Recovery Round One

Everyone knows a cat has nine lives. I've had fewer to date, but it begs the question since we are talking about addiction (and we are): How many recoveries do I have left? 

My first recovery, like my first love, is worth recounting.

In 1983, I was addicted to Valium. I was also drinking quite a bit. For awhile, I stopped drinking, but I couldn’t let go of my little yellow buddies. They gave me the courage to do absolutely nothing with my life. 

It didn't take too many long spans of inertia to determine that what I thought was helping was in reality destroying my body ... and my will. I asked my prescribing psychiatrist at the time, a savior-turned drug-dealer in a suit and tie in Century City, if he could help me get off Valium. He adamantly assured me he could not. 

One stormy day in May, I stomped out of his office on Wilshire Boulevard clutching his handwritten prescription for Valium. The water was up to my knees as I navigated the parking lot, but I was less concerned about getting electrocuted than the 'script getting damp, unreadable and un-fillable! Everything was wrong with the picture, yet, I was too busy being in denial to note that I had any problem whatsoever.

Serendipitously, a writing instructor I knew told me about Overeaters' Anonymous, aka OA, after casually mentioning how much prettier I’d be if I lost weight. That comment prompted me to go to my first OA meeting. A dozen women and maybe one guy sat in chairs situated in a circle harping about their mantra: abstinence. Now this was a notion I could not comprehend. What they were talking about? Restriction, I understood, thanks to mother, but abstinence? I was not having it. 

As I was ready to leave, I overheard someone say they were heading to yet another 12-step meeting: Alcoholic Anonymous. Since I was busy doing nothing that year, I decided to give AA a whirl. The clubhouse was on Ohio Street in West Los Angeles. There must have been over 100 people there, and I was terrified. Fear took a back seat to belonging, though, when the first speaker told my story. She was addicted to pills and so was I! I was finally home.

After tear-filled rituals and vulnerable shares, the meeting ended and I headed to the door thinking maybe no one will notice me.  A woman with kind eyes approached and asked "Are you an alcoholic?" 

“No,” was my knee-jerk response, not considering that blacking out and hitting two parked
cars while driving the car my parents bought for me made me an alcoholic.

She held space, letting my response linger in the silence, before I shared that I was addicted to pills in general and Valium specifically.

“So was I, but that was 10 years ago and I haven’t had a pill since.”

That must have taken a miracle, I thought. I was looking for a miracle. Susan F. gave me her phone number and told me to call her. I called her the next day, assuming she wanted something from me, most likely money. But she genuinely and only wanted to help me. That, in my heart and mind, was the miracle. She told me I couldn’t do this alone. I needed help. She suggested I go to St.John’s Chemical Dependency Center. I had no money to pay for that, but my parents did! They had oodles of it. Surely they would help me wouldn’t they? I hadn’t spoken to them in years, but I had nowhere else to turn.

In a rare episode of heartfelt honesty, I called my mother and told her my dilemma. She, in turn, called my father. I entered a rehab program that day, having taken my last pill ... for 30 years ... until I relapsed.

I've since learned that relapse is part of recovery, and my first was as spectacular as it was tragic.  But that's another chapter altogether.