Category Archives: Sobriety

Alcoholics Anonymous: We Surely have no Monopoly

Posted in AA Sobriety, Recovery, Sobriety by

Recovery Options“Love and tolerance of others is our code” (Big Book 84).

I am not a very lovely and tolerant person. I’m just not. I try my darnedest, but… no. Quiet, though, I have improved upon. Pausing when agitated. Walking away. Not engaging. This morning, though, I woke up to yet another email explaining to me the fallibility of AA. Ugh. When I posted last week that this conversation bores me, a man called me a coward. He said that since his opinion differed with mine, I was scared to acknowledge him. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am sorry he feels spurned or neglected or failed or whatever it is by AA. I know such feelings exist. I just… I don’t know what to say about it.

I know there is a lot of hostility towards AA out there. And I know some people feel the need to express their dissatisfaction, but let me set something straight, once and for all. This is my blog. I write it. I draw the pictures. Its about my life, my perceptions, my recovery. I make no bones about it. I’ve have my reasons for breaking my anonymity. I wrote about them in in my post Part Three: Why I Write about my Alcoholism: (https://annkroger.com/2014/09/26/part-three-why-i-write-about-my-alcoholism/) But this, this is not a Celebrate Recovery blog. It is not a SMART Recovery Blog. This is not by the sheer force of willpower blog. And I do not feel in the spirit of equanimity that I have to give equal time to any of them because my blog is not about the many forms of recovery from alcohol and drug addiction. It’s about my recovery from alcohol and drug addiction. And I’ve chosen AA.

With that said, I have never once said any other approach does not work. I never would. I have no basis on which to judge anything. I have not looked into them. I do not know what their methods are. I do not know what they teach. I’m not a coward; I’m just busy. I have two jobs, two dogs, this blog, my art, a family, a wedding to plan, and a fiancé who just had open-heart surgery. I have neither the time nor the interest to participate in a discussion that affects my life in no way whatsoever.

Furthermore, I find it odd that anyone would even engage in that discussion. The Big Book tells us, “In all probability, we shall never be able to touch more than a fair fraction of the alcohol problem in all its ramifications. Upon therapy for the alcoholic himself, we surely have no monopoly,” (xxi). I have a more than a couple friends in Celebrate Recovery. I have friends in SMART recovery. I, as well as most of my friends, engage or have engaged in some form of therapy/ psychoanalysis. Many AAs are on some kind of medication for anxiety or depression or any number of things. AA says some of us may need outside help. It encourages hospitalization when needed.

Well… the sun is nice and high. I’ve had a cup of coffee. Writing this has cleared my mind and my mood has drastically improved. So, here is what we’ll do. I will make a one-time offer. If you send me an email at agkroger@gmail.com summarizing your program of recovery, regardless of what it is, I will post it. Explain the program’s advantages or why you like it. Whatever you want. I would prefer it if you did not criticize other programs, but simple tell us about yours. I will not edit it. I will not voice an opinion. If you want to send original artwork, I will post that as well. This is your chance to voice whatever it is you want about whatever it is you are doing.

I will accept emails until hmmmm… April 5th and I will post the blog on April 12th. I hope everyone has a great day.

Summer in Sobriety, Down by the Pool

Posted in AA Sobriety, Alcoolics Anonymous, Sober Living, Sobriety by

Hobo WeddingMy friend was telling me about a woman she had recently met. This woman was newly sober, just a couple weeks in. She was concerned that summer was around the block. Her husband and her were renowned for their pool parties, and she was worried that if they did not serve alcohol, no one would come. Two weeks sober and she’s are worried about pool parties? I would have laughed if I hadn’t known she was dead serious.

