We are up to 23 clients in the rehab facility now. The staff is struggling to keep up. This is the most clients they have ever had at one time. Two of the clients are only in for seven days – they had the choice of seven days in jail or seven days in rehab in a cushy rehab place. Go figure, they picked the luxury spot instead of jail. Those of us who are here for “longer” detest the seven-dayers.

We’re @ outpatient programming right now. We go to outpatient four times a week for two and one-half hours per sessions (10AM to lunch break @ 12:30). On Thursdays such as today, the first hour is structured as an AA meeting (though it is the worst AA meeting I have ever attended).

The morning AA meeting was awesome! Lots of great sharing. One of the “old-timers” approached me afterward and told me he had been through some of the same experiences as me (such as driving our vehicles into ditches on the “way home” at something like 60 or 70 miles per hour and being fucking lucky we didn’t smash into a power pole before righting our vehicles back onto the roadway…good times).

I’m eternally grateful that I never hit anything…or anyone…while driving drunk. It’s a miracle, one of many. I could not live with myself if I had hurt or killed someone in an “accident” – to be honest, I would rather have died myself than hit someone else. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suicidal, I just couldn’t bear the guilt of damaging someone else’s life that way.

Yesterday I received pictures and a lovely letter from my significant other. I also talked on the phone last night with them for awhile. Things are going well in their life (all things considered) and I am very happy about that. The pictures sent were from their visit during “family visit” day last weekend and they came out great. I am so blessed to have this person in my life, especially after all I have done. I still feel a lot of guilt and shame for hurting them so badly with my drinking and the behavior I exhibited while drinking.

I miss them so much. But as they have said (more than once), I’m where I need to be right now. And as they said as I was packing my bags for rehab, and I noted how far they had come in making some needed changes in their life, “It’s your turn now.”

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Hi, my name is Gretchen, and I am an alcoholic.

This is a fragment of a thing I wrote while I was in rehab trying to kick the habit I’d developed of being a “closet drunk”, drinking wine every night until I passed out to blot out the pain of memories far too close and yet so distant.

I’ve written a bit before about about how I drank, starting out with just “two glasses” of wine at a party or dinner each night, then escalating to “pre-drinking”, getting my buzz on before going out to a party or dinner, then declining rapidly into “closet drinking”…every morning when I woke up…every evening after getting home from a “social event”…until I had no control left and ended up…well, I might tell you where I ended up prior to rehab once we get to know each other a bit more…or maybe not, it’s very personal and I’m very ashamed of it.

So I wrote these words while observing one of my fellow “guests” in rehab…

With a voice worn down and broken

the veteran tells his story

You can tell he is not joking

as he talks of battle’s glory….

The veteran has come around again

The veteran is just looking for a friend

So in need of an ear to bend

Someday, you will be the veteran….

You can fight the fight, try to run away

but every vet has his veteran’s day

a time for time to have it’s simple say

the calendar of war is on display…

The veteran has come to make his stand

The veteran is living out his plan

At day’s end, he is just a man

In the end…you will come to understand

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Hi, my name is Gretchen, and I am an alcoholic.

I really shouldn’t have so much to bitch about.

Born an only child, and growing up as something of a “military brat,” I have always been an introvert who learned to play the role of an extrovert. Moving across the States (and the world) frequently as a younger person, I learned early on how to “fake it to make it.”

Ironically, decades after learning myriad techniques for getting by, it all came crashing down around me and I lost my ability to cope, my house, my job, my car, and most of the people who I always suspected – who I knew deep-down inside, in the dark of night where my tears were the only sound to drown out those nagging voices of doubt, fear, and self-loathing inside my head – I was sure they would abandon me once they figured out the faker underneath it all. Whoever the hell that faker had become.

I started drinking at a fairly young age by American standards. Of course, people have commented that I looked and behaved as though as I was older than my chronological age for all of my life. That used to feel like a compliment – I was quite the “popular” teenager, although strangely most of my so-called friends turned into hoodlum Houdini’s once I doled out the booze I had acquired with my fake ID and deep voice.

As a teenager I was curious, and was often told how smart I was. One day a friend and I decided that smart+curious=trip to a parent’s basement to scope out anything of interest. Among the treasures we found was The Bartender’s Guide to Mixology. Not just any guide, nor just for any bartender, but THE Bartender’s Guide to Mixology! Naturally the bookshelf it was in had very few other books, but the bottles in the shelves combined with this book of magic potions was all we needed.

So there we were, two curious, allegedly smart nerds, about to have our first drink. The choice was made – something called “a Manhattan.” The first one was wonderful. So was the second. Shortly thereafter we were the two nerdiest 14-year-old drunks in town. And so began my career as a professional alcoholic.

Throughout most of my adult life I lived a “traditional” life in public and a rather different one in my own head. I thought of myself as a social drinker, never having more than two drinks in public. As tears went by and life got more complex, I continued to use wine as a “social lubricant.” What could be the harm in that? It was just wine. I never consumed more than two glasses of wine in public. And I was the belle of the ball, the person whose table people rotated around so they could share in witty bon mots about the shallowness of others, refreshing small talk wholly reflective of the total nothingness that is suburbia, mindless chitter chatter for we, the upper-middle-class masses, to pass the time in between PTA meetings, mowing the lawn, polishing our nails, and otherwise giving the Brits a damned good run for use of the title “Lives of Quiet Desperation.”

As the mundane drone of life went on, I began to find that two glasses of wine was not enough to get me through the various social outings that I felt obliged to go for fear that the other attendees would all talk about me in my absence. So I learned the delicate art of “pre-drinking” – consuming as much wine as possible as quickly as possible in the alloted time when no-one else was home.

Even while engaging in pre-drinking, I rigidly maintained my two glasses in public rule. Not once did I break that limit. After all, I told myself, I had the “post-drinking” to look forward to. And of course, it was still just wine. once I was home, safely ensconced in my private chamber of alcoholism, I could and did drink until I passed out. I even started adding in an occasional nostalgic Manhattan.

Eventually the blackouts started arriving, along with the mornings of discovering new bumps, bruises, and scrapes (always accidentally self-inflicted, to the best of my knowledge). Hangovers were a thing of the past. If I woke up with a headache, or shaking hands, or just thinking I could use a drink, that would mark the start of that day’s pre-drinking.

Days become weeks, weeks became months, and months became years. Over time, the few people I had not totally isolated myself would periodically try their best to help. Some asked if I was trying to kill myself. My answer to them was always “No, of course not.” But inside I knew I was choosing a very slow, very painful, and very selfish form of suicide.

At times I even thought of taking a quicker way out.

At other times, the best of intentions from some people actually made things worse. But today, looking back, I am grateful. I walked the line and got a chance to start over.

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