Men go out and get drunk, and that's acceptable. Women can't do that—the stigma of alcoholism is greater for them. Most women alcoholics feel very guilty about their drinking, and many women wonder "Have I hurt my children?"
Women alcoholics in particular report that they have felt anxious their whole lives and have tried many things to counteract a low-level, nagging anxiety. Often when they drink they feel "normal."
Although an alcoholic is an alcoholic, there may be less understanding of women alcoholics than there is of men alcoholics. In addition to a different kind of physiology, women often have pre-existing depressions and histories of abuse, sexual and otherwise.
Furthermore, a wife will stand behind her husband and his drinking problem, but husbands get angry at their wives for their alcoholic behavior.
Treatment centers today are much more apt to have special treatment programs for women and specially trained counselors to work with them. Increasingly, women who are concerned about good treatment are trying to develop new ways to help the woman alcoholic. Because of their guilt and low self-esteem, it is doubly important that women alcoholics understand that they have a chronic, progressive, incurable disease, and that they are not responsible.
A list of modern-day leaders in the field of alcoholism would have to include Jean Kirkpatrick. Labeling herself as that kind of old-fashioned drunk who is almost passe, she has focused her interests, experience, and expertise on the treatment of women alcoholics.
Believing that women alcoholics are dealing with not only the problems of drinking, but of low self-image and self-esteem, Jean Kirkpatrick founded Women for Sobriety. She believes that gender plays an important role in the recovery process.
Jean Kirkpatrick, Ph.D., is an alcoholic. She is the founder and executive director of Women for Sobriety, an organization of recovery that helps alcoholic women. Women for Sobriety is located in Quakertown, Pennsylvania.
Society has a tendency to say, "Oh, look at Charlie, isn't he marvelous; he gave up drinking? Look how wonderful he is. Look at the courage he shows." Then you say, "Well, Mary gave up drinking, too," and society says, "Well, it's about time. Look what she did to Bob's career and how she ruined her children." Society desperately wants women to set the trend, to have some kind of moral fortitude. Society has never been able to accept a disease concept of alcoholism applied to women. As time goes along it will get better, but we've got a long way to go.
Let's face it, there is nothing at all genteel about drinking, for either men or women. A male drunk is not nice to see, but a female drunk is just awful. I can think of myself and the situations I got into when I was drinking, and honestly, I could live to be one hundred years old and I would still feel the waves of humiliation, knowing how terrible I looked and how I displayed myself. I will never forget it. What's necessary is for society to have a forgiving and accepting attitude, not necessarily a tolerant one.
I was leading a Women for Sobriety group in Allentown, and said, "Now, let's go around the room and let's talk about alcoholism." Not a single woman would talk about it. I asked, "Why?" They said, "We're not alcoholics." "What do you think you are?" I asked. And they said, "We have a drinking problem, but we're not alcoholics." There wasn't a single woman in that group who would accept the fact and say that she was an alcoholic. This was six months into their having stopped drinking. That's because of the stigma of a woman alcoholic. It's much easier for a woman to say to her husband, to her family, and to herself, "Well, I have a drinking problem and I'm doing something about it," but still not accept the terrible name "alcoholic." My eyes were really opened. It's so hard for a woman to say "I am an alcoholic."
We downplay that statement now in Women for Sobriety. I know I'm frequently criticized for this, but I feel if semantics are going to keep somebody from getting help, it's stupid. It's just ludicrous for us, as an organization, to say, "You cannot come in here and use this program unless you say you're an alcoholic." So we don't make a big deal about it. If they quit drinking and accept the fact that they have a drinking problem and can't drink again, down the road they will be able to say, "I really am an alcoholic." That might be three years in the offing, but so what? It doesn't make a bit of difference. We have accomplished what we needed to do. We have stopped that woman from drinking, and she has accepted that she must never drink again.
There is a slight possibility she may try to drink again, but we pound it into everybody that they cannot handle alcohol so they are able to say, "I cannot handle alcohol, that's why I'm here."
I think the symptoms of being an alcoholic are exactly the same for men and women. We drink because we're worried, we're bored, we're tired, we're frustrated, we're angry, or we just want to get drunk. Lots of people use alcohol in that way on rare occasions, but some of us begin to depend on it. Any time we use it outside of a social gathering, we are obviously using it for some kind of crutch.