When I first got sober, I had my own obsession: my wedding day. As I remember, early on I met a girl who had met a boy on AA campus and had gotten married. She was telling me about their relationship and life, but I didn’t get further than… “Wedding? Hold up, you had a sober wedding? No one drank? No endless champagne toasts? No open bar? A dead sober wedding?” I could not imagine such a thing. So, I obsessed about it, what my sober wedding would look like. Would we serve alcohol, and I would just not drink, or would the whole wedding be dry? Would we have water in club soda in champagne glasses or would that just look tacky? Would anyone dance? All this time, I didn’t even have a boyfriend, let alone a fiancé.

And that, my friends, is how I know I am an alcoholic.

I read a startling statistic the other day: 60% percent of women drink at least one drink a year. That is not the part that startled me. What shocked me was that if 60% drink at least one drink a year, 40% of women do not drink at all! Nothing!

I think it is hard for heavy drinkers to fathom that many people do not drink. We think that if we order a Coke at a party, the record player will come to a screeching halt as the attention of the whole room focuses on our lack of a proper cocktail. The reality is no one cares. Wait… what I should say is no one cares, but the other alcoholics in the room, the other people who cannot imagine that one might forego a drink.

In our disease we only hung out with people like us, who did what we did. They acted like us and drank and used like us. It’s how we justified our own actions. Then when we get sober, I think our minds just grasp on to whatever we can. There’s so much going on and changing, the idea of changing everything, even our pool parties and wedding aspirations gets a little overwhelming.

I wish I could have talked to that lady. I would have told her not to worry. Some people won’t go to her party, the active alcoholics won’t go. But 40% of the population goes to pool parties to swim and 40% go to weddings to see the actual wedding. 40% don’t drink. Period. So find them. Be friends with them. Make the 40% your 100% and you’ll have rocking parties once again.

Heck, I’ll go. Let summer begin!

A Disease of Perception

Posted in AA Unconditinal Love, Alcoholics Anonymous, Higher Power, Reality of Wrestling, Sobriety, Spritual Experience, Twelve Steps by

The HoboatorHouston has its own wrestling TV show called Reality of Wrestling. I am going to give Booker T. a plug because if you have not seen it, you should. It’s on at 1 AM Saturday night/Sunday morning on channel 57 (The Cube). It’s super awesome, old school wrestling in the overly dramatic, absurd kind of way. For the past few months, my sweetie and I have started a new routine. We attend our usual 10 o’clock candlelight meeting, go out to dinner, and then come home in time for wrestling. Though I cannot believe how lame we are, what I really cannot believe is how much I like it.

My sponsee and I were talking a couple of weeks ago about the idea that addiction is a disease of perception. I’ve never really been a happy person. I’m more the glass half empty, life has no meaning kinda girl. But I crave happiness. I desire it. I search for it like an explorer looking for El Dorado or the Fountain of Youth. For years, I traversed the bar scene, drinking and talking. I met not so interesting people. I played jukeboxes and shot pool. I skipped lines and got after-hours pulls.

Looking back, though, what’s incredibly awkward is I do not think I had a moment of pure joy the entire time I was out there. I thought I did. I thought I was having fun, because in some messed up sense it was fun, compared to the rest of my life. On my happiness scale of one to ten, I continually fell around a 2; I was genuinely unhappy. I then go out and drink, some gross boy flirts with me, tells me I’m pretty, and suddenly I’m like a 4. But I am never really happy; I’m just better than I was. I had mistaken happiness.

What the steps of AA do is alter my perception of my life through gradual acts that help change my perception of myself. Simple things: I look at my past acts, things I have done that have hurt others and try to rectify them. I look at the parts of my character that I do not like and try to engage new and better habits. It is cognitive therapy at its finest. “… huge emotional displacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them” (Big Book 27).

One of my favorite AAs in the world said something once that continues to resonate with me over time. He said, “I use to pray to God to make me a better dresser. But God did one better, he made me not care.” That is the emotional displacement that occurred as a result of the steps. Those are the parts of AA that make me say, “Oh, yeah. That’s right. Better dressing isn’t that important to me. Good character is.”

