Family

I have been dually diagnosed with a mood disorder and a disease called alcoholism.

I grew up in an upper-middle-class family. My father was first-generation Irish on his father's side. He didn't explain his mother's side until I was an adult with children of my own. He then reluctantly, told me his mother's father was an alcoholic who abandoned the family when his mother was a child. He hinted that her mother also had a fondness for drink. His father died of cirrhosis of the liver when I was about 12. I don't really remember my grandfather except for his laugh and his voice — the brogue.

My father told tales of teasing his father when he was going through the DTs. He and his brother they would sneak into my grandfather's darkened room and shout out things like “watch out for the spiders,” and “look out, dad, the bugs are crawling up the wall.”

Later the two brothers and the father all shared the disease. All three were what we call “functioning alcoholics.” This type of addiction is probably the most common. The image that is most recognizable is the one that finds addicts living on the streets or in homeless shelters, begging, conning or conniving their way through the next 24 hours and focused on acquiring and using the drug of their choice. The type of alcoholic my father, uncle, husband, friends and I fell into was the functional type — the ones who haven't lost everything.

You can't find “functional alcoholic,” in the DSM IV, the bible of psychiatric diagnoses, but maybe it should be there.Addiction is a chronic, progressive and fatal disease. But not everyone dies of it. Some live a long. miserable life never knowing that if they just stopped drinking or using they'd have a good one. And never believing they actually could stop.

Surroundings

I'm a member of the baby-boomer generation. As a child in the late '50s and early '60s, drinking alcohol seemed to be more popular than drinking water. My father was born in a “cold-water flat” in Harlem. He worked his way through Catholic high school, followed by law school at St. John's University. Practicing law was his way into politics. Drinking was most likely his courage. Entertaining or being entertained came with the job description of a politician. Alcohol came with the entertaining.

I remember sitting on the landing to the second floor in my house. Dressed in my night gown, I watched through the spindles of the banister as my mother and father — and seemingly all their friends — danced, laughed and spoke loudly about nothing I found of interest. But I was fascinated by how much fun they all seemed to be having. I was particularly intrigued by my mother and father who, when not arguing, screaming or yelling at each other, would go to their separate corners in our large Victorian home. My father found solitude in the den, comfortably laid out in his recliner with the HeraldTribune and Daily News in his hands and the console TV flickering images of the Dinah "Chevy" Shore Show or Andy Williams or Bonanza.

Mom would stay in the kitchen, where I later found a large bottle of vodka stashed under the sink.

Women all seemed dressed in brocade dresses and pearls. The popular fragrance of the day, “My Sin” by Lanvin of Paris, was part of the party uniform. The teased hairdos that only a professional could master during the women's weekly pilgrimage to the salon all remained stiff and glistening from layers of lacquer keeping them secure. And I sat on the top of the stairs imagining what it would be like when I was old enough to join them and receive the secret catechism, which would finally explain it all. Explain the secret to being a grown up, how to entertain, how to speak. What exactly to say in large groups, never spending more than a few minutes with any one person in order to be sure everyone felt equally special.

Of course I later learned the secret all these people shared came not in written form but rather in liquid libations.

First Drink

I must have been 11 or 12 one afternoon when I decided to see for myself what was so special about these “cocktails” mixed, stirred, shaken and poured. Not that I hadn't had sips of some of the ingredients previously. My mother told me I had sips of beer as a toddler. The adults in the bar found this “so cute,” ahw said. Later, if my often-recurring stomachaches became more acute than usual, some blackberry brandy was sure to cure, according to my dad, as he tried not to spill the dark liquid traveling to my mouth by spoon.

So that day I went to our very Victorian dinning room lined in dark oak panels and red silk curtains. I stepped up to the buffet which served as a bar, with all its magical accoutrements laid out before me. The silver shaker, a tall stainless-steel stirrer with a red wooden ball affixed to the top. A strange hand-sized metal contraption, which was squeezable, but I didn't know why. There were bottles of all different shapes, sizes, colors, and names, all smelling different from each other yet with a common theme. The names were mysterious, ranging from Grenadine and Rye to Drambuie and Angostura bitters.