An alcoholic is somebody who drinks at inappropriate times: to help herself be popular, to help get over worry, to get over sorrow, to get over grief, to get over bills. It's somebody who depends on alcohol to get her through hard times. It's someone who drinks a lot nonsocially and someone who drinks uncontrollably at one time or another, no matter how much time intervenes.
A woman may be an alcoholic if every time she has a fight with her husband she's been drinking; every time she has an upset she drinks; every time she has a problem like a broken tooth she drinks. All these are signs.
The alcoholic woman who is at home has greater freedom. She is able to drink all day long and then has time to sober up before her family arrives. This is quite different from the pattern of the woman in the work place, who really tries to hang together during working hours and then falls apart in the evening. The loneliness and isolation for the woman at home is devastating. Working it out with a sociological timetable, we find that women alcoholics in this country adversely affect the lives of thirty-eight million children. They affect not only their own children but their children's friends. Often a child will have to say, "We can't play here. Mommy is sick again." A continued pattern of children seeing their mother in this devastation is tragic.
The woman alcoholic has almost no self-image. Almost never is she able to sit clown and see herself in a clear-cut way. She sees herself as being victimized, and she usually is. She sees herself as being inordinately helpless, and she usually is. She doesn't have to be that way, but most women alcoholics are rather helpless and ill equipped for life. She is most victimized by herself because of the feeling of helplessness. "I can't do it. I'm not capable. I'm not able." She is overwhelmed by life.
Women often don't have any kind of picture of themselves. In doing workshops I have asked women to write ten positive words about themselves in twenty-five seconds. They cannot do it. When a woman talks about herself, she will say her name and something like "Well, we moved here. My children go to P.S. 74. My husband works at Bethlehem Steel." You can talk to her for ten minutes and you won't learn one single thing about that woman. She has such a low opinion of herself that she doesn't feel you are interested in her.
Often she is totally dependent on the husband who keeps her within the family unit. If that unit is shattered through divorce or separation, the woman in recovery will have great difficulty because she is alone at that point. For such women alcoholics to recover, it takes a double thrust because they must quickly grow up and learn how to be self-sufficient, to take care of themselves and their children, and to have some kind of decent feeling about themselves.
In the case of the woman alcoholic, I don't think she's the last one to know. I think she's the last one to admit it. I know, even though I drank for twenty-seven years, that until the last day I didn't want to admit it. I knew it all the time, but I didn't want to admit it.
I'm really glad the old-time alcoholic that I am is almost no longer around. The women who come to Women for Sobriety groups are women who have drunk five, ten, maybe fifteen years, tops. That's terrific. It shows some kind of progress because they haven't let themselves get so run down. More and more, humiliation, rather than ill health, as in my case, brings them in.
I first began to drink in high school, when I felt on the edge of things. I always felt that I was a wallflower. As I look back on it now, I wasn't. I just felt that way. When I drank just a couple of drinks, I felt terrific. I felt popular. I felt charismatic. I felt dynamic. I drank because it made me feel loaded with personality, charged up, personality-plus. It made me feel on top of the world.
I was in a serious automobile accident in my senior year of high school; it was not from drinking, but it postponed my going to college for a year. So I went to Pierce Business College in Philadelphia, and I am not a Pierce Business College type. To compound the disappointment of not going away to a regular college, I had to settle for a college I considered second-rate. I started drinking seriously during that year. As I look back on it now, I was an out-and-out alcoholic by the time I was seventeen. When I was eighteen, I enrolled in Pierce, but I didn't go to classes. The boys would get liquor for me. Can you imagine? At eighteen I'd give them money, and they would go out and buy me a pint of whiskey. I didn't feel much ill effect from it, physically. They thought my requests were unusual, of course, but it wasn't considered ladylike to go to a bar or buy a bottle myself, so I did it that way.
I finally went away to college, but I was thrown out of several of them for drinking. I didn't go to class; I just drank. To think that I kept at it until I was way up into my forties is incredible. Incredible. The suffering that I put so many other people through, the suffering I put myself through. I just couldn't quit drinking.
I have kept a diary since 1954, and I got out the diary the other night. I couldn't believe what I was reading. I could not believe how many years—not days, years of my life—were spent in drunkenness. I have written across page after page—Drunk. The next day—Recovery. Drunk—Recovery. Drunk Drunk Drunk. Years and years and years of my life went right down the drain. I could not quit drinking. I worked out how many years of my life I really worked. It was actually a total of only nine years before I quit drinking.
