The Lapse

I'm about to get really real. Over the past three years I have been to 3 rehabs and about a dozen behavioral health hospitals. It still amazes me that addiction is as they say cunning, baffling, and powerful. It all started when i was about 11, I had a traumatic event in life and started eating for comfort. I gained weight and got bigger through my teen years and my pregnancy with my son. Eventually with adult onset type two diabetes and insulin resistance and a slew of other health issues I was forced to have gastric bypass and basically I was forced to give up my addiction. Not even a year after I had lost 200 pounds and started drinking, but only on the weekends. Unfortunately I could no longer handle my alcohol like a normal drinker. Alcohol abuse running in my family also didn't help much either. I found myself in detox facilities, having the cops called on me by significant others and really close friends, having emotional breakdowns in bars, falling down, blacking out but I enjoyed the numb it gave me, I used any and every excuse to drink. Celebrating, being stressed, angry, anxious, sad whatever feeling or emotion I was going through I used to drink. Soon I started stealing and selling my parents pain medications. Then I was taking up to thirty pills a day for my pain of being a dental assistant for 14 years, but boy was a I a total Butch on painkillers. My parents would hide them, I would find them, they would lock them up I would find the key or pick the lock. Then I started huffing air duster ( canned computer cleaner) this soon became my favorite, it was euphoric. It was cheap and easily bought at Walmart and office supply stores. I was also drinking in the morning to start my day and on my lunch break at work to get through to happy hour. I would also hide alcohol in my room and drink at home until I would pass out. Things started to get really dangerous when I started drinking with my son in the car I would pour shooters in my beverage cup to make it through birthday parties and family functions. Have waitresses put shots in my soda cup while out to family dinners. Soon I was huffing in my car because it was the only place I could and not get caught by my family. I passed out and lit a cigarette half out of it and the gases in the car had built up and I caught myself and the car on fire. My brother picked me up and took me to the ER. I was transported to Denver to the only burn center in the state. It was the most horrible pain I had ever been in. still 3 weeks later I was huffing in the car again, with the windows cracked, because you know that made it better and I might not catch on fire. Cunning, baffling and powerful I tell you. This cycle didn't stop even after 4 DUIs in a month, a 30 day rehab, my first sober living. Finally I went to jail for a while. It was eye opening. I was let out and was fine for about 5 weeks, but the first time I wasn't with someone I lost it I drank which lead to everything else. I had to turn myself   into probation for violating I was there for another 4 months and I went straight to Inpatient Residential Treatment, IRT. I still belonged to the state of Colorado. It was a 90 day treatment and it was not a bouji, it was a step up from jail. I learned so many things there, which you can read about in my first post Just me. Once I completed treatment I came straight to Grit Grounds recovery home for women. This house and these women changed my life.

After Thanksgiving,  feeling lonely, depressed etc I found myself temping in a dental office and at lunch time I was restocking and found 3 cans of air duster. I immediately obtained them and went to the parking lot and in public huffed until I passed out for over an hour. Then I went all out and ubered to Walmart got a lot more and got a room. I should be dead, or mentally disabled. God  has a plan for me. But my ego had separated myself from him E-edging G- God O- out. EGO. But with GOD G- good O- orderly D- direction I can conquer this. I was lucky enough to have support from the owners and management of GG's I was allowed back home with alot more rules and stipulations.   And thank God. I was 1 month and 12 days away from having a year clean. They say you mentally relapse before you pick up and I feel for me that is definitely true. I held everything in, I didn't share at meetings, I started isolating, I distanced myself even more from my new boundaries with my family and the ladies in house. I stopped working a program, and because I always look OKAY everyone thought I was OKAY! The holidays are hard, distance physically and emotionally from my family was really hard.

But the 14 hours I did not come home I had a house full of women worried sick about me. I was too selfish in my addiction to reach out and just say hey I'm doing what I want I'm alive leave me alone. And until someone your really close to goes back out you don't understand how it feels. I just call it a LAPSE because I came back I didn't go out for weeks or months or until I was back in jail or dead, I surrendered again, I want to be alive I don't want prison for my future. Being so close to that year I was really down on myself for a few weeks.  I finally changed my clean date on the board, I cried, a lot.   And I reached out to my mom  told her how I felt and that I wanted and needed here to be more apart of my life that I missed her! We went to lunch and it had been heavy on my heart- the lapse. I told her. I told her that if she had to cut me off that I would understand, that anything she wanted to say I would listen and that if she wanted me to tell my dad and my son that I would, even if that meant no contact for an indefinite amount of time. I wanted to take ownership and accountability for my actions. It felt so good to tell her. She cried, I cried. I found out about a week ago that she had told my dad and since then I have seen my son several times, he has always been the one to say one more time and we are done with you for good. I haven't found the right time to talk to him about it alone. Though I will, I need to. I never thought keeping something to myself would be so hard. I've lied and manipulated my whole life, I'm selfish, I want what I want and I want it now, but it feels so good to think of others before myself, not just do things for others to get something in return. I spent the day with my family today and though after 5 hours my anxiety is through the roof it was a really great day. I was officially invited- months after invitations were mailed out, to my brothers wedding, my actions, my program, everything I'm doing in recovery is paying off in a big way. I still have my big, loud, smart assed family and they LOVE me. It feels good. It also feels good to be able to leave what once was my home and come home to 8 amazing ladies who want to know how it went and they get my anxiety and just get IT. This is home, it's my safe place, these ladies are all my personal therapists in different ways. My boyfriend went home with me today too, he is also in recovery. He said he understands a lot about who I am from being around my family. He was invited to the wedding too. What I love most about my sobriety is that my son sees the changes I'm making how my program and recovery is affecting how I speak and have relationships with people. Something so silly happened while we were together tonight and I belly laughed so hard and he laughed with me and we were just feeding off each other's laughter it was so nice. Who would have thought laughing and having a good time would be possible.  I embrace my feelings and emotions these days and voice them and sit with them when I need to. I'm grateful today that my sobriety let's me feel happiness, enjoy laughter, embrace my inner silly.  Also the little things in life mean so much now.