Powerless over Alcohol

Day 2:

I am powerless over alcohol. No-one likes to admits this and I am no exception. I have known for years that this is the case, but like any grieving process, I was in denial. People who are alcoholics do grieve - they grieve the loss of being that good time person, the life and soul of the party. They grieve the dutch courage afforded them through that elixir their bodies so desperately crave. They grieve being the person who cannot drink socially, having one or two drinks, and being content with that. For me, it wasn't being the good time person, or the dutch courage. It was the numbness it brought night after night.

If I am brutally honest, I have probably been an alcoholic since I was 14 years old, when my best friend and I snuck booze out of both of our parents' booze cabinets, decanting them into yellow, plastic cold drink bottles, and slugging it down in her bedroom, if I recall. It was a premeditated affair - we had been planning it for weeks. The effects were almost immediate. Within minutes I was running atop my friend's four foot wall, yelling I wanted to die.

Alcohol has always played a part in my life. My dad, and I know he won't mind me telling you this, is an alcoholic. His kind of alcoholism was not pleasant and had reached a particularly nasty high (or is that low) around the time I turned 15, about 6 months after I had my first experiment with alcohol. Life had become pretty much unbearable and I remember begging my mom to leave my dad. She almost did, but then he convinced her that their marriage was worth saving and at 5am on the morning we were due to leave, my parents woke me to tell me that they were going to give it one more go. I felt so betrayed. My mom and I had planned the exit with mission impossible precision. We had colluded to leave my dad in such a fashion that it would be too late for him to convince us, again, that he would indeed stop drinking. Now, my mother had betrayed me. I felt isolated and alone. Not the first time and certainly not the last.

Three months later, my dad gave up alcohol for good. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous and has remained sober for the last 26 years - he is, and always will be, an inspiration. So, it is with great shame, that I came to the realisation that I indeed was also powerless over alcohol. Deep inside, I knew of course, but I did not want to face it. I am sure, if I am honest, that my friends and family knew it, but they never said anything. On the odd occasion someone intimated at the fact, I would dismiss it and tell myself that they should try walking in my shoes for just a day and see how they would feel. Justification is a big thing in an alcoholic's life, I have come to realise.

My confrontation of this addiction came out of the blue. Yesterday, I was visiting a friend whom I hadn't seen in a long while. We were talking about our lives, filling in the blanks where we had last left off, about a year ago. I had mentioned a couple of times about my increase in drinking due to some stresses that had occurred in the past year. Suddenly, my friend stopped talking, hesitated, looked at me right in the eyes and just came out with it: "Do you think you are an alcoholic?". The question slapped me right across the face. I felt my face flush. Tears immediately welled up. I stammered and then simply said, "Yes". Despite knowing the signs, and knowing deep down inside that I had become caught up in the grip of alcoholism, I really didn't want anyone else to know. After all, I should know better, I should be able to control this monster - I had been to Al-anon and Al-ateen for God's sake. I did not belong on the other side of the fence, dammit! The shame was unbearable.

My friend is a good friend, and being a nurse, she urged me to get help. She urged me to see my GP and to join AA, and to even see a psychiatrist if I wanted to. I am not sure I am ready to talk to my GP as yet, but I am ready to go to AA. I think being around people who share the same affliction may give me some comfort. If I am honest, I am scared out of my wits. I don't want anyone else to know and I certainly don't want my father to know. He must know of course. He must have watched over the last 26 years, in his sobriety, saddened and powerless, as I descended further and further into the abyss of alcohol. The shame is a big thing for me.

It must seem strange that I am blogging about this, since I have said I don't want anyone to know. Well, strangely, this is cathartic. By writing down my thoughts, my feelings and confronting my issues via this blog, I am no longer able to run away from them, or pretend that they don't exist. I am able to say yes, this is my problem, no longer hiding, but standing up and saying no more will I put myself through this turmoil, no longer can I pretend that there isn't something drastically, horribly wrong.

