Lightning Bug

Hi! Thanks for stopping by. I begged my husband to join a support group like Al Anon but he flatly refused. He is introverted and not comfortable with sharing his feelings with people. Maybe he would be receptive to join the family forum here. I will ask. Thanks!

Lightning Bug

I think the most important thing you can do to help her transition back home is to make her feel welcomed home, make sure she feels loved and missed, don't rush her back into responsibility (it may be overwhelming) and be there to listen to her when she is ready to talk about her experience. Don't expect an immediate change in her - don't expect her to be cured of her disease. It puts stress and anxiety on her. Let her show you her changes, let her progress and hard work unfold before you. Be encouraging when you see it, positive reinforcement will empower her. And lastly, just love her.

Bug

MidnightRider

You have been through a lot in the past month.

But you are on a glorious journey and there will be waves of hardship and joy.

Positive thoughts to you today.

Lightning Bug

I am filled with positivity today!

madgirl

I asked God to help me with the daily stress of handling two young children.

Hi and good morning Two young children with their energy combined with active alcoholism in you will equal stress - for you. I think you'll find your daily routine and work will get much easier as you consistently make the choice to face them in your right mind.

Perhaps you should give your husband some space and not try to engage in the big conversations right now - just show him through your daily choice not to drink that you are doing the best you can to heal.

This has been my experience anyway - I'm still new too, a little over four months in.

Lightning Bug

Yes, I came to the same idea. I just wish he wold stop baiting me. I said all I needed to say last night. I feel better. Thanks. WTG on the 4 months!

Lightning Bug

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

I love this! I am very excited to discover what is lurking within me. I have been struggling with multiple addictions (at different times) for ten years and I have kept the real me in a neverending coma. It is time to wake her up!

Fly N Buy

Are you going to a meeting today?
Have you gotten a sponsor - or asked for any phone numbers??

Lightning Bug

Yes! Meeting is at 7. I have 15 numbers and have been texting with a few today. I plan on AA meetings on Tues, Fri, Sat and Sun. I have IOP on the other days. I need to meet more people before I find a sponsor. I am anxious to get started on the steps.

Lightning Bug

I just wanted to add this here. It is my journal entry from Saturday. I had it in a separate post but want to include it here.



This is my journal entry this morning. It felt liberating to do this. It is long, sorry, I love to write, and right now I am working hard on my emotional health. This exercise has freed me.


If I sat face to face with the deep and ugly underbelly of my addictions, I would want to have closure. A tie to bind the bag that I am going to bury so deep beneath the Earth that it can only be found by the devil himself. Never to be unearthed again. Never to parasitically suck the life and soul out of me and never again to leave me powerless in a path of suffering and destruction.

I would tell my addiction this before I shoveled the last pile of dirt.

I am sorry I brought you to life as a young child and nurtured you to grow while I was lacking the strength, maturity or understanding of how to control you, to keep you locked up, to suppress your power.

I am sorry I allowed you access to more than my inner self but also my external self where you maliciously released pieces of your poison to infect those I surround myself with. Those who are most precious to me.

Now my Goodbyes...

Goodbye to your villainous attempts to change the core of my being, the very essence of me, from a loving and caring person to a detestable one with selfish needs, cunning behavior and malicious intents.

Goodbye to your very first attempt to destroy me, your desire to turn my normal and healthy appetite and relationship with food into a dark and ugly cycle of binging and purging and endless starvation, leading to a hatred of my body and naturally a later a fear of intimacy with men.

Goodbye to your intent to turn medically needed medication into objects of insatiable desire worth lying and stealing to obtain. And goodbye to your encouraging whispers in my ear telling me that self harm could get me more and more pills. Goodbye to you gorging yourself with my screams from self inflicted pain. My pain is gone but my scars carry the memories forward.

Goodbye to your goal to rip me from my children with isolation attempts through daily sunset blackouts and sleeping binges that lasted days. Your control of me was so strong that while I was physically there for my children, emotionally I was millions of miles away. I can never replace the years I lost of their childhood.