And then I mixed my first drink. I can't remember now what exactly I put in that glass, but I'm sure two ingredients did not satisfy my yearnings to become a mixologist. Easily it could have been all four of the aforementioned liquids. I didn't get “it “ that day. I didn't see the pleasure these “grown ups” derived from drinking that potion. That was some of the most god-awful-tasting stuff I could have imagined going down my throat. A few years later, when I learned to separate and mix with a bit more aplomb, the “getting it” came on like broadband.

Catholic High School

As a freshman in a small, all-girls Catholic high school coming out of a co-ed parish grammar school (grades one to eight), I wasn't tuned into who was or wasn't looking for the path I was headed for, so nicotine remained my drug of choice for the first half of my freshman year. Though at a local community dance that year, I remember being flattered that two different boys came over to me asking if I knew where they could get some pot. I wondered how I had gotten that reputation. I didn't even know who they were.

The following semester I latched onto a new girl. She'd been in the public high school and apparently her parents thought she could use a stricter, more structured environment to keep her on the right path. Well, as is usually the case, by the time the parents discover the situation, she just brought herself with her and I finally had a connection to the drug market.

Amphetamines, which we called speed in those days, were my first illicit drug of choice. What a wonderful, magic pill. It gave me energy, and helped me to focus for hours on some obscure obsession. They allowed me to stay up reading or writing well into the night and still function the next day.

A few months later, I met a boy in a record shop who introduced me to pot. I quickly learned boys were very good at supplying drugs. Often they didn't even charge you.

At the end of that school year, the principal, Sister Tall and Mighty, summoned my father. I never quite knew what transpired that day but the next thing I knew I was being taken from a strict, structured environment and was offered the freedom of the infamous local public high school or a private prep school in midtown Manhattan. While I thought I was cool and intelligent in an artistic way (I wanted to be a writer), I was smart enough to realize my sheltered Catholic school existence was no training ground for being dropped in the middle of an urban educational institution in 1968. I chose the prep school. At about this same time, my father became a judge. Part of his oath must have included the words “sober as a judge” because, as far as I could tell, he stopped drinking.

Prep School

It turned out my prep school was the last stop for a lot of kids being removed from other educational institutions. I felt I'd reached nirvana. Here I was at 15 on Fifth Ave. and 54th St. across from the Museum of Modern Art, next door to Revlon's headquarters (where Cary Grant sometimes visited), and down the block from the Warwick Hotel, where many of the rock stars of the day stayed.

I quickly found and made all the right connections as far as drug acquisitions went. My eventual steady boyfriend was never without something stronger than nicotine to smoke, preferably hash. Any normal person would have stayed away from LSD if her first trip were so bad she thought she was dead and confined to an insane asylum along with a group of skeletons sitting around the dining room table. But I just figured the next time would be better. Speed was always available in the form of “diet pills” that someone always managed to find. $25 brought you an ounce of pot, a quarter ounce of hash, a hundred diet pills, or five hits of Windowpane or Orange Sunshine (LSD).

I remember finding a tiny Ziptop bag in my daughter's room early in her drugging career and was certain it once contained pills or coke. When I confronted her, she told me it was for pot. I wouldn't believe her. She told me it was a nickel bag. Apparently inflation had hit the drug market when I wasn't looking, as well as extra strength weed in small packages.

I got through high school. Barely. All types of drugs and alcohol became part of my repertoire, not only on weekends but also in between classes. Central Park was our back yard and it was a lovely place to get high. My high school English teacher often offered up her apartment to some stoned-out students looking for a place to crash.

A few years later, Central Park was where I managed to get arrested for possession of pot and spent a night in the jail known as “The Tombs.” I later toured the same jail with my father, the judge, while on a trip home from college. He never knew about the arrest until I was married with children. We were good at keeping secrets in my family. I didn't learn my mother had been married before she married my father until my father passed away five years ago. I might never have known if we weren't trying to find her marriage certificate so she could collect on my father's Social Security. This is certainly typical of a dysfunctional household with chemical dependency at its core.