AA didn’t make me thin or tan or an optimist. What AA has done is help continually correct my faulty perception that being those attributes are going to make me happy. What the steps have done, what acting myself into right behavior has done, is improve, not my perceived life, but my genuine life. So today, on my happiness scale, I run about a six, but six is better than four. And the happiness I spent years looking for…? Well, I found it on my sofa, in my pajamas, watching ridiculously awesome wrestling.

The Flip Side (or The Show Running the Actor)

Posted in AA, Recovery, Sobriety by

You Spot It, You Got It

On Thursday, I wrote about actor running the whole show. I’m writing about it again because I’m still living in it. I know some of you can relate. Just because I have identified the character defect doesn’t mean the defect and the accompanying anger magically go away. No, no sometimes it takes a little more work. Sometimes, I have to process it a little bit longer.

So, here is where we are at… I occasionally have the mentality that I know what’s best for all those around me. It’s for the best! I am looking out for them. I am being gracious with my help. I am being generous with my time and energy to help you; the least you could do is accept it. I don’t even really need a thank you. I just need you to do it because I am tired of hearing this same complaint or maybe I am just tired of having to witness the general disaster you have made out of your life.

But there is another side to this coin.

There is something really awkward about engaging in a character defect while someone is engaging in theirs. For instance, I get really angry when people talk on their phone while driving. The freeways in Houston are bad enough without the additional distraction of phones. And yet, there are some days when I have to make a call, and while I am driving is the most convenient time to do it. I get self-conscious about holding the phone up to my ear because I know the person driving behind me can see it. I know they are cursing me. And yet…

It’s the alcoholic double standard. I don’t want anyone messing with my life for any reason what-so-ever. I do not want any judgment or criticism. In fact, I would really like it if you just stood over there, off to the side a little ways. I’ll call you over when I’m ready to see you.

And yet, I am more than happy to stick my pudgy little fingers into whatever pie you happen to have going on. I remember a friend having a slight disciplinary problem with her daughter. In the scheme of life, it was nothing. A little backtalk, normal for any kid, but the kind of thing a parent worries about lest it snowballs. Anywho, she and her husband had a plan. Upon hearing said plan, I thought, “That’s never going to work.” Now, I don’t have kids. I do not know the first thing about the stresses of being a parent. I can’t even properly train my dogs. And yet…

The book tells me that when I try to control and manipulate, other people rebel. I know that to be true because when other people try to control and manipulate me, even when they are doing it to help me fix the general disaster I have made of my life, I rebel. It’s a deal breaker. And that’s my lesson. It’s a cycle. It’s a reverse. It is so simple, they even teach it to little kids. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” I shouldn’t manipulate because I do not like being manipulated. I shouldn’t control because I do not like being controlled. And I certainly shouldn’t assume I know how other people are feeling because I am quite certain no one knows what’s going on inside me.

Letting people be is a difficult thing, especially when I only have good intentions. But the road others have to walk down, the lessons they have to learn, are not for me to decide for them. What I need to do is turn the mirror back around on myself and think about the lessons that I need to learn. There are enough things wrong with my life and with my relationships, to keep me busy for eternity.

The Actor Running the Show

Posted in AA, Big Book, How It Works, One Day at a TIme, Sobriety by

The Actor Running the ShowYou know what I was thinking? There should be a Survivor where all the people on the island are alcoholics. Instead of immunity idols, there could be hidden bottles of Jack Daniels. High atop cliffs, there could be warm beds and hot food, and the contestants would have to figure out how to get up to them. I would love to see the social aspect of the show turned on its head. You want fire? Want it more than vodka?

“… any life run on self-will can hardly be a success. On that basis we are almost in collision with something or somebody, even though are motives are good… If only [our] arrangements would stay put, if only people would do as [we] wished, [life] would be great… In trying to make these arrangements, [the alcoholic] may sometimes be quite virtuous. He may me kind, considerate, patient, generous; even modest and self-sacrificing. On the other hand, he may be mean, egotistical, selfish, and dishonest” (Big Book 60-61).

