Relapse

Don't worry, not my relapse.

I ended up with a front row seat to a friend's relapse this week. Wow. It was rough. Had I known what was going on I probably wouldn't have put myself in the situation, but with the way it happened I didn't really have the opportunity to step back.

Remember my friend Becky in iop? I've mentioned her before here. She called me for help one night, for someone to talk to, and other nights i've called her when i've been freaking out and feeling worthless. (she's about the nicest person in the world and helps me feel like I'm worth something when I'm feeling lousy).

Becky lost her mom over the weekend, so needless to say she's got a lot going on. It was expected, as her mom had been sick for so long they'd even been praying for her death to let her out of her suffering. But of course that brings up all sorts of other emotions as well. Becky told us about all of this at IOP on monday, and I thought she was surprisingly and impressively together. She was being very honest about her feelings, positive and negative, which struck me as a very good sign. However I was also wondering in the back of my mind if she'd really be able to get through such a huge thing sober. (She's been sober for about 4 months now which sounds like a hugely long time to me but in reality is not long at all).

During my monday night meeting Becky called twice. I'd wanted to step out to answer but i'd suggested the topic for the meeting so i figured it'd really look bad for me to then step out. So I waited until after to call her back. She didn't sound good at all. She was crying and I could barely understand her. I asked her if she wanted me to come over and she said yes. I had hoped that having someone to sit with her for a bit could help her out.

I got there, we sat down on the couch, and she pretty much instantly collapsed on me sobbing. She sobbed and sobbed for what seemed like forever. When she finally started to calm down and we started to talk I realized she wasn't making much sense. I didn't want to ask if she'd been drinking, because I didn't want to offend her on top of everything, but I was getting suspicious. I asked her what she'd been doing earlier and she didn't tell me anything. She started saying repeatedly that she'd fucked up. I eventually did ask if she'd been drinking and she said no, but that she'd wanted to. To add complication to this, Becky has a seizure disorder. She had a seizure last week when she'd been sick (apparently from throwing up her meds) and has some pretty intense bruises from falling during it. So...I was becoming somewhat convinced she'd been drinking but I wanted to believe her, and also felt like the strange behavior could be coming from grief or seizure related stuff.

In the midst of all this her friend from out of state called. Becky refused to talk to him and kept putting me on the phone with him. This friend was very concerned and kept asking me what was going on. I kept having to say I really didn't know, since that was the truth. The friend started getting a bit upset with me, mainly out of concern for Becky I know, but it added stress to the situation. The friend wanted to call Becky's brother, who lives in town, so I got his number for him. I thought that that would be the perfect solution. Brother would come over and know what was going on, comfort her, and we'd move on from there.

Well. That's not the way it worked out. At all. Brother calls, and from a few feet away I can hear him screaming through the phone, "You're fucking drinking again aren't you?! What the fuck are you doing getting all these people worried about you?!" etc. etc. Becky passes the phone over to me so now brother is yelling to me. He says she's obviously drunk, this is what she does, that I should just put her to bed and leave and "if she drinks herself to death then so be it." Then he asks me if i'm her friend from AA and I say yes. Then he starts yelling at me saying how I should know better and be able to see through her bullshit and why can't I just handle it and yada yada. Grrrrrrrr. Suddenly I'm right in the midst of family drama, plus feeling that i'm alone and responsible for all this because i'm the only one physically there with Becky. Brother goes on to say that every time she drinks she has a seizure, but doesn't give me any advice on how to deal with it. Just says that it's "the ugliest fucking thing you'll ever see." The friend had also expressed concern about the seizures. I'm obviously concerned about the seizures. I don't want to leave her alone to have a seizure, but what the hell am I gonna do if she has one with me there?

Becky and I talk a bit more after I hang up with her brother. She admits she has been drinking, but no details of when/where/how much/etc. Our talking is going around in circles and pretty much useless. So I put on the tv hoping we can just relax and watch tv while she sobers up a bit. After a few minutes of that she's back to freaking out and crazy emotions and such. I finally decide there's not much more I can do there, and my presence may just be causing her to freak out more. So I get her to drink some water and then put her to bed. At least that way I knew she made it up the stairs to bed without falling down them. She seemed to settle in but as I left she started screaming for me again. I really didn't feel like going back up to her room was going to do anything other than rile her up again so I left, even with her yelling for me. I felt like a horrible person for doing so.