Suicide Attempt

I managed to get into college due to the City University of New York deciding everyone should be afforded a college education and no one would be denied a seat, including me. Most of my education there took place in the student lounge, where I dropped acid and smoked pot in the bathrooms. I decided I wasn't getting out of school what I should and since I wanted to be a writer, I agreed with an English Department counselor that the University of Missouri School of Journalism sounded like a good idea.

The plan was to finish up my sophomore year and work part time so I could save enough money to go to Europe on five dollars a day the following summer. By this time, I was hanging out with new “friends” who were even more into the drug scene. I dropped out of college the second semester of my sophomore year, though in reality I dropped out long before that. My father found someone who knew someone (a doctor on Park Ave.) to write a letter stating I had mononucleosis and could not complete the year. I guess we were all pretending I just wasn't having a successful year at school and better luck next time.

For some reason Mizzou thought I was worth having and accepted me. But first I went to Europe with my girlfriend and my junkie boyfriend after making promises to our parents that we would have nothing to do with drugs. That lasted until the following evening in our student hostel in Amsterdam. If we weren't doing drugs, we were getting drunk on cheap wine and my boyfriend was threatening suicide. Running out of money, the boyfriend and I came home. A few days later it was me who decided to commit suicide, taking 30 Seconals that I had found in my grandmother's closet.

I was found, and managed to survive. When I woke in the hospital with an IV in my arm, my first thought was “What am I tripping on now?”

My mother's first words were “How could you do this to us?”

I was released a few days later, avoiding hospitalization in a psychiatric ward. Instead, I was supposed to visit a psychiatrist on a weekly basis. My parents must have convinced everyone that I hadn't tried to kill myself but had accidentally overdosed instead. For a Catholic, suicide means eternal damnation. Drug use probably only gets you a few millennia in purgatory.

After that, I got a job in an addict's candy store - a pharmacy. By that time they were locking up amphetamines in difficult-to-get at places, but I worked in the basement where the pharmacy supplied local nursing homes with their medications, primarily ”downers,” as we called them. Percodan and Quaaludes became my drugs of choice, along with the booze. When my shrink informed me that I shouldn't drink and use Quaaludes at the same time because I might never know when I'd taken enough to kill me, I thought that sounded like a good game.

In the next few months I had two car accidents. In one accident, the car was totaled and no one ever got me for drunk driving. My best friend's mother, whose twin sons were both in separate rehabs, was trying to get me to join them. Instead I managed to get out to Missouri in January of ' 1972. I traveled with a pint of Southern Comfort, a handful of pills, and no idea what I was doing with my life. Arriving at the dorm, I was pleased to discover my room mate was 21 so I wouldn't have a problem acquiring booze. In New York the drinking age was 18, but it was 21 in Missouri. I quickly hooked up with an amphetamine and hallucinogenic salesman. I decided it was a good time to best my former English teacher's record of dropping acid for 3 weeks in a row. I did it for 30 days. While marijuana was always available in those days, it was alcohol that really attracted my attention. A friend I made from New Orleans introduced me to “po' boy” sandwiches and Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey. Jack and I became best friends for the rest of my drinking career.

After graduating from Journalism School as a photo major (it seemed easier at the time than the magazine major I intended to be; besides, you could spend hours in the darkroom drinking), I got a job at the New York Daily News as a “copyboy.” I think they now call them editorial assistants. It was a great place to be an alcoholic. I met my husband there. He used to come down to the bar behind the building when a number of us were taking extended lunch hours and drag us back up. Eventually I kept my own bottle in my locker, as well as visit the bar. When we left the News, Thom was going to write the Great American Novel and I was going to watch him write it. I don't think our drinking got heavier at the time; I just think we had more leisure time to do it.

One thing led to another and I became pregnant. It wasn't accidental. We wanted a baby. Problem was our lifestyle was like 15-year-olds pretending to be grown ups. Yes, I drank during my pregnancy but back then we were told two drinks a day was OK and I tried to keep it to that. Carrick was born 6 weeks early and I remembered thinking, “Finally! Go get the champagne now; I can drink again” -in between breast feedings, anyway.

