Confessions From An Alcoholic/Addict

There's a saying in AA that we're only "as sick as our secrets." Well, I have a secret that I need to get rid of. Last month, right after my dad passed away, I visited my pdoc and reluctantly asked her for a prescription of Ativan. I was afraid that she wouldn't give it to me because a couple years ago I had abused it for a little while.

My doc did agree to write the presciption, but said she didn't trust me with it. I agreed with her. She wrote it with the provision that when I got the bottle filled I would bring it to her nurse and let her keep it. I would only get enough for a week at a time. The script was for .5 Ativan twice a day.

Everything went OK for a short time. I took no more than she prescribed. Even then I was hesitant to take as much as it was prescribed. I didn't want to become hooked on it again.

A few days after taking it, I couldn't tell it was working that much. So, I decided to stop taking it. I felt there might come a time when I might really need it and it wouldn't work.

I have this habit of sitting up sometimes all night. I don't want to go to bed. If I could, I'd rather be able to stay up 24/7 and still be able to function properly. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.

For the past few nights after I sit up for so long, I begin to get angry about everything. When this happenes, I feel a rage coming on. I want to throw things. So far nothing important. I've resisted the urge so far to trash my apartment.

Either these feelings peaked last night or I just got tired of having them. To make a long story short, I took 5 .5mg of the ativan fairly close together. It mellowed me out some, but didn't come close to giving me the feeling I had gotten a couple years ago. I think then the meds were a little stronger.

What was left, I flushed down the commode. Now I realize there may come a time when I would really benefit from taking the meds right. After all, my grief for dad is still extremely fresh and I don't know where it will take me. I know for a large part, I'm still in denial about it.

The way my thinking works is this. Since I've already abused the pills, I might as well go ahead and get my drug of choice which is whisky and indulge myself. I've only abused ativan and one other drug, hydrocotone for a brief time. My real choice is the whisky.

The thing is, I already feel enough guilt about abusing the pills. I can only imagine how much more guilt I'll feel if I get drunk.

Up until Oct. 2 I had a year of sobriety that I was proud of. Then I gave into the desire to drink... No excuses... I drank because I wanted to. It felt like an overwhelming urge that I got tired of resisting.

I was both open and honest with my counselor and my AA family. I had enough guilt. Lying about it or denying it wouldn't have anything better. I'm grateful for the support that I recieved from all of them.

I just wanted to share this with you and get it out in the open.

Thanks for listening!

Daddy, I miss you so much!

Originally written on 11/9/09

Toward the end of the day is the time when my thoughts of Daddy are the strongest. I don’t know why that is, unless it’s the time when I feel the loneliest. Tonight during the AA meeting my feelings were the strongest they’ve been in several days.


Daddy had never been to Calvin and Sherri’s house, but it was like I could almost see him sitting beside me on the couch. Perhaps it was just my imagination, but I could “feel” his presence there. As I write this now, I “feel” him near me, but not like it was earlier.

I’m not saying this is anything mystical, but I think it’s just me wanting him to be near me again. I miss him so much and he’s only been gone a little over two weeks. How much more will I miss him in the days to come? I never, ever want to stop missing him.

I am so glad that I had the opportunity to talk to him several times the day he died. That morning he seemed to be so happy go lucky. There didn’t appear to be anything bothering him, except maybe his back. He didn’t even get upset when I told him the bank made a mistake and put his check in my account.

I thought that was both funny and ironic. In the past when it was my responsibility to see that his check was deposited, a lot of times I would be late taking care of it. As a result, there would be months when no deposit showed up on his bank statement. He would get upset and think I was keeping his checks for myself. Even after I showed him the statements where there were two deposits, he still didn’t seem to understand that I always put his checks in the bank.

Then just two days before he left us, he took his check to the bank and it was mistakenly put into my account. I discovered what had happened that Friday morning. I called to tell him what happened and that I was going to take care of it. It didn’t seem to bother him a bit. We discussed it a few minutes and he finally said “oh well”. My reply was “Oh, really? Does that mean you don’t care if I keep it?” I don’t think he knew what to say about that. I just laughed and said I was joking. I think Daddy laughed, too.

It’s not surprising that I have regrets when I think about Daddy. There are things that I wished I had done with him. I am glad that I had been able to take him out to eat at least once before he left us. There should have been many more times besides that.