Sorry to be so long-winded here, but it was a really intense experience for me. I was terrified that i'd done something wrong for her, and that something really bad was going to happen to her and it would be my fault. I planned to call her the next morning but she beat me to it. She asked if I'd dumped out her booze. I told her no I couldn't find it. She told me she couldn't either. lol She said she was wanting to find everything to throw it out so she wouldn't be tempted. That at least sounded promising.

I'd really hoped to see her today at iop but she wasn't there. I told Stupidface everything that'd happened, and he went to call her during one of the breaks. He couldn't get a hold of her so he called the police to do a welfare check. They eventually called back and said they'd spoken to her face to face, she wasn't intoxicated, she wasn't a danger to herself, and she checked out medically. So at least as of this morning she was ok. She's not returning my calls, so I'm having to just take a step back and accept that for now. I'm realizing that this is a very very hard part about this disease. You bond with people in recovery. You have to. But holy crap it hurts to see them fall apart. It was so sad to see Becky in such pain. Scary too. And it's just so painful and frustrating to see that happening but not be able to do a damn thing about it.

It was a small group at iop today so we talked quite a bit about this and relapse in general. Everyone told me I did the right thing, which was reassuring because I felt like I must've done something wrong. Stupidface said I could've called him tuesday, and maybe i should've to have someone check on her sooner, but I was really hoping I'd see Becky today and everything would be more or less ok. Stupidface and my sponsor both said that what I did was a 12 step call, and you should never do that alone. Well for one thing I'm nowhere near ready to do a 12 step anything! I'm on step 3 here! But at the time I had no idea that's what I was doing. I had no idea she was drinking. Once there I really didn't want to be alone. I was actually rather pissed about being there alone because it was all falling on my shoulders. I wanted someone else to be there but I didn't know who to call. Becky doesn't really have any local friends that I know of aside from her family who was useless...and the people we know mutually through iop i didn't have numbers for and i wouldn't have felt comfortable calling them anyway. My sponsor told me I could've and should've called her. Live and learn I guess.

I'm grateful for my own sobriety, but a little overwhelmed I guess. It's a reminder of how close we all are to that first drink and descending down a bad path. Such a crappy, horrible disease we fight.

Other than all of this craziness, things are actually going decently well. I had a good day yesterday, and actually got some stuff done. My sponsor gave me an awesome compliment yesterday evening about how well I'm doing. She's someone who went through hell in early sobriety (I truly don't know how someone could go through what she did and stay sober) so a compliment like that from her is a big deal. It feels really good to hear. Since my class was cancelled yesterday I also got to go to my favorite meeting yesterday evening. I saw some people I haven't seen in a while, and they were also commenting on how well I'm doing. I've never managed to share at this meeting cus it's big and that scares me, but I did last night. Yay! :) So lots of stuff is going right for me and i'm feeling pretty good. It's a good thing too because there's a lot of challenging stuff going on around me. (There were only 3 ppl at iop this morning...and we realized that we're the only 3 out of the usual 7 who haven't relapsed in the recent past).

One last thing...something I've learned lately. Last week was absolutely crappy as far as flashbacks and everything else. It wasn't even one day at a time...it was one minute or even one second at a time. I had to talk myself through every action and I just had no idea how I could possibly get through it without drinking. Flashbacks are a time when I always reached for a drink, and they're so so hard to deal with because you can't fight what's in your head. But the exciting news is that eventually all those seconds added up into minutes, hours, and days. Suddenly it hit me that I had in fact made it through. Even these days that felt like pure hell...I survived. That shows me that I can do it. Even when it's so so bad it really will pass, and I can do it. And that's something that no one can take away from me. I have my sobriety, including that week. I'm up to 54 days now...just a week aways from 2 full months. And from all that chaos comes the knowledge...the fact...that I succeeded despite it all. No one, and nothing, can change that or take it away. That's what I shared in the meeting last night too. My sponsor said afterwards she was surprised to hear me speak. I said yeah, so was I! lol