Goodbye to your opportunities to devalue me, make me feel dirty and worthless and in despair, to make me hate who I become. Goodbye to your pitiful attempts to sabotage my education, goals, and career. You tried so hard to make me fail, but I must have shocked you with my success. Score one for me.

Goodbye to your selfish need to consume all my energy and nutrients and to degrade my body and damage my health so far that damage could be irreversible. I must have a strong will to live because you could have killed me many times over.

Goodbye to your wild willingness to compel me to do things I am morally against. Goodbye to the manipulative control you tried to have over my sense of right and wrong, my willingness to protect others from harm, and my disregard of my ethical values and and a sense of common decency.

Goodbye to the wake of broken friendships and ended relationships that you created for no other reason than to cause pain and suffering. You turned me into a bitch. You put words in my mouth to hurt other people.

Goodbye to your juvenile attempts to break up my otherwise happy marriage by verbalizing anger with vile words, insults and threats of divorce. Goodbye to the crazed looks you put on my face, the contempt you put in my voice and the sheer volume you added to my screaming. You made me look insane.

Goodbye to your choke hold chaining me to the couch or bed and preventing me from taking proper care of my family and household. Goodbye to your constricting grip around my vocal cords rendering me mute with no care to interact with those around me.

Goodbye to your stifling obsession with keeping me weak, dependent, and unable to function without you. When I fought back you made so sick with withdrawal I had to let you back in.

Goodbye to your partners in crime, the booze, the benzos, the percs. They were never my friends. They didnt bring me joy or happiness or satisfaction. But you made them so attractive and delicious and irresistible that I would do anything for them. Like doctor shop. Steal from my aging mother. Lie to my friends. Spend loads of money needed for bills.

We never had any good times, you and I. You seeded yourself in me when I was a young child. I never knew life without your vile parasitic presence. You followed me through school, college, jobs, marriages. You never left me alone. Your incessant chatter in my head never stopped. Your vice like grip on my hands controlled my movement. You were so tightly wrapped around my heart trying to prevent me from loving and caring and feeling real emotions. I never enjoyed the drug and alcohol induced highs you promised, the incredible rushes of endorphins, the satisfying release of energy. You were always restricting my good feelings by directing me to find the next bottle or the next prescription.

It is time addiction.

I have cut every last bit of you out of me, bound and gagged you, put you in a canvas bag tied with rope and now I will bury you so far into the earth that you will never see the light of day again. I will never forget you, though, because if I do then I open myself up to a bigger and badder cancer to invade me. Acknowledging my past failures, making amends, accepting what I cant change, developing new coping skills and learning to love and appreciate myself will keep those demons at bay. And I will continue to know peace.

Farewell. Don't forget to keep your eyes open. You will live forever with the final sight of me living free, safe, healthy and happy in a beautiful glow of light shining from above surrounded by loving family and waiting for the future of possibilities I have never imagined to see.

Eliasson

Wow. I love this. Well done

Lightning Bug

I have never felt comfortable enough to allow myself to feel anything. Alcohol and Xanax numbed my central nervous system so much that the anxiety, fear, and anger was suppressed and I didn't have to face being afraid or depressed or nervous. It silenced the negative voice in my head telling me that I was not good enough, or thin enough, or loved and wanted enough. But as I buried the bad feelings deep inside I found that I buried the good ones too. I lost happiness and joy and love. To the world I appeared cold and distant, bitchy and stoic, uncaring and emotionless. I was told I was distant and unapproachable. My husband told I was incapable of loving anyone but myself. He told me I was selfish.

I didn't love myself whatsoever. I was protecting myself from feeling rejection (childhood fear), ridicule, failure (all or nothing thinking), loss of control, and the threat of being abandoned. I pushed people away and built a fortress around me that was impenetrable. Xanax was my DOC, it stripped me of all these emotions so that I felt nothing, an empty void. There was always a blanket of protection with me. Together with my heavy antidepressants it stripped me of feeling what it is like to be a human being, a woman, a wife and a mother.

I didn't take the drugs or drink the alcohol to party or get high. There was nothing fun about it. There was no elation, joy, euphoria. There was just nothing. My prescription for Xanax was first. Alcohol only came into the picture when the prescription ran out early and I was left without it. I consider myself more of an addict than an alcoholic. I craved the benzos, alcohol was only there to try and fill the void when the pills were gone.