Now, there are things that I’ll never be able to do with him. Such as invite him to my apartment for lunch. Ask him to spend the night with me. He would’ve loved either one of those. I can’t even remember the last time he was in my apartment. He never got to watch a movie with me on my new TV.

Then there were my intentions to do something like a life story about him. I had a list of questions that would have documented his life from the time he was a boy until now. That project will never be done now. I think he would’ve enjoyed that, too.

But don’t I think that Daddy enjoyed talking to me several times that Friday? I believe he did that morning and I would like to think he found some kind of comfort in talking to me that afternoon when he was in such pain.

I only wish that I had known what was causing some of his pain in his stomach. I wish that I could’ve been there with him when he took his last breath. I would have loved to have held his hand, giving him what comfort that I could. I wonder what kind of pain he felt up until the end?

But there’s something else that I keep thinking about. It might have been the very last time that I talked to him at 4:05PM. He said that he wanted me to get back in church. Not for him, but for my sake. I think he wanted me to promise him that I would. I reluctantly said that I would think about it. When I said that I loved him, he replied in a way that he usually did. He said, “I love you with the love of Jesus.”

So, was Daddy really alone when he took his last breath? Could Jesus really have been there holding his hand, giving Daddy comfort that no one on earth could’ve given him? I want to believe when his time was over the angels escorted him to Heaven.

Daddy, I miss you so much!

Personal Thoughts On Grief

Originally written on 11/5/09

In my second entry, I stated "each of us is left alone with our own grief." There are numerous books that have been wrote on the subject of grief. I'm sure that as many different books that have been written, there are just as many differing opinions on the subject. I believe that each one of us who has experienced some kind of loss could write their own book and each one would be just as true as the so called experts on the subject.


We all experience it in our own unique way. There are similarities in the grieving process that we all have in common, but no two people grieve in the exact same way. How could we? The relationship that my sister had with our dad is different from the one that I had with him. When there is a death in the family, a lot of well meaning people say things like, "I know exactly how you feel." I know those words are meant to comfort, but if we really think about them they are just not true.

Tomorrow will be two weeks since Daddy passed away. There have been several days that have gone by that I haven't cried at all. I don't know, perhaps my sister has cried more. Does that mean she misses him more than I do? No, it just means we grieve differently.

To me, it hardly seems real that he's gone. After the funeral, when I was home by myself, I just shook my head and said "that wasn't my Daddy in that casket. If I call him on the phone he'll answer. I still can't fully grasp the fact that he's not with us any more. I believe that's the way we were created. We have some kind of "safety valve" built in us to soften the blow until the time comes that we can deal with it.

The Day My Life Changed

This entry was origianly written on 10/27/09:


The last few days have seemed so unreal. It's like I'm in a bad dream and waiting to wake up and find that everything is alright. But I know it's no dream and things are a long way from being alright. Last Friday afternoon (Oct. 23, 2009) , my dad passed away very suddenly and unexpected.

I had talked to him several times that day. Friday morning he sounded rather up beat. That afternoon, I could tell that he wasn't feeling good. (The night before he had fallen and they took him to the ER. CAT Scan and X-Rays showed he was OK. The only thing was that the fall hurt his back.) He was in a lot of back pain and he complained of being very constipated. If we had only known the constipation was a symptom of a much greater problem.

The last time that I talked to Daddy was 4:05 PM. I had talked to his nurse a little earlier. She had given him a pain pill around 1:00PM and the next one wasn't due until another 12 hours. The nurses were in the middle of a shift change and they would give him some laxative as soon as they could.

About 5:50, his nurse called me. She said they had found Daddy a few minutes earlier. He was unresponsive and had no vital signs. The ambulance was taking him to the ER. To make a long story short, by the time my sister and I got to the hospital, our Daddy was already gone. I'm rather sure he was dead before he left the nursing home.

The coroner decided to perform an autopsy. They found that Daddy had hardening of the arteries around his intestines that had blocked his bowels. He had complained of constipation the day before, but not as bad as Friday. I don't fully understand how that ended his life, but one of our cousins who is a nurse, told us if it had been caught in time he could've had emergency surgery that might have saved his life.

