I am currently in the process of learning how to live...well actually my entire family is in this process. If you have never dealt with addiction you are lucky...and if you have or currently are...God bless you. It is this terrible monster that consumes every bit of you...it doesn't care who you are, who your family is, your job or how much money or lack of you have. It is this vicious thing that will consume your entire life. It will take every sane thought you have and toss it out the window. Addiction kills and destroys lives every...single...day. You forget what it means to live happy, you forget how to truly live. Nobody ever "beats" their addiction. It is a battle that will never end...only your opponent gets easier with time.
I married my highschool sweetheart. We were crazy about each other. Life should be easy huh? Negative...Life isn't easy for anyone. We had the odds stacked against us from the beginning. I became pregnant in highschool...still trying to figure that one out. Pretty sure I was still a virgin;) Life was good..we learned together how to be parents. We were raising our son and present in his life...but we were young..we liked to party and drink. We weren't ready by any stretch of the imagination to give that lifestyle up.
To make a realllllly long story short..life went on. We had another child..another boy. Life was still good....we still liked to have a good time although it was becoming apparent that my husband liked it much more than I. Over time our lives began to unfold and unravel at the same time.
The good times we had were no longer fun. Fun times were turning into carwrecks, hospitalizations, fighting, dwi's, wasted money, lost jobs, jail, courtrooms and rehab several times. Those fun times turned into fear. Fear for my kids, fear for myself, fear for our future. I stuck around...I had even more fear if I left he would die...either intentionally by suicide or by accident. Oh...and in the midst of this, we had another baby..this time a girl:) I no longer drank in the hopes of me not drinking...he would not drink. That is not how this addiction game works...I found out after several years of me trying to "fix" him that I couldn't. That I could hide money and car keys, tear my house apart and dig through trashcans daily..but none of this was going to stop his addiction.
We split...in one of his drunken tyrants I dropped him off at the rescue mission. He had nowhere else to go. There was nobody left...all bridges had been burnt. It was hard. We lived seperately for 6 months. I believed if he didn't have us it would be enough for him to get sober. Newsflash...nothing is enough, not your job, not money, not your spouse and not even your kids. Addiction becomes bigger than you are.
So after years of myself not drinking...not even a drop. I had this really brilliant idea that if I couldn't beat it...I would just join him. Genius..I know. I loved him..I didn't want to live my life without him...We needed each other.
So we drank. We drank to relax, we drank to have fun, we drank when we were stressed. I myself eventually had an excuse to drink everyday as well. It became routine and normal for us. We couldn't really enjoy life or do anything fun without drinking. We continued to remain functional. We got up, went to work, took care of the kids..and then...we drank. We drank until we felt really good and really bad the next day. When the bad wore off...we drank again. This became our norm. We both knew it was a problem. We had many conversations about cutting back...but to quit completely was terrifying. How could anybody live like that? Sober...all the time.
The functional part of our lives ended up dysfunctional...well it was all along but was brought to light when my husband became very sick. He couldn't function. He couldn't work. He could not get out of bed without his blood pressure and heart rate going through the roof. He couldn't eat without vomiting...and at times bloody vomit. We both knew his life was going to be cut very short. His doc was very blunt with him...he either quit drinking or he was going to die. Stopping this cycle was unreachable alone. He continued to drink..and sleep. That was all his life consisted of. Without drinking his body felt like it was dying also. He tried to quit..but the uncontrollable shaking, sweating, dizziness and nausea would lead him straight back to the bottle.
One day he decided he wanted to live. The next day I sent my extremely sick husband on a plane to California. He was admitted for detox and then an amazing rehab center. We had hope again for the first time in years:) While he was gone I continued to drink. Each day telling myself that tomorrow was the day I would stop. I actually told myself this until the day before I went to pick him back up....boy time got away from me;) I had so many mixed emotions about our new life together. I enjoyed drinking and wasn't ready to give it up. I knew I had to though..for myself and for him. I had so many questions in my head. How were we going to enjoy life? How about our friends..would they even want to be around us anymore? Would we even like each other sober? Could we even do this???
Well...we are doing it! We like each other...our friends still like us and we are enjoying life. I can't speak for him..but I do still think about how good an ice cold beer would be...I get home from work and at times would love to have a glass of wine..or the whole bottle..whatever;) Only now I wake up in the mornings not hungover. I sit on the porch and drink my coffee and smile because we made it another day. We are doing life sober and it is a learning experience. We are having fun sober, we are enjoying our kids sober, we are talking sober....and then there is sober sex..and that's a post in itself!lol
Either way...I can't remeber who said this, but I keep it in my head. "One is too many and a thousand is never enough" True story:)
