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Just When You Think You Can’t Hang on Any More

ONE OF THE PEOPLE I enjoy listening to most in meetings is Ruby. She’s been clean and sober about seven years and I’ve known her since she was brand new. I’ve watched her go through relationships, her college education, the beginning of a new career, marriage, and the birth of her first child. And I’ve learned from everything she’s had to say about what it’s like to live as a sober young woman.

Years ago a young DJ told me that when I spoke I was “droppin’ science.” I was pleased to discover this was a compliment. Well, Ruby drops some serious science every time she shares.

Ruby, in common with everyone else who is happily clean and sober, takes full responsibility for her addiction and recovery. The adults in her family drank, but not excessively. Even if they had used excessively, she says they weren’t “brilliant enough to create alcoholism.” She always felt that sense of anxious apartness that seems to be particularly acute in people who become addicts. Ruby describes having serious suicidal feelings starting by age ten and an overwhelming feeling that she missed the course called “Life 101.” In grade seven she and some friends were going through a punk rock phase. They listened to loud, fast music and wore Doc Martens and black clothes. A teacher accused them publicly of being Satan worshippers. The entire experience spiralled out of control, and although the teacher eventually backed off, every kid he’d accused wound up traumatized.

By grade eight, Ruby’s grades had gone from A’s to barely passing. She was smoking cigarettes and marijuana and drinking what she referred to as “shit mix” (alcoholic concoctions stolen from parents’ liquor cabinets). Drinking proved very effective in helping her escape her feelings.

She admits that from a young age she was very attracted to the “dark side.” She says she glamorized people who’d had difficult upbringings or were down and out. She was a successful chameleon and could move from group to group, but was happiest with the rocker/drug crowd because she found no judgment there.

At fourteen, she met her first serious boyfriend. He was eighteen and had just been released from jail. Over their three-and-a-half-year relationship, his heroin addiction progressed and he was in and out of several institutions. Ruby says he gave her something to focus on other than herself. She was, she says, “wired to the addict.” The year she turned eighteen, her boyfriend died of an overdose. That’s when Ruby really began to go downhill, drinking very heavily and doing harder drugs. Her goal was never to be sober.

Her first go at treatment was an outpatient program in Victoria, B.C. She was sent there in lieu of being charged with fraud. She reports leaving the program and going home to get drunk every night. By this time, she was spending time with very serious people: murderers, dealers, and assorted criminals. And she herself was dealing. Every time she got loaded, she would talk about cleaning up. In fact, she says that’s all she talked about.

After a long binge during which she couldn’t stop drinking or using, despite the fact that the drugs and alcohol weren’t providing any relief, she called a crisis line. They told her to go to the hospital. She did as suggested and begged to be admitted. The hospital sent her home. This incident, she believes, was a huge blessing in disguise. If she’d been taken in and diagnosed with something like depressive disorder or some other label, she might never have sobered up.

Finally, she called her mother, who’d joined Alanon to help her cope with Ruby’s disintegration. Twenty-four hours later Ruby was in treatment at Edgewood. Many alcohol and drug programs insist people be clean and sober for a period of time before they can be admitted. Ruby is grateful that Edgewood didn’t have any such policy.

At treatment Ruby says she surrendered almost right away. It wasn’t hard to admit that her life was a shambles. A few months before entering treatment, she’d found out that she was three months pregnant. She’d been drinking and getting high the whole time and had no idea that she was pregnant. She’d had an abortion. That was what ultimately put her over the edge. “I couldn’t believe that I was living a life so polluted that keeping my baby wasn’t even a choice.” She spent forty-four days in treatment. When she got out, she went to meetings, but she also picked up with an old boyfriend. She had no clean and sober friends, and to stay busy and “make up for lost time” she started working eighty hours a week.

During a trip home at New Year’s, she relapsed. Her plan was just to drink, but as soon as she had a drink, the drugs followed. The slip was, she says, what she needed. She went back to meetings and got honest about not “getting it.” Instead of pretending like she had it all together, she would announce, “I don’t know what the fuck you people are talking about.” She got close to several sober women, let go of her old relationship, eased up on work, and enrolled in a program that helped with the transition back to school and eventually college.

I met her during her “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about” phase and still found her uniquely articulate about the experience of being newly sober. Now she’s a magnet for women, young and old, partly because she’s funny and well spoken and partly because she’s honest. Honesty is definitely an attractive ingredient.

I asked Ruby if she had any advice for people new in recovery and she took a moment to consider. “Tell them that just when you think you can’t hang on any more, you can. Even if it’s by your fingernails.” She paused and added, “Oh, and if you don’t put it in your hand, it won’t end up in your mouth. The other thing is, happy people don’t like to feel nothing. Only for addicts and alcoholics, numb is the goal.” In other words, if you don’t allow yourself to feel sadness and discomfort, you can be sure you’re not going to feel happiness. She pointed out that for those of us who’ve crossed the line into addiction, “using to block your feelings will take away any chance of ever being happy again.” Ruby, whose career brings her into contact with many people on the fringes of society, in particular addicts and alcoholics, asked me to remind people that even those of us who are genetically or environmentally predestined to suffer from addiction can get better. She also pointed to the growing body of research that suggests that although anyone can get clean for a while, only people who have ongoing support stay clean.

She says that when she was new she tried not to think in terms of never using again. Instead she thought about trying to create a life, one piece at a time. Today, she doesn’t wear the label of reformed addict/alcoholic. She wants to be judged on her own merits. And they are many.