The Kink Collective - The Kink Collective Blog , Recovery

Recovery #3 – White Light Experience

Thu, 27 Oct 2022 19:51:07 -0500

I have just begun my 29th year of sobriety.

Last post, I made reference to my “white light” experience, which I will talk about here.

During the time coming up to November 16, 1993, my life was falling apart. I was married to a man, had fallen in love with woman, and had moved out of my house. I asked my then-husband to go to therapy with me, but he wasn’t willing. So, I sought out therapy at the LGBT center, with someone who supported the notion of bisexuality. I also began to attend CoDA meetings, as well as “dropping into” AA meetings, simply because I had found them helpful in the past, not because I thought I actually had a problem with alcohol. I knew I had a ‘life’ problem, but had no idea that it was rooted in an alcohol problem.

Every Tuesday, I had therapy in Berkeley at 10am and then went to a gay CoDA meeting in SF at 12pm. The therapist I got at the center was a gay woman who understood bisexuality, but also happened to have 14 years of sobriety.

On Tuesdays, I would go to therapy and “argue” with Leslie that I didn’t have an alcohol problem. This was something that I would just announce to her, to which she would simply reply, “ok”. She never once tried to tell me that I had a problem.

One day, after therapy, I was driving to the city for my noon meeting. While on the Bay Bridge, I had a “vision”. Hanging in front of me was a glass, like a hologram, of my favorite cocktail. It took up most of my field of vision. It was perfect, as I had become pretty picky about my cocktails. All of a sudden, I started to sob. I realized that this drink was my best friend, that it had been my best friend since childhood and that only an alcoholic could feel like that.

I got onto the bridge not an alcoholic, and got off with the sure knowledge that I was one. There were only 2 choices at that point – go to AA and do all the things, or go on as I had been.

Not much of a choice – I was in sufficient distress, so I took the only road that made sense.

Recovery #2 – A “High Bottom” Drunk

Thu, 27 Oct 2022 19:50:01 -0500

It’s been a while since I’ve written. My sobriety birthday is approaching (that’s what they call it on the West Coast – its anniversary here on the East Coast – I spent the first 17 years of my sobriety in California). This time of year always makes me reflect on what it was like. Also what happened and what it is like now.

It wasn’t pretty. And yet, I wasn’t “bad” – at least in so far as my physical relationship with alcohol was concerned. In fact, my last drink was half a glass of champagne. And that fact haunted me for a long time, my mind holding it up to me as evidence that I didn’t really “earn my seat” – a phrase in recovery that means you belong there. But my life had been a train wreck emotionally and mentally, I had wrecked the relationships around me. I was 29 years old and my second marriage was ending. I had even known for a while that in this relationship he was the “enabler”, which meant, by definition, I was the “addict”. But for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out to what I was addicted. Denial really is something more than a river in Egypt.

I had begun therapy, probably the summer of 1993. That part is an. But on Tuesday, November 16, 1993, I had what is knows as “white light” experience. In the months up until then, I had become increasingly aware of the unpredictability of my drinking. I could drink plenty one day and be fine. And then on others, drink half as much and end up sick, with bone-crushing hangovers. I was also starting to have the experience that as soon as I drank anything at all, I would say things I didn’t mean. I could see these things coming out of my mouth and was powerless to stop them. I did not connect this in any way, however, to a powerlessness over alcohol.

But that morning, at approximately 11:30am, God, Great Spirit, Beloved, Divine – whatever the power is in the Universe revealed to me my true nature as an alcoholic. Story again for another day, but I had been exposed to AA earlier, and at the moment of my “awakening”, I knew that all the things I had heard about now applied to me. So I did those things. I went to meetings. Everyday, sometimes 2, 3 or 4 times a day. I got a sponsor, a big book, phone numbers – I went everywhere the sober people went and did what they did. Some days it was excruciatingAnd I stayed committed to not drinking, no matter what, one day at a time.

It has been a long road to now, and I will continue to tell you my story.

Thanks being here with me as I tell of what has happened. I hope it helps – even one person.

Recovery #1 – In the Beginning

Thu, 27 Oct 2022 19:48:55 -0500

Greetings. Let me start by saying that I have been sober from alcohol and most mood and mind altering substances since November of 1993. There are a couple of qualifiers to that statement…I drink coffee almost every day. I have been on various pharmaceuticals for the treatment of depression and anxiety for the better part of 20 years, although I am happy to report fewer than ever in the whole long and bloody tale of my recovery.

As you can imagine, I have a long story, and lots of short ones that makes up the tale of my recovery. My plan is to tell these stories here, in installments. I don’t have a specific plan and I am not sure how it will all unfold, but stay with me.

Recovery started for me in the 7th grade. It was the first time I ever showed up somewhere and said, “There is something wrong with me, I need help”. I was 12 at the time. I was already drinking, although not a lot, and that wasn’t what I showed up at the school psychologist’s office for. My mother had died about a year before that, my father remarried almost immediately, I wasn’t coping very well and I was aware that I needed help.

The impulse to make some kind of change, to get to the place where the fear of staying the same becomes greater than the fear of making changes, propels us forward, even when we don’t yet know what we need.

If you are reading this, and are either on the road of, or just beginning, your journey into recovery – from anything: addiction, grief, trauma, toxic relationships, this blog will cover these topics. I also intend to share the tools and resources that have allowed me to travel this road. I don’t pretend to be an expert or to know everything, but I have had an incredible journey, from the depths of codependency and addiction, to the heights of trauma recovery and spiritual experience.