober periods rarely lasted that long. Bensodiazepam helped, during those periods, but they were hard to come by. When I had them I was extremely careful about them and saw to that I had at least one, for important cases … when I needed to see some authority person or the likes.

Now, that I was living in this northern city, where they had this big hosptial, they had a special clinic for booze people. One ward for women and one for men. It was like a hotel … beautiful, you got your own room, there was a smoking room, good food, the staff must have been angels. Seeing these people time after time was associated with such shame and guilt. Once I asked them how the heck they could work there, and weren’t they just so fed up seeing us time after time … same people coming back. They said no, if they only saved ONE, it would make it worthwhile.

The panic anxiety, I think, in hindsight, played an important part in my final quitting. All get to that later. As I knew that it was totally booze related, I sometimes thought about all the people that suffer from it without knowing where it comes from … and I felt truly bad for them. It was hell on Earth. Its exacerbation was rapid. It became a vicious circle, where I started to think about it before I even left the apartment, so I had to turn around and get back inside countless times.

On busses, in grocery stores, in the post office, I sometimes tried to think it away … Of course, it never helped. I tried to persuade myself as I knew that it wasn’t lethal … I wasn’t going to die then and there from anxiety … It always won! I had to get off the bus and walk. I got a helluva lot of exercise.

A short time after I’d quit for real, I went to a movie theater on my own … it went well, and I actually enjoyed the movie. I felt immensely proud of myself when I walked out of there. I still think about how it felt and I’ll never forget.

and life goes on

Picking up where I finished previous post, I met this guy and I was only seventeen. He was eleven years older than I. When I turned eighteen we moved in together, but that didn’t last long. I was too young and I gave up at slightest adversity. We stayed friends afterwards, though. I had my job, I had a car and a pretty good life. Now I was back, living with my mom again. I had quite a few friends and we were out in bars several times a week and on the weekends.

Over the years, until 1983, I had various relationships … one stranger than the other. They aren’t really important here, but I guess I was searching for all the wrong things in those men.

Life wasn’t bad those years, though. Drinking was still not associated with any kind of trauma, I always got up in the morning afterwards and worked as usual. It was still just fun to party. I must have had a slight bout with megalomania, because I always drank only exclusive brands like Glenfiddich and the likes.

1980, I moved in to my own apartment, had an extensive social life … stared giving elaborate dinners at home. In this apartment complex where I lived, we were all the same age .. all single, and liked to party. Those were actually fun-filled years that I have no bad feelings about.

Late 1983, I met a guy. He wasn’t much different than all the others but we started dating. Now, it’s  so long ago and I find it so strange, in hindsight, that I even fell for him in the first place. He was a weak personality … no spine whatsoever, but that I didn’t see then.

At the time we met, he was unemployed. He didn’t do anything in the daytime and picked me up after my work-day was over. Finally, I suggested to him that he’d start to look in to work opportunities in other cities than our own little town. He did. There was one job that seemed a little more interesting than the others, we travelled down south to have a look. The employer seemed nice enough and we went to look at a beautiful apartment.

He took the job and we went back home again. Got married! It was a civil marriage. This guy liked to drink but so did I, and I didn’t see any signs at that time, of how bad it was. I didn’t have any real experiences with alcoholism, so I had no idea.

I had to give three months notice to my work place, so my new husband went down and started working there beforehand. All my stuff was moved, and I stayed at my mom’s place the last month.  I had the car in order to be able to drive down when I was finished working, and he was going to take the train up to meet me the night before.

He wasn’t on that train. I waited in the train station, I went through the whole train — no sign of him. Went back to mom’s place, called down to our new home, no answer. He was nowhere to be found. I was worried, out of my wits. The morning after, I had to just pack up and go. I didn’t know what else to do, and not what to expect when I got there … after six, seven hours drive!

Along the way, I stopped every now and then, called my mom and checked whether he’d called. Finally, at one stop, she told me a man had called, who had him there. They’d gotten so drunk on the train, so ‘my guy’ had gotten off the train far south of my town and followed the calling guy home and they’d continued to drink. Got an address, went there and picked him up!

During the drive to our new home, he told me his story. He was a full-blown boozer, who had been hospitalized numerous times, he suffered from severe anxiety and all kinds of stuff. I think I was in a state of shock … first the trip itself and now this. BUT, I was married to him and I had to deal with it.

Things went well for perhaps three, four weeks. Then he ‘went to work’ one morning as usual. After a few hours, the employer called and wondered where he was. In the afternoon, he called, from Stockholm (!). He’d bought a one-way ticket to Stockholm, now he was there, drunk, and wanted to come go home. I went there and picked him up! Now he didn’t have a job anymore. Things started to go downhill. Many bad things happened … he got crazy when he was drunk, at one point he threw out the furniture through the shut window … we lived on the 9th floor in the middle of town. Then he left.

There’s no point in going into all the details of all what happened there, except one thing; It was now my own drinking deteriorated. I made him drinks, but I saw to that mine always were double the strength. I started drinking in the mornings. All of a sudden I got panic anxiety, that was totally alcohol related. When I stayed sober, I didn’t have it.

