Thursday, January 24, 2008
How I Landed In Rehab
So, about 2 1/2 months ago I started cycling pretty rapidly downhill. I was mood swingy like crazy, I was spending tons of money on clothes and makeup and drinks; I was really screwing up at work; getting "tipsy" nearly everyday at lunch and then going back in and doing fun stuff like making huge accounting errors, flirting with my boss, and sending really, really, extremely inappropriate emails to the work boyfriend; fighting with John all the time; acting really short tempered with Suzie; drinking at least a bottle of wine a night; passing out a lot; needing sleeping pills because I was waking up in the night with insomnia; waking up so tired and hungover nearly every morning that I completely gave up exercising and instead was drinking 5 cups of coffee before lunch when I could start the whole thing over again.
So obviously I was having a problem with alcohol, right? Not in my mind. In my mind I was clearly bi-polar/rapid cycling and needed medication. So I went to my doctor to talk it over. I wasn't sure what would happen, I mean, was she just going to send me away with a script for lithium? I just had no idea how these things worked. I talked with her for about 1/2 an hour; we went over my history, my current life stresses, and of course the drinking thing came up.
Its funny, I've kind of floated in and out of denial about my drinking for the past of 14 years. The first time I remember looking in the mirror and actually saying "I have a drinking problem and I need help" I was 20. Since then I've been drinking essentially Over the years I've tried to quit or cut back now and again, but I don't know how many of you have tried to quit before, um, it's really fucking hard. Like impossible hard. I've come to find out that's kind of a statistically true thing as well.
So, the doctor puts down her pen, looked at me long and gently, very nicely and gently says " you know, sometimes getting drunk and sobering up two or three times a day can look a lot like rapid cycling." She told me that the best prescription she could offer me was rehab and that once I'd been sober for a while, if the mood swings and other behaviors were still troublesome, we could talk further.
She must have just caught me at the right time. I called the local hospital's Chemical Dependency Center that afternoon and scheduled an appointment for an intake assessment the next day. I guess I was still riding that denial wave a bit because I was shocked when the woman doing the assessment was debating between Intensive Outpatient and actual inpatient, 28 days, alcohol treatment. Despite all the troubles I'd had in the past with trying to quit, I really still though that once a week outpatient for a month or so would take care of the problem for me!
Not so much. So that's that. That's how I got into rehab. I'll write more later about how it's actually been. Especially in coming from a background in therapy and mental health but right now I've got to clean a little and make dinner. Which is really cool, cause two months ago I would have been well on my way to wasted by now.
Also--Sarah--please send me an email! I can't seem to find your current address!!
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So obviously I was having a problem with alcohol, right? Not in my mind. In my mind I was clearly bi-polar/rapid cycling and needed medication. So I went to my doctor to talk it over. I wasn't sure what would happen, I mean, was she just going to send me away with a script for lithium? I just had no idea how these things worked. I talked with her for about 1/2 an hour; we went over my history, my current life stresses, and of course the drinking thing came up.
Its funny, I've kind of floated in and out of denial about my drinking for the past of 14 years. The first time I remember looking in the mirror and actually saying "I have a drinking problem and I need help" I was 20. Since then I've been drinking essentially Over the years I've tried to quit or cut back now and again, but I don't know how many of you have tried to quit before, um, it's really fucking hard. Like impossible hard. I've come to find out that's kind of a statistically true thing as well.
So, the doctor puts down her pen, looked at me long and gently, very nicely and gently says " you know, sometimes getting drunk and sobering up two or three times a day can look a lot like rapid cycling." She told me that the best prescription she could offer me was rehab and that once I'd been sober for a while, if the mood swings and other behaviors were still troublesome, we could talk further.
She must have just caught me at the right time. I called the local hospital's Chemical Dependency Center that afternoon and scheduled an appointment for an intake assessment the next day. I guess I was still riding that denial wave a bit because I was shocked when the woman doing the assessment was debating between Intensive Outpatient and actual inpatient, 28 days, alcohol treatment. Despite all the troubles I'd had in the past with trying to quit, I really still though that once a week outpatient for a month or so would take care of the problem for me!
Not so much. So that's that. That's how I got into rehab. I'll write more later about how it's actually been. Especially in coming from a background in therapy and mental health but right now I've got to clean a little and make dinner. Which is really cool, cause two months ago I would have been well on my way to wasted by now.
Also--Sarah--please send me an email! I can't seem to find your current address!!
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