Under Reconstruction
IT’S 15th October 2024 and I’ve taken a sick day today from work. I honestly did not feel well enough to deal with patients, students, work colleagues and just the hustle and bustle of the hospital today. I’ve been going to AA meetings nearly every evening, and some daytime meetings too, for two years and five months. I’ve not picked up an alcoholic drink during this time.
Before then I was a daily drinker, drinking a bottle of wine a night on weekdays and two or three bottles a day at weekends, with the odd spirit or two thrown in for good measure. I was a mess. Angry at my workplace and colleagues, exhausted, undervalued and disillusioned. I had taken two sick days in the week leading up to me calling the AA helpline, and finally after years and years and years of chronic alcoholism I went to my first AA meeting on a Sunday morning. I sat in that meeting and for the first time admitted to myself and others that I am powerless over alcohol and my life had become unmanageable. I heard others share my thoughts and feelings about alcoholism, I saw the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions on the scrolls, and I felt hope for the first time that I could change and be free.
About halfway through the meeting I opened my mouth to speak, “My name is Lucy and I’m an alcoholic. I had a brother who died from alcoholism, and I have a twenty-year-old daughter at university, and I just can’t stop drinking.” I burst into tears and a kind lady brought me some tissues. A man with piercing blue eyes told me, “You are in the right place.” I kept coming back and I still keep coming back. Sponsors guide me through my sober journey. My first sponsor gave me so much of her time to get me started. I will be forever grateful to her. After two months of not drinking and going to meetings every night and working as a nurse every weekday, I was physically sober but exhausted and still very far from emotional and spiritual sobriety. My sponsor strongly suggested that I take some time off to get well and fully throw myself into the Programme of recovery. My first thought and reaction was, “I can’t do that – what will people say,” and to think, “I can’t be that selfish and let all my work colleagues down.”
I had a meeting arranged with my boss about a personal development review and I prayed the Serenity Prayer before I went in. I ended up telling her all about my drinking, that I was in AA, that my sponsor had suggested I take time off work to recover. She was shocked but as supportive as she could be, although she did say, “Can you come in tomorrow?” which I did. Then I took three months off work. It felt strange and I felt like a failure – weak and selfish and very afraid of what would happen to me. Then gradually I began to learn more about alcoholism, the three-fold illness of the body, mind and spirit. I threw myself into AA, my family were very supportive. Most of my friends gradually drifted away from me or maybe I drifted away from them, I’m not sure. I knew I felt lost, misunderstood and let down. I also know that I was and still am changing, and my main purpose is to stay sober. The friends I used to drink with, whom I still love — I am not reaching out to them anymore, neither are they reaching out to me. I accept today that this is just the way it is.
Through working the Twelve Step recovery Programme, I have learned to deal with my anger and resentments and let a lot of self-pity, self-righteous anger and self-loathing go. I am, and always will be, a work in progress under reconstruction. Life is so much better now I’m not drinking. I don’t have hangovers, regrets, wasted days, mental torment that I used to have on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis. I like myself a little more, I am more confident, and I am happier. My relationship with my daughter is so much better now, she told me that she used to be afraid of me when I was drinking, now she is not afraid and trusts me.
So, I’m not going to beat myself up for taking a sick day today. I am self-preserving, becoming guided by a Power greater than myself who has my back, and who has kept me sober one day at a time since Friday 13th May 2022. Some days I just have to slow down. Stop doing. Just be. Feel it.
LUCY, Exeter, Devon
