There’s always something uncomfortable about watching a talented person’s life flame out spectacularly, isn’t there? Especially when you find yourself wishing you had even half the talent that person’s wasting.
At times [Cat] Marnell seemed so hellbent on doom that I began to wonder if hers wasn’t entirely an act. Did she even do drugs? Or was she just another fame-hungry young woman who had learned that her self-destruct button came with all kinds of rewards?
As for her writing, her work was wild and wildly inconsistent. A post she wrote about the morning-after pill was one of those incoherent rants that make you wonder if an entire generation failed to learn how to use the delete button. “O.K., so for the exactly three women left in this world, apparently, who don’t know what Plan B is, it is sort of the world’s greatest contraceptive,” her post began, and it unraveled from there. People eagerly passed it around Twitter, sure, but they passed it the way you might pass spoiled milk: Here, sniff this.
But her Whitney Houston piece was something else. It was haunting and shot through with revelations. . . .
“Why can’t we acknowledge that lots and lots of women abuse drugs?” Marnell wrote in one of those passages in which you can practically hear the frantic clatter of the keyboard as she typed. “Why does a person have to have resolved their drug issues in order to be allowed to write about them? Can’t a writer be conflicted?” When I read her essay, it had been 18 months since alcohol last lighted a match in my veins, but I had to admit she had a point.
So, what did I think of this writer? In the following months, I thought a lot of things about her. I thought she was a gifted memoirist and a self-mythologizing poser. I thought she was an addict in love with her own damage and a deeply troubled soul. But mostly what I thought after clicking the link in that e-mail was: Damn, her Whitney Houston piece was better than mine.
My first introduction to Marnell was that morning-after pill piece, and the impression I got from it that this was a privileged, clueless dingbat who desperately needed an editor. It wasn’t until recently that I ran into some of her other writing at xojane, when I had followed a link to an article about coping with socializing as a sober person. Digging around in the site’s extensive addiction files, I saw that Marnell wrote often about drugs, about being high, about being insecure, about using drugs and alcohol to cope, about her apparent inability to experience anything, accomplish anything, without pharmaceutical assistance. I saw that when she was on, she was on. As Hepola noted, she wrote with an energy and freshness and originality that many writers would kill for.
I would get these funny zaps of envy reading her prose. I should have done more drugs, I would stupidly think. I should have fallen deeper in the hole. I was just a garden-variety lush, so enamored of booze I didn’t even bother with hard drugs. And I saw in her drug use and her writing an abandon I never allowed myself, and it gave her articles that unmistakable thrill of things breaking apart.
When she wasn’t on, she produced rambling, disjointed hot messes like her morning-after pill piece and the one she wrote upon returning from a stint in rehab ordered by the company that owns xojane.
I do! LIKE: most of the pre-rehab nights when I wasn’t filing stories for this website it was because I was up on speed in my apartment alone, strutting around in a skimpy kimono like Buffalo Bill in “Silence of the Lambs”, listening to obscure David Bowie, wearing thigh high patent leather Burberry, chainsmoking Marlboro Ultra-Lights and lovingly, endlessly painting and my face with all the new makeup I get sent at work every day and I am always dragging home by the bagful intending (vaguely) to review.
Then I’d vamp in the mirror. “Would you fuck me?” I’d garble, admiring myself. You know the answer. “I’d fuck me.” . . . .
More non-working, pre-rehab nights of my little life: it’s 6:45 AM. I’m wearing a “Basic Instinct” T-shirt, lilac fishnets, and a bright green face mask that’s been on for hours; I reek of self-tanner and whatever the newest perfume is. Crunch crunch crunch. That’s me chewing up another Adderall like a Tic-Tac while I leaf through The Keanu Reeves Handbook: Everything You Need To Know About Keanu Reeves:
Again, I haven’t felt a single smidgen of guilt about not writing anything even though my morning deadline is approaching. But boy, do I feel — well, not good exactly, but…well, I’m not feeling much except for not-hungry, the main reason I take speed in the first place. Brilliant!
