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Doing the Lone Ranger

SO YOU’RE GOING to do it on your own? Well, good luck with that.

Seriously though, some people do quit without help. They are rare.

Not long ago I read a book by a young woman who wrote about her excessive drinking. The book was beautifully written and did a great job of exploring the inner life of the high school and college drinker. This woman and her friends were serious enough drinkers to end up in hospital with alcohol poisoning and to experience frequent blackouts. No namby-pamby little tipplers, these girls. But the book went south for me when, near the end, the young woman decides that society’s attitudes toward women in general and advertising in particular had somehow led her into the drinking life. The theory seemed to be that her self-esteem and that of her binge-drinking friends had been so damaged by their cultural environment that they were nearly forced to drink. Her solution was to just say no. She quit cold turkey one fine day and never looked back.

Huh, I thought. How nice for her.

The dream that one day we’ll up and quit whatever addiction is eating our lives—booze, drugs, food—is a primary obsession of almost every alcoholic and addict, second only to “How do I get more?” For anyone who has turned a corner into genuine drug addiction or alcoholism, that dream of quitting on one’s own is unlikely to come true. We’ve all heard the stories: he just stopped one day. Just like that. We shake our heads, as we would upon hearing that he won the lottery. That lucky bastard!

But the chances of experiencing a spontaneous remission from serious alcoholism and drug addiction are low. If you are merely a heavy user or drinker, it might be possible. But if you’ve lost the power of choice in your using, you are in serious trouble.

In The Natural History of Alcoholism, George Vaillant found certain factors that worked for people who became abstinent on their own:

1 The people found an alternative to their addictive substance, such as alternative substances, compulsive work or hobbies, belief, prayer, or meditation.

2 They developed a serious medical problem that interfered with their using.

3 They got involved in a religious organization.

4 They acquired a new love relationship, either with a romantic partner or a mentor or close friend.

Many alcoholics and addicts reject offers of help and say they’d like to try doing it on their own. One can understand. It reminds me of that old saying, who wants to join a club that would have me as a member? Also, who wants to admit that addiction has you in a bear hug and is eating your face? No one.

The prospect of quietly (and bravely) quitting is so much more attractive. Some of the addiction memoirs that have really taken off in recent years have been those in which, through force of will, the afflicted person has quit without help. Just walked away. Of course, at least one of those memoirs turned out to be fictitious.

I suspect that in addition to the fact that such stories are often over-the-top good yarns, what excites people about them is the notion that addiction can be conquered without help. There are instances in which this happens. There are people in my own family who showed signs of having serious addiction and who, after treatment or a time in a self-help program, dropped out and stayed clean and sober. They now have stable family lives and have had for years. I’ve seen others cut back and maintain heavy but manageable substance intake. In other words, they are able to work and maintain relationships. They function.

But for those of us who have tried many times to cut down and to quit on our own, the notion that we will one day be able to do this is the dream that keeps us sick. I tried over and over to quit but the minute the opportunity to drink came up, I forgot. I could not remember not to drink. I’d be quit. A clean and sober young woman. An upstanding citizen. I’d go out with my friends and ten minutes later I’d be halfway through my third drink and remember: Damn! I was supposed to be quit! Oh well, I’ll get to it later.

After a period of recovery, I was given the choice again. Now, if I drink, it will be because I have made a decision to do so. That’s what time in a recovery program has given me. The ability to choose. It is the most humane and empowering choice I’ve ever had. I am allowed to have the dignity to direct my own life.

Getting clean and staying sober with the help of others often requires time in a treatment centre, an aftercare program, ongoing participation in a program such as AA or NA or SMART plus counselling, and a large dose of grace. Getting clean and staying sober using only one’s unaided will requires the equivalent of a three-minute submersion in an Olympic-sized miracle pool, a burning bush, and a permanent grace-dispensing IV. Good on you if you can clean up on your own, but if you find it’s too hard, the help is available.

Part of the difficulty is the ongoing “living with yourself” piece. Most programs are aimed at helping people who have pre-existing issues or problems caused by drugs and alcohol to exist and function in regular society. This can be particularly challenging for those who start using substances early in life. Most of us didn’t hit our personal-development and life-skills milestones. They say people stop maturing when they begin using heavily. That leaves a lot of us emotionally twelve or thirteen years old when we sober up, trying to act like the twenty- or thirty- or forty-year-olds we actually are. Most of us have trouble handling disappointment, pain, discomfort, or any sort of delay in gratification. I had the social skills of a particularly awkward thirteen-year-old. Only time and generous support from other people who were or had been in the same boat helped me cope. I interviewed one beautiful, poised young woman who talked about having one year of sobriety and literally falling on the floor in anguish when she didn’t get a job she wanted.

If I’d been left alone with my paranoia, anger, fear, crippling shyness, and the rest, it would have been too hard. Many of the people I spoke with for this book talked about the difficulty of going it alone. One friend told me, “I was crazier sober than I was when I drank. It got to be too much. I couldn’t handle it.” She decided to join AA when she had already been abstinent for a year and a half.

If you are convinced you can do it alone, fly at it. Get all the knowledge you can and give it a shot. But if you find you can’t do it alone or your quality of life and mental state is too harrowing, consider getting some help.