Quiet This Roiling Fury Within

I just ate three Luna bars in a row. In quick succession, actually. For dinner. And I ate one around 4 o'clock as well. That makes four Luna bars in the last four hours. Two Chocolate Peppermint Stick ones and Two Nutz Over Chocolate ones.

I haven't had a drink in 17 days.

Until today, and the Luna bars, I hadn't had any sugar in 10 days.

I've never really talked about it. My drinking. Problem. I've talked about it with my therapist a little bit. I've talked about it with some of my friends. Most of whom have the same problem. I certainly haven't written about it.

I started drinking regularly, heavily, the summer after my mother died. I was nineteen years old. I had dropped out of college and was living at home with my Dad. We spent our days trying to figure out how to live our lives without my mother. At night I worked in a little cafe. Every evening after we had swept the floors and wiped down the counters, I would join the rest of the staff, a motley assortment of late teen & early twenties fuck-ups, and we would traipse across the square to this dingy little piano bar.

I drank vodka tonics. I leaned my lithe young body up against the bar, the liquor numbing, my dead mother disappearing, my stance softening. It was easy. It was easy. It was very easy.

I fell in love that summer. He was a few years older than me. He'd just lost his younger brother. We sat next to each other on bar stools and knew that we knew things about each other that we didn't have to explain. We drank drink after drink.

I used to drive home drunk, can barely remember the winding curves of the wide suburban Atlanta roads, the moonlit magnolia trees and gently hanging wisteria. I remember my mattress, my body thudding heavily across it, shoes left on, feet dangling. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

We drove to New Orleans in the middle of the night one night. We weren't sure if we were in love so we drove all night, through Alabama and Mississipi, dawn breaking as we entered Louisiana. We got a hotel room on Bourbon Street and we sat on the balcony watching the sun break over the rooftops. We were drinking red wine out of tumblers. I looked over at him, the morning light fresh and pale across our faces. I loved him. I knew it then.

We stayed there for three days. We drank and we fucked and we lay, tangled in the sheets, numb and soft from quaaludes and red wine. Nine months later we were living in Manhattan together, in a fifth floor walk up in the East Village. We lived there for four years. We were both bartenders. We drank and we drank and we drank. At night he lined up empty beer bottles along the base of the front door...a homemade burglar alarm. Sometimes, stumbling drunkenly to bed I kicked into them, the sound of hollow glass ringing through our little apartment.

I'm eating another Luna bar now. It's going to make me sick but I don't really care. It's a Chai Tea flavored one and not nearly as tasty as the chocolate ones.

Almost everyone I know drinks. And they drink a lot. There have only been a few times in the last ten years when I felt like my drinking was really out of sync with those in my social circle. After my Dad died and J. Ryan and I started dating my drinking amount didn't waver. It remained pretty steady at five to six days a week, 1-2 drinks on an average night, 5-6 drinks on a social night. We made it into more of a hobby by attempting to become something of a wine connoissuer couple. We went up to Los Olivos every 5 weeks or so, touring the vineyards, bringing home cases of wine to stock our little wine refrigerator with. It was fun and sophisticated and made drinking into a real activity, an event.

Ugh. Fuck. I can't believe I ate that last Luna bar. I feel sick now.

But that's my problem. I've always been like this. As much as I can get, as often as I can get it. I was a pack-a-day smoker from day one. I can still remember how much I loved that first cigarette. I was never going to be a social smoker. It was going to be cigarette after cigarette after cigarette and if it wasn't cigarette after cigarette then it was going to be drink after drink after drink and when I stopped that 17 days ago it became chocolate after cookie after candy after chocolate after cookie after candy after anything, fucking anything, just put it in my mouth.

So I quit that too. After a week of no drinking and bingeing on chocolate and sweets I threw it all out and went to Whole Foods and spent $150 on vegetables and vitamins and healthy soy products. I've been going to yoga or walking or doing the steps every day. When I really want to scream, when I really want to break something, when I really want to rip myself open and tear out my insides, I take a bath. And I sit there in the scalding water, candles lit all around, steam rising up, and I cry.

I'm not sure where I'm going with all of this yet. I've gone to a few AA meetings with a sober friend and while it helped in some ways, especially that first week, I'm not sure that AA is for me. I don't know how long I'm going to go exactly. My substance abuse class teacher asked us to give something up for the quarter, some kind of vice or habit, and I'd already gone almost a week at that point so I said what the hell and comitted to ten weeks of sobriety. I gave up sugar too...or at least any kind of sweets. I guess I just fucked that up with the Luna bar binge. How pathetic. I binged on fucking Luna bars.

So yeah. That's what's going on around here. A lot of baths and a lot of not drinking. It could be worse.

Comments

[Trixie]

You've already said it, so you already know it...it could be worse...but it IS hard. That I understand, so don't beat yourself up! Luna Bars...hey! They're good, at least the peppermint ones (I LOVE those bad boys!) ... and not nearly as bad for you as some things.

but what i really mean to say is good for you and good luck. (I really don't mean to be patronizing so I hope it doesn't sound that way.) I have been thinking a lot about my past drinking...mainly thinking about how I ever could have done stupid things like driving while drunk...but I did...more than I care to admit...I don't know, something about being a mom now and realizing I could never put myself into such a situation again because of little G...but why oh, why did I do it before? It makes my skin itch and crawl the thought of it...

but ok...really...I hope you find what you're looking for...

and the baths...(God how I wish we had a tub in the house...I make a vow right now to never live in a tubless house again.)...the baths can replenish you like nothing else...but you already know that.

xo

[Dan]

Self-destructive addiction is probably never healthy, as you most undoubtedly know, but I wonder whether binging on Luna bars (or for that matter other generally benign things - sunsets, baths, self-obsessed blog writing) aren't a sign of something that most people only wish they had: a true feel for life. I for one cannot relate entirely - I have a completely non-addictive personality and would be hard-pressed to even detail my "hobbies" - but what I can see very well in your pain and joy is that you FEEL.