Unconsciously my days revolved around drinking. I would try to drink right after I nursed the baby, figuring 4 hours in between should be enough time to make the alcohol go away. I began hiding bottles. Not because I didn't want my husband to know how much I was drinking but because he was drinking more than me and I was afraid he'd drink what I wanted to drink. Then he quit drinking when our daughter was about 18 months old. It took me another 18 months to make the same decision. Somehow I began to recognize that something was wrong with my drinking. I was a member of the board of our co-op apartment and attended meetings with a coffee mug filled with liquor and coffee. Being cheap drunks, we'd switched from bourbon to vodka and lots of wine. After Thom quit, the only night I ever really got to drink the way I wanted to was Thursdays when he worked past midnight and almost always found me passed out on the sofa when he did get home.

The end came with a whimper, not a bang. Making tea one night instead of an alcoholic drink, I suddenly realized the tea water was boiling and I was staring at the stove with a vodka and orange juice in my hand. The light bulb went off, and I knew I no longer had any control over my drinking. When I asked Thom how he quit he told me it didn't matter what he did but I ought to go to AA. I'm pretty certain I never would have been able to stop without AA's help. It wasn't easy.

The first few years were pretty miserable. I wasn't an angry drunk but I was angry sober. My emotions were like raw nerves during root canal. It took me a good year before I stopped thinking about a drink on a daily basis. I was miserable to my daughter. It seemed like all I did was yell and scream at her, not unlike how my mother treated me. While I was learning new life skills such as acceptance, one day at a time I can do anything, patience, live and let live, etc. I was missing my medicine still. I no longer thought of a drink when situations became seemingly impossible. I thought of suicide. I didn't know there was anything wrong with this idea. I would share it at meetings that I would think a drink through - through to running away to a seedy hotel in Philadelphia with a neon sign flashing outside my window, a bottle of booze in one hand and a bunch of pills in the other. My first suicidal act had been at the age of 13 during a sleepover party at my house. I took a handful of aspirins. I got sick but never seemingly enough to tell anyone. Before Thom and I even became engaged, in between drinks, depression would make itself known. I'd battle it by drinking it away and if that didn't work I remember trying to cut myself and taking overdoses of Tylenol with codeine. But after my daughter was born I remember the anger. She does too. She says she forgives me because now she knows I was just sick.

After ten years of sobriety, the anger turned inward and sunk me like cement in a stream. Very early one morning I found myself unable to sleep. I went into my photographic darkroom and sat on the floor crying uncontrollably while rocking myself back and forth, my arms encircling my legs.

Later, I remember saying to Thom, “I don't feel well and I'm going to call a psychiatrist.” How I managed to be aware enough to say and do that I'll never know, but I did. I was ten years sober and went into a severe treatment resistant major depression. My psychiatrist continually tried different antidepressants, tinkering with doses and combinations. Some worked for a few weeks, but just as quickly they stopped working and back into the dark room of depression and suicide I would go. Eventually I had to be hospitalized. There, I underwent Electroconvulsive Therapy. I'm told it saved my life. Typical of that type of treatment, I lost much of my memory of that time and some of the time going back a year or so before it. But it gave the good doctor more time to try again to stop the pain, with different combinations and dosages of meds.

Today, seven years later, I'm symptom free and more productive than I've ever been in my entire life. I went back to school and became a certified chemical dependency counselor. I work as an intake coordinator and counselor in a co-occurring disorder inpatient unit at a major teaching hospital in NYC, where we recognize chemical dependency and mental illness are often intertwined. I plan to go back to school to get a degree in social work and have already taken a few courses toward that end. I founded a recovery group in Westchester County called Friends and Voices of Recovery (FAVOR). Our primary purpose is to put a face on recovery and advocate to remove barriers to treatment due to stigma and discrimination. I've been married almost 30 years, have two beautiful children, one in recovery herself; a kind, loving, supportive husband, five cats, two dogs, a wonderful job and support system. I'm no longer angry. I don't yell and scream every time something doesn't go my way. But I do wish I could “do over,” some of those first ten years of sobriety when only half my symptoms were put to rest -the drinking and drugging. I sometimes feel ashamed I couldn't be the wife and mother I hoped I would be back then. I still take a mixture of prescribed medications and may or may not for the rest of my life.