Then on this morning it’s around 7:30 and I’m force myself to do the responsible thing (HA), which is take a few Ambien, a Kolonopin wafer or three (they taste like strawberries and melt under my tongue); I wash the whole thing down with warm vodka-Gatorade left in an enormous laboratory beaker from an afterhours I hosted two nights ago, and then I shove over the huge pile of fur coats and French Vogues piling my bed and pop off for about nine hours. I wake up at dusk.
This easily could have been, say, a typical Tuesday, say, in March 2012.
(I am leaving out all of the hugely wildly glamorous nightclub nights, as not to glamorize my drug use.)
It’s perfectly normal to feel nostalgia for the life you led as an addict. At least the fun, glamorous parts: the parties, the drug-fueled creativity. Everything was so much brighter and sharper and more fun then; sobriety is just you and your thoughts, and you have to find a way to be with them without putting a veil of booze or drugs between you and the things you don’t want to acknowledge. You also have to find new ways to have fun, to be creative, to relate to people. A lot of people can’t handle it.
Marnell turned out to be one of those people. It probably came as no surprise that she went back to drugs, and about writing about drugs. Hepola:
A month after our interview, Marnell announced via a profile in New York magazine that she was entering rehab at the insistence of xoJane’s publisher. When she came back, her next post was nonsense. She’d lost it. A few weeks after that, she announced via New York Post’s Page Six that she was leaving xoJane.
“Look,” she told Page Six, “I couldn’t spend another summer meeting deadlines behind a computer at night when I could be on the rooftop of Le Bain looking for shooting stars and smoking angel dust with my friends and writing a book, which is what I’m doing next.”
It was a Keith Richards exit. She must have been very pleased. And she quickly found a new outlet at another publication, Vice magazine, where her bio refers to her as the “pills and narcissism” correspondent.
I have no idea if she’ll write a book, of course. I’m skeptical, not just because there’s a dearth of great PCP-inspired literature but because writing a book is a mountain that is easy to start and tremendously difficult to finish. It requires ripping out the IV drip of a thousand Facebook likes, the instant comfort of “update now.” It requires patience and hard work and closing yourself off in a quiet, hateful room.
People think you can’t write while you’re high, but I’m sure that’s not true. I loved the tippy-tap of a four-beer drunk, because your self-doubt melts away, and the hounds stop howling, and it almost feels as if you are taking dictation from the universe. After I quit drinking, I spent months unable to write. I would literally spend hours staring at a blank screen — typing phrases only to erase them again — and I would long for the late nights in a smoke-clogged apartment in Williamsburg, when I would be up at 3 a.m. writing so fast that my laptop nearly levitated.
The problem is staying in that place; I never could. I drank past the point of coherence. I fell down stairs and slipped off barstools, which can seem hilarious when you are 25 but is pathetic when you are 35.
Marnell is in that place now between 25 and 35. Her behavior seems hilarious to many of her readers, and to many of her friends. She certainly gives the impression that it’s hilarious to her, though she’s also, in her more honest moments, admitted that much of what she puts out into the world is a front.
Sorry, y’all, screwed up the formatting, and I’m having trouble with the editor. Here’s the rest of it:
It’s not, however, so hilarious dealing with an active addict.
Hepola noted that when Marnell left xojane, her Twitter followers and Facebook fans supported her, and told her she was brave. But how brave is her writing, really? How honest?
I’m unsure what to say, except that some people use drugs to help cope with their disabilities, mental and otherwise. There’s also something to be said for the ‘wasting of talent that you wish you had at least half of.” But I can’t articulate it at he moment.
This left me feeling a little queasy. Marnell vividly reminds me of a childhood best friend who followed a similar trajectory and has come to a really bad place. At the same time, I have totally been guilty of writing while pretty tipsy and finding that alcohol can energize the creative process. However, there’s a long way been tipsy and addiction.
