- Alcohol
- Drugs
My journey to recovery started in therapy, when I was 19. A history of sexual abuse was exposed, when my sister finally talked about it and discovered that all of us had some experiences. The family sort of fell apart, so my mother’s first response was to get everybody in therapy. What nobody knew was that I had been using since I was 13. I started with pot and went into using just about everything I could grind and snort. Pills, cocaine: It really didn’t matter. The only thing I didn’t do was shoot up, but I did do heroin and methamphetamine. I tried everything, but I probably used cocaine more than anything else, and I was drinking equal amounts as a counterbalance.
I considered myself a very smart drug addict. In ’83 I found myself on the carpet looking for the cocaine I had dropped, so I stopped using all drugs, or so I thought. I was still drinking. I had more issues, and I stayed in therapy the whole time. I stopped using drugs, because I was very logical about what I was doing, even though I had been using enough to have died at any particular moment. In hindsight the fact that I survived is just amazing.
I got logical about my alcohol use and figured it was a problem, so I stopped for five years. There were a few exceptions, as I wouldn’t drink for the entire year, and then I would go out and have a weekend bender and black out. I was a black-out drinker at age 16. My first experience with alcohol was drinking two six-packs of beer while skipping school on the beach in Ft. Lauderdale. It was a bad decision, as I come from a long line of alcoholics and addicts on my mother’s side.
By ’87 I started just drinking wine, but then I met someone and ended up pregnant. We were engaged and living together. He was an alcoholic and a prescription pill addict. I could keep drinking my wine and not really think about it. While I was pregnant, I stopped, and the relationship became really bad and emotionally torturous. I had my son, and then the abuse got worse. I went back to drinking after my son was born. I started seeing another therapist who wanted me to go to a support group for children of alcoholics. I went and realized I fit in with the group. I was in a relationship with an alcoholic, but I still didn’t consider myself an alcoholic, because I stopped using drugs in ’83 and only drank once a year and only wine or wine spritzers.
After attending support group meetings I finally had enough courage to walk away from my relationship. My son and I walked away and started living with my brother. After two weeks I had eaten everything in his house that possibly had sugar in it, and I realized, “People don’t eat like this.” After talking to my therapist I started going to a support group for over-eaters. I started my program there and started working with a sponsor who was also in recovery from alcohol addiction. My sponsor asked me why I drank, and it occurred to me at that point that I didn’t really know why. I would be drinking and then eat anything I wanted, and so I thought maybe I had an alcohol problem too. I stopped drinking in March of ’89, as I couldn’t come up with a good enough reason to keep drinking.
I continued attending support group meetings and therapy and did a lot of healing from the sexual abuse and trauma of my past. My family was splintered, and everyone was acting out in their own way. I went back to the abusive partner for about another year, and my son started to act out at two years old. He hadn’t slept through the night yet either. My therapist refused to keep seeing me, because I wouldn’t leave the emotionally abusive boyfriend. I started seeing another therapist, and she asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I told her that I really liked what she did, and she told me she thought I would be great at it. I finished my bachelor’s degree, took out student loans for my master’s and became a therapist. I graduated with a 4.0; it was a perfect fit.
The boyfriend I was with at the time bought me an apartment, so we were still living together. At 2 and ½ years old my son told my sister that his father was abusing him. This made me realize that my core addiction was love addiction or relationship addiction. Relationships were my bottom. I knew I was going to die, if I didn’t stop. After all my substance abuse and negative behaviors, what finally brought me to my knees was my son being abused. I didn’t go back to any substances, and I stayed out of all relationships for 15 years. My goal became getting my son to safety.
My partner was not only an alcoholic but was also a sex addict, and that is part of how this happened with my son. It was the relationship addiction that finally got me to see a whole different view. I couldn’t have told you that I was a relationship addict, until about seven or eight years ago. I realized that my son was almost grown when he was trying to fix me up with his friends’ fathers and get me to start dating. I still wasn’t ready, but two years ago I met Juan, and this is my very first relationship in recovery. It’s also his first relationship in recovery, and neither one of us knows what we’re doing. I have all the theory and all the practical knowledge to teach others what to do and how to do it, but actually applying all of it to my life is amazing.
My business is a private practice. My mother, sister and I started this practice about 25 years ago, and I have been doing it full time since ’05. We’ve never advertised, as it is just word of mouth. There is no lack of people who come in the doors, and my specialty has become dealing with personality disorders and sexual abuse trauma.
Addiction treatment is a piece of cake, but recovery is a long-term process. Don’t give up. Approach same-gender people and really try to build relationships. I share some of my own experiences with clients, because it makes them feel they are not alone.