The latter half of this year was so heavy I’m having trouble remembering the front of it. I’ll have to consult the annals. Let’s start with what we can remember:
After what amounts to a minor inconvenience at work on a Monday, I became blackout drunk by early-to-mid afternoon on August 5th. I came to while on a walk around the block, and by the time I got home, Laura was gone with the dogs. I knew I had really done it this time. I spent much of the rest of the day kind of in a fog of regrets; I wasn’t drinking more, and I knew something had to change, but I was too drunk to figure out exactly what. I made angry phone calls to family. That evening, I decided to drink some more, so I walked to the ATM and pulled out $60, then hit the bar. I ordered a shot of tequila, threw it back, and realized it was not going to help. I left the $60 on the counter and went home and slept in bed on top of the covers.
The next morning, I woke up and called out of work. I was at a loss. Ryan and I were texting, and when he asked if I had considered, you know, stopping drinking, I found myself looking up rehabs at the same time. I called Vogue Recovery Center and that started a journey of several months (non-consecutive) in treatment.
August was hard. Vogue was what I found, so it was exactly what I needed. Proximity to people detoxing the whole 28 days I was there was intense. I met some great people there who will be in my memory forever, and hopefully some of them are able to stay in touch. I found the program there effective – as I write this, I am 148 days sober.
It turns out not drinking was depressingly easy. I went back to the world September 5th, and the first few days were pleasant, but as soon as I had to go back to work things started going downhill. I was drinking to both deal with my depression, and to feel shitty because I felt like I deserved it. I also was doing it as a “subtle” long con to shorten my lifespan. It took a pretty drastic turn of events for me to stop, but when I did it turns out I was doing nothing for my depression and had to just feel how awful I felt things were. By the end of September I was calling suicide hotlines a few times a week, and I knew that something had to change again. I met with my psychiatrist and started a new add-on medication, but by October 2nd I was calling inpatient treatment centers looking for help. The next day I was on a plain to Fort Myers, Florida.
I checked in at Prisma the afternoon of October 3rd, not in good spirits. Looking back at my mood tracker, it’s very obvious I was in a dark place. Prisma was not what I thought I was getting, but it was helpful. The therapist I had there is among the best I’ve worked with, but in retrospect I think part of that is I have finally been ready to get the work done. The therapist I worked with at PHP seemed great too, and then having a session with Amber since I’ve gotten home has also been more productive. Stopping drinking was a big part of the solution.
While I was in Prisma, I made much progress on the, “I Am Autistic” workbook I had been working on since the summer of ’22. I come with a handbook now, so that is handy. I also had the thought to start reading a parenting book for autistic children while I was there, and picked that up when I started PHP (more on this later). I realized that the, “not knowing” of all of this really was a big contributing trauma to my depression – this is one of the biggest traumas contributing to my mental health issues.
While I could complain about Prisma, the staff there were in it to win it and trying to help. The fellow patients there were where I learned the most though, it felt like. Most of it was being ready to here messages that others had been trying to tell me for years. Some of us are staying in touch, but my roommates there get a special shout out. Ty and I have been staying in touch, we’ve had a few phone calls and it has been good to talk with him. Jim and I have primarily been messaging, but I gave him a call a few days ago. There’s also a group of us staying connected on Discord.
My full review of inpatient at Prisma is that it was a business first with a Cybertruck company car — a pretty embarrassing way to run something that claims to be a mental health clinic. However, it was effective, in spite of itself. I was there 38 days.
After that I went to PHP at Zoe in Orange County, CA. Here I met many great people I have been staying in touch with. The programming here was pretty heavily AA oriented, which was a bummer. After having to deflect and parry a variety of people entreating me to go, I finally came up with a simple phrase to explain why I’m not going the higher power route; I’ve taken to claiming to be aspiritual. I do not consider myself an atheist, that word implies I believe the question of, “is there a god?” is worth asking. For me, it’s kind of like aliens — I’ll care about them when they start being relevant to my life, and I don’t expect that to happen in my lifetime.
The people I met at Zoe were really great, and encouraged me to try new things. I did stand-up comedy, played laser tag, and took my guitar to the beach. I was able to get some good work done on me, and started reading, “Magnificent Minds” by Suzanne Goh, a parenting book for parents of autistic children. That was immensely helpful, and is something I am still working through.
I was at Zoe for much of November and December, but did make it home the week before the holidays kicked off in earnest. I was able to set up my gift for Laura. I am quite happy with how that turned out.
Being home has been nice, but is not all smooth sailing, not that I expected it to be so. Laura and I have a lot of learning to do about each other, and our relationship in general. I was gone over 3 months in the back half of the year, and I spent that time relearning and rebuilding who I am. I came away with 3 big takeaways from this process; I feel awful when I hurt people, instead of hurting people I would like to be a healing presence, and come what may, I will live. In rehab they asked us to identify a why, a motivation, as to what got us there and what would sustain us afterwards. I went with, “do no harm,” but quickly realized I could do relatively low amounts of harm by doing nothing. This was not satisfying, but I was able to use that foundation to build a second why on top of it, “be a healing presence.” These two principals are my foundation right now. “I’ll live” I stumbled upon while journaling, reflecting on something that was out of my control, and then I wrote the usually sarcastic comment of, “I’ll live.” I realized, however, that I was not being sarcastic! I really would live, no matter what. It is a powerful feeling.
When I started this post, I was going to get my journal and review notes from earlier in the year, as I don’t really remember too much before work started getting entirely unbearable. It turns out, I wasn’t journaling, or doing any of the work to keep myself healthy at that point. I do remember spending time on PT for my shoulder, which I finally was able to resolve on the 31st of December – I have some tendonitis/inflammation in my shoulder, and a shot of anti-inflammatory seems to have fixed me right up for now. The short of it is, the first part of the year I wasn’t present and was coasting. In August I was able to get things back in drive, spent September idling, and then in October I started trying to figure out where I am going. I haven’t sorted that out, but we have been driving and maintaining since then.
I’ll end this with the mantra I’ve been using in my meditations that I came across while in rehab at Vogue: You’ve got this; I love you.