This was a powerful read. I have been living in the bottle for many, many years, and one of the reasons I fear giving it up is that I do feel it’s stoked the creative fires. It’s also given me confidence, and wit, and the ability to be wild and mouth off to whomever I please. I tell myself alcohol is the only thing that makes me interesting, and that I owe it to people to be interesting. And yet, I also know that I am destroying myself. My stomach is riddled with holes, I am unemployable, and I have caused more pain to others than I care to contemplate. I need people to tell me that life can be amazing without alcohol, that I can be interesting without drinking myself to death. How do you do that? How do you convince yourself?
olympia-
One of my greatest fears when I contemplated getting sober was being social sans alcohol. I thought I couldn’t be myself and get past my fears and anxieties without at least a few drinks (which quickly became many drinks). It’s been 120 days and I won’t lie and say it’s been easy or I never miss it or I’m never tempted but things do feel real and I figured out that a lot of my fears and anxieties were the result of my regrets over choices I made while drunk. Anxious me drank to loosen up so drunk me could be confident and interesting -but also embarrassing and humiliating and emotionally tumultuous, which led to hungover and shameful me needing alcohol for courage to face the people around me. I don’t know if my rambling will apply to your situation but here I am, crazy and sober, wishing you the best in whatever you decide.
<3<3<3 am
P.S. Naltrexone can work wonders.
P.P.S. Life is better than before – and I can remember it all. (:
Olympia, drinking yourself to death isn’t actually very interesting. Or very creative, either. Alcohol also doesn’t make you interesting; it makes everyone around you less able to care if you’re not.
You stop drinking, and you have to sit with your own thoughts and restructure your life, and it’s not easy because no one around you makes it easy. Even if you cut out the drinking buddies and avoid people who are active drunks, you have to deal with the normal people, the ones who can drink one or two and can’t understand what’s wrong with you, or what you’re going through, because they’ve never felt it. And you have to watch them drinking normally and wonder why you can’t do the same.
And at some point, you have to face those insecurities that are keeping you from living without the bottle.
You’ll have to find new ways to fill your time since you’re not filling it holding up the bar. But you’ll start to find that these new things you’re filling your life with interest you, and when you’re interested, you’re interesting.
Not gonna lie; it’s not easy. But it’s worth it, and it can be an amazing process.
If you haven’t already read it, get a copy of Caroline Knapp’s Drinking: A Love Story. She writes about alcoholism and the fears and insecurities that kept her drinking with the kind of honesty that Cat Marnell can’t hope for as long as she’s deluding herself.
I expected at first that this was going to end with the announcement that Marnell has died. I’m glad she she hasn’t.
am and zuzu- Thank you. This really is an excruciatingly hard battle, as you two clearly know. I also know that the way I’ve been doing things, waiting for some grand epiphany that erases my need to drink, is not working- and yet I’ve kept waiting.
am- Congratulations on the 120 days! Good for you. Do you mind if I ask what’s kept you going on your path? I did achieve 60 days sober earlier this year, my longest streak in nine years, but I just felt like I was acting much of the time, feeling empty, infusing myself with caffeine and ritualistic cigarettes, so I could at least feel like I was getting some chemical enhancements. I couldn’t keep it up. Have you made other attempts at getting sober? I’ve looked into Naltrexone, and also anti-depressants, as I feel like depression definitely affects my drinking, and vice versa, of course.
zuzu- I read part of Knapp’s book, years ago, when my drinking career was still fairly young. At the time it didn’t resonate with me fully, but I think it would now. You’re point about others not making it easy- so true. I often feel like the only way I’m going to stay sober is to break away from my family and SO, as we’ve all been enabling each other. But that’s difficult, for so many reasons.
Olympia — you may want to try The Fix, a site all about addiction.
I picked this book up in a bargain bin in 2006 and successfully quit two years later, after a few tries. It’s a little cheesy, to be honest, but it worked for me.
You are going to have to make some changes. You may have to break contact with your family and SO. It’s hard because reasons. There are always reasons. But is it any less hard to keep living the way you are, when you know it’s killing you?
olympia
I’ve never had an addiction, so I was hesitant about commenting on this at all and please tell me to eff off if I’m sticking my foot in it, but addictions research has come up on some of my classes, and one finding that really stuck out to me was that a one predictor of success in kicking an addiction is number of previous ‘failed’ attempts (I wish I could find an exact cite, I’m sorry) – so trying and struggling and trying again is not a futile effort – each try brings you closer.
