Welcome to Marilyn's Recovery Page

Looking for a little spirituality in this world?

There are important junctions in everyone's life -- graduation day; a wedding -- but for me, the most important day remains July 2, 1984. That is the day that I stopped picking up the glass; that is the day I decided to get this "drinking problem" fixed and, somehow, fix the rest of the things that were wrong in my life. Little did I know that drinking Jack Daniels WAS the problem in my life; the rest solved themselves as I became more sober.

I am a Child of an Alcoholic. I remember researching alcoholism as a teenager and finding that there was a 50% chance of a son of an alcoholic becoming an alcoholic. Fairly certain that it applied to daughters too, I resolved to never drink alcohol. I didn't want to end up like my father.

Inadvertently, I started right down that path when I was prescribed amphetamines (for cramps!) in high school. I loved them! They enabled me to study and play hard. In fact, before there was such a thing as a "designated driver," I drove my classmates from bar to bar.

In my senior year, I knew that something was wrong. I wanted more amphetamines than I could get and I seldom slept. I was down to 100 pounds. I just quit the pills. Cold turkey. Without medical help or knowledge. There were no addictionologists in those days.

Needless to say, I became pretty depressed. Guess what seemed to help? An "occasional" 7&7 with my friends.

I like to believe that when I moved to Germany, I didn't drink. But I sure did after I got there! Local beer was delivered by the case and I worked very hard at becoming a wine expert.

When I returned to the States three years later, I drank wine with dinner and had drinks with my friends on the weekends (mainly).

Within the next five years, I had crossed over the line. I drank to self-medicate. I drank to excess. I had blackouts. I began to associate more with drinkers than with non-drinkers. I couldn't stop drinking despite self-promises. And, of course, I blamed everybody but myself. I'd been abused. My mother was cold. My father was still a drunk. My husbands had been heartless. Nobody understood.

Ah, but I went back to college, built a home, and started my nursing career during all this. I was well-hidden. Only the various liquor stores knew how often I bought magnums of wine. I never missed work. I found enablers - the best being the law enforcement friends I drank with.

I knew I had a drinking problem. However, I didn't really think I was an alcoholic because I was sure I wasn't physically addicted. I tried a geographical cure to no avail. I went into short bouts of counseling. My father has been in and out of AA all his life, so obviously that wouldn't work.

In the end, after seven more years of despair, I was so isolated that I thought I was the only nurse in the world who drank; I didn't even know where to go for help. At the end, I was buying a magnum of Jack Daniels every week. But when I found I was physically addicted, I decided to quit.

Luckily, I went to my doctor and, after being detoxed, I entered a program she recommended.

I had spent the prime of my life rationalizing, justifying, and minimizing my alcoholism - just like every other drunk.