Most people don’t just wake up one day to discover that they are an alcoholic. It is oftentimes a slow but progressive descent into madness. I compare it to taking a leisurely swim in the ocean without awareness of the ever changing tides and currents, suddenly you look up and realize you are much further from shore than you thought and the swim back to the beach is formidable compared to the mindless float out.
I see that stunned face of the tired person looking at the long swim back to safety a few times a week in my office as I see clients who come in for their new consultation for outpatient treatment. They scan me and my office, I usually try to put on a blazer of some kind, dust under my chair with a swiffer and pull back my copious amount of hair (hey, first impressions count right?) They peer at the titles in my bookcase and my degrees hanging above the couch. I suppose they are trying to make a quick determination of whether they have come to the right place and if I am actually capable of helping them. Some are defensive, some tearful, some are still drunk, but almost everyone at some point utters, “How the hell did I get here.”
Usually to everyone else in their life who is close to them, their steady decline was obvious. When family members accompany the client in session, I often refer to them as the “historian.” They are the silent observers, documenting year by year the client’s increasingly toxic relationship with their substance of choice. With some time in sobriety, my client’s become very good historians of their own lives, but at first, the narrative told by those who were a witness to their decline, often sound like they are telling the story of someone else's life.
I know this sounds obvious, but I feel like it needs to be stated, no one wants to be an alcoholic. No one includes it on their vision board or five year plan. For many, the label of alcoholic stirs up negative associations to people we often at worst perceive to be weak and at best pitiable. We think of that red faced uncle at the Christmas party who told dirty jokes and fell asleep in the cheese tray by the end of the night. We think about people who exist on the fringes of society, shooting up in public bathrooms and drinking out of brown paper bags. And although addiction does exist in these stereotypes, when you don’t identify with one of these alcoholic tropes, it is easy to start to excuse a bottle of wine a night (who are we kidding, at least 2 bottles).
The facade of a well managed life becomes the obstacle for many of my clients getting the help they need. I remember when I completed my lifeguard training in high-school, one of the first things we learned is that most drownings are silent, addiction is much the same. The perpetuated stereotypes of addiction are a disservice to many struggling with this disease. What I often hear is “I run a successful business, my children make good grades at school, I own a beautiful home, I have no legal issues, how could I possibly be an alcoholic?” With closer inspection what is often revealed is that they have worked tremendously hard over the years to check off the boxes in hopes that no one will notice that they are silently drowning. They pull themselves into work every morning, operating as if they always have a low grade flu, they are checked out of their important relationships and their inner emotional world is spiraling into darkness. The recognition that they are merely surviving their own lives can serve as the proverbial “rock bottom,” that many think is required in order for addicts to get help.
Although I believe there are many paths to sobriety, Alcoholics Anonymous got it right when they wrote down the first step to healing as “we admitted to ourselves we were powerless over alcohol-that our lives had become unmanageable.” I know the first step sits wrong with some people who don't want to admit that they are powerless over something. I have never interpreted it as a lack of personal power, but rather a mindful awareness that after many attempts and sometimes decades of struggling, the most loving thing a person can do for themselves is to stop fighting with something that they will never be able to control or moderate. Admitting this to yourself is incredibly scary but can also be incredibly liberating.
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