Olympia – as well as the other great advice, go in forewarned that anything you may be using your addiction to suppress (past trauma, unresolved issues. buried feelings) will probably bubble up.
I think realising that in advance, and deciding on some sort of appropriate outlet to express or work through that, can help steady you on your feet. If you’re warned of rain, then you carry an umbrella to protect you, just in case.
I wish you strength, courage, and the fervent hope that you get the results you want.
am – congratulations, a third of the year! That’s brilliant. As above, may your journey be even, and lead to where you want to be.
That sense of finding Eden in your everyday home, doing everyday things, is a hard-earned thing, like being paid triple time for a 16 hour Saturday shift. You may feel like you’re dying when you’re doing it, but it’s ultimately worth it.
Accept that in your first year or two of sobriety, it will frequently appear that the entire universe is conspiring to irritate you. My mantra is a variant of an Eleanor Roosevelt quote, to wit: Nothing can irritate or aggravate me without my consent, and I Do Not Consent. I walked out on a husband, numerous junk jobs and false friends, and eventually an entire family to keep sobriety. It was, and is, worth it.
Look upon every day as the ultimate mystery story. It’s up to you to dig out the facts, to see beneath the shiny well-kept human surfaces, to pull together the pieces of your narrative. This might get you through the tough job of socializing sober.
I suspect that you are here because you want to make the world a better place for women. You can start by making your body a better place for you to live, and take up sobriety as a Challenge.
Sorry to be so verbose. Thank you, Zuzu, and all of you, for being here and now.
Thank you so much everyone. You all give such good and kind and wise advice. And I know all your advice is right- it’s just so hard to get past the addictive voice roaring in my ears. And it’s hard to even think about doing the transforming of my life that I know sobriety requires. I believe that alcoholism (along with any other addiction) is 100% biological in that it is a brain disease, but the brain is made up of not only whatever genetics dictate, or the substances that are thrown at it, but the experiences it processes. Dealing with my experiences, both past and present, is my primary sticking point, even when I know that’s what I need to do to reorganize my neurons.
And I apologize for making this so much about me! This article just really got me thinking. Katherine, I too started this article thinking that Marnell had died- which, you know, would not be a surprise, sad as it would be. But I also know there are people out there who’ve come out of absolutely monstrous addictions. I think there’s hope for all of us.
Olympia, my partner is in recovery (3 years last week!) and it’s been a journey. He got sober after we got hitched, too, so I’ve known him as an active drinker and then once he wasn’t anymore.
There are all sorts of things that come up that we haven’t expected. Sex has been a journey to say the least. He’s found that he was drinking to self-medicate, to hide from trauma, to try to be someone he’s not for all sorts of reasons. It’s not like getting sober magically made all that go away or anything.
But we talk about it a lot, and one thing we realized the other day after yet another issue bubbled up from the depths to rock his stability, was that THIS DAY IS THE WORST IT’S EVER GOING TO BE. Every day is slightly, microscopically, incrementally better. Because he’s sober and he’s working on his issues instead of hiding in a bottle from them.
So, take from that what you will. I wish you lots of luck and healing in your journey.
But this, too, is worthwhile. Consider it a clearing of the debris. Sometimes your back and thighs ache from the heavy-lifting, but look at the light and space in here! :)
Has anyone tried this book? The Easy Way to Stop Drinking by Allen Carr. The reviews on Amazon are very interesting.
I don’t get the judgey tone of this piece. We really don’t know that her primary “privilege” isn’t to be in a state of mania. Sure, it’s seriously messed up and actually really grating that she’s glamorizing addiction. But I’m not really interested in trying to read her mind- does she think it’s hilarious? is she for real- as much as I am in saying wtf is up with the shit you’re printing, xoJane/Vice Magazine/Page Six?
