- Alcohol
- Mental Health
I spent my childhood in South Mississippi and South Louisiana during the 60s and 70s– a troubled time in our country. Growing up, I was surrounded by artists, oak trees, and plenty of bourbon. My father drank more than anyone else and traveled for his work. When he was home we would have friends over and parties with music and dancing. So to the casual person on the street we looked like a beautiful middle class family. But the disease of addiction and depression was eroding the façade of the little white house on the hill.
When I was ten years old I started art classes, began singing in the choir, and wrote off to the National Council on Alcoholism to find out how to help my father get sober. By the time I was 12 I got drunk for the first time while serving champagne at my episcopal Sunday school teacher’s wedding. I did not drink often in junior high and high school but every time I drank I drank like my father.
In high school we had the first integrated social party at our home for the staff of our high school musical. I was the student director and the teacher warned my parents that the diet pills I had been taking were causing me to lose sleep and act irrationally. Looking back, I was never comfortable in my own skin. I felt as though we had big secrets in my family and we were taught very early to keep up appearances. I gave up the pills but kept drinking.
When I left for college my drinking became the center of all social events. I hid a bottle of vodka in my dorm room under the bed. I did not know how to relate to others without a substance as a buffer. I thought this buffer protected me but instead it was eating away at my joy and identity.
After my first degree I spent a few years attempting to find myself in church, teaching school on the gulf coast, and finally returning to my hometown and winning a scholarship to art school in Memphis. I thought this would be my ticket out of the confusion of the family secrets and social changes of the times. After I moved to Memphis in my second year of school, my father died as a direct result of his drinking.
All the circumstances never came to light but this was my bottom. I believe someone who was not an alcoholic would have looked at their life and said “I will not drink again because of this death”. Instead, I drank as much as I could as often as I could and then when I wanted to stop I found I could not.
I remember singing in the choir at the cathedral one Sunday and thought all these people knew what they are doing and I didn’t have a clue. It was as though I was in a jar; they could see me, but I could not touch them and they could not touch me. This was before cell phones so I got out the Yellow Pages and looked up the number of the cheapest psychologist I could find and called and made an appointment. I started occasionally going to a 12-step group.
A few weeks later I was still drinking and I was in a very spiraling relationship with a woman. I thought everything was her fault, just like my childhood when I thought everything was my father’s fault. Obviously I was a child when I was in my family home in Mississippi but the patterns were set and I just kept repeating the things I thought would work but never had.
I hid the truth that I was a woman dating a woman, and tried to look good on the outside. My faulty belief was if I could just make things pretty on the outside, then others would behave and the party would come off a success. Life was supposed to be a party. But the parties were not very pretty anymore and the reality of a whole and happy life seemed an almost lost cause.
One night I drank everything in my apartment and at midnight I called a twelve step program. In a black out I managed to put out the outfit I was going to wear to the meeting the next day because I had to look presentable. This is funny now because I am sure I was not the picture of health. The next morning I went to my first meeting. When I walked into the building, an old friend was walking out. He was a drummer in a band I used to go to parties with. He asked, “Why are you here?” He could tell I was nervous and hungover and he said, “It’s ok, I understand”. I knew in that moment he really did because he was clear eyed and seemed to be happy. That was July 17, 1983. I have 32 years of sobriety now. I have a rich and full life and I believe I am reasonably whole.
The most important part of my story: my insides and my outsides match. I have more friends than I can count. I have worked on national political campaigns. I am a member in good standing in my church. I had a relationship with my life partner for 29 years and she is now buried in the walls of the church I attend each Sunday. I have been a part of watching my church ordain gay and lesbian priests.
I speak this boldly to say that I believe my journey into mental health and sobriety is in direct proportion to my journey into the truth. I am the same person whereever I go now. That jar that sealed me off from the world has been opened and I am free. Love has the power to bind what is broken and set free what is bound. For the rest of my life I will be walking into the mystery of love and as frightening as being vulnerable to others can be; it is a blessing compared to the prison of secrecy.