November 7th, 2016, I rolled out of bed and grabbed some Tylenol for my throbbing headache. Hungover wasn’t strange anymore, it was expected. A perpetual alarm clock, waking me up and giving me another excuse to skip French class.
Did I black out? No. I didn’t – I could remember every second of the night before. Another night, with another partner, who I didn’t care about and never would see again.
I grabbed a glass and poured some white wine, it was 11 AM. Then I paused, I had gone to my first AA meeting recently, down at the Manhattan LGBT center. Everyone was friendly, accepting, but I wasn’t sure I belonged. I didn’t want to belong.
A while before, I told my therapist that I felt out of control. I felt that I was flying around aimlessly with nowhere to land. It was my drinking, she said, that I couldn’t control. It was the nights that I would go out, and end up at someone’s apartment, or wandering the streets inebriated, that were chaotic. If I could only drink three drinks a night, or maybe only go out on weekends, I would feel a lot more grounded. Why wasn’t school a priority anymore? She would ask. I didn’t know. I had worked hard, and ended up at a school that many only dream of attending. Yet here I was, failing, floundering, and insatiable.
Sleep was something that eluded me. I found myself up at night, trying to find someone to talk to, or meet up with. Manhattan is alive at all hours of the day. There is always something to do for those whose thoughts can’t stop racing, who can’t stop searching for excitement.
Yet somehow that day was different. I put down the glass and ran down to my therapist’s office on Central Park west. All I remember was crying. I didn’t know what I had lost – but my grip on reality had been faltering for a while.
I just watched the movie the Adjustment Bureau – and I feel like whoever wrote that was definitely in my head at some point when I was psychotic. I was convinced that there were external forces that were causing me to spin out of control. The forces that had killed my dad, that had ruined my relationships, that wanted me to kill myself.
That night, November 7th, 2016, I ended up in an inpatient unit downtown. I was up at 4:00 AM, heavily medicated, but still not sedated. I insisted that I be taken to a hospital in Connecticut, one that I had stayed at for months when I was younger. I wanted to see my former psychiatrist and my social worker. I wanted to be among those who I knew cared, at least at one point.
November 8th, 2016 – I didn’t vote. America chose to elect Donald Trump as our next president, and I decided to stop drinking. It was the day that I was taken by an ambulance to the hospital in Connecticut wearing flip flops and leggings (which were taken away) and was given sweatpants, t shirts, and underwear because all I was left with was a pajama shirt. I was alone, but I was sober – and for once in a while, I felt safe.
It would be the next day that I would learn why I had not been sleeping, and why the world didn’t make sense anymore. I was having my first manic episode. A nice nurse would come into my room, give me a copy of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, and tell me that maybe it’s good that I have a drinking problem, I would never be without a community. Maybe I would have a community, but would that matter if I couldn’t drink?
November 8th, 2017 – marks a year of sobriety for me. It is a day of mixed feelings, as it also means that I have been in residential mental health treatment for an entire year. Yet, looking back, I am happy with my decision. Sobriety, after I leave treatment, will be an entirely different journey, but this last year has been restorative. Mania did not disappear when I stopped drinking, and neither did psychosis. It took months in treatment and medication that actually worked to get me into a place where I was ready to accept myself.
Sobriety did not mean that I was immune from mistakes, and I made many. I look back at some of the things I did and said in early recovery, during my mania, and cringe. Yet, today, 365 days along on my journey, I do not regret any of it. I am healthier than I have been in years. I have a sponsor and am slowly working the twelve steps. When I walk out the door of my treatment center as a resident for the last time, I feel like I have a solid support system to keep me sober.
I am not perfect. Yet, today I have been sober a year.
I am proud of myself.