If you’ve decided her life is “flame(-ing) out,” then you’ve become part of the problem. She isn’t beyond redemption just because you don’t think she’s acting right, and she doesn’t deserve to be told so. Marnell’s a human being who needs help, and if the vehicular metaphors (flaming cars, trainwrecks) sound dehumanizing, it’s probably because they are.
Samanthab, why do you think I think she’s beyond redemption? Where did I say that?
Why do you think I’m judging her (come on, give me more to work with than “tone”)?
I think she’s actively addicted, and she’s not facing what that’s doing to her. It’s plain from the way she writes about drugs, even when she’s just gone through employer-ordered rehab. It was plain to me from that piece that she was going to relapse.
And, yeah, I think she’s privileged (though I will point out that I only used that term in connection with the impression I got from her from that morning-after pill piece). She writes about leaving her magazine job (which you don’t get without some kind of connections, so: privilege!) because she was addicted, and was out of work for a year. I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t pay rent in the East Village without a job for an entire year AND pay for drugs and nightclubs and booze, too. Her father was a psychiatrist, so she doesn’t come from a poor background.
Maybe she is manic. Maybe she’s taking a lot of Adderal and speed, like she says she is. But when she asks why those who are actively addicted can’t talk about drugs, one of the reasons their narratives aren’t trusted is very simple: addicts lie. And they lie to themselves most of all. One way they do that is to insist they have everything under control when all around them can see they don’t.
I want to put this anecdata out there. One thing I’ve heard from folks with addiction issues is the fear that they’ve dug such a hole with the people who love them that they can’t face trying to reboot those relationships. My mom had a very serious alcohol problem, inpatient rehab failed and she had a full relapse; she was functionally absent as a parent for several years, existing mostly as a problem that the family had to deal with rather than a mom. But she got sober and it took a few years but we got back on track and by the time cancer took her, we were really in a good place.
This question of zuzu’s got overlooked so I think I’ll have a crack at answering it:
How brave is her writing? In my opinion, not at all. Her description of her drug use is extremely defensive. Being defensive is not the same as being brave. I suppose quitting her job is ‘brave’ if she does not, in fact, have a financial safety net. But, as was said above, we don’t know if she does, and it doesn’t seem like she’s facing financial ruin.
How honest is her writing? Well, about as honest as a beautiful painting of a landscape. It shows you all the lovely things about it’s subject (let’s face it, taking drugs is fun, that’s why people do it,) but leaves out the negatives (which in a majority of cases outweigh the positives) or paints them as harmless.
I hope my comment above doesn’t imply that I don’t think she’s a talented writer. Having been in the same mindset as her during my younger days, I find her prose extremely evocative, though what it evokes is unfortunately what zuzu referred to in her comment @19; which is that addicts above all lie to themselves.
Marnell isn’t particularly talented. She’s good at marketing her glib, glam addict persona, but that’s about it.
Some creative people are afraid that if they get sober, they’ll lose whatever made them interesting. Usually, that’s just the addiction talking. But in Marnell’s case, it’s probably true.
She’d have nothing to write about if she stopped using. The only subject she’s ever written compellingly about is her own addiction. She can’t even write engagingly about beauty products, her ostensible beat.
When she writes about her lifestyle all she has to say is, “Look at me! I’m so fucked up. Give me credit for admitting it.” Her fans insist she’s honest, but she’s not. She can’t even keep her story straight about how she quit XoJane.
Even if Cat keeps using, her shelf-life is limited. Nobody will care what she has to say about addiction when she stops being young, thin, pretty, and mysteriously financially comfortable. She’s a figure of fascination because of who she is, not what she produces.
In the context of addiction, I think bravery is outside of this total equation. She has a safety net so she is free to quit her job without suffering too many consequences, one of them facing the depth of her addiction. She quit because she was being held accountable for her addiction and going through the motions of recovery was only going to buy her so much time — it’s common enough among addicts, either losing or quitting jobs where the addiction will no longer be accommodated — so really, and I say this without judgement, this was just another move down the spiral.
Zuzu, thanks for touching on this.
I’m in agreement with those not really enamored with her writing or her integrity in that. Glib? Yes. Authentic? Only the pose.
