I want to preface by saying I am not a doctor, counselor or mental health professional. I cannot offer any diagnosis or treatment plan. I am sharing my experience in hopes that it will encourage those who are still suffering to get help. Life can be better.
My battles with mental health were more serious than my alcoholism. In retrospect, it was obvious that I suffered from depression as an early teen. I remember feeling different from all those around me. I was somehow less than everyone else. I don’t recall any depressive issues like I experienced when I was older, but I was painfully shy, lonely and anxiety riddled most of the time. Shamefully, my best friend during this time was the kid living next door who was five years younger than me. Most of my free time was spent watching TV.
When I started drinking, I quickly discovered that alcohol could melt the knot of existential angst in the center of my chest. I was no longer shy and I was free of the oppressive weight of anxiety and fear. My solution to the problem of self was to drink as much as I could, as hard as I could, whenever I could. Booze was my outlet.
Drinking only lasted a few years before I had to get sober. Quitting drinking was a choice made out of self-preservation. If I continued to drink, I would have died, but I resented the hell out of getting sober. Booze was the only means I had to deal with life and now it gone. I may have gotten sober because I was afraid of dying but I stayed sober out of fear of being thrown out of the military. My first year in the Navy, I knew numerous people who were discharged for both drinking and depression issues. I had already drank my way out of college twice and the Navy was my last chance at making something out of my life. Without the military, I feared I would have lived alone in some anonymous trailer park in the Florida Panhandle. I stayed sober and kept my mouth shut.
I did my best to hold everything together for as long as I could. I would go through periods of relative peace where I was okay, but invariably I would get depressed. I considered myself to have been a very good sailor. I took pride in my work and was successful in my job. Despite what would appear to be a happy person on the outside, I was hopeless on the inside. All around me was dark and foreboding. I made a few friends, mainly in AA, but I kept to myself. I would let on that I was depressed to those I trusted. I was always encouraged to seek help, but I was also told that in doing so I would likely be discharged.
When I transferred to my third and final duty station in Hawaii, the bottom fell out and I crashed hard. Hawaii was a paradise I would not enjoy. Over the course of a few short months, my shyness morphed into a full blown terror of people. I became prone to panic attacks anytime I was out in public. I could not shop for my basic needs unless I went to the 24 hour Walmart at 2 or 3 in the morning. I was plagued by insomnia and could not sleep for days on end. Other than work, Walmart and nightly runs to the drive thru at Jack in the Box, I went nowhere. I shut myself in. My blinds were tightly drawn and the lights were out. The darker the better. I wouldn’t clean. My kitchen sink was full of dirty dishes growing mold. The only things in my fridge were bread, jalapenos and mayonnaise. I made my outsides match my insides, reading tragic stories, playing video games and listening to the most depressing music I could find. Bands like The Smiths and The Cure were companions. My depression was would sucking demon inside my head.
My depression was bad but the powerlessness I felt was worst. I felt like I had no defense against my own thinking. On one level I knew better, that I needed to pick myself up, yet I could not. No matter how hard I tried to rise above my depression I failed. I watched myself hopelessly spiral further into despair. At the end, I became a cutter, mutilating myself to feel something other than depression. Then there came a spark of light from the most unlikely of sources, the internet.
In the mid-90s the internet was in its infancy. Surfing this new medium for information about depression, I came across an article on reincarnation which instantly piqued my curiosity. I didn’t believe in past lives, yet I gobbled up all I could find on the subject. My beliefs up until this point were Catholic. There was either Heaven or Hell. Live a good life, embrace Jesus and the end of your life you will pass through the Pearly Gates and into eternal paradise. On the flip-side, a sinful life resulted in the Devil who waited below with his pitchfork in a sea of fire. I never gave religion much serious thought in the past because it never offered me hope, yet reading about reincarnation somehow did. I hurled myself trying to uncover my past lives that I didn’t even believe existed because it gave me hope.
I read everything I could on-line and bought multiple books on the subject. Two themes kept repeating themselves to me. The first was that people who spent too much time investigating who they were in a past life was a clear indicator they were unhappy in this one. Of course I was unhappy! Why else would I start believing such a crazy idea in the first place! The second theme scared the hell out of me and that is if I didn’t overcome my difficulties in this life, I would have to face them all over again in a future life. Hell didn’t scare me half as much as the possibility that I would have to come back and go through all this shit again. It was then I took my first baby steps toward recovery.
I went to sick call for insomnia, and I spoke to the doctor there. I was partially honest about my depression, and he told me that he would refer to psychiatric help if that is what I wanted. He cautioned me that by accepting his referral, my naval career would be over. I thought it about for a few days before I accepted the help. True to his word, in a little over a year I was discharged from service.
The psychiatrist who did my initial intake diagnosed me with depression, social anxiety disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder. She put me on a merry go round of SSRI anti-depressants and pretty much sent me on my way. I did have to see her once a week, so she could make sure I wasn’t in danger of hurting myself. I also had to see a counselor, but other than encouraging words they were not much help either. My one take away from treatment my anxiety was a bigger issue than my depression. In fact my depression was most likely a result of my inability to cope with my anxiety.
As I left the Navy and transitioned into civilian life, I got myself off the medications and really tried hard to establish a new life for myself. To a lesser extent I succeeded. I was able to get a job, get a girlfriend, I firmly established in a solid AA group. I was doing well for myself, but in retrospect I see that I did the bare minimum by expanding my comfort zones just enough to make my life a little bit better. Rarely did I rise to the challenge to be better or do more; I did my best to extend the status quo as long as I could. The important thing for me was that I was no longer battling depression and that was enough for me.
Life is constantly changing, yet I was terrified of change; even the things that I wanted out of life, like to further my education, write a novel, explore my interests in nature and spirituality, get married, have a family etc. paralyzed me. I had girlfriends too and I would spend time with them, but the relationships were never serious. Mostly, I went to work, went to meetings and played video games. I liked to read too and I read quite voraciously, usually multiple books at once. One year I read over 300 books. I still love reading to this day, but I don’t read nearly as much as I did during this time.
It took a lot more pain to change my life. I had another long term bout with depression. I like to think it was situational but even if that is true, I didn’t do anything to challenge or change. Instead, I regressed into old thoughts and patterns. As the years dragged on, I began to hope for death. It was the only way I could see out of this nightmare. I also made a colossal mistake and stopped going to AA meetings. I did this because I was ashamed at how far my life had fallen. I had close to 20 years of sobriety, but my life was a fucking mess. I could never let anyone know that things had gotten this bad. I stopped talking to my family. I closed myself off to everyone. For years I loved my life but hated myself, but suddenly I saw that I loved myself but hated my life. I saw everything I could have been if I only had the courage to step forward and seize it, but my life felt like it was over.
It wasn’t until a chance meeting on a now defunct website where I would anonymously share my pain that I found a way out. I met others who shared a similar story and together we forged a bond of hope. Hope is amazing, and I not talking about the blind hope of someday, but the hope of knowing that with effort, with faith and with love, all things are possible. This new found hope, carried me, and still carriers to me into realms of living I never dreamed possible.
The past four years I have spent full time working on myself and my recovery. I realize that recovery, whether from alcoholism or depression is a lifelong endeavor. We always have opportunities to grow and to learn. It’s never too late to follow the path to who we are meant to become. I spent years in self-pity and lamenting my lot life. I see those years as the single greatest transformation in my life. It was only through my pain did I find out I really was and what I wanted out of my life. My past forged the man I am today, and the man I continue to evolve to be. I am grateful today for my life and it is full life worth living.
Comments
Post a Comment