A lot can happen in 10 months! I have learned so much about myself and if I want to continue my journey to a healthy life, I need to continue to find out who I am. I started this journey in February of 2011. In this blog, I will take you through my journey of heaven and hell and through this blog I am hoping to complete some of my healing and telling my story may help someone else seek help when they need it, whether they want to admit it or not!
First, I will take you back to April 19, 1983...the day my beautiful baby boy was born. I wanted to call him Christopher Robin because I thought he was the happiest, most loving, funny, yet smartest character I had ever met. Fred said no, so we named him Christopher David..he did turn out to be all that and more...but I digress...the point is that Christopher had to endure two of my addictions before he even had had lungs. I was addicted to a nicotine. I vowed the day I found out I was pregnant I would not quit smoking, because when I did with my pregnancy with Jason, I gained too much weight. YES! I was young and stupid and very, very, selfish. On April 19, 1983 I had to have an emergency c-section due to fetal distress. To make a long story short, the first cigarette I smoked after surgery made me cough and having abdominal surgery it quite frankly HURT like hell! Getting home, not driving, having a non-smoking husband and by the end of six weeks I decided it was time to quit smoking. What I didn't understand was I had an addiction and not a habit. An addiction is evil and had a way of making my brain believe I needed this to make me happy. Without nicotine...my brain wasn't happy and it turned to another addition.
Now, I will take you back to February 15, 2011...the day of lap-band surgery. This was a time of hope, fear, and death. The hope of a new healthy life, the fear of failure and the death another addiction. After I quit smoking I turned my smoking addiction into a food addiction...before I became pregnant with my third child in 1985, I had not lost one pound of weight I had gained from 1983 and had put on another 50 pounds. Pregnant again I gained more weight, never to lose those pounds. By the time I was 50 I was a hefty 280 pounds. By the end of that summer I hit 296 pounds and was continuing to eat. I had become addicted to food. I would hide my eating, I would eat entire bags of chips and dip, I would eat and eat and eat. Before surgery I took classes to learn about food addiction and how it can turn to other addictions, but I chose not to believe them again. Surgery was my only hope at this time! I was addicted to food, I just gained weight because of my body. I had dieted and lost only to gain it back and another 25 pounds on top of what I had lost. YoYo dieting was a losing battled. I had the surgery and began to lose weight, but not realizing that I hated the fact I couldn't eat. Again, not coming to the realization that food was an addiction and not just a habit. I lied to my family, my friends, myself about my eating habits! I REALLY wanted to eat and I couldn't and I hated that I had the surgery because it took away the one thing I could always rely on to make me happy.
Now, I will take you to December 16, 2014. This was by far the best and worst month of my life! I know, I know, I
have said this before and I will probably say it again, but for this 54
year 11 months and 7 day year old woman, December was when I fell in the
deepest hole I have ever been in. I cannot tell you everything that happened in these months, weeks, days, hours, but I can tell you that I fell in a hole so deep and so painful that I not only dig myself out, I didn't want to dig myself out, I wanted to cover myself up with the dirt and forget that I ever existed. I got to a point that I felt that I didn't feel I belonged in this world and that I all my family, friends, and the world would be a better place without me in it. I sat down with a bottle of pills and a glass of wine and thought about taking one pill at a time, as my thoughts started clearing, I took the pills to bed with me and laid next to Fred and thought about how much I loved him, my kids, my grandkids, my mom, his family, my friends, it all came flooding back...even if only long enough to get me through the night. When we woke up, I confided in Fred my feelings. I hate myself, I am a selfish brat, I shouldn't be a teacher the students and parents hate me, I should not be here wasting space and the air everyone else should be breathing. I want to die.
To make a long story short, I was turning my next addiction into alcohol because I have an addictive brain. I am depressed, and I have severe anxiety, when I feel down I need something to get me up again. These are my addictions...smoking was replaced with food, food was replaced with wine, and I was spiraling out of control. I am an addict, not an alcoholic, but an addict. I had not become a raging alcoholic, I was still the open and honest drinker, but...over the past 10 months I started making up excuses to drink...it helps me eat, it is the only thing I can drink when I eat...then I wanted to go out to dinner and lunch all the time to give me a reason to drink wine. I started wanted to stay at the restaurant and have...just one more glass...no longer just drinking on the weekend, now on weekdays. Coming home and having a glass of wine because of the stressful day (some how every day was stressful. Then I was going to work with hangovers, weekends I started drinking until I went to bed not knowing what I did the last few hours. I guess I was what they call a "functioning alcoholic", never drinking at work, not hiding my habit, only drinking enough during the week that felt good about myself, but I could still wake up and get to work and then bring on the weekend.
It came to head in December through a series of events. I am not blaming the events, they just added to my self loathing and my additive brain needed to drink to feel good. I ended up in the hospital, then in an intensive therapy program. Through intensive therapy and counseling over the last six weeks I have been able to stay alcohol and tobacco free. I have started going back to my healthy eating habits (I need to work on this a lot more!). I am now working on my self loathing, depression, anxiety, and addictive brain. I feel good and I feel like I am gaining ground on understanding myself and how I am an addict. I never realized that addition is a disease of the brain. There are actual reasons that some people are addicts and others never become addicts. An addict will trade one addiction for another because of the way our brains work. I am an addict! First of tobacco, then of food, now of alcohol.
Do I think I will be able to drink again. I hope so, I would love to have a glass of wine with dinner, and not need to drink to give myself a boost of endorphins that make me feel good. At this point, it would be really stupid of me to try a drink of wine. I need to heal first. I hope that I can find a way to love myself and get those endorphins going on their own. Most addicts also suffer from depression, anxiety, and mood disorders. It has to do with the lymbic system and the misfiring of dopamine, and lots of other medical brain things. At times I have lucid moments when I know that I am not a horrible person, that I do deserve to be in this world. It will be a long haul because I really hated myself. It won't happen over night and I will have good hours and bad hours. I will have good days and bad days. I will have good weeks and bad weeks. I do know that in the future I will be able to love myself. In in the past week I have had some moments of liking myself again. I am legitimately smiling and laughing again and I am not lying and putting on a great show.
I won't bore you anymore with my self pitying, that is not why I am writing this. I am writing this let you know that even when you are at your lowest; even when the world looks like a better place without you, even when it seems like your family and friends would be better off without you, even when it hurts to breath, you are just feeling what your evil brain wants you to feel. Find someone that loves you and hold on to them until you can breath again and then be honest with them and yourself. Get the help you need. I am not saying that I don't have those moments of feeling like I don't belong here, but at least now I can talk to people that understand my disease and they help me back to reality.