Sometimes, and I mean sometimes, as I am pretty happy with my life now, I even envy my friends with "problems", whether it be booze, drugs, girls, gambling, whatever. Somehow they all seem more human than me, more attuned to reality or something. Having a passion, even perhaps a self-destructive one, is a thing of fortune in my eyes.

Thanks for writing this post.

[tony d]

life is about binging. we binge on air every second or we die. the diff is that this is an automatic process and our bodies know immediately what to do with the air and that is that. but just try to NOT breathe for a minute and feel yourself go into withdrawel! i wrote a paper in school about how my theory is that there is no such thing as addiction because there is no such thing as NOT being addicted. we are all addicted--to life. corny, but look behind the corn. i am a life junkie.

couple summers ago i was doing x every weekend and i had a fucking blast. i had broken up a 4 year relationship about three months prior and had not yet discovered how to release myself from that and be what i wanted to be, post relationship. i actually felt that i would never fall in love again. i was only 41.

one night i went to a bathhouse after taking two x and everything seemed magical and new! i met and played with some marvelous boys, but i ended up leaving with a young latino named james. we got to my place around 6 in the morning and proceeded to have mindblowing sex for the next three hours. i can remember that two days later i felt myself "withdrawing" from him, and i felt like running up to his apartment building and screaming his name from the street. this all felt real.

it wasn't.

that was the beginning of an amazing summer, so amazing that i am writing a book about one particular encounter. i have done x since but it has not been the same because i am aware that what happens afterward is an illusion, and i am more interested in something real.

i opened a box of chocolates that i have had in the house. i immediately ate about 8 of them.

we are all riding the line between real and illusion, which in itself is sometimes a blur. i think that when it is a blur, like for instance when a parent dies or a relationship breaks up or we get cancer, we seek something to thrust us one way or the other--back into real or far away from it. seeking balance again like when we wake in the night gasping for breath because our face was in the pillow.

i think that you will find that your abstinence is much more intoxicating than your drunken states. but that buzz will throw your balance, which results in attempts to restore the balance with luna bars. you will get sick on them and file that information away for future reference.

i still drink but i have not done x in ages. i may do it again, but for different reasons. i do not think i fit into your social group of heavy drinkers, but nonetheless i fit with you due to my addiction to life, and writing, and learning, and love, and air. throw out the luna bars and drink that in sweetie, and get high.

[Claire]

Wow, I'm really moved by the responses I've received from this post...those here and in email.

Tricia, yes, it's quite startling to look back on so much of the behavior that I never even questioned at the time...the drunk driving...the general recklessness. At an AA meeting a few weeks ago I listened to a man cry as he talked about how he used to drive his nieces around when he was drunk. And I could relate, you know? Not necessarily to driving anyone around but just to the drunk driving in general...to putting other drivers, and myself, at risk. Sigh.

Dan, thanks for adding an interesting perspective. Yes, I definitely FEEL a lot. All of the time, really. But it can be burdensome...hence the drinking. In my substance abuse class over the weekend that idea actually came up...in a movie about addiction...that often addicts are more sensitive, that they have a tendency to FEEL more than most. I was sitting next to Lydia, one of my best friends who is also a big drinker and who is also taking a break right now and who also lost her mother when she was young, and we just nodded at each other. So yes, I have passion, that's for sure. And it's wonderful...but sometimes it can be overwhelming. But Dan, truthfully, I look at your life and see so much passion. To be your age and living in Budapest, to be really out in the world...that takes a certain amount of passion for sure...passion for life, for really living your life. Think about how many people never do something like that.

And Tony, lovely Tony. I miss being in classes with you, getting to hear your eloquent insights! Thank you for adding one here. And thank you for personalizing it with such an intimate story. You're right, I can already feel myself becoming much more addicted to consciousness, to self-care, to living. Let's hang out soon and binge on something good!

[michele]

I eat old fashioned buttermilk donuts and jelly-filled ones.

I'd take more hot baths but I have sensitive skin and can't handle it. :\

This should be so simple. It's a very simple thing. I know people who just don't drink. They're like, "Oh, I just don't really drink," and I think, Ok, this should be easy. This is a simple concept. A drink is such a small thing. I don't need it. It's so simple. Right?

Simple is not the same as easy.

It's not the drink I'm desperate for.

It's that living in my head is so difficult. I grew up learning to find ways to escape.

That bottle was a perfect tesseract, transporting me elsewhere, away from myself, into a girl much happier, glowing, lit up, content and not haunted.

Dammit. But you ride the train far enough and you hit the end of the line and it will not take you further. Stepping off, standing in the sand and seeing yourself left behind, so distant, off somewhere on the other side of mountains, and you wonder how you'll ever get home to her, and who she actually is, after all this time abandoned.

[CC]

Hope things are better now. I just ate 4 Luna Bars, and then Googled "ate 4 Luna Bars" to see who else did that. Your excuse is better than mine. I'm trying to write an essay.

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