CN: ADDICTION
I can't pinpoint the date I decided to go sober, but I know the month. It was a Saturday in November 2011. The week before, I had utterly blown a relationship after less than half a year, and it could all be put down to booze and drugs. There were other factors, of course, but they all grew from those gardens in one way or another.
To compensate, I had a week of coping by going out every night and beating my liver up as brutally as possible. By Saturday morning rolled around, I knew I had had enough. The week's escapades hadn't helped, and they hadn't even been fun or funny. The tipping point came that Friday night. It wasn't a dramatic evening. It was profoundly mediocre. I spent the after-work hours drinking with a friend when he decided we should go to Canary Wharf. I obliged, but we lost each other about ten minutes after arriving. Stuck there by myself, contemplating what to do next, I caught my reflection in the giant mirrors of whatever gaudy, sterile bar I was unfortunate enough to be in. Clad in a cheap suit, sipping overpriced piss water, and surrounded by vapid people, I loathed what I saw.
The image didn't hit me like a meteor or anything overly dramatic. It wasn't like the room suddenly went silent, and clarity dawned on me from heaven. The moment was more subtle. The figure in the reflection precisely looked like how I felt, and it was deflating. I could see that the fun was long gone, and my image of myself as a hard-living rogue was bullshit. I was lonely. I was bored. I was poor. I was tired. I was heartbroken.
I wanted to be anyone other than myself, and I wanted to be anywhere other than Canary Wharf.
On Saturday, when I eventually woke up, I contemplated seriously if I should commit myself to drying out. I was finally telling myself honestly that I had problems I needed to deal with and that I could only do it sober. It felt freeing and empowering, but it also gave me unmatched anxiety. Regardless, I soldiered on. By that evening, I was pouring out the wine I had in the fridge and had downloaded a copy of 'The Easyway to Stop Drinking' for my kindle. It is ridiculous that within 24 hours, I had gone from trying to bury pain under litres of booze and drugs to a firm commitment to sobriety. But I also felt like I no longer had a choice. Once you acknowledge that you've got a problem, it's tough to shove that genie back in the bottle.
I wish I could say that was the end of things. But it rarely works out like that. That moment was just the start of a 26-month-long journey towards drying out completely. Many trip specifics aren't essential for this discussion because they are immensely personal and often embarrassing. But, it does need to be stated that they were 26 challenging months where things got much worse before they got better. I got clean numerous times, only to inevitably rebound in horrifying, scary ways. During those rebounds, I would abuse dangerous levels of drugs and alcohol with a feverish intensity that I never had, even in my worst pre-2011 days. It was bleak, and there were whole days when I sobbed alone in a dark room, thinking I would never escape my torture.
It took heroic levels of support and sacrifice from my family in the ensuing years to get to where I am now. To cut a very long story short, I have been completely sober and clean for six and a half years. I'm honestly not sure I would even still be around without sobriety. I wouldn't be living this life with my family if I was. The difference in my life is incomparable by every conceivable metric. My sobriety defines a lot of who I am and has helped shape me into somebody that, generally speaking, I'm getting more proud of each day. I might be more than my sobriety in total, but at the same time, I am nothing without it.
So why the long, self-indulgent recap?
So why the long, self-indulgent recap? Well, along with my other worries about having a baby, the fear of relapse weighs on my mind. This can sometimes be difficult to reconcile because I don't necessarily agree with the wisdom that addiction is a disease. While I appreciate why people frame the issue this way, I'm still unsure if it's the right way to think about it. Addiction is a severe affliction, and it can be fatal, just like many diseases can be. But I can't 'catch' a relapse or be struck down with one simply because of genetics. At some level, there would still have to be active participation from me. I would have to cross the relapse bridge myself.
So if I think I have the choice to stay sober, then I shouldn't be scared, right?
Well...no. Because sobriety is painfully and terrifyingly tenuous. Sobriety is like an experimental plane from the 1920s. It can fly, and it can achieve incredible feats. But you need a determined aviator with a lot of energy because flying the damn thing is enormous work. The pilot has to always be on their toes. They must be able to patch up holes in the flimsy walls. They must be able to navigate back to their path in freezing darkness when the plane gets blown off course. They must continually fix the engines to ensure they keep running instead of catching fire. Without this constant attention to detail and maintenance, the plane would fail and fall out of the sky.
There is a good reason why aviators didn't take newborn babies into the sky with them.
