An Alcoholic Relapses

It's been fourteen months since I walked into my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. It's about thirteen months since I admitted that I am an alcoholic and I am powerless over alcohol. It's about twelve months since I started working the Twelve Steps. Why did I buy the bottle of Margaritas and drink it on December 21st?

As I walked into Wal-Mart I noticed how crowded it was. People everywhere, a backup of the line to get a cart, children running to keep up with their parents. It was the usual hectic scene I'd expect to see four days before Christmas. The door into the food section of the store was the first entry portal for me. I worked my way between parked carts and loitering shoppers. I didn't have a cart; I only needed a few things.

Right in front of me was a huge display of Asti Spumante. I believe it's a kind of sparkling wine. I have probably drunk it at some point in my life; I just don't remember specifically what it tastes like. For some reason the color and shape of the bottles caught my attention and fascinated me. I reached out tentatively and touched the foil on the neck of a bottle. It looked so festive and felt completely innocent and benign beneath my fingertips. In a second my mind was made up. I headed towards the back of the store.

It seems to me looking back, my brain went on automatic pilot at that moment. While something deep inside me tried to resist the impulse that ensnared me, the larger part of my mind sort of switched off and let go of control. In a minute I was standing in the aisle with the already mixed bottles of Margaritas. Before I was arrested fourteen months ago for drunk driving and before I began to go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, this was my drink of choice. I had to stoop a bit to get one of the large bottles off the second shelf from the floor. While the larger part of my mind noted that the price of a bottle had been reduced, a small voice in there somewhere said, "No! No!" I shook my head a bit and headed towards the check out counters.

A few feet after leaving the liquor section, I realized that I was walking up the main aisle of the busiest store in town four days before Christmas carrying a very large bottle of hooch in my hand. Me, the one who attends at least five Alcoholics Anonymous meetings a week. What was I doing? Someone might see me! What could I say if anyone challenged me? I'd tell them that the bottle's a Christmas present for a friend who still drinks; a friend without a drinking problem. I knew how lame that would sound if another recovering alcoholic approached me and my face flushed with the realization.

To the right was the men's clothing section. I hurried between coats, long johns and shoppers, keeping the bottle close to my thigh, until I found the t-shirts. I grabbed a shirt in size small. It would be just right for my friend John who would be joining us Christmas Day. Perfect. I wrapped it around the bottle and took off again for the check-out counters. I looked left and right and even behind me a time or two. It was a miracle. There was no one in sight who knew me.

I had to unwrap the bottle at the check-out counter. Again I looked around and saw no one who would care one way or another if I was buying booze. My heart pounded in my chest so hard that I was sure the clerk could hear it. She scanned the bottle first and sat it near the bags. My mind screamed, "Put the damn thing in a sack!" It seemed to take her forever to find the scan bar on the t-shirt. For a second I feared she was going to call for a price check. My breath was short and my temperature rising. I kept scanning the other counters and hall, literally praying that no one I knew would see me paying for that bottle.

Finally the woman bagged the booze and the shirt. I fumbled the money out of my purse and grabbed the bag. I was about to hurry off when she said, "Here's your change." The man putting his purchases on the belt looked up at me. I blushed again and stuck out my hand. All I wanted to do was get out of the store and back in my car.

Finally outside, I hurried to my car with the bag clutched against my chest. Jerking open the unlocked back door, I put the sack carefully on the seat behind the driver area. I didn't want it to fall and possibly break if I had to stop suddenly. Backing up, I was losing patience with the dawdling shoppers walking behind my car. The steady stream of people parted long enough for me to get out of the parking lot and onto the main road.

I congratulated myself for putting the liquor in the back seat. At least I wouldn't be tempted to open the bag and break the seal on the bottle while sitting at one of the traffic lights on the way home. I was nervous and jumpy and I drove too fast on the way home. Still, I had time to think about what I was doing.

Why was I doing this? What was triggering this stubborn attitude? I had decided to drink and nothing could stop me. I felt as though I'd dropped into a slot and had to take the inevitable route to the end. I was going to drink. I was going to drink a lot, and I didn't care about the consequences.

My sister Anne is seven years my senior. She'd been arrested the week before on a drunk driving charge. She was picked up near her home driving in a drunken black out. She spent the night in jail. My nieces called me and told me the story. Even though I knew my sister was also an alcoholic, the fact that she'd been arrested kept popping into my thoughts, waking me up from sleep. She was in a mental hospital in Kansas City for detoxification. Her daughters took her there directly from jail. She was supposed to go to a thirty day inpatient treatment program when she left detox. I knew she'd find some way not to go to the inpatient facility. She'd filled my thoughts the past few days. Did it have anything to do with my decision to drink?

Mom is 80 and has advanced emphysema. She moved in with my husband and me two years ago. She wasn't able to live alone anymore. She wasn't able to do any household chores or even walk from one room to another in her small apartment. We remodeled our family room into a roomy space for her. We put some of her own furniture there. She has a private half bath. She seems to be content. Sometimes this arrangement is hard on me mentally. When Mom first moved in I was working at a home for developmentally disabled adults. I tried to work and get my two daughters to help me care for Mom, but after a month I saw that it just wasn't going to work. I quit my job with a promise to myself that I'd go back someday. So I miss my job. It was the first job I'd had since I was 19. There are many times that I'd like to go somewhere or my husband and I would like to go out of town for the weekend, but it's impossible unless one of my daughters comes to stay with Mom while we're gone. It has complicated my life. Is Mom a factor in my stumble?