For the most part I'm proud of who I am today. I get sad now and then, and anxiety rules once in a while, but my supports get me through, rather than a drink. There was a time I wouldn't get out of the bed; now there are times I feel too busy to get there. Recovery is a lifelong journey, a path to be walked, and a life to be lived, deliberately. I also recognize I'm very lucky. Not everyone has the support system I've been blessed with. They have to work even harder at their recovery. But I see miracles happen every day, one person at a time.

In a Candy Store

After that, I got a job in an addict's candy store — a pharmacy. By that time they were locking up amphetamines in difficult-to-get at places, but I worked in the basement where the pharmacy supplied local nursing homes with their medications, primarily ”downers,” as we called them. Percodan and Quaaludes became my drugs of choice, along with the booze. When my shrink informed me that I shouldn't drink and use Quaaludes at the same time because I might never know when I'd taken enough to kill me, I thought that sounded like a good game.

During the next few months, I had two car accidents. In one accident, the car was totaled. No one ever got me for drunk driving. My best friend's mother, whose twin sons were both in separate rehabs, was trying to get me to join them.

Instead I managed to get out to Missouri in January of 1972. I traveled with a pint of Southern Comfort, a handful of pills, and no idea what I was doing with my life. Arriving at the dorm, I was pleased to discover my roommate was 21 so I wouldn't have a problem acquiring booze. In New York the drinking age was 18, but it was 21 in Missouri. I quickly hooked up with an amphetamine and hallucinogenic salesman. I decided it was a good time to beat my former English teacher's record of dropping acid for three weeks in a row. I did it for 30 days. While marijuana was always available in those days, it was alcohol that really attracted my attention. A friend I made from New Orleans introduced me to “po' boy” sandwiches and Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey. Jack and I became best friends for the rest of my drinking career.

"Copyboy"

After graduating from Missouri's Journalism School as a photo major (it seemed easier at the time than the magazine major I intended to be; besides, you could spend hours in the darkroom drinking), I got a job at the New York Daily News as a “copyboy.” I think they now call them editorial assistants.

It was a great place to be an alcoholic. I met my husband there. He used to come down to the bar behind the building when a number of us took extended lunch hours and drag us back up. Eventually I'd keep a bottle in my locker, as well as visit the bar. When we left the News in 1982, Thom was going to write the Great American Novel and I was going to watch him write it. I don't think our drinking got heavier at the time; I just think we had more leisure time to do it.

Parenthood

One thing led to another, and I became pregnant. It wasn't accidental. We wanted a baby. Problem was our lifestyle was like 15-year-olds pretending to be grown ups. Yes, I drank during my pregnancy but back then we were told two drinks a day was okay and I tried to keep it to that. Carrick was born Six weeks early and I remembered thinking, “Finally! Go get the champagne now; I can drink again” - in between breast feedings, anyway.

Unconsciously my days revolved around drinking. I would try to drink right after I nursed the baby, figuring four hours in between should be enough time to make the alcohol go away. I began hiding bottles. Not because I didn't want my husband to know how much I was drinking but because he was drinking more than me and I was afraid he'd drink what I wanted to drink.

Thom quit drinking when our daughter was about 18 months old. It took me another 18 months to make the same decision. Somehow I began to recognize that something was wrong with my drinking. I was a member of the board of our co-op apartment building and attended meetings with a coffee mug filled with liquor and coffee. Being cheap drunks, we'd switched from bourbon to vodka and lots of wine. After Thom quit, the only night I ever really got to drink the way I wanted to was Thursdays when he worked past midnight and almost always found me passed out on the sofa when he got home.