David Foster Wallace would be the obvious choice of gargantuan talent and tragic trainwreck. Depression at work but it wasn’t helped by substance abuse.
Having said that, I reminded of Lou Reed’s “Oh Jim” (the entire “Berlin” album, really) and the lyrics, “All your two-bit friends/they’re shootin’ you up with pills/They said that it was good for you/that it would cure your ills,” and, “All your two-bit friends/they asked you for your autograph/They put you on the stage/they thought it’d be good for a laugh.”
No trainwreck, Lou, but certainly authentic. And talented.
I’ve done a bit more reading of her writing (most of her Vice columns,) and I no longer am as impressed with her writing as I was after reading the stuff referenced in the OP. Those little paragraphs taken out of context showed a mature sophisticated prose which belied an immature unsophisticated life-view. However, a majority of the other stuff I read just shows the immaturity and unsophistication.
This response literally made me cry, it seems so venomous and full of hate. Has the trend towards treating addicts with ‘tough love’ led us to completely lose our sympathy?
Maybe you could specify what you think is so hateful and venomous about this, Fat Steve. You know, before you start accusing people of being venomous, hateful, and lacking all sympathy.
Because really, I’m not seeing it. And maybe you don’t know any addicts, or you haven’t been one, but those of us who do and have may see her writing differently than you do.
Saying that she wouldn’t be a decent writer if she quit drugs isn’t hateful. As a writer and a former drug abuser, that comment would have not led me to get help but is exactly the kind of berating that used to make me consider suicide. Some of us who abuse do so because we’re very insecure. Maybe you don’t know what it’s like to be extremely insecure.
In my experience, people who have firsthand experience with addiction are pretty matter-of-fact about it. The thing about active addiction is that it will fill the space you give it, and empathy and sympathy are interpreted by the addict as an opportunity for exploitation to maintain the addiction unabated.
As much time as we spend hand-wringing over addiction and abuse as a society, we absolutely do glamorize the wild, carefree abandon with which the young and beautiful self-destruct. Zuzu’s point is that very few people get romantic about the beautiful disaster of a 40 year old mother of two who lost her looks due to her meth addiction and life on the streets (there’s a race/class analysis here worth diving into further), and nobody much cares about the young, poor addict in flyover country smoking meth out of a roll of foil in a Kmart parking lot, but Cat Marnell’s life (as she portrays it) is sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll without boundaries or consequences. Except those of us who aren’t deluded by the lies and tall tales of addicts (anymore), and those of us who are jaded by addict drunkalogs, very clearly see where her employers have drawn discreet, but clear boundaries, and where the consequences of her lifestyle are leading. Addiction is progressive. Folks who are “functional” today won’t be forever.
The thing about addiction — and here’s my compassion — is that we all deserve the dignity to live our lives as we see fit, no matter how destructive that is. Marnell has no kids, and she apparently has people who are willing to bankroll her deathwish, so more power to her and my compassion to them. I can only hope that when (if) she has decided to quit, she hasn’t burned her last bridge.
I do. But don’t assume that Cat Marnell is unfamiliar with criticism. Her posts on xojane routinely generated 900+ comments, not all of which were her fan club. Many readers were extremely critical.
She’s not you. You would consider suicide; her reaction has clearly been something different.
In any event, do you think it’s inaccurate to say that, in this culture, once she loses her looks (or, if she hangs on to her looks, once she ages past the point where she can be consered rock-and-roll), writing about her drug use and her clubbing and her glamorous life is not going to sell nearly as well as it does now that she’s still young and cute and hip?
Like Lauren said, no one cares about women who are old and washed up and unglamorous and their drug use. Cat Marnell’s life seems sparkling because she’s glamorous, lives in the East Village, is plugged into the art and club scene, knows all the hip places on whose roofs to do angel dust, and is young and hot.
That definitely sounds reasonable and wasn’t the bit that affected me. It was the assertion that she wouldn’t be worth anything as a writer if she was off drugs. One of the things that seemed to help me stop taking many of the drugs Marnell does was my friends/peers telling me ‘you’re so much funnier when you’re sober, you’re much cooler to hang out with when you’re not high’, etc. And when it came from a person in my field I respected it was even more affecting. (Lindsay being someone I consider a well respected blogger.)
