Self-Care is Important

Lauren C. attended the Moments of Change conference on behalf of her employer, a drug and alcohol recovery center. Lauren has been in recovery since March 27, 2007. The following is the story of her journey into recovery, her experience and hope. – Abby F.

I am lucky. I got sober when I was 24 years old and that’s pretty rare. I sponsor a 24-year-old right now and she’s my only sponsee that made it through a year of sobriety. All of the other younger people who I’ve sponsored that were my age or younger haven’t stayed sober.

I was lucky because my drug of choice wasn’t just alcohol. I had drugs to help me crash and burn a little sooner. Which is good. I’m also a non-functioning addict. I can’t have a car or my family or school or anything in my life when I am using. I reached a point where I had no place to live. I didn’t have anything to lose, so when I got to recovery and they told me I could have an awesome life or I could keep doing what I had been doing. I was like, “I’ll take the terrible life. That sounds good.”

I’m the product of an intervention. My parents were not in recovery. My great granddad on my mom’s side was an alcoholic, and I never met him. He died at 56 years old, drunk– he fell and hit his head and died from the injury. He left eight kids behind—my grandma was one of them. I never met him but I had the genetic component.

My family didn’t know what to do. I had an ex-boyfriend who broke up with me over my drinking and using, and he called my parents and he said to them, “If you don’t do something, she’s going to die.” They called an twelve-step group hotline or treatment center and they got hooked up with an interventionist.

My intervention followed the Johnson model of “Surprise you’re going to treatment!” Everybody read me letters, you know. They were like, “Sit.” I was like, “I think I’ll stand.” I did run from my intervention. But I only weighed 100 pounds and I smoked two packs a day, so I made it half a block before everybody caught up to me. They asked, “Could you just come back?” and I agreed.

It wasn’t much of a run, but it shows  you that I was a runner. I came back and everybody read their letters to me and I couldn’t care less. But there’s always that one family member who’s a linchpin and it was my dad. He looked me right in the eye and he said “If you don’t go to treatment, you need to get out of our lives forever because we can’t do this anymore.” My heart broke. I said “Okay.” I knew he was serious.

My father was my enabler, so for him to say he would cut me out of his life, I thought, “oh no, no, no, I can’t do that.” So I went to treatment in small part because I knew they were right, but mostljust to get them off my back.

Two weeks in, I got a letter from my cousin Scott who is like my brother as he’s my same age. We went to college our freshman year and partied together, and he was worried. I scared him. He wrote me this letter and he said, “Just think Lauren, our kids could grow up together.” I wasn’t even sure I wanted kids at the time. But at that time I realized how little my life was and I gave the program a shot.

I got through my fifth step in treatment, and I started to have a spiritual awakening but I drank afterward, because I knew I was a drug addict but I didn’t think I was an alcoholic. I thought there was a difference. It said in the book to try some controlled drinking. So I did but I loved the alcoholics’ 12-step fellowship, so I was going to meetings but still drinking. I got out of treatment on February 26th and my sobriety date is March 27th. All it took was 30 days for me.

I was standing around a keg at 6:30 in the morning my last drunk, and I told myself I was going to leave at midnight after three drink– and I couldn’t. For me it’s Russian Roulette. It’s not every time I drink. But every once in a while I get in the cab and that cab decides where it’s going to drop me off, instead of me saying where I’m going to get dropped off. I tried to drive home and I barely made it home and my parents were at the breakfast table by the time it was seven a.m.

I walked in and they looked at me with that look and my heart broke again. I was very sick that day; I was sick for a few hours. I threw up and then I slept all day. I woke up at around seven p.m. I woke up, that was the jumping off point. I couldn’t live with it anymore and I couldn’t live without it and I knew that the people in my 12-step group and treatment were right. I had that powerful emotional thought. It was as if I became “struck sober”, which was a gift.

I had a temporary sponsor who I called, sobbing. She asked, “Who is this?” Two weeks before I’d asked her to be my temporary sponsor, she had no idea who I was. Which I still found offensive in that moment because I found that my ego, my selfish self-centeredness knows no bounds. But she did say, “come meet me at a meeting.” So I met her in an 8:00 meeting. I got my crap together. The one thing she said to me on the phone before we hung up was: “You never have to feel this way ever again if you don’t want to.” I told her I would do anything. Whatever I have to do I will do it. That was my last drink. I got a desire chip and I worked all 12 steps within six months.

When I got introduced to the 12 steps, therapy, and recovery, I thought “Oh my God, these people are insane but I kind of love them.” I put all my chips in from the beginning. I haven’t done it perfectly. But I do work all the steps today. I do the prayer and meditation. I do my nightly review, and I think that’s why I’ve been able to stay. I still do my annual housecleaning. I have a sponsor who works the steps, I sponsor others, and I think it’s working so far, so I’m not going to mess with it.

To those who are new, I would say there is a solution, there’s a way out. The other thing is not to do your own trauma work. I’ve not met an addict to date or an alcoholic to date who doesn’t have trauma. Find somebody who you can trust and do that work with that person because it will deepen your sobriety and the possibility of your life. It’s important to get rid of the shame core and live in a place of abundance and love instead of scarcity and lack. That’s where that trauma therapy piece comes in– staying present.

Whenever my husband and I get in a weird funky place, he tells me to “ETJ”. Which means “enjoy the journey”. It’s something he can say that doesn’t piss me off. He’s like “ETJ, baby” and I say, “all right, I hear what you’re saying. I’m going to let that sink in.” I know he’s right.  If I’m thinking I will be happy one day in the future, or once a certain thing happens, then I’m missing the journey.

Find something you can call your higher power. That’s so important. I really love, my sponsees and we always talk about how “not cool” we are. Early on, I think one of the hardest things for me to do was lose the identity that I had built around my drinking and using. I had long black hair and I listened to punk rock music, and it was totally not me. It was a complete lie. I had convinced all my best friends from high school that I was that person. That was an amends in itself to just become the perfectly nerdy weirdo that I am, and now, allowing other people to do that is just so beautiful. I always tell my residents and patients to “find your inner nerd.” They always look at me like I’m crazy.

Treatment introduced me to some really cool concepts around not just recovery but therapy. I always have to remember that piece, and then remember self-care. When you work in the field, you must be a professional all the time and yet also be someone authentic. If you work in the field, it is so important to have a good mentor, or a good therapist (especially if you are a therapist). Doing your own work around trauma becomes much more important when you begin to get secondary trauma from other people’s trauma.

I had one supervisor teach me how to be a channel instead of a receptacle for people’s stuff. She would do a meditation where she would visualize letting the bottom drop out and just letting it all flow into the river of light and into God instead of her. She talked about being a channel for God instead of this receptacle for people’s stuff. So I don’t take responsibility for their health. But, even with this information and meditation, I can still forget that, so I have to practice that every day, and I have to help other people practice that if they forget.

My mentor told me, “People who do this for a long time are the happiest people I know, because their happiness comes from their higher power, and you can’t take it from them. It’s not contention on whether there’s evil or not in the world– that we know. Being a force for good is what I love and that’s what I am.”

It’s so important to know who you are so you can do your own work. Self-care is important. It’s all about flow. Keep the flow going and the support ready, and you will be ok.

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