I've heard it said that in sobriety we have lots of small problems, but when we're drinking we really only have one, major problem- that we can't seem to stop drinking or getting high. I perceived my life to be really quite routine or boring when I was a drunk. I knew that I was a little behind the curve in the career, relationship and social aptitude departments, but I thought my plentiful problems of not paying bills on time, losing jobs, threats of eviction and the occasional arrest or emergency room visit were fairly normal and mundane.
Being addicted to a depressant like alcohol (of which I drank daily and heavily for ten years) did wonders for my fear-riddled life. Like I said, at the time my lifestyle seemed boring, repetitive and not in any way unusual, dangerous or abnormal. I basically went from one mini-crises to the next. There was always a utility about to be shut of- I frequently went weeks without phone service, a boss that was mad at me, a girl that was mad at me, a wound that wouldn't heal, a cold that I couldn't shake, a shake that I couldn't steady, weight that I was losing, money that I owed a bartender or a dealer... Life was never very simple. Booze helped.
For a long time, when I drank, I felt sublime. The problems seemed manageable if I thought about them at all. Drinking calmed my nerves and physically stopped the shaking and quieted my growling stomach. When it stopped working, I drank for a few more years trying to get that fix back. Eventually the whole thing went to shit and something stopped me from drinking any more.
It was then that I realized I was a scared, helpless little motherfucker. In my first 90 days of sobriety I probably had 400 panic attacks. I now understand that I had been experiencing severe anxiety for several years and I was self-medicating with booze and drugs. Depressants like alcohol, benzodiazepines (Xanax, Clonopin, Valium), and opiates treat anxiety very well, but when your body detoxifies, the anxiety returns like a pack of hungry coyotes that chase you around your living room and gnaw out your guts.
To be clear, I had a lot to be fearful of. First of all, I had some fairly serious legal trouble that was threatening to put me in jail for a little while and essentially make me unable to hold a job, pay my rent or bills. There was also the whole "accepting I'm an alcoholic" thing and figuring out what the fuck to do about that. Then I had to face up to the fact that I owed a shitload of money to banks and lenders. I had to acknowledge that things weren't going quite as well as I was leading people to believe. I was an anxious, anxious dude.
Many alcoholics identify "resentment" as the number one engine in their drinking airplane. For me, fear and anxiety were the culprits. I had a wide assortment of fears, but frequently the smallest ones were the most detrimental. For instance, I was afraid of my mailbox. In this day and age, we seldom get good news in the mailbox. For me, it was a box of doom and misery. Because I lived in an apartment building, the tiny mailbox necessitated that I empty it at least bi-monthly. I would pull out a stack of mail that was entirely collection agencies or overdue bills (you really only need to worry when they send the bill in a yellow, pink or blue envelope- then they mean business). I wouldn't even sort through it. I would just take it upstairs with the intention of dealing with it when I got my next tax return- seriously, that was always my plan. I would walk into my studio apartment and plop it down on the previous stack until it was about 8 inches high and it would spill off the shelf onto the floor in the middle of the night, reminding me that I was a delinquent, sad sack of incompetence. In the middle of the night I would hear this "sssshhhhhhh......kerplash!" and I would know the bill pile was all over the floor again. The next morning, I would scoop them up, stuff them into a drawer and wait for the tax return. When I got my refund I would sometimes actually pay off a bill or two, but usually I drank a lot of it away.
Anyways, back to the present. The bills get paid on time these days and I haven't seen a yellow envelope in quite a many months. Once, when I was a few months sober and still pretty broke, I thought that my phone was shut off when I was a few days late on my bill. It turns out that nobody had called or texted me for a few days- which is also pathetic, but less pathetic than getting your phone turned off. But in spite of this renewed responsibility I still suffer from anxiety attacks.
They come from the weirdest things. A couple of months ago I was driving home from a place I'm not familiar with and my GPS failed to give me a direction. The feeling of an anxiety attack crept up quickly. For me, it's a feeling that starts in my heart with a skipped heartbeat. My heart seems to stop for a second, then my stomach tightens and I feel a little nauseous, my heart speeds up and beats irregularly, my shoulders tighten and my mind races. Sometimes these attacks go on for days and days. It's misery.
But I've learned to look for the fear behind the anxiety and find out what it is that's feeding the sense of impending doom. I'm not afraid of mailboxes anymore because I know that I can handle any bills that come my way, and what I can't handle I know my higher power can.
When I sat down to write this, I intended to get into a discussion of the dangers of treating anxiety with prescription medication, but I already wrote that research paper last July. Also, the burger I took out of the freezer has thawed out and I'm hungry. Good night.
THE END
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