But, you are right, she is not me, and perhaps she enjoys the criticism. I didn’t start appreciating criticism til i got sober and got over my insecurities, but I’ve never been as conentionally attractive as her and I do notice that does give many (though by no means all) people a sense over confidence.
The “assertion that she wouldn’t be worth anything as a writer if she was off drugs” kind of overstates things, don’t you think? This is what Lindsay wrote:
That’s an assertion based on Lindsay’s having read a variety of Marnell’s writing. And frankly, I don’t think it’s too far off the mark (which is actually something you seemed to agree with in comment 26 *after* Lindsay’s comment appeared, so I don’t see why it’s bothering you so much days later). Writers who have talent but are addicted write well about many things, not just drugs or alcohol. They may think that they aren’t interesting without substances, but that’s not true.
Marnell *only* writes well about drugs or alcohol or her addiction. Take that away, and what’s left?
Personally, I’d argue that she could channel that energy into other topics if she wanted to, but hey, we write what we love.
That’s true, Lauren, but I don’t think she’s there yet. Or she hasn’t demonstrated the capability to do so thus far. After all, she gets lots of jobs and lots of page views with the persona she’s created, even when she fucks up. There’s been no reason for her to develop the kinds of skills she’d need to have longevity as a writer once her persona goes stale.
olympia:
I don’t mind sharing at all but it’s a bit of a mess of different things so I’ll make a list of bullet points to try to be somewhat understandable.
• Physically, naltrexone is fantastic for me. It reduces cravings immensely but doesn’t cause interactions with alcohol like Antabuse (disulfiram) does. However, it makes it so that narcotic painkillers don’t work so that can be an issue if other medical emergencies arise. I actually have come to appreciate this side effect/result because I tend to misuse narcotics after surgery (and I’ve had surgery eight times so far) and now I can’t get an effect from them.
• I take medications for my mood disorder/personality disorder (up for debate) that stabilize my mood to keep me from the major ups and downs I was experiencing.
• Psychologically, I see a therapist once a week and a psychiatrist once a month. I’m honest with them about everything that’s going on.
• At the beginning, I tracked my mood using an app on my phone and I still track my days sober. Seeing my mood start to balance out to normal was really rewarding and reassuring.
• I made a WRAP plan (this is the official site but there are plenty of unofficial ones with information) that helped me get my head around my problems as well as my attributes while planning for any potential crisis in the future.
• A friend was worried enough about my drinking to message my boyfriend.
• My boyfriend, friends and family have been very supportive. I made sure to tell them that I was quitting. They now know that I don’t want to drink so if I slip, it would be a major cry for help, and when I succeed, they’re proud of me and cheer me on, which makes me happy instead of ashamed of where I am.
• I sleep better without alcohol so my mood is more even and makes things easier.
• Alcohol makes a lot of medications for mood less effective or counteracts their effects so just by not drinking, I felt better.
• The final things that actually pushed me to quit were these: a night of black-out drunk bingeing that could’ve ended much worse and, more importantly, a realization from my job at the hospital. Almost every patient who comes in for a suicide attempt is drunk, usually at the > .20 level (“stupor, loss of understanding, impaired sensations, possibility of falling unconscious, severe motor impairment, loss of consciousness, memory blackout”). Every time I’ve attempted suicide, attempted to overdose or vaguely even self-harmed recently, I’ve been drunk. This started to bother me on its own but wasn’t enough to get me to quit drinking. Then, I saw a case where a patient was depressed and drinking and overdosed on some other medication (that may not have interacted well with alcohol? I don’t know). The patient was found and brought to the hospital and worked on and while they were able to keep the patient from dying, the patient had major brain damage and will likely never be independent again. I’d always thought that if I attempted suicide, I’d succeed or I’d be saved, and I’d forgotten the middle ground where you could wind up permanently disabled by it. I know it’s incredibly stupid of me to have not thought of that before but I wasn’t thinking rationally. Something in that patient’s story snapped me back into thinking and made me realize how important my health – mental and physical – are to me and how I don’t want to risk it for a drink, especially when I’ve found that my friends are just as friendly, nice and fun when I’m sober.