The end came with a whimper, not a bang. Making tea one night instead of an alcoholic drink, I suddenly realized the water was boiling and I was staring at the stove with a vodka and orange juice in my hand. The proverbial light bulb went off, and I knew I no longer had any control over my drinking. When I asked Thom how he quit, he told me it didn't matter what he did but I ought to go to AA. I'm pretty certain I never would have been able to stop without AA's help. It wasn't easy.

Angry Sobriety

The first few years were pretty miserable. I wasn't an angry drunk but I was angry sober. My emotions were like raw nerves during root canal. It took me a good year before I stopped thinking about a drink on a daily basis. I was miserable to my daughter. It seemed like all I did was yell and scream at her, not unlike how my mother treated me. While I was learning new life skills, such as acceptance, one day at a time I can do anything, patience, live and let live, etc., I was missing my medicine. Still, I no longer thought of a drink when situations became seemingly impossible. I thought of suicide.

I didn't know there was anything wrong with this idea. I would share it at AA meetings that I would think a drink through - through to running away to a seedy hotel in Philadelphia with a neon sign flashing outside my window, a bottle of booze in one hand and a bunch of pills in the other.

My first suicidal act had been at the age of 13 during a sleepover party at my house. I took a handful of aspirins. I got sick but never seemingly enough to tell anyone. Before Thom and I even became engaged, in between drinks, depression would make itself known. I'd battle it by drinking it away and if that didn't work I remember trying to cut myself and taking overdoses of Tylenol with codeine. But after my daughter was born, I remember the anger. She does too. She says she forgives me because now she knows I was just sick.

After ten years of sobriety, the anger turned inward and sunk me like cement in an ocean. Very early one morning I found myself unable to sleep. I went into my photographic darkroom and sat on the floor crying uncontrollably while rocking myself back and forth, my arms encircling my legs.

Later, I remember saying to Thom, “I don't feel well and I'm going to call a psychiatrist.” How I managed to be aware enough to say and do that I'll never know, but I did. I was ten years sober and went into a severe, treatment-resistant major depression. My psychiatrist continually tried different antidepressants, tinkering with doses and combinations. Some worked for a few weeks, but just as quickly they stopped working and back into the dark room of depression and suicide I would go.

Eventually I had to be hospitalized. There, I underwent Electroconvulsive Therapy. I'm told it saved my life. Typical of that type of treatment, I lost much of my memory of that time and some of the time going back a year or so before it. But it gave the good doctor more time to try again to stop the pain, with different combinations and dosages of meds.

Emerging

Today, seven years later, I'm symptom-free and more productive than I've ever been in my entire life. I went back to school and became a certified chemical dependency counselor. I work as an intake coordinator and counselor in a co-occurring disorder inpatient unit at a major teaching hospital in NYC, where we recognize chemical dependency and mental illness are often intertwined. I plan to go back to school to get a master's degree in social work, and have already taken a few courses toward that end. I founded a recovery group in Westchester County called Friends and Voices of Recovery (FAVOR). Our primary purpose is to put a face on recovery and advocate to remove barriers to treatment due to stigma and discrimination. I've been married almost 30 years, have two beautiful children, one in recovery herself; a kind, loving, supportive husband; five cats; two dogs; a wonderful job and support system.

I'm no longer angry. I don't yell and scream every time something doesn't go my way. But I do wish I could “do over,” some of those first ten years of sobriety when only half my symptoms were put to rest — the drinking and drugging. I sometimes feel ashamed I couldn't be the wife and mother I hoped I would be back then.

I still take a mixture of prescribed medications, and may or may not for the rest of my life.

For the most part I'm proud of who I am today. I get sad now and then, and anxiety rules once in a while, but my supports get me through, rather than a drink. There was a time I wouldn't get out of the bed; now there are times I feel too busy to get there. Recovery is a lifelong journey, a path to be walked, and a life to be lived, deliberately. I also recognize I'm very lucky. Not everyone has the support system I've been blessed with. Other people have to work even harder at their recovery. But I see miracles happen every day, one person at a time.