Unbuttoning
How I finally stopped drinking and began lifting.
An edited version of this piece appeared on the ABC Sport website on 27 October 2022.
It is March 2022 and I am being admitted to a rehabilitation hospital. My bags are being searched. A nurse wearing rubber gloves swings my suitcase onto the bed. Another nurse unzips it. She removes the clothing and shakes each piece out, folds it again and starts a pile on the single bed.
There is a small desk. No lamp. A cupboard with three drawers but no hanging space. A bathroom with no solid hanging devices. Rubber hooks for towels that give way when you pull them with a finger. A shower curtain hanging from a rail designed to collapse, should you pull down on it with any weight.
My toiletries bag is opened. A bendy tray of tablets is waved in the air.
I forgot that was in there. It’s Panadol, I tell them.
They take possession of the Panadol and my medication. Lexapro for depression and anxiety. Thiamine tablets. The GP said these would help save my brain from the wine, should it come to that. You can come and get your medication from us when you need it, one of them says. They stack my books on the bed, after flicking through each. The suitcase, now empty, is zipped up and placed on the floor.
There is a safe, a nurse says. You should use it. You don’t know who is walking around this place. Everyone is an addict, she says, and rolls her eyes like she was talking about her children who had just run through the house bouncing a ball for the fifteenth time after she had told them not to do it fourteen times before.
I am here because my doctor found out that I drink more than one bottle of wine every evening. It is wine made without preservatives and it contains slightly less alcohol than most. The hangovers aren’t savage, but it wasn’t these that led to my confession at the GP. It was the voice in my head that spoke to me every morning.
“You’re an idiot”, it said. “You fucking idiot. How have you done this AGAIN? How did you let this happen? Ok, you’re not going to drink tonight. You’re going to have a night off. Just one. It’s not impossible”.
I would stand at the kitchen sink and drink a glass of water, eyes stinging from dehydration and some part of me would beat another with a stick. Punishment.
I keep looking at the name tag of the nurse who seems to have taken charge, because I keep forgetting her name. It’s not unusual, I just keep forgetting it. I read the tag and the name enters my brain, smacks off something and slips down somewhere inside my head. I look at the tag. Gone. Again.
The nurses leave the room and I’m standing there with the contents of my bag displayed, all approved. They don’t close the door but leave it slightly ajar. I push it shut, quietly.
I take my shoes off and lay down on my back under the covers of the single bed with the blanket pulled over my chin. Someone is going to take over now, I thought.
I can let go.
I spent six nights in the hospital. I was scheduled to be there for three weeks. I don’t feel this was a failure. I have ruminated on many failures in my life because it is one of my favourite topics — things I messed up again — but this was not one of them. On the seventh day of my time there, I was suddenly determined to go home.
I had the usual breakfast in the hospital dining room, sitting alone, at a table far away but close enough to those already eating. The food was unchanged. Gritty scrambled egg, a single piece of toast, a small sausage. I read the news on my phone as I ate. After that I went back to my room to check where I was supposed to be next. There were three sessions a day at which attendance was compulsory. The material covered in each differed. Mindfulness, the recovery ‘journey’, how to deal with cravings, a reflection, art therapy.
I was suspicious of most of these. When I was assigned to a group early in my stay, I told the therapist I was not keen on ‘group’ stuff but for the sake of my recovery, I would attend and tolerate it. I didn’t tell her that if I was going to do ‘art’ it would be alone and at a time of my choosing. It was not a pursuit I considered conducive to conversation or ‘bonding’.
I probably began on the wrong foot.
So on this seventh day, the reflection session held in the morning brought several groups together. I did not know most of the people there and while this would not normally bother me, I felt my back go up like a pissed off cat once the discussion started.
For the sake of the privacy of others at the hospital and those who work there, I won’t detail exactly what was discussed in this session. What I will say is that by the time I walked out of that room, I was done. As far as I could see, there was finger pointing, there was an emphasis on ‘what went wrong’ in childhoods, how other people may have damaged us and, therefore, how our own behaviour may have damaged our own children. It was the last in a line of meetings that seemed to emphasise being prey to something, rather than an active participant in a complex life. You are an addict, and you always will be, they said. You are powerless over this thing. It is only with the help of a higher power that you will recover. I felt defeated before I’d really begun. Firstly, one would have to believe in a higher power.