One time I was in a mental hospital for a year, for drinking and drugs. Three times in hospitals, total. I got so sick. I tried so many times to quit. I would start, quit, start. Finally, everybody who had stuck by me left me—and they had stuck by me a long time. I don't believe I have ever been quite as frightened as when I realized how really sick I was, how dependent on the bottle I was, and how everybody had gone. I was really alone. I think that made me straighten up faster than anything. I was so sick. Nothing was functioning anymore. When I took a drink, I'd never know what was going to happen. I'd regurgitate or I'd get the hiccups or I'd start sneezing. My body just said, "I've had it," and it quit. I was lucky.
Until the day I actually quit, I couldn't conceive of life without alcohol. At first, even after I'd quit, I didn't permit myself to think that I would never be able to drink again. For the first three to five years, I always kept an open door. Maybe a cure would be found or a magic pill would come along. Now I'm happy to be free of it. If anybody asked me to drink now, I wouldn't. It just seems dumb to me.
I don't think there should be just one self-help program for alcoholics. I don't think there should be just two. I think there should be three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. There should be different choices among self-help groups. So far, the program that has shown the greatest success rate is AA.
AA is a marvelous program. The fact that it has worked and lasted for so long speaks to its greatness. I only hope that Women for Sobriety lasts as long and can be so self-contained. Then we'll have something to crow about. It's going to take time to see if it will. My belief was that women needed something that spoke specifically to their needs, which are gender oriented. That's how Women for Sobriety came into being. Many of our members use both AA and our program. Others just use the Women for Sobriety program.
Our program is based on a concept: that the things which we think become our reality. That is the whole philosophical basis of the program. We begin by realizing that our images become the reality of life. I cannot have a reality unless I first have the idea; idea and image precede action.
Before, I used to think, I'm nobody, I'm no good, I'm nothing and nobody loves me. I acted out those negative thoughts, and that is exactly the way society dealt with me. Society turned me off and rejected me. Then I could say, "See, they rejected me, poor little me," and I could crawl into my shell, take my bottle and cry, isolate myself and get drunk.
In Women for Sobriety we reverse that process by saying, "I am a competent person. I know I am a competent person. I am capable and caring. I am compassionate. I am a loving person." The idea is to know these things in idea, to know them and see them clearly; then, even without our doing it consciously, we act them out. In acting this out we change our whole lives. It changes our entire attitude about how we will be as people. We become competent people and that is how we recover.
All Women for Sobriety "statements" promote developing a positive person. We begin with, "I have a drinking problem that once had me." We accept our disease and the responsibility to take care of it. We are in charge of that disease, and we pick up a drink or we don't. "I am what I think," shows that we can control our lives. We learn that problems bother us only to the degree that we permit them to. We can control those things that bother us. We are in control of our reactions, and we are in control of our actions. That is very important. A key in our program is, "The past is gone forever." This is an especially important concept for women. We have gone through so much humiliation and, unfortunately, families and society tend to remind us of it.
We also have two statements which deal with learning how to accept love and how to give love, because alcoholic women—and alcoholic men, too—have a lot of trouble loving. We have statements dealing with negativity and statements dealing with encouraging acceptance of life and enthusiasm for life. The fundamental object of life, we say, is emotional and spiritual growth. In regard to acceptance we say, "I am a competent woman," and we accept the responsibility to help others. Those are, in a few words, some of the principles and philosophies of Women for Sobriety. Recovery is really dependent on coming to grips with one's inner self and then growing.
I believe that many things can't be talked about in mixed male-female groups. Not because they are so secret but because men and women often don't share interests and frustrations. I've heard men say, "She's always talking about the baby diapers and the wash." But these are her frustrations. She might say of him, "All he ever talks about is business, business, business." Those things which frustrate a man or a woman might in some cases be boring to someone of the opposite sex. Separate groups help greatly in the beginning. I'm certainly not opposed to mixed groups, by any means, but there is a great advantage to all-male or all-female groups within the self-help movement.
Considering the fact that AA has been in existence since 1935 and that we started in 1975, our acceptance has been very swift. But not enough women are in the recovery process. I don't know exactly why, but I have an idea. My feeling is that most programs over the years have unconsciously been male oriented, male directed. They've assumed that an alcoholic is an alcoholic, period. As far as the disease is concerned, of course an alcoholic is an alcoholic, but these alcoholics we're talking about are also men and women. We ha-e overlooked that all these years.