This marriage lasted for two years before I gave up. The divorce papers arrived on the wedding anniversary. The damage was already done … I was now an alcoholic who didn’t drink because it was fun to party with friends but to get numb. I had got a good job, strangely enough, and  I kept that until I moved back home, some two more years later.

By then, it had gotten rather bad, and I had this classical idea, that if I moved home, it would all get better. Surely, I wouldn’t be able to drink and behave like that once I was back home!

After a couple of years back home, I met the guy again, he who this post started out with. We were now a lot older and thought our chances would be a lot better now, that we (I, rather) was more mature. In 1989 we got married. This was my third time, because I had a one month marriage before I moved back home too!

This third time, was in my church back home. I remember thinking; this is It! This is right. And it was, I guess up to a point, had it not been for the ever-present booze.  Eventually, that became our downfall. Sadly enough. I couldn’t deal with it … I realized if we stayed together, we’d drink ourselves to death. So I left. It was 1992. We stayed friends though … all throughout life. He died 2006, unclear if it was suicide or accidental drowning.

The same year I moved again. North, this time. Took a course, got an education as medical transcriptionist and eventually a good job in the big university hospital. During my course, I’d been hospitalized seven times due to booze, but still made it and ended up being #1 in my class, so I guess I did something right. I often had to walk in the pouring rain to school, due to my now severe panic anxiety.

More to come…

hiatus

This year is almost over and I haven’t written since early April, obviously. Don’t remember why I stopped or if it even was a conscious decision.

This is a cathartic blog so I will continue. I want to continue.

Like I said in previous post, I was a somewhat sad, quiet child with few friends. Did really well for myself in school. Got a really good friend around the age of eleven … she lost her dad at that age, and I lost mine when I was two, so we had sort of a common denominator there. That wasn’t the only one. We were ambitious, studied … one summer, I remember we studied German on the beach — learned the prepositions by heart!

When she was around fourteen/fifteen [she was one year older than I], she met a guy! Young love! However, our roads parted a little at that time. This was in my grade 8. I can almost look back on a particular day when everything changed. I had very long hair, but went to a hair-dresser and had it cut short and I think I started smoking for real about the same day. Changed totally, started hanging out with the «in-crowd» in school.

The evening I had my first drink is forever etched in my memory because I was so scared. Doing something against what my, extremely dominant, mother felt so strongly about, was frightening beyond words, but somehow the peer pressure won.

One of my newly won friends had stolen a big bottle of cognac from her father, and we shared that in a park. I got very drunk, but not as drunk as could be expected … I remember most of the evening and I actually walked home! I think that is significant … any other teenager would have crawled on all fours.

After that first encounter with alcohol, there was mainly beer and wine. It had hit home with me, big time. All of a sudden I had FUN, I was social, had lots of friends.

My Mom discovered that I’d started smoking, because a bus driver snitched on me. She sent me to see a psychiatrist. Her reaction was comparable with if she’d found out I’d started heroine or something.

My grades dropped sadly, so I didn’t make it to real highschool [it’s not called that … it’s a whole different system there]. Went away to another town, far away, to go to school for one year. Things didn’t exactly get better there … twelve girls living in a sort of dormatory [not really], same age, away from home for the first time. Made it through that year with pretty good grades still, went back home and got a job. Kept that job for twelve years. It was like growing up there, because I had not yet turned seventeen when I started to work there.

Things were going pretty good, considering. Good job, living at home with Mom, saving a great deal of money. Partying a lot, but it didn’t really get out of hand. Never so that I lost memory or had to call in sick due to booze.

About the same time as I started working there, I met the man, who later in life would become my husband. I’ll save that for next post.

Besides, I see now that this was pretty much a repetition of an earlier post. I should have read it first, but what the heck…

Still … after all these years

I quit for real 1993. Life is good now. Still I suffer from an immense sadness. I lost so much and so many. Sometimes it feels like it’s too late for anything and everything. Part of the whole picture is also that I think I was born with a certain lack of energy and sadness. I was always prone to melancholy even before the whole booze business started.

I need to let go, but that’s so easy to say. You can say all kinds of wise things … like the ones you see on all these motivational sites … but to actually anchor them in your own mind — that’s a whole different story.

Childhood years

Lost my father in an accident when I was only two. Of that, I have no memory. My first memory is from when I was three, my mum picking me up in the hospital after some minor surgery. She was all dressed in black. They did that back then.

My mum did not drink. At All! She was rather fanatic against drinking. All my youth she kept telling me horror stories about people who drank. Somewhere, subconsciously perhaps, it didn’t make sense as I saw all the people around us, drinking socially. This is something I’ve reflected upon since I became an adult — not then.

First I started smoking. Smoked on the sly for two years, before someone told on me. That was a huge deal … the reaction was similar to if I’d started heavy drugs or something. Eventually I was sent to a psychiatrist. That didn’t help. All she did just made me more determined as a smoker, and I still smoke.

Had my first drink when I was either fourteen or fifteen. Brandy. Half a bottle, in a park. A class mate had stolen the bottle from her father, and we shared it before going to some disco. I was so scared beforehand … my mum was a woman of great will-power and hot temper. Having a fall-out with her always resulted in several weeks of silence. The silent treatment was tough on me, but apparently it didn’t stop me from drinking.