My sister picked me up later that night.
I hadn’t had a drink in a week, which was notable, but I was also now back home where nothing had changed. Not that I expected it to alter, but I had to work out a way to sustain my own changes, in a world that went on as usual around me. Something had shifted in me, but I didn’t know how far and how stable it was. What I did have on my side was the intractability that saw me leave hospital, despite the cajoling of the nurses, two weeks ahead of schedule.
This is not a story about my drinking. I drank too much and too often. It was a problem. Although, I never had an accident. I never crashed my car or burnt myself or wandered in front of a bus. I was never admitted to hospital to have my stomach pumped or stitched up after I crashed through a glass screen while showering late at night, drunk, losing balance. All my broken bones happened while sober. I didn’t drink in the morning or at work. My drinking was quiet and contained. There are no stories to horrify and fascinate, I did not live hard. I held down jobs, have a partner, a son of whom I am proud, and I have achieved some things. I have a doctorate. I wrote a book. So that story is not at all interesting. This story is about how I have begun to live with myself. This is the hard bit. Once I had stopped drinking, I was like a half-peeled onion. Raw. Exposed. Making everyone cry.
While I was in the hospital I began to think about what I would like to do with myself, if the treatment worked. I spent a lot of time “looking up” things on the internet. Cars I’d like to buy. Shoes. Maps of the United States. Books. Most of it was aimless and as pointless as the hour or so I’d spend laying on the bed flicking through TikTok, only getting up when I realised I was almost asleep and drooling. One day I found myself looking at the NSW Weightlifting website. I had often thought about giving it a crack but lacked the courage. A sport for everyone, the website said. I fancied that my short, squat frame was well matched to it.
During the 2020 Olympics I watched much of the lifting. I listened to the commentary and took mental notes. One woman was very impressive. She talked knowledgeably and calmly about the lifters and their performances, saving excitement for only those moments that warranted it. At one point she said: “pain is irrelevant” and I drew breath.
I became fascinated by Hidilyn Diaz, the first person to win a Gold Medal for the Philippines. In the 55kg class she lifted a total 224kg across the two lifts: the snatch and the clean and jerk. When she performed her final clean and realised she was going to hold it and thus win, she began crying before she returned the barbell to the floor. 2020 was her fourth Olympic games.
It had been a long time since my body could move with velocity, to respond, to jump across a muddy puddle. I was sluggish and weighed down by kilograms acquired, mainly around my waist, from years spent sitting in front of screens. Years avoiding stairs and yes, years drinking wine. The website supplied a form through which they invited you to express your interest. I typed in my details
At this point I should tell you that lifting heavy things is not new to me. I tell people that lifting got me through a PhD and it is true. I had a personal trainer who made sure his clients exercised in ways that were agreeable to them, because if you hate the exercise, you’re not going to keep doing it are you? I told him I wanted to become as strong as I possibly could. I also knew this meant I would not have to run intervals on a treadmill or row on a machine. He trained me to become strong in the three powerlifting lifts: the deadlift, the squat and the bench press. In powerlifting, the barbell doesn’t have to be lifted above your head. Olympic lifting requires you to push the barbell above your shoulders and hold it there.
Lifting helped me bring mind and body together and withstand the separation I felt throughout the PhD process. Years spent sitting at a desk, alone in an office with no windows to the outside world, my thesis required me to prioritise the mind to get the job finished. Whilst many books and articles of advice for doctoral students encourage you to maintain a healthy body, the reality for me meant ignoring it for much of the day. The lifting brought me back into conversation with my limbs. I pondered their capabilities, what I could potentially make them do. I chased personal bests to prove I could achieve something while my supervisors sent me out of their offices with yet another draft to be re-written.
Finding myself in a psych hospital, being treated for my drinking habit, my lifting PBs were something from a time that had ended. I didn’t really know what had happened between the time when I laid on a gym bench and pressed 65 kilograms upwards and away from my body and this moment.