Sometimes, in my journey to understand myself, I read and re-read sections of the Big Book. Though I always find myself relating and identifying, I sometimes simultaneously think, “Well, hold up Bill W. Isn’t everybody like that?” I mean, really, doesn’t everybody want everything to go his/her way all the time? What person out there would have the fatuity to ask for a little extra helping of heartache or failure? I’ll tell you who, no one. And if I could figure out a way to make my life better through some subtle arranging of things, does that make me alcoholic or just smart?

Here is what I’ve decided this week. It’s not the manipulation of things around me for my betterment that make me alcoholic in nature, it is the extent to which I work to manipulate these things and then my subsequent reaction to them that identify me. I really think, by and large, alcoholics are fascinatingly intelligent and cunning people. I listen to people speak in meetings and it almost seems as if we alcoholics are running giant sociological experiments on those around us. Will you do it if I ask? No. How about if I am mean? Coercive? Gracious? What if I cry or throw a tantrum or refuse sex? What if I buy you a drink or a fur or a car?

And then, when I do not get what I want, there is no acceptance. Instead, there is a foot stomp followed by renewed exertion. Somehow, I think if someone failed me, it is not that they fumbled, but that I have somehow failed to properly explain what needed to be done. So, I try again. “He decided to exert himself more. He becomes, on the next occasion, still more demanding or gracious, as the case may be. Still [life] does not suit him. Admitting he may be somewhat at fault, he is sure that other people are more to blame. He becomes angry, indignant, self-pitying,” (Big Book 61).

The longer I stay sober, the more sure I am that Bill was right when he talked about how doomed this idea of collision is. I used to think that people would one day wise up to the fact that I was only trying to help them. Now, I know better. I’ve learned better. I’ve learned that the human experience lies in the fact that people need to experience their truth first hand, and that no amount or lecturing or warning is ever quite the same thing. I’ve learned that no matter how much I think I know about a person, I will never know exactly what is feels like to be them.

But I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you’ll just have to experience it for yourself.

What’s the Scariest Thing You Could Do?

Posted in Alcoholics Anonymous, Fear, Houston, Recovery, Sobriety by

Danger, Alcoholics, DangerSaturday was my sobriety birthday. I turned eight. Sobriety birthdays are an interesting time. As anyone who has celebrated one knows, it’s a time of reflection. This doesn’t happen with belly button birthdays; no one ever says, “I wonder where I was thirty-eight years ago at this time?” But sobriety birthdays are so precisely counted from one specific date that one cannot help but define one’s life by it. Very rarely in one’s life can a person say, “On this date, my life changed.”

But then there is another side, I alluded to it a couple of weeks ago in one of my drawings. A man is sitting in a chair. Underneath, it says, “Five minutes after the miracle,” and the man is thinking, “Now what?” I think that is what a lot of sobriety really is: the “now what” part. For our first couple of years maybe, we are adjusting to our new lifestyles. I do not care what they experts say, it takes more than 28 days to rewire a habit that one has had for decades. It takes time and patience. We go to meetings. We get sober jobs. We become accountable and responsible. And slowly we get better.

Then what do we do? I think I have really floundered in this realm. I think that if down in the pit of our stomachs each man and woman has some sort of conception of God, I think deep down in each one of us there is also a dream unrealized.

I’ve told this story before, but last year on a retreat, I realized I was not living my life with principles in all my affairs if I was not practicing courage with my future. I had always wanted to write, but never really felt I had any support in following this endeavor. I think most people chalk it up to a good hobby or a noble pastime, but not something one attacks as one might attack business school or another more reputable occupation. Last April 8, I came home from the retreat and before I could change my mind, I started this blog. It was the scariest thing I could have ever imagined.

I will tell you, if you think of the scariest thing you could do and then do it, it changes you.