Rehab chipped away at my wall until I was left standing alone with the bricks at my feet and a feeling of vulnerability that scared the hell out of me. I didn't know what to do when the dam inside me was released and I was flooded with emotion. I didn't know how to handle these feelings. I still don't. I have cried (a new thing for me), I have smiled, and I have laughed out loud. I felt maternal towards the girls around me, I shared the burden of their pain and the hope in their hearts. I interacted with others intimately, shared my feelings and opinions in group, praised others, argued without anger, and talked openly and honestly with my therapist. Who was this person I was becoming? I had no idea. But I liked it. I can't believe how much I liked it. I was told that I was a nice person, that I was sweet and caring and respectful. These were words given freely to me and instead of rejecting them I accepted them.

There have been moments since coming home that I doubted the authenticity of my experience. I wondered if it was all a show I was putting on in rehab and that I was just acting that way to show that I was in compliance with the program. Was I faking it so others could see personal growth? Or did I really have an emotional breakthrough strong enough to actually change the person that I was?

I am not going to lie and say that I had an enlightenment that removed all my negativity and baggage and I suddenly became a new person full of positivity and light. But I did change something in me. Now I have to work on harnessing these emotions and releasing them in a healthy way. I have to work on allowing myself to be scared and vulnerable without reaching for a drink or a pill. Rehab lit a fire under me and it is now my job to keep it going.

These journal entries are tangible evidence that maybe I wasn't just acting in rehab. I love to write but I never once wrote about my thoughts or feelings. I put these entries out there so that others can see this new person I becoming. My stories could help someone. Instead of selfishly concealing myself, I am standing naked in front of you. And I hope you don't see a drug addict who couldn't cope with life, but just a girl who is finally becoming human again.

sleepie

Hi Bug wishing you the best in your endeavors.

Lightning Bug

Thank you! I am doing great except I have been having cravings today. Mind over matter, right

sleepie

Well you already knows what lies ahead if you choose to drink. Just keep abstaining, simply time in itself will quell the desire to drink to a fair degree, down to occasional spikes is my experience.

Lightning Bug

I would rather cut off my arm than take a drink!

Lightning Bug

I feel really good today! I realized that a to do list with boxes to check off was key to putting me back on a tight schedule. It is good for me mentally to see the checkmarks. I feel peaceful today, much better than this past weekend.

Cheers!

Lightning Bug

Moving my most recent post into my journal.

have been sober for 38 days, no alcohol. I am not craving it or thinking about it or dreaming about it. But I can't go into an NA meeting and say I am clean. My destructive obsessive thoughts have returned in gusto and I am having a hard time keeping them at bay. My DOC are benzos (I crave being down not high). But like alcohol though, I am not obsessing about those. My obsession took a new turn and I found myself taking an extra Adderall every morning in the past few days. I have never abused them before. This is new. I think I did it because I think I was looking for a crutch. I fell back into the habit of wanting to pop a pill to feel better, the action of swallowing it was familiar and comforting. Having never abused them before I really think it is the actual thought of having something, anything, to take that made me do it. Luckily I can't take more than one extra because too much makes me want to come out of my skin.

The obsession is real. I found myself looking forward to it - which is so weird because I have always had to be reminded to take it before.

I have always lied to people about taking extra medication, but my experience in rehab has taught me that lying about it is wrong. So I confessed to my husband, had him lock it up and give it to me as prescribed, and now I am confessing to you. I am thinking that I need to get rid of it though. I can't have these obsessive thoughts. Thoughts like this will lead me back to using. There is a non-stimulant medication I can take for my ADHD. I will ask my doctor at my next appointment.

Please don't think badly of me!

Lightning Bug

Good news everyone - I dumped the Adderall! Now that it is gone I won't be obsessing over it and won't have to worry about a new addiction being transferred from the old.

Soberwolf

Good move Earth steps .. have you told your dr this as I think the accountability with a Dr is important but it's up to you hun x