I’d gone from middle-aged woman of middling lifting ability to an empty shell who no longer felt much at all. The heaviness of the blankets on the hospital bed was the first thing I noticed in a long while that gave me comfort. Physical comfort. I asked for a blanket to be brought in for me from home: a heavy, knitted orange blanket my grandmother made for my son about 15 years ago. I needed more weight on me than the hospital blanket could offer. The first night I slept with it I imagined my grandmother was holding me.
I suppose I should tell you how I got here. You don’t just wake up one day and have a drinking problem. For me, it developed over a long time. There have been times in my life when the problem was larger than at others, but for the past ten or so years I have used alcohol as medication.
In the years between 1992 and 2008 I experienced a succession of ‘events’ that I do not wish to describe. Some of them marked me significantly. The emotional scar tissue developed over many years, although I did not know it at the time. Having a small child and being a single parent for a while, I had learned to just keep going. Food must be on the table. Rent paid. A little boy put to bed, clothes washed, school uniforms ironed, lunches packed. You can’t give up, you can’t stop. You put your head down and do what is required because there is someone in your life who is far more important than you.
The scars were patched up and ignored.
In 2010 my grandmother died. Even though she was 87, it was sudden. Something inside me broke. There would be no more patching over the scars; they busted open, and I was left frantically trying to hold everything together. A few weeks later I noticed I had increasing bouts of light-headedness. It was unnerving enough to see a doctor, who could tell me little. She mentioned anxiety — the possibility that I was over-breathing and making myself lightheaded — but I paid little attention.
Then I noticed an undercurrent of dread running inside me almost constantly. I could not even call it ‘dread’ then, it was unnameable. It was inside of me but uncontrolled and not obviously related to what was happening around me. It just appeared one day, and I couldn’t get it to leave. The only thing that would make it fade was two or three drinks. I counted hours until I could get home and start drinking because then this feeling would stop. It would always return but for a few hours I would have some relief.
This dread stayed with me for another 8 years, being worst when I was in the final stages of my doctorate. By then I was in a constant state of panic. It peaked and troughed but it never disappeared.
Sitting at lunch with my partner in a fancy restaurant I got up and down constantly, walking outside, texting my sister, asking her to say something good, because if I didn’t move, I would be overcome.
Driving with my son on a Sydney freeway I stopped the car — I told him I just needed a moment to take a breath — got out walked to the back of the car, bent over and dry retched. I do not know what my son thought was happening, or how he kept his own emotions contained.
Waiting to check in at the airport I hid my eyes behind sunglasses because I was crying uncontrollably. I couldn’t understand what the staff member was saying when she was checking my bags. I realised she was telling me I had to get myself together or they would not let me on the flight.
Sitting on a bench in the street, frozen in place, full of panic. Two women stood near, having a conversation. I wanted them to come to me, to ring the ambulance and take me to hospital. Just help me, I whispered. But they didn’t notice me.
These are some of the episodes I remember.
My anxiety — I started to call it ‘my’ because by then it had become part of who I was — managed to develop a tolerance to the wine. It took more and more to numb things. Aside from the wine, the one other thing that assisted me in beating back the dread was lifting heavy things. The stronger my body became, the more skilled my mind at pushing through barriers. Sometimes I barely hurdled them, falling on my face after catching myself, but somehow, for a reason I still don’t understand, I got up.
There was the time I sat on a machine designed to strengthen your back — the seated row — and cried as I pulled the cable toward me with patience and control.
Or the time I lifted 100 kilograms for the first time and felt like I could walk through the glass door of the gym on the way out, I was so powerful.
Exerting my muscles was both relief and armour.
The deadlift was my favourite lift. The process of performing it became a ritual during the writing of my thesis. I was trained just enough that it became rhythmic and my muscles developed a memory. I had to maintain the routine to perform the lifts correctly and not injure myself. It required me to first consciously train body and mind work together, until the body could do it alone.
