Twenty some odd years ago I was lost and struggling to not pick up another drink. My life had become a whirlwind of drinking myself into oblivion every night, though I told myself it was only every other night. I could not do anything without a drink in my hand. I needed that liquid courage to talk to strangers, solve my romantic problems, escape whatever I was running from that day. I could not face my life, any part of it, without drinking.
Well, that is not entirely true. I was sober at work, but I could not wait to clock out and find the next round that would help me feel normal again.
Normal meant three things. A little hair of the dog to cure last night’s hangover. Turning off the thoughts that kept creeping in and making me squirm in my own skin. And getting over my shy demeanor so I could actually talk to people. I convinced myself I could not do any of these things without a few beers, which always turned into shots and mixed drinks as the night wore on. This sent me into a tailspin of feeling like shit every day and needing alcohol just to function. Eventually I had to have a drink to stop the shakes.
I remember ordering a beer at the bar and watching my hands tremble so violently I could not pick up the glass. Did I think maybe I should stop this insanity? Nope. I ordered a mixed drink with a straw so I would not have to pick up the glass.
A Functioning Alcoholic
I paid my bills on time. I showed up to work and did my job well. I was what they call a functioning alcoholic. I was also stumbling through my front door at three in the morning, sleeping for three hours, and doing it all over again.
One morning I woke up in my car in the driveway, engine running, passed out at the wheel. I sat there for a moment in that foggy space between sleep and consciousness, staring at my hands on the steering wheel, and felt nothing except relief that I had made it home. Not fear. Not shame. Relief. That tells you everything about where my head was. Did I stop after that? Hell no. I just took more precautions not to let it happen again.
It never crossed my mind that what I was doing was killing me. I thought this was normal, what all young thirty somethings did. I surrounded myself with people who drank just as much because excessive drinking was not only accepted, it was encouraged. We enabled each other in this vicious cycle that continued for years.
The Moment Everything Changed
Eventually I had a brush with suicidal ideation. I will save that story for another time. What I will say is that the thought of wanting to end my life terrified me. I did not want to die, and in that moment I knew I could not keep living like this.
I had to stop drinking.
I thought if I stopped for a while I could eventually come back and drink like a normal person. You know, have one or two and call it a night. I had no idea that being an alcoholic meant I could never drink again.
Never?
How was I supposed to give up my lifeline? How was I going to deal with life without numbing out?
Learning to Sit With It
I could not hide anymore. I could not escape the uncomfortable feelings. I had to face everything raw and unfiltered. No more unwinding with my drinking buddies after a hard day. If work was brutal, I had to sit with the anger, the frustration, the inadequacy. I had to endure the thoughts that whispered you could just go have one drink, and the shame that made me want to curl into the fetal position and disappear.
When shame hit, I wanted to be alone. I did not want anyone to see me cry or watch me frantically pace my apartment. I could not sit still long enough to read because my head was jammed with what felt like the entire universe screaming at me all at once.
But I could smoke.
I could sit outside and burn through a pack of cigarettes like it was nothing. One puff and there it was, a tiny moment of relief. So I smoked and paced and curled up on the floor. I begged on my knees for anything or anyone to help me get through the misery. I do not think I have ever spent so much time on my knees in my entire life.
I did not know what to do with myself. I could watch TV and zone out, disappearing into whatever was on the screen like I was an invisible character in the room. I could escape to other countries, fall in love, find courage, save the world, as long as the TV stayed on. But I could not live there twenty four hours a day. I had to work. I had to interact with actual human beings.
How the hell was I going to do that?
My First Meeting
I asked a coworker who was in recovery for help, and he picked me up that night and took me to my first meeting. Walking into that room I felt ashamed and out of place. I was not like these people. My story was not as bad as theirs. Maybe I was in the wrong place. Maybe I was not really an alcoholic. A thousand thoughts ricocheted through my head, but I sat there and tried to listen.
I kept going to meetings. I found a sponsor who required me to call her every single day. So my life became this: call my sponsor, go to meetings, watch TV, smoke. Rinse and repeat on an endless loop.
But my overwhelming thoughts still had a death grip on me, and I was desperately searching for a way to slow them down, turn them off, or at least get them to whisper. You know that feeling when you are in a crowded room and everyone is talking so loudly you cannot hear your own thoughts, let alone the person standing right in front of you? That is what every single minute of every day felt like.
The Night a Pen Saved Me
One evening those voices got so loud and relentless that I was ready to walk into the bar and say forget it to everything. Instead I called my sponsor while I sat outside chain smoking and tapping my foot on the ground like a drummer playing double bass.
I told her I could not stop the negative thoughts, that I was drowning in shame about how I had treated people, how I had pushed my family away, all the damage I had caused.
She said this was normal and told me to write it all out on paper.
“What? Why?” I asked.
“It might slow down your mind,” she said. “Write for thirty minutes and call me back.”
I thought she had lost her damn mind. But I did not want to drink that day. So I grabbed a pen and started writing.
One word. Then two. Then three.
Suddenly I had sentences. Paragraphs.
I cannot tell you what any of it said, but my mind had to slow down because I cannot write as fast as my brain spits out thoughts. I had to focus on the words forming on the page and the feelings pouring out of me. I fell into a trance of paper and pen, barely aware of what I was writing, caught in that strange and magical space between brain and hand where thought becomes word. I scribbled down everything I could hold onto long enough to get on paper. Run on sentences. Misspelled words. Skipped words. Handwriting like a drunk spider.
I did not care.
For once I was not beating myself up. I was just making letters into words into sentences.
When I finally put the pen down I sat there for a minute not quite sure what had just happened. The apartment was quiet. My foot had stopped tapping. Something had loosened, not disappeared, but loosened, like a knot that had been pulled so tight for so long it had just barely given way. I did not feel fixed. I just felt a little less like I was about to crawl out of my skin.
I picked up the phone and called my sponsor back and read it to her. To this day, twenty two years later, I have no idea what I wrote. What I do know is that writing saved my life that day and has continued to save it every day since.
What Journaling Became
In the beginning I wrote about anything that crossed my mind just to stop the spinning. As time passed I started examining my past and my role in everything that happened. That became part of my recovery work. I never stopped writing after that first day.
I do not have profound revelations every time I sit down with a pen, but I know if I keep at it I will eventually uncover my own wisdom buried underneath all the noise. Sometimes I borrow inspiration from other writers or use journal prompts. Sometimes a quote or a single line from a book strikes something in me and I start there. Over the years I have learned to ask myself deeper questions. Sometimes the answer comes in minutes. Sometimes it takes months just to figure out what question I need to ask.
I have learned so much about myself and how to navigate this life. I still get caught in the spin, but nothing like before. When I feel it starting I know I need to sit down, pay attention to what is surfacing, and trust that writing will lead me to the wisdom waiting inside.
We all have that inner knowing. We just need to slow down enough to hear it.
Thank you for being here with me on the page. I hope something in my story resonated with you. There will be more stories, more discoveries, more of what I have learned that might help you through whatever you are facing. I do not have all the answers, but I know journaling saved me, and I am here to share that in case it might save you too.
Penelope