To being with, my only regret was that I wasn't there with him when he died. If I had only known... Then yesterday I started wondering how much pain he was in when he took his last breath. I wondered what it was like for him when he died. I'm afraid that it wasn't a painless death.

The funeral was yesterday afternoon. When I got back home, it just didn't seem real. I thought that really wasn't my dad in that casket and if I called his phone he would answer. I'm sure that when the full effect hits me I will have a lot more regrets.

It's just my sister and me now.... And I feel alone...

Thankfully, there are people who have been here for me to lean on. My sister and I have pulled together for each other. My friend Calvin has been by my side ever since Friday night at the hospital. He says that's part of the program of AA. He says he considers me like a brother. I'm reminded of that verse, "A friend sticks closer than a brother". Perhaps Calvin is not only my best friend, but the brother I never had. I am so thankful for him. Of course my therapist has been very supportive.

They are not the only ones... The people from Daddy’s church, our relatives, even those we're not really close to.

All of these people help, but I suppose when it comes right down to it, each of us is left all alone with our own grief.

Even though my Dad is no longer with us, I will never think of it as our relationship is over. He will forever be in my heart and in my mind.

Introduction

A few days ago, that old classic movie “The Wizard Of Oz” was on TV again. How many times have all of us watched Dorothy click her heals together and say “There’s no place like home”? I recently spent the night with a friend and had an enjoyable time, but there was nothing like coming back home to my own bed. There truly is no place like home.


Two of the most important factors in any home are the Mother and Father. Without them, I don’t believe you can really have a “Home Sweet Home.” Without a Mother, where is the love and caring the children need? Without a Father, where is the stable home environment that’s needed?


As the children grow into adulthood, they quite naturally carry the traits and characteristics of their parents. How many times have I noticed the simple words and phrases that I’ve picked up from my Mother and Dad and repeated throughout my lifetime? How many times have I been talking to my sister or friends and noticed that I was talking or acting in ways that I’ve observed my parents behaving?


I’m now 48 and I can recall when I was in my 20’s and thinking how fortunate I was to not only still have both parents living, but they were still married. A lot of other people I knew either had at least one parent who was deceased or they were divorced.


Yes, despite the difficulties that I had while growing up, I was truly blessed to have had my two parents.


Do I have regrets now that they’re gone? Yes, I have a lot of them. There are many things I wish I could go back and change, but time only flows in one direction. Several times before my Daddy died, I had the thought of recording some of his personal history from his childhood on up to adulthood. But that was one of the many things that I kept putting off. Now it’s forever too late.


I hope somehow by keeping this blog I can honor both his and Mother’s memory. Perhaps in some way I can make up for some of the things that I neglected doing. I believe if they were both still here, they would say that I was the best son they ever had. In my opinion, I let them down many times.


In actuality, I’m a rather selfish person. Too many times I felt I should come first. Therefore neglecting the two wonderful people who gave me life. Now they’re both gone and all I have are memories.


I am a pessimist and I have a difficult time remembering the good times I had with Mom and Dad. I can recall too many times when they needed me and I was off doing something else that I thought was more important. I wonder how many times they sacrificed doing something for themselves when they chose to help me instead?


Mother has been gone for over six years. She left us on August 17, 2003. Daddy has been gone less than a month: October 23, 2009. I still mourn the loss of Mother at times. Daddy’s death just doesn’t seem real. It’s something that just wasn’t supposed to happen.


Despite the fact that he had a lot of health problems: Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Bipolar Disorder, etc. I still look at him as being my “rock and strong point” in my life. Oh, he could be so demanding at times, but he was still my dad.


How I wish I could’ve been there for him when he took his last breath, like I was there for Mother. But some things in life just don’t turn out the way you want them to. Perhaps it’s like a friend told me today. Maybe it turned out just the way God wanted it to turn out.


I chose the nickname “LoneWolf” both because I like wolves and because I tend to be a loner. I keep to myself a lot. Perhaps too much at times. Now, the word alone is very adequate. I still have my sister and we’re closer than ever before. I have very good friends who care about me and check on me regular. But first Mother left us and now Daddy is gone and I feel alone.


But they aren’t totally gone. They will live forever in our hearts and minds. Whenever we recall memories of them they will be here with us. Whenever we close our eyes and see them, they will be alive in our hearts.