California Sober
When Life Gives You Chickenshit, Make Chicken Salad!
More Struggles on the Journey to Stay Alcohol-Free
I want to be happy again. I want to be free of the daily doses of “life on life’s terms” that I have been getting since the Autumn.
Lately, every day has brought new aches and pains, new depression, new loss, another calamity. A close friend died, I just had heart surgery, and my car blew up.
I am, by nature, a happy-go-lucky person. It feels off to me to be down. But my psychiatrist just diagnosed me with clinical depression. For the last twenty years, I have been falsely carrying around the diagnosis of bipolar 1 disorder -manic. Now, it turns out that what was diagnosed a manic episode was alcohol-induced psychosis.
I have anxiety and depression — only with good reason. Who wouldn’t be anxious about my heart condition? Who wouldn’t be depressed by a promising legal career ended by alcohol use disorder?
“Stop the Stigma!” the billboards read. Given that most people have a fourth-grade reading ability, what the hell is this billboard meant to accomplish?
Like other forms of mental illness, substance use disorders carry the notion that the user is somehow to blame. That when the disease is active, it represents a weakness of will.
I am still pissed off at the potential new primary care doctor who told me that I seemed too intelligent to avoid following my diabetes diet. That, my friends, is stigma. That is the kind of person who thinks intelligent people should not get addicted to substances. Good people don’t misuse alcohol and drugs.
Those ignorant attitudes are pissing me off. Nothing at all seems to work since the pandemic. Why can’t I just have one day when things are happy again?
So, I return to the solution. I have been going to meetings. I am writing. I am working up the courage to talk with my friends. I am enjoying my coffee and cannabis, taking a new anti-depressant, and working on my Program.
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