The world is in a pandemic right now, and people are stressed. Statistics show huge jumps in various addictions for escaping psychic pain. As we enter September, which is National Recovery Month, I’d like to share my story of recovery, and how being joined to the Body of Christ through Holy Comforter has continued to support me in the abundant life I now enjoy. I can testify that even in the midst of a pandemic there is Hope.
In 1983, if someone had told me then that I would be here in Northern Virginia and be married to a loving and responsible husband for 32 years, I don’t think I would have believed them. I was suffering in the deep throes of alcoholism, and I believed the only way out of the horror was to end my life. I had briefly considered trying to stop drinking, but every time that thought came to me, something deep inside said, “I can’t give it up,” and besides (I decided), alcohol wasn’t the problem anyway. After all, I only drank innocent white wine, and I taught orchestra in the public schools, so obviously my problem was not alcohol. The “real” problem was that my life was full of all these mean people around me who created my broken relationships, and it didn’t seem worth it to keep on hurting that way. I was in a mess of my own making, but I did not realize it, and I was in so much pain that I just wanted out of the agony—I was convinced it was everything and everyone else, not the alcohol.
Some strange things began to occur, like my friends telling me about something I had done, but I had no memory of doing it. That’s what you call a blackout. Another time, my precious 14-year-old daughter walked in through the back door. I do have a real memory of demanding, “Where have you been??” She quickly replied, “You told me to get out, so I left!” I just stared at her, because I didn’t remember that either. Then she shouted some God-ordained words, which got through the haze of alcohol that suffused my brain: “Mom, you’re sick, and you need help!!”
Somehow those words sank deeply into my being, so deeply that they lodged right next to the words of “I can’t give it up.” All those words fighting and jumbling inside me…it was a vicious fight.
I woke early the next morning from a dream in which I was lying on my back in a boat, floating down a river, looking up at the tree branches and sky. Suddenly I realized the river was going to go over a big waterfall soon, and I couldn’t see how close it was or how soon the boat would tumble over the edge of the rushing waters.
I woke panicked, feeling as if I were choking, drowning…coughing, struggling. I sat up in bed, and then my daughter’s words (with the help of the Holy Spirit) won the fight inside. I realized I needed help, and I suddenly had an idea. I knew that people could go to “treatment,” and in my mind’s eye this fantasy treatment center was where I would be lying on clean white sheets, and a solicitous nurse would approach my bed with one perfect martini on a starched white napkin on a tray. This is how I would learn to drink like a lady, instead of how I really drank. I could tell my boss and get a medical leave; it would be awkward and clumsy, but it could be done.
So I got out the phone book and looked in the yellow pages for “treatment center”—there were three in town. It was 6:30 am. I called the first one, and listened as they told me how they handled the process, and that I would have to go to AA meetings. I hung up, indignant. I knew that AA was full of Bible-thumping holy rollers, finger-wagging and hypocritical people. So I tried the second center, and then the third. They all said I’d have to go to AA, and I was beyond annoyed.
Suddenly a thought came like a thunderbolt: I could go to an AA meeting all by myself, for free, and not have to tell my boss or anyone! Excited, I looked up the AA hotline, and asked when was the next meeting. The nice lady said, “8 o’clock tonight.” Disappointed to have to wait that long (remember, it was 6:30 am), I told her, “You don’t understand, I start drinking at 9:00 am, using a large drink cup with half Pepsi and half vodka, because you can’t smell that.” She said, “Just take it 15 minutes at a time.”
I was stunned. Here was a plan that even I could manage. I felt like Dumbo holding the feather, ready to try to fly. I was finally right about something: instead of blaming everything and everyone else for my misery, getting help for myself to stop drinking could work. A whole new life was about to begin, a life of sobriety and recovery that could be happy, joyous, and free.
Today, 37 years later, I am a joyful member of Holy Comforter, active as a Lay Minister, as the commissioned Gestalt Pastoral Care Minister of this parish, leader of the Healing Prayer Team, and a grateful member of the Addiction Recovery Care Ministry.
Thanks be to God—Alleluia!!
– Alexandra MacCracken