As it stands, I do a lot of work to keep my plane in the air. It's not conscious work anymore. I have spent several years pivoting my life towards lifestyle patterns that allow me to stay well-rounded and rested (relatively speaking). For example, while it might not appear to be the case if you look at me, I exercise quite a bit, predominantly to sustain positive mental health. I also no longer hang out in pubs or many social settings because I find it increasingly uncomfortable. Perhaps most importantly, I have a lot of downtimes where I indulge in hobbies and new learning excursions (such as this whole podcasting project). Basically, I keep busy through curiosity and through being selfish in my life. Ironically, this form of selfishness makes me a better husband and a much nicer person.
This has all inevitably changed now that we have a child. I can't be as selfish anymore because I'm not the most essential thing in my life anymore. And that's definitely not a bad thing in itself. But I am woefully anxious. Because before we had our baby, I spent years maintaining sobriety by carefully altering my life where it was needed.
And I'm scared that if I can't keep doing that, I might make a mistake and lose a mental battle when I'm weakest.
It's difficult to describe what it's like to be at your weakest and facing a relapse. But for argument's sake, try to imagine what it would be like if you could get mosquito bites directly in your brain. When you get your second or third bite, you will know that you shouldn't scratch it because sticking a finger in your brain is the stupidest idea imaginable. Yet like with any itch, the more you tried to avoid thinking about it, the more inflamed it would begin to feel.
If you didn't have sound strategies to work around the itch, it would just sap your energy until you began to crack. Since our memories have the incredible knack of being unable to recall what pain feels like, you would start to bargain with yourself. You would convince yourself that the last time you stuck your finger in your brain, the fallout wasn't that bad. You would also remind yourself that you stopped scratching eventually, so you could do it again if you got another infection.
After finally wearing yourself down, you'd snap and scratch with everything you've got. You'd be hit with that combination of self-hatred and pure euphoria that our tiny brains have no idea how to process. That complex combination would likely result in you scratching away until you're again lying in agony.
I'm not sure that analogy works. But hopefully, you get the point of what I'm trying to say. I might be worried about nothing. As we speak, I don't want to stick my finger on my skull. Conversely, this has been the most challenging year of my life. And I know there will be new things coming up very soon that I'm not prepared for and won't be able to prepare for. So the status quo I live in now means nothing for the future.
The change that freaks me out the most in this regard is the arrival of this unparalleled fatigue that we've had over the past year. And that was one of my biggest fears before we had Ava.
Now, I understand that parents think it's really hilarious when they tell the mere mortals without children that they have no idea what it's like to be truly tired. But before we had a baby, it would make me antsy when a parent scoffed at me and told me, ‘oh, you have no idea what tired is’. I would get these powerful pangs of panic-laced anxiety. The reason for that is fatigue is one of the biggest triggers that can lead people to use drugs because fatigue affects every part of your mind and body.
I know that fatigue changes mean to someone I don't like; I've experienced that plenty. Over the past year, I have become irritable and mean and depressed and lazy and bitter. I get angry at my one-year-old daughter, who has no idea why what she's doing could be annoying for me because she's literally one, and it's just part of her developmental journey. I can see myself from outside my body being unresponsive, cold and grumpy with the people I love. Yet, I still end up doing it because I lack the energy actually to interject. Like many people, fatigue wears down my resolve, leading to me making bad decisions.
Because of this, I get why parents would use drugs to combat overwhelming tiredness. Sedatives like booze, weed and opiates make sense in the context of parenting. They give you an endorphin rush that helps you lose focus on your exhaustion. Then they help you sleep, which can be like a gift from God. Speed-focused drugs like amphetamines, meanwhile, can give parents the power to flat-out ignore sleep. With just a bit of speed, they could get everything that keeps a household running while feeling human. How can that not sound appealing?
Some parents might be able to use different drugs in moderation to help keep them fresh. They are gifted people who can mask problems like fatigue for a moment and deal with them reasonably. They don't just keep accruing loan-shark debt levels on their mental health balance.
That's not me, though. I can't start masking problems like fatigue, or I will never stop. When I begin masking problems, I will create new issues that I will try and mask. It's a vicious circle, and it's punishingly cliche. Instead, I usually have to deal with my fatigue by resting and sleeping, which is pretty much impossible if you've got a sick one-year-old, an ill six-month-old, a sick three-month-old, a sick nine-month-old, or a sick eight-month-old. If you have a sick baby, don't expect to sleep - expect to be screamed at.
