Day One - continued

I was scared to death when I sat among all of those strangers and admitted that I needed help.  It was an incomprehensible situation for so many reasons.  Following through on a decision to stop drinking was strange enough.  Admitting weakness and defeat was something I had never seen as a possibility.  The end of the futility was just as hard to imagine.

We began with would become a nightly ritual: rounds.  I listened to my "classmates" describe how they had been feeling over the last 24 hours--cravings? thoughts of using?  Some of them blew into a breathalyzer; all of them took antabuse in front of the group.  Each introduced themselves and their drug of choice.  Most were alcoholics, but there were heroin addicts, potheads, and abusers of painkillers, as well.

I felt uneasy and completely isolated--for about five minutes.  I recognized one of the guys in the group; we would sometimes drink in the same bar.  He was a clinic "veteran": he had been in intensive out-patient rehab for about a month, and he had almost completed that first course of treatment.  During rounds and in the next phase, he showed me the ropes, often with wit and levity.  During the first break, I met many of the others in the group.  Without asking them for help, they offered advice and support.

It didn't take long before friendships were formed.  In group therapy, we supported each other through divorces and relapses, through hard times at work, through bereavement and mourning.  We celebrated anniversaries.  We insisted on honesty and responsibility; we called you out if you weren't doing the work and accepted no excuses for not addressing your issues.

While many of us became friends over the next several weeks, the doctors at the clinic introduced me to an old friend that I had completely forgotten about--sleep.  Months before, when I quit cold turkey, I didn't sleep for weeks.  I never slept well when I was drinking.  At the clinic, the MD gave me some librium, which I took for two nights.  Since then, sleep and I have been like long-separated, reunited best friends.  After years apart, we are still catching up.

I had feared admitting my weakness.  I feared how my life would change if I stopped drinking.  Admitting my weakness and my fears allowed me to see that there were a host of people in the very same place as me, willing to help and, at the same time, hoping for a hand.  I had believed my drinking to be a private problem; I had come to see the solution was, in part, a social one.