I started drinking on a daily basis not long after my Mom moved in with us. I felt I should spend most of the evenings with her. I felt odd about being off doing something with Mom sitting in her room alone. We don't like the same type of television shows. She likes celebrity gossip shows, Larry King, and historic documentaries. She controls the remote control in her room. She also hates to watch commercials so when one comes on she switches the channel searching for something else. She often forgets what show she was originally watching. I grit my teeth sometimes to keep from saying something ugly to her about channel hopping. Trying to make the best of the situation, I usually have a book with me and tune out the television completely. I started having a couple of drinks every night when I learned how much they relaxed me; how incredibly fast the evening passed when I'd "had a few." Before long I wasn't drinking two glasses of Margaritas, I was drinking half a bottle each evening, then finally, a whole bottle. Time went by quickly because I was blacking out. Some nights I forgot to give Mom her bedtime medicine. Sometimes my husband had to put her to bed when he got home at 11:30. My life was spinning out of control.

Time and again I promised myself I'd stop drinking. I just would. I was tired of the hung-over aches surging through my body every day. Tired of being sick at my stomach; tired of the cramps in my intestines. I was disgusted with myself on one level, but if anyone else brought up my new drinking habits I went on the defensive. All I wanted to do was get through each day a little easier. Couldn't everyone see that? Why couldn't my husband and daughters leave me alone? All they wanted to do was make me stop having a good time in the evenings. They didn't understand. I kept drinking. No matter what great promises I made to myself and God in the morning, by three in the afternoon I'd be at one store or another buying alcohol. I told myself I didn't "have" to drink, I just wanted to.

My hands shook worse than my 80 year old Mother's. I could hardly sign my name or write a sentence legibly. My manicurist cocked her head and looked at me strangely because my hands shook so much she could hardly polish my nails. I told her I was getting Parkinson's Disease. At the time I thought I was very clever to think of that to tell her. Now I know she must have smelled the booze on my breath and knew perfectly well why my hands were shaking like the dead leaves on the trees outside.

And here I was in my own kitchen, my now steady hands clutched around yet another bottle of booze, the first in fourteen months. I had to work at it pretty hard to get the top unscrewed. I laughed somewhere inside myself thinking of how stupid it would be if I got this far and then couldn't get the bottle open. I twisted the top with a sudden burst of energy and drank my first taste straight from the bottle. As soon as the bottle touched my lips I hated myself. What was I doing? Why was I doing it? How could I be doing this to myself again after all I'd been through in the past year? I wanted to throw the bottle through the window and get far away from it but I knew I would hug it near me until it was empty.

I woke up the next morning while my husband still slept beside me. Panic wafted over me when I realized I couldn't remember the previous night. What happened when my husband got home? Had we fought or was I already asleep? Had I hidden the bottle or left it out for him to find? Had I given my Mom her medicine and put her to bed? I had no memory at all since standing in the kitchen drinking straight from the bottle. I slipped out of bed and padded to the kitchen for a drink of water. There in the middle of the counter, looking as big as the Statue of Liberty, was the Margarita bottle. Dead center on the counter, meant to mock me as soon as I walked into the room. I knew my husband must have left it there like that.

When my husband woke I spent a long time apologizing to him. He wasn't really interested in how sorry I was. He wanted to know why I threw my sobriety away for an evening with my old friend, the bottle. I didn't know what to say to him because I didn't know why myself. The question kept pounding through my aching brain, "Why?" "Why?"

My AA sponsor is a pragmatic, practical woman. When I told her that I'd relapsed and how, she shook her head back and forth a few times. When I started to apologize she held up a hand to stop me. "Don't tell me you're sorry. Figure out why it happened. One reason is that you are an alcoholic and this is what alcoholics do. But you have to come up with the rest of the reason. I want you to go to two meetings a day for the next two weeks."

That was two weeks ago last Thursday. Since then I've been to lots of AA meetings, I've read the AA big book's first 164 pages. That's where the Twelve Steps are outlined. I've started back on Step One: "We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol -- that our lives had become unmanageable." My life was certainly unmanageable when I drank. So much so that I ended up being arrested for drunk driving at nine o'clock in the morning. Why had I stumbled on my road to recovery? How could I make sure it wouldn't happen again?

I don't know the answers to those questions yet. I do know that alcoholism is a baffling, powerful and dangerous disease. It is a disease that progresses and ends in death. I know I can't go back to using alcohol. I'm trying to reestablish a relationship with my higher power. I'm taking it easy and trying not to beat myself up too much. It scares me that I can't point to something in particular that happened that caused me to relapse. Did my sister being in detox have anything to do with it? Did the pressure of getting ready for Christmas affect me? I know self pity is a sure way to relapse again. I am trying to concentrate on what's good in my life. I'm trying to remember that there are many things I have no control over. I have to accept life on life's terms or I will end up drunk again.

God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.