My adult life has been an ongoing wrestle between academic pursuits and my deep love of sport; the interdependence of body and mind required for lifting seemed to embody a struggle I too clearly understood.
The lifting, however, did not have the power of the wine. It could not provide the same level of comfort, the same relief from anxiety. Of course, being unconscious by the time your head hits the pillow is far easier than taking yourself to the gym in the evening in a bid to tire the anxiety into submission. You just end up in a darker place over the longer term. I was happy with this deal. Until one day I wasn’t.
A local weightlifting gym contacted me. I had almost forgotten that I had submitted that form. They invited me to come in for a trial.
As I said earlier, I did not know what training for the Olympic lifts involved. Of course, you must lift heavy things, but I had watched enough of the sport on television to understand that being strong was only part of the equation.
You must move quickly in weightlifting. It requires explosive speed. This is one of the reasons it was attractive. I knew I could lift heavy weights — even when my drinking was bad — but I no longer felt my body could move with speed. I had fallen a few times. I fell on slippery stairs. I put my foot just slightly off the mat at the front door and broke my ankle. I had become unsure of my body. I didn’t trust it to react. To what? Uneven ground. Unexpected events. I didn’t feel safe. Weightlifting requires speed and balance and being trained in it seemed to be a good way to regain some confidence in my body, and thus, myself. I guess I could have taken up yoga or pilates, but like many people with substance issues, I don’t do things by halves.
The weightlifting club was smaller than I expected. Two rooms and a mezzanine, plus a small bathroom upstairs. Grey painted brick walls, a red line painted just above head height, where a picture rail might be. In the room with the lifting platforms, light was provided by fluorescents and three small windows at the top of the far wall. Pictures printed from a home computer pinned on every wall, weightlifters of note in action, club members at meets, the coach and his kids, Arnold Schwarzenegger on a visit to the club. Five wooden platforms are wedged into the room, most facing a mirror. Weight plates were lined up neatly between platforms.
The coach, originally from Central Asia, was taciturn but welcoming. He didn’t ask me about myself, what I was hoping to achieve by being there, or what I wanted from my exercise regime. He told me that I must learn technique first.
He handed me a wooden broom stick and showed me the first movement. I tried to mimic him. Your wrists, he said, roll them forward. Bring the stick up your legs, pull up through your elbows, roll the stick overhead and lock your elbows. Wrists, he said again.
He took the broomstick and handed me a barbell. It had no weights on it and was lighter than the 20 kilogram bar I was used to in my usual gym. He was teaching me to do a straight leg snatch. I did it over and over again. When he was satisfied, he progressed to another movement: the hang snatch. I held the broomstick again, this time across my thighs, at a height allowed by the wide grip I was told to take. He instructed me to lift the bar above my head in one movement, this time squatting to catch it. Hold the squat he said. I did this a number of times, I lost count, until he assessed my squat and general form.
I’d been moving for over half an hour. I hadn’t told the coach I’d recently come out of hospital, that I was recovering from a drinking problem or that I hate cardio. I just kept doing what he told me. My legs started to shake slightly when I held the bar aloft.
Then the nausea rolled over me.
I tried to choke it down but after a few more minutes I knew I was going to have to acknowledge it because I thought I was going to vomit. I asked him where the bathroom was. It was old, pink, tiles cracked. I sat on the floor, I felt bad enough to not care about who or what had been there, and put my head towards the bowl, but nothing emerged. I sat back against the wall; the tiles cool under my legs. I took a moment then went back downstairs. Ok, I’m ready to go now, I told the coach. Have a lolly, he said.
After I had exited the hospital, I went back to work. I teach at a university. My students didn’t know why I was absent for a couple of weeks. I couldn’t tell them how I had walked out of the classroom looking forward to a glass of wine and returned two weeks later shocked and raw. I accepted their well-wishes and pretended nothing had happened. For the first few weeks of ‘recovery’ I predominantly felt relief. I didn’t have to drink anymore. I didn’t have to drive to work with studied focus, concerned I would lose concentration and have an accident. I didn’t have to wake up feeling like I had only just gone to sleep.
To open my eyes and curse myself.
To make sure there was enough wine in the house.