If you had asked me eleven months ago, what I expected from this experiment, I’m not sure I could have articulated it any more than, “Fear.” I wanted to get over the fear. Fear of failure. Fear of judgment. I think a lot of us have dreams, but then alcoholism and drug addiction get in the way of them. And then recovery gets in the way of them. And living amends. And jobs. And then families. And then justification and realization and the “I’ll do it over summer” or when the kids graduate or when I retire. Last year, I just didn’t want to do that anymore. I didn’t want to get any older still holding on to the regret of dreams unrealized.

Eight years ago, the very scariest thing I could have done was walk into an AA meeting and ask for help. It took an unbelievable amount of courage.

It is time to move on. There’s new fears to conquer. And that is what I am sitting here thinking about: what is the scariest thing I can do this year. And then how am I going to do it? That is my birthday present to me, cause I didn’t get sober to sit in the back of the room.

I don’t know what your scariest thing is, but I hope when you’re driving home tonight or cooking dinner, you think about it. And then I hope sometime before your next birthday, you do it. It’ll change you.

Driving the Road of Happy Destiny

Posted in AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, Houston, Hyundai, Recovery, Sobriety by

Humility CarI have a love/hate relationship with my car. Before I got sober, I needed a car. I was looking at used cars, but couldn’t settle on one. For the price I wanted to pay, all the Hondas and Toyotas had high millage and no warranty. One day, I was talking to my brother. He said, “If I were you, I would go down to the Hyundai dealership and buy their cheapest new car.” I went down there that day, and did exactly that. I came away with a little black Hyundai Elantra complete with tape deck and cloth seats. (Yes, I have a tape deck in my car.)

My first couple of years owning the car was a bit rough. I’d never learned how to take care of anything, so oil changes, stickers, tires, all fell by the wayside. And yet the car kept going. I dented it a couple of times (once sober, once not so much). I broke the cover off of the vanity mirror. I lost my floor mats. My seatbelt jammed. I blew the speakers. And still it goes. Now the paint is flaking off, I have the beginnings of a hole in my floorboard, and my headlights seem to go out with surprising regularity. And still it goes.

And that’s the problem. Eleven years later, it still goes. No matter where I am or what parking lot I am in, I look around. My car is inevitably the worst looking car in the lot. I know because I look a lot. I size my car up against all the pretty, undented cars with paint so glossy it reflects the world back upon itself. It has become an obsession of mine. I look for the worse off cars too, and when I occasionally spot one, I fight off the urge to write a pithy, little note saying, “It’ll be okay, Life’ll get better.”

But then, I love my car. It is an awesome, little machine. When I could not afford for that car to break down, it didn’t. I remember taking a friend to Ben Taub psychiatric unit and driving that car home in the foggy, early morning calm of the desolate Sam Houston Tollroad, never being so grateful to be sober. I remember the first time my love came over in torn jeans to fix the thermostat. Some mornings, when I turn over the engine and it starts right away, I pat my car on the dashboard and say encouraging words.

And the truth is the only reason not to love  is because I feel like it is some sort of reflection of my place in society, or even worse, of my place in recovery. I feel like more established people or saner people have nicer, shinier things. So, its not that I am uncomfortable with my car, I am uncomfortable about what you think my car says about me. And that’s crazy! Its like not only do I think you think about me at all, but that you think about my car and what you think my car says about me. To get a new car would, on some level, acknowledge and validate that part of myself that places value not only in the material world, but on what I fear others might think of me. And that’s really awkward.

Over time, my car has become less a method of transportation and more an extension of my journey into my disease and back out again. And now I find myself, like The Giving Tree, learning a new lesson. Now I am learning the lesson of humility and gratitude. A lesson about outer beauty versus inner awesomeness. A lesson about dedication and perseverance and loyalty.

So, yes, I love my car… even if the window doesn’t always want to roll down.

