“Hell is a trap we don’t even know we are caught in” ~anonymous
We’ve all heard the statement “relapse is part of recovery”. This is a true statement. In my own experience, I needed to relapse the final time in order to finally “get it”. I had been in a 12 step program for over a year, and a 6 month outpatient program before that. I needed to try “recovery” my own way. I distinctly remember the final 6 months before my last relapse. I had been holding out on my own as best I could, trying to “white-knuckle” it but my resolve was failing. At long last, after a year of trying it my way, I had failed conclusively. I did not have the skills or the tools to stay sober on my own power. My mind had passed back into the realm of “maybe I can use safely again, maybe that one drink won’t hurt”, and I was no longer aware of my condition. Slowly, over time, I was no longer focused on recovery, of letting things go, of being a good father/husband/employee/man. I was stressed to the max, restless, irritable and discontent. I didn’t want to feel that way anymore. I knew what would fix it.
I don’t remember the actual day I first relapsed after my 365 day white-knuckle. I think once I thought I had “a year”, that somehow proved that I had the cerebral knowledge and superior intellect to one day control and enjoy my mind-altering activities. I just remember that on Father’s Day in 2009, I had made it a full year by hanging out in AA and not having a sponsor. I had read the 12 steps on my own, by borrowing the book from my outpatient councilor. The only thing I remembered about the 12 steps was it didn’t speak to my ego…it spoke to something different within me because even though my ego mostly rejected/failed to retain the information (my ego specifically likes to decide what information the rest of me needs and what it doesn’t want to look at) there was hope. However because that hope was not coupled with constructive action and the guidance from someone who had done the work, I reverted back to my previous mental states of hopelessness, depression, and fear. Once the mind relapses, the actual act of putting a mind altering chemical inside my body is not too far behind.
By September of 2009 I was using painkillers again, sometimes with alcohol, sometimes with marijuana, sometimes with cocaine, sometimes with all 3. All this while working for the phone company and a wife and 2 young kids at home. The pressure to keep it all together was intense, and every day I was folding more underneath it all. I had been written up by my employer the year prior for not doing a good job, and I still had a king-sized resentment against my supervisor. He was a good man who gave me a second chance, but in my warped reality he was just “out to get me”. I couldn’t do it anymore. I was just going through the motions day by day, but psychologically I was trapped in a single moment; from the time I went to the strange mental blank spot of unawareness until early December, I lived in an alternate reality of wake up, use, get thru the day, repeat. The days I couldn’t find my drug of choice I would just drink and smoke pot until I could get my hands on the pills again. Hell stretched out before me in all directions. I was doomed.
Finally on December 4th, 2009, my scorecards all hit zero. I had lost no material possessions: the wife and kids were still home, the bills were (relatively) paid, I still had the job. But nothing was working anymore. I had drank and drugged the entire day and nothing happened….well at least for most of the day. Around 8 pm I took another 2 pain pills as a last “hail Mary” to try and get some effect so I could get that “ease and comfort” once again. About an hour later it all hit me. The “nothing was working all day” decided to hit me all at once. But not in a good way. Instead of being euphoric, gleeful that in my “secret place where nobody can see”, I had once again been delivered from a life of misery by my chemical friends….but no, that would not be.
Instead, the euphoria was replaced with a terrible fear. Impeding doom. Death itself was set behind me. This was it. I would not make it through this night. All the sworn oaths prior to now made to God to get me through this last time would not be answered. A fight or flight reaction and nothing to fight except myself. In my fear I had gone to the local hospital knowing that I was going to die. I had also been to several ER’s in the months prior. But before I turned myself in to this ER room, I first went into the bathroom instead. I had been here before, just 2 weeks prior. I swore to my family I was done. Crying my eyes out in shame and remorse I swore that I was all done. Yet here I was again.
I had run out of time, my excuses were gone. It was over. I consigned myself to death. I told myself I’d rather die right here in this hospital bathroom than to get any more help. I didn’t deserve the help. I didn’t deserve to live. Maybe when I lose consciousness someone would find me and bring me back. I sat in the stall waiting for the end. Yet nobody came. For over an hour, I was alone in this bathroom. Nobody else came in. In all the years I’ve been in public restrooms, the amount of times I had even 5 minutes to myself was near zero. Yet on this night, I had the facilities all to myself to say my last goodbyes to the world.
I never did lose consciousness. Or maybe I did and I don’t remember. I ended up going home and trying to act normal. My wife, who I could snowball whenever I wanted, didn’t notice anything. My son, who was 5, didn’t know enough to notice either, and my daughter was just 10 months old. To them, this day was like any other; but to me, I had already died. The part of me that knew everything, that knew what I was doing, that knew all the answers, was mortally wounded that night. I was in the living room with my family, yet I wasn’t there. It seems part of me was already in the spirit world; the connection to this world near broken and withering.
Luckily for me, and only by God’s grace, all the things these 12 steppers had been saying over the last year finally made sense. I finally knew what the “desperation of a drowning man” felt like. The pitiful, incomprehensible demoralization that the Big Book of AA talks about. Terror, bewilderment, frustration, and despair set about me on all sides. I knew what had to be done. I told myself if the Lord or the Universe decided that I was to wake up the next morning, I would finally do the thing that I had been dreading all this time. I would ask someone for help.
The next day I did wake up. I went to the noon meeting at the local clubhouse. There in the crowd sat a man that worked for the same company I did years prior. I was terrified. But I had no choice. I could no longer postpone or evade this problem. I could not die this way. So I had to choose between killing my ego, or letting my ego kill me. I walked up to this man after the meeting and said: “Hi Tom, will you be my sponsor”?
After drinking and drugging for most of my adult life, this was the first step in ending the relapse.
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