Overall, it’s a vicious cycle, and a lot of the things that keep you drinking can keep you not drinking if you can manage to break out.
<3 <3 <3 am
am- Thanks. The more I go through this, the more I want to hear other people’s stories of how they got and remain sober. I think it’s interesting to realize that -as your story seems to bear out- addiction is a physical problem, a disorder of the brain, and some of the things that make it easier not to use are basic, physical, even mundane things. I know I’ve been waiting for some grand epiphany to magically cure me of my cravings! Which for addicts, I think is pretty common- maybe even universal.
Naltrexone- I didn’t know about it interfering with narcotics. Do you know how long it takes to leave your body, should you need narcotics in a hurry? Narcotic abuse isn’t an issue for me, thankfully (it was illuminating for me to find that out, as it reinforced my belief that a lot of this is physical- the brain likes what it likes).
It doesn’t surprise me a bit that most suicide attempts are done under the influence of heavy intoxication, and your point about suicide attempts leading to permanent disability is spot on. I have a cousin who, after a failed overdose, wound up with an instant case of what looks like late stage Parkinson’s. Addiction can lead people to a place far uglier than they can imagine, and while it usually takes a while, sometimes it can happen in an instant.
You sound like you’re doing wonderfully, and that’s great to hear. Thanks again.
It’s definitely physical, at least much of it. I have a great uncle who died of DTs, which I didn’t know until I was older, and my sister had genetic testing done that showed a predisposition to addiction to/excessive enjoyment from drugs. I’m the only immediate family member with a real substance abuse issue but the mood issues are four generations deep. /:
I’m not exactly sure but I’m pretty sure it only lasts as long as it’s in your system and since it’s a daily medication with a 4 hour half-life, it shouldn’t be long-term, irreversible effect. I know when I had a kidney stone, I didn’t take naltrexone that morning and by late that night or the next day the narcotics were working again.
Oh, also: America Anonymous (http://www.americaanonymous.com/) is a great book on addiction. Some of the quotes have stuck with me throughout all the ups and downs. I’ve saved so many of them.
Thank you and you’re welcome.
Best of luck and feel free to ask me any questions you have,
<3am
Olympia, the library is a great resiurce on sobriety. The book which helped me through the immediate problems of detox, and no, I can’t remember the name, took a physiological approach. The authors advised a low-sugar diet, vitamin B supplementation, and hard workouts. The Y membership worked off my nerves and assured that I couldn’t drink up the payments. New research indicates that wheat compounds activate and bind to opiate receptors, so eschewing starches may be advisable. Constant drinking causes constant insulin secretion so doing a modified diabetic diet should quell some of the cravings. Sauna, sweatlodge, or sunbathing will sweat out toxins. Get a doctor’s permission for this. Give sobriety a try-remember, total idiots have done it for entire lifetimes, so it’s not as difficult as it looks through the bottom of a bottle.
There is no reason to tan or sweat for sobriety. “Toxins” are removed from the body by its normal functions. That’s what the liver does. Tanning has no medicinal benefit. There is no reason to do any “detox” diet in order to quit drinking.
And according to a study on alcoholics I found, “Most abnormal results reverted to normal on an adequate diet with 112g protein daily or without ethanol, and ethanol had no detrimental effect on normal pancreatic function when given with a normal diet.”
Angie unduplicated- Thanks! I am keenly interested in the physiological side of things- looking to rearrange my brain molecules by any positive means possible. I have been looking into how my diet might be affecting me- I am a rather huge carb junkie, as are many drunks. :), and the idea of eating lower carb is pretty unfathomable to me, but I’m definitely interested in the connections between diet/addiction/everything else!
I utilized this sobriety program over 20 years ago, and medical knowledge has improved since that time. I will vouch for its results, though, when combined with low-stress employment. I did mention saunas but not tanning beds, which are known carcinogens, as is ethanol.