You Better Double Up

Posted in AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, Recovery, Sobriety by

5 Minutes After the MiracleA friend of mine had a sponsor when he first got sober. When my friend got thirty days, his sponsor said, “Thirty days? That’s really great. But we lose a lot of people between thirty and sixty days. You better double up on your meetings. You gotta take this thing more seriously.” And so my friend did.

When my friend picked up his sixty day chip the sponsor once again said, “Sixty days? That’s great. But we lose a lot of guys between sixty and ninety. You better double up your meetings. Take this thing a lot more seriously.” And so my friend did.

When my friend picked up his ninety day chip the sponsor once again said, “Ninety days? That’s great. But we lose a lot of guys between three months and six months. You better double up your meetings. Take this thing a lot more seriously.” And so my friend did.

It turned out that regardless of the time my friend would acquire, the sponsor always responded in the same manner. “A year? That’s great. But we lose a lot between one year and two years. You better double up your meetings. You gotta take this thing more seriously…”

A couple of years ago, my friend passed away, but up until that point, every birthday meeting, no matter who was celebrating or how many years they had, my friend would speak the warning his sponsor spoke to him.

I like that no matter how seriously I take this thing, I could take it more seriously. I could understand my disease and me more. I could know the book more. I could help more, sponsor more. I can work the steps more. And with that, I can grow more. And be spiritual more. Live in the now more, have faith more. The idea pleases me.

I like the idea of doubling up on meetings. I think it is easy to let life become life-ish. We get spouses and homes and kids and meetings are harder to make. But meetings are where the miracle happens. Meetings are what keeps this thing fresh. Meetings are where we hear new ideas and thoughts, struggles and heartache and triumph. In meetings I get to simultaneously hear of the places where I do not want to go, and the person who I wish to be.

And I think my friend was right. We do lose a lot of people. There were many people around me when I first got sober. My entire halfway house, women in the meetings, friends, and friends of friends. We all had roughly the same length of sobriety. Now there’s not so many. In fact, there’s one. One of my friends still has her original sobriety date, eight years later.

Eight years. We lose a lot between eight and nine. I better double up. I better take this thing more seriously.

Which Person are You?

Posted in AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, Recovery, Sobriety by

Program of ActionIts 4:17 in the morning. I’ve opened my blinds to look out onto the calm of the apartment complex. It is quiet. No dogs barking, no children playing. Just the steady hum of passing cars from the freeway.

I am struggling this morning.

Not with drinking. I don’t want to drink. I am struggling with something else. Anger, maybe. Disappointment. Sadness.

My love had open-heart surgery a few days ago. He had a bad heart valve that had to be replaced. It’s about as serious of an operation as one can get. It requires stopping the heart for several hours, cutting into it, replacing the valve with one from a pig, sewing up the heart, and then hoping it starts again. The operation takes about ten hours start to finish. It is terrifying and painful. But my love, he did wonderfully. He came back to me.

No, my lost emotion does not lie with my love, who is hopefully sleeping even as I am awake. No, I am filled with alternating rage and sadness at the people who I thought would show up that haven’t. The friends, the family, who I expected would be there with cards or love or something, a smile perhaps. I am angry with the ones that are absent. The ones that have abandoned him as he would never abandon them. I want to call them at four in the morning,  as they sleep in their warm beds and scream at them. I want to ask them if their heart is beating strong, if they can breathe. I want to tell them they are bad people.

I sigh, for I know what they will say, even without them having to say it. They will say they didn’t know. Or they would say they didn’t want to bother us. They will have a justification, a reason, unwilling or unable to admit that they are failures at compassion.

So, I sit here, angry, remembering all the things they AA has taught me over the years. And what I keep remembering is the line in the Twelve and Twelve that tells me, “We had refused to learn the very hard lesson that overdependence upon people is unsuccessful because all people are fallible, and even the best of them will sometimes let us down,” (Page 115). People will let me down, and it is in that moment, the moment of perfect abandonment that I need to be able to turn to my higher power in order to find a renewed source of strength and power to continue forward.