Gems and I have always had fantastic open communication, and we continuously work on it, but even this has taken a hit with the arrival of a baby. We used to not have that much responsibility, and we were flexible. So it gave us time to work on those things. Now it's working when we're already working at the job and home with Ava. What's terrifying as well is that Ava is a pretty good kid. I mean, I know she's pretty good. She's my kid. I've seen her. I know that she's lovely. She has had some challenges, like getting sick, which has necessitated multiple hospital trips. But she's a pretty good sleeper, generally speaking, and she's pretty pleasant. Now, that's an understatement. She's got an absolutely wonderful personality. Even with all that, we still experienced fatigue this past year, as neither of us had ever imagined.
I am worried that this will increase with time, and as the stresses get more intense and my ability to handle them gets worse and worse, the precarious stability of the past eight years is going to disarray. I worry that more sleep deprivation will bring more self-loathing, self-doubt, anxiety, panic, depression, isolation, and guilt. I feel like even though it's hit me with an intensity I've never experienced already, it’s going to get worse, and I'm not going to know how to counteract that. Because it's still all new to me, and there is no step-by-step handbook on this. My immediate and extended family watch out for us all the time. They're amazing. But it's still really nerve-wracking, knowing that my sobriety will be strained more than it's ever been when I need it, more than I've ever needed it before.
As I said before, perhaps I'm taking us all a bit seriously, and I shouldn't be so worried. Maybe I'm overthinking things and letting my anxiety run away with my logical brain. Maybe things will get much easier in the near future, and I won't have anything to worry about. Perhaps we'll get to sleep eight hours a night for the rest of our lives.
But I also don't think I should apologise for being overanxious about this. Putting my issues aside, drug and alcohol abuse in the home is a colossal problem we as a community still have trouble facing up to.
A staggering third of families in Aotearoa face issues with substance abuse, and episodes of family harm involving alcohol and/or drugs are on the rise. This is why I am confident that if you're reading this, you know children affected by family addiction. There's even a distinct possibility that your own children have been affected, or your childhood was.
I mentioned earlier that there are undoubtedly parents that can use alcohol and/or some drugs in moderation. I do believe that. What most of us know from personal experience, however, is that there are also plenty that can't. There are swathes of parents with substance problems who won't or can't acknowledge them.
Some won't because they feel fearful, and you can't be angry about that. Addiction doesn't happen overnight. It's a long trek with lots of little steps, and it's sneaky. I can vouch that it's hard to realise that you might have crossed the Rubicon. You prolong facing up to your addictions as long as possible because it is scary and makes you feel like a failure.
These folks are usually the ones that wouldn't judge their friends for acknowledging their issues. Still, they don't gift themselves the same compassion. They continue to overpower their inner voice, telling them they have a problem, even though it hurts like hell.
In contrast, I believe that others refuse to acknowledge their issues out of ignorance and sometimes plain arrogance. These people will perform all kinds of rituals to convince themselves and everyone around them that being unable to get through the day without beer or a spliff is fine. They might stop using it for maybe a week or a month to prove to everyone they can do it. During these short-term efforts, they will be miserable to everyone around them, and they won't acknowledge it. After self-imposed abstinence, they often 'reward' themselves by going extra hard with their usage.
It's not surprising, considering we glorify these triumphs of effort as a nation. Having a whole annual charity based around Dry July sends such a strange message. It shouldn't feel like a feat for someone to give up drinking for a single month.
More depressingly, some won't even go that far with their performances. Instead, they will make a huge deal out of meaningless gestures. They might commit to no longer drinking spirits (at home), or they'll make a show of calling their spouse to inform them that they will be just having a couple of drinks with their friend. They'll pat themselves on the back for their show of good faith, and things will be beautiful for a couple of weeks. Like clockwork, though, things will slip. A couple will become a few. A few will then become several. Then spirits will become the more sensible, economical choice. The communication will vanish, and their kids will return to walking on eggshells just in case mum or dad is in a mood.
The idea of being that person haunts me. When I've seen those people in real life, I have been left feeling helpless, useless, and full of despair. I don't think I am better than them - it's the opposite. My last couple of years as an addict may have been humble, but I've perfectly played the arrogant addict before. I am only human, and I don't doubt that I am that person all over in another scenario.
The moment you stop paying attention to where your plane is flying is the moment you crash into a mountain range you thought you had already cleared. The fact that vision haunts me so much gives me some confidence that my plane won't follow that course. But I don't think I'll ever stop fearing it, and I don't think I should stop worrying about it.
Even if I get to old age with a grown-up child, and my sobriety intact, I don't think I've earned the right to stop worrying about the condition of my plane. That might make me insufferable. But I don't know any other way to be on this topic.