To think about going to the gym but not actually get there.
To hope my son didn’t notice the glass beside me long after my partner had gone to bed.
To avoid evening events where I couldn’t get a drink.
To look at people on the train and wonder how they managed alcohol-free days
To wonder why I couldn’t be like everyone else.
To discount everything good I had ever done because it didn’t matter when I drank so much.
For those first few weeks I was overcome with this relief and could feel little else. Until the day I walked past a graduation and saw parents standing either side of their child, in cap and gown, posing for a photo. Some were holding flowers, those teddy bears wearing mortar boards, a testamur in a plastic sleeve. I graduated with a PhD in 2019. My parents were there, alongside my son and my partner. It didn’t feel like this. It didn’t feel joyful. I didn’t feel proud. I didn’t feel relieved. I felt very little. I was there, but when I saw those families, I realised I wasn’t there at all. At that moment I saw that I had been moving through my life with a thick layer of protection, provided by alcohol. I had managed to avoid feeling bad — mostly — but I had also missed opportunities to feel very good. And as I said, nothing I achieved mattered, when I knew I would ruin it all that night.
The second week I visited the coach I brought the weightlifting shoes I bought a couple of years ago but never really used. They have a lifted heel and large straps that warp around your foot, over the laces. Ah, said the coach, shoes. Getting serious! He demonstrated how my shoes should make a sound at the very moment my arms lock out at the top of the snatch. Like this he said. BAM! He moved quickly and forcefully. I tried it. The shoes made a satisfying sound on the wooden platform.
During the session I was instructed to hold my shallow squat, bar held above my head. The coach asked me to go lower. My knees screamed. He pulled the bar back as I held it. This is where the bar should be, he said. My shoulders felt ready to pop from their sockets. I now knew where they needed to be.
I practice at home with a bit of dowel from Bunnings.
Several months later, I am still training with the coach and have no intention of quitting.
When I am at the club it’s about the session only. I have no past, I have no future, I am in that moment. The coach doesn’t care what I did earlier or what I am going to do later. It’s just about performing the actions correctly. If that takes many attempts, so be it. He uses a broomstick to keep my line straight when I squat. I am supposed to descend without hitting it. I hit my head against it and try again. He wedges small weights under my heels to take the pressure off my knees. I have learned to squat without technique, and he needs to fix this. You need your technique to be good, he said, otherwise you will rely on your strength at higher weights.
For the past 10 years I have relied on strength. I had no technique. I relied on the brute force of wine to beat anxiety into submission.
It’s like unbuttoning, he said. You’ve buttoned something up the wrong way and now we need to unbutton it and do it properly.
I began to realise that my body bore real, physical scars that would also need to be addressed before I could achieve proper technique.
I have broken my left ankle twice and dislocated my left knee once. I had surgery to pin my knee back together after the dislocating kneecap ripped through it like a tornado through a field. My left ankle won’t bend like my right one. It pinches in front, like there’s something in there, getting in the way. The scar tissue there will need to be dealt with before I can squat as low as is required for these lifts. Hip flexors stuck tight after years of sitting. A hunched back, developed early to hide a large bust, exacerbated later by screens on phones and computers. A girdle of flesh left after an emergency caesarean and a large baby. All of these things need to be broken down.
Like my psychologist said, different layers of real work lie ahead.
Another lifter, a woman who trains with an intensity I’ve rarely seen matched, told me that lifting exposes things that were there but hidden or ignored. “You only see them ‘under weight’”, she said. If you’re injured or a part of your body is not operating well, you won’t necessarily notice it until you put it under stress, or you get older.
“If I wasn’t able to address things now,”, she said, “I might not be able to walk when I’m older”.
My brain has been under stress for many years, and I thought I could mask the stiffness and the soreness with alcohol, and with what I realise now were half-hearted attempts to lift heavy things. Eventually I broke down. Like a car never cared for or serviced.
Weightlifting is helping me face those wounds, the physical and emotional scar tissue built over many years. It simultaneously holds the scars to the light, whilst giving me reason to start working on them, to break them down gently and with love.