I know other things too. I know that if I am angry, there must be something wrong with me. I cannot help but think of all the times I have failed someone else, the times when I did not show. The excuses I do not need to hear because they come from within me; they are the excuses I have used when others needed me.

Today, I am learning that the offer of help is different from the action of help. I am learning that a text is not the same thing as a phone call is not the same thing as getting in the car and driving. I am learning that “Let me know if you need anything,” sounds different than, “If you want company, I can bring ice cream.” I am learning that sometimes when a person says they are okay, they are not.

I have learned from the ones who have failed us and from the ones who have shown up.  For the one who never came, there was the one I could not turn away. For the one who disappeared, there was another who sat with him so I could regain some sanity. There was the one that played with the dogs and the one who answered the phone. And then there was the friend and family who took off from work to sit with me for an entire day in the waiting room.

I think when this is over, I will have learned a lot about who I am and how strong I can be. But I think I will also learn how I need to rely on others. And I will learn how to be reliable for others. I will re-evaluate the person I am. I will make the conscious decision to be a person who shows up. I will make the decision  to become the person I wish to be. I will reposition myself away from the false friends and closer to the true ones. I will pay attention, so I can better differentiate when people say they are okay and when they actually are okay. And then, I will not wait for them to call me and ask for help.

I think at the end of the day, it is not just my love who will come out of this experience with a better heart.

Dealing with Death in Sobriety: Part Two

Posted in AA, Compulsive Shopping, Recovery, Sobriety by

Piscine Mourning*** I will be out of pocket this week. In my place, one of my favorite AAs has stepped in with her own two part story of perseverance and healing. The honesty of this piece rings true. I hope you pass this piece on to anyone in sobriety that is currently suffering from loss. I will be back on Thursday.***

As I ran my key down the left side of a stranger’s vehicle, watching the white streak make a line in the blue paint, I knew I was in trouble. I did it anyway despite knowing that my actions were wrong. I also justified this situation in my mind and publicly. I’m an alcoholic I can justify just about anything. I could continue my spiral of insanity or I could deal with the issue underlining my rage: grief regarding my grandmother’s death 30 days prior.

I have been shopping. That obsessive-compulsive-I-am-trying-not-to-feel-shopping. My binge list included: 7 ottomans, clothes, My Little Pony blankets, dust ruffles, throws, art work, and more. It started the day of my Grandmother’s memorial where I was in charge of the food. I went to the grocery store and purchased 10 cooked chickens, a bag of salad, and dressing. I showed up and announced, “I have chickens.” I lined them up on the counter and walked away. My aunt came over to me and quietly whispered, “Mija, what are you doing with the chickens, are you going to cut them?” I couldn’t. All I could do that day was show up with chickens.

I was continuing my compulsive shopping the day I keyed that vehicle. I had shopped and like the other times, felt empty and angry afterwards. I left crying for no reason which was common these days and someone had parked so close to my car, I couldn’t open my door. I felt the rage rise up like red, hot, bile from my soul and proceeded to the thing that I never could understand that people do. Destroy someone’s property.

I emailed my therapist that night and told her I needed an emergency appointment to talk about my rage. I’m sitting on the couch and speed talking about the 5 stages of grief and how I’m only feel 5 stages of anger. How everyone in my life is going to either die or leave at some point and I might as well prepare for it now. This appointment turned out to be the catalyst for me to begin healing.

My sponsor assures me that shopping is better than drinking because I can return every item I purchased, but I cannot return a drink once I have taken it. Slowly I notice I am crying less and peace is replacing the anger. Acceptance is replacing fear, love is replacing hate, and time is healing my wounds. I do the next right thing. I have a spiritual experience that is indescribable. I laugh a little more. I return some of the wreckage of my shopping binge.

My hope is that anyone who is grieving a lost relationship, friendship, past life, pet, family member, or friend remembers this: there is absolutely no experience that will be made better by a drink. Not one. Not even grief.