So, today is day 2 of sobriety. I had planned on having some wine last night after seeing my friend, but funnily enough, it just didn't have the allure when I got back home. So yesterday, was day 1. I will keep blogging my progress, more for myself than anyone else. I need to do this to help me be accountable. I hope I make it. In AA, they have a saying - "Just for today". So, just for today, I will not drink. Just for today, I will be strong. Just for today, I will be grateful for my friend, who had the courage to make me confront the inevitable, and my family, who have watched helplessly as I disintegrated as a person, yet have unyieldingly stuck by me, showing me every drop of love they have every single day. Just for today, I will find some pride and make them proud. Just for today...

Up in the Air should Up and Leave

I have to admit that I am not a George Clooney fan. I must one of a rare breed of forty-somethings who have never found him remotely sexy. I watched him in ER and the Ocean's movies and somehow never managed to get caught up in Clooney-fever. But then I have never been a hero-worshipper. In my teen years, when my friends drooled over their pop star or actor heroes, plastering posters of them all over their bedroom walls, my walls were pristine and my nose was always in a book. I could never quite see the allure in placing one person on such a high pedestal. After all, they went to the toilet in the same way I did. So they could act or sing. Did that make them a better person than me because I could do neither, or if I could, I hadn't reached the same level of fame and fortune? I would watch my friends and scoff at their ridiculous adoration of a person who would never know they existed.

And so it was with George Clooney in my twenties. Again, when my twenty-something friends were fantasising about languishing with him on some tropical island beach, the ocean lapping at their bodies, I quietly laughed, thinking what a ridiculous waste of energy all this fantasising took, energy that could be put to much better use, oh I don't know, trying to think of a way to solve world hunger, for example. No, George Clooney was never going to be my muse. To make matters worse, I didn't rate him much as an actor either (sorry, George).

However, when Up in the Air hit the media with such hype, such adoration of Clooney's acting, touting the awards for which he was being nominated, implying that this was his best work yet, that he had actually reached new levels of acting prowess, I began to wonder if I hadn't got it all wrong. I watched the trailer online, with the added interviews, which cleverly weaved a tale of an actor that had finally made his mark - this would be the movie for which he would be remembered. I suddenly didn't want to miss the boat. I didn't want to be the person that had doubted, was proven wrong and hadn't been there to see it.

My sister-in-law and I had decided to take our teenage daughters to see a movie and since Up in the Air was the only movie available at the time that suited us both, we went to see it. Actually, I convinced my sister-in-law to see it with me because my husband refused to go and see George Clooney (I think a lot of men suffer from Clooney-hatred, actually). Having never been a Clooney fan, but with the ringing of the Golden Globe and expected Oscar nominations in my mind, I tried to give it a 'fair go'.

Oh dear. Sorry, George, but it was awful. There is no other way to put it. It was slow and laborious in the way the story was weaved, predictable in a lot of areas with a ridiculous ending, that left both my sister-in-law and I looking at each other saying out loud, "Is that it?". I felt betrayed. Here I was, George's worst fan, prepared to give him a chance based on the promise of acting prowess strong enough to get him a possible Golden Globe and even an Oscar and what did I get? A two hour Clooney monologue with him interacting with a few characters along the way. Characters, I might add, that had no depth or meaning, other than to reiterate the meaningless purpose of his character's life. Here was an opportunity for the producers to make Clooney shine, to allow him to surpass his stereotypical crooning and to find some depth in his character. But no, they chose the safe option. He crooned, he smiled, his eyes twinkled, he was empathetic, so Clooney-perfect, the whole way through, for two agonising hours. One might even be able to forgive this lack of depth if the story itself was reasonable, but it wasn't. The movement of the movie was so one dimensional and incredibly predictable - certainly not a story worthy of any award, never mind an Oscar, in my opinion. Actually, what I felt I was watching, and people who have seen the movie may agree with me, is perhaps a snapshot into his actual real life - good looking and (seemingly) commitment-phobic - and for me, that was not acting. I felt cheated.

Judging by the mood in the cinema after the movie had finished, I was not alone. My sister-in-law's daughter and mine (aged 15 and 17) had lost interest half way through, choosing to talk about my niece's impending birthday instead. People in front of us shuffled - a lot! And even my sister-in-law and I took to the odd comment here and there, something I never usually do. And so it was, I left the cinema having my original view of Mr Clooney remain in tact - a man (and actor) not worthy of my hero worship in my twenties and even less so in my forties.