That first time, of course, I got terribly drunk but I walked all the way home afterwards, and I remember parts of the evening.

After that opening, it was beer in the weekends.

Still feeling uncertain

I'm like a bumblebee. They used to say that bumblebees can't fly but they don't know it so they fly anyway. I can't write, but I write anyway. Can't decide whether to keep it as a blog or just turn it into a page … it's really a long story. Blog might be the best after all … to break it up in shorter pieces. 

I so much would like to convey the feeling of powerlessness. It took a number of years before I admitted to myself that I had a serious problem, despite the fact that I was so dead drunk so that many days are totally lost … long periods of time. I did all the classical mistakes — I kept moving, like the geographical transformation would solve anything when I was carrying my problem with me wherever I went. 

I lost count of how many times I quit. How I hated myself each relapse. How I lied and hurt, most of all, my mum. Maybe I should convert to Catholicism so that I could get absolution. Ha! Sadly enough I do remember most of the stupidest things I did. I still hate myself.

 

Wow!

I started this blog, partly to tell my story, but also thinking perhaps I’d connect with others. Searched a little, found several and even left a comment on one of them … only to find out she’d set her blog to ‘only invited readers’ now. So much for that! Can’t even go back and remove my comment.

So this is obviously a post aside from the regular topic.

the story

It probably began when I was born. Why is it that all boozers in recovery want to share their stories?! I’m no exception … that’s why I started this blog.

As a kid, I was very quiet, didn’t make friends easily, good in school.In hindsight, I think I was already prone to depression or if I was just born with a melancholy mind. Lots of thoughts about religion … always searching for something.

In my early teenage years, I had one, close friends. We drifted apart a little when she got a boyfriend and about that same time something happened. I don’t know what, but my whole style changed. I started to hang out with a totally different crowd and I still remember clearly the night I had my first drink.

All my life, my mum had tried to scare me to death about booze, but that didn’t help. Oh, I was scared as I took the first swig out of a bottle of brandy, but that soon went away. Had too much that night, but that didn’t do the trick. It hit home with me. I had fun … the parts I remember … it felt good — all of a sudden I could ‘be myself’.

That was it! After that, it continued even though it was ‘only’ beer. Looking back, I realize that I always ‘had to’ drink much more than the girls same age, in order to get the same effect. My resistance threshold was high.

As the years went by, it turned out this was the funniest thing I knew of. When we talked about doing something fun this weekend that was equal to getting drunk. At least for me.

When you reach the age of around twenty, many of your friends start to getting married and start a family. Me, I hardly noticed that … it was like I remained in the same age — I only wanted to ‘have fun’, party. I had a good job, a nice home … I had not yet come as far as getting bad consequences … I never missed a day at work or anything. Sure, I was hung over but never so bad that I couldn’t go to work. Mainly head-aches.

The love life was another story. That too was disastrous. Basically, I think it was a disaster because my whole emotional life was screwed up and all my decisions with regards to men, were based on booze compatibility. It seems you’re automatically drawn to that type of men and they are drawn to you too. It’s like you have invisible antennae very sensitive to booze.

After many strange, and screwed up, relationships, I got married in 1984 after only having known the man for three months. We moved away from the town … far away, to boot and now the real disaster commenced.

Flashbacks

My first post. Once I’d decided that this is something that I really want to do — to write about this part of my life — I signed up with a different ID and set up this blog.

Still not sure how to attack it … but I think I’ll basically just type of flashbacks as they come, and I’ll be brutally honest.

For example … I use to tell people that there were nine or ten years that got totally wasted on booze. This is not entirely true. I was a heavy drinker ever since I was fifteen, even though it didn’t turn into full-blown abuse until 1984. Before that, it was still fun and I never got any serious consequences from it … it was still very social.

Before I go on, I’ll state that I’ve been sober since 1993 except for two relapses. They were serious but very limited in time. I’ve never been in AA or any other type of twelve-step-program.

What/who is Gamma GT?

I’m a woman. That’s about as much about my persona I will state here. In order to feel totally free to write from the heart, I’ve chosen to keep this account anonymous. Gamma GT is a liver enzyme, by the way 🙂

The fact that I’m a woman is important with regards to the subject … female alcoholism can be very different from male. Now … I’m not your typical female boozer either, and this blog doesn’t necessarily emphasize the female part. This is a blog for all people who lost control over their booze consumption. All who knew they’d get bad consequences but kept on drinking anyway. All who have had a loved one losing control over the alcohol … or even losing his/her life.

I’ll share memories. Even though it was a pretty sad journey, there will be laughs. Had I lost my ability to see the humour in all the madness, I wouldn’t have sat here tonight.

Once I had made up a webpage about this, but it was in Yahoo’s Geocities, they shut down the site before I could save it. Doesn’t really matter … I like the blog format better — the comments, the interaction.

Writing in this blog could be therapeutic and hopefully I could also get in touch with others. You don’t have to be a boozer … people might be interested in this subject anyway.