It appears that recovery rates for men are very high and recovery rates for women low. Therapists and counselors have said for years that we're uncooperative, too hard to deal with, too neurotic, too emotional. No one has ever said, "Maybe we're not reaching women." But it's beginning to change. Treatment facilities are beginning to advertise programs for women. And that's the way it should be. It's changing, but we've got to do a lot more. We have put too much emphasis on talking just about alcoholism, not male alcoholics and female alcoholics.
***
Gale Storm had a proper upbringing in Texas and knew all about being a lady. She never took a drink until after she was married and was never a loud-mouthed or falling-down alcoholic. Like so many women alcoholics Gale was a controlled drinker and she drank out of view of the public. She never wanted anyone to suspect. As Gale puts it, "To say alcoholism snuck up on me is the understatement of the year."
After several doctors and three hospitals, Gale ended up at Raleigh Hills, a treatment center for alcoholism, where she finally understood the disease concept of alcoholism and quit drinking through counterconditioning therapy.
Gale Storm is an alcoholic. A former film star, she played the lead in the television series "My Little Margie" and "Oh! Susanna." Gale and her husband, Lee Bonnell, live in California.
I never saw other people as bad. I only saw myself as bad. When I went through Raleigh Hills Hospital, I felt terrible. I just wanted to bury my head under the bed and stay there. When your face is so recognizable, people talk about you. I was afraid, but I was also bent on getting help. I'd tried three hospitals before that, and there had been a consistent pattern of failure. I was desperate. I went in there hoping and praying, "Oh, God, if this can just stop me from drinking. Why can't I stop this? What's the matter with me? Why can't I use my will power? I'm hurting myself, I'm hurting my family." This hammering at myself was constant; and I couldn't control my drinking. It was the most frightening thing in the world. I never thought I'd fall in love with a hospital, but I love that hospital.
By the time I went to Raleigh Hills I was getting up at night to go to the bathroom at fairly regular intervals because I could also go to the kitchen. Nobody else was awake. I could go to the kitchen and I could have a drink. My body was demanding it. I hated myself. I would never treat another person the way I was treating myself then. I shudder to think of the horrible things that I told myself. I degraded myself constantly. My sense of self-worth was down the drain. I loathed myself. I didn't need anybody to say one unkind word to me because I had said them all.
I could not quit drinking; I couldn't. I tried, but it was always with me. I thought , Well I can stop if I want to. Tonight I won't have anything to drink. The few times I tried it, I would sit there with people I knew, and in a very short time feel as if I was in the fringe area. I would hate that 7-Up I was holding. I'd find myself getting angrier and angrier. Not angry at anybody else because they could drink, but angry at myself. I turned it all inward, frustrated that they could all enjoy themselves and I had to sit there like a stone. All I wanted to do was go home. I was miserable.
I was such a lady. I paced my time drinking so that I would never be drunk and reeling around, a loud-mouthed woman. There is no such thing as an attractive, cute, funny, drunken woman, and I was walking on eggs because I didn't want anybody ever to suspect. I'd ask Lee when he'd come home from the office if he had talked to anybody about me or my drinking. I couldn't stand that. It hurt me terribly to have that kind of image.
When I was growing up in Texas, I was taught that liquor was bad. I was always the nice girl. But when you start to really drink, it's compulsive. It was terribly frightening. Hiding bottles, sneaking drinks, adding to drinks—these things were completely foreign to the way I had been raised. When Lee and I were first married I didn't drink. I had never tasted liquor. If Lee even accepted a drink when somebody offered it, he'd get a glare from me. But we'd go out to social functions, and I got so I'd have drinks, too. I cultivated a taste for it. I liked the feeling it gave me. My drinking didn't seem to increase, so I had no warning that I could have an alcohol problem. I very seldom had hangovers, because I didn't drink that much. I can't even visualize when I started heavy drinking. Many people can find some traumatic experience to blame it on. Well, I didn't have one single thing to blame. To say alcoholism snuck up on me is the understatement of the year.
Eventually I began to hide bottles because Lee gave me a bad time. He'd start by saying, "Honey, we've got to talk about your drinking." And I'd say, "Look it just so happens that I can drink more than other people. I just drink. Some people can." I would use all those excuses on him. I'd be indignant or I'd be angry. The tension between us was terrible. And my drinking got worse and worse.
I looked terrible. I was used to having a nice trim figure. I never had to diet or anything and here I was wearing A-frame dresses. I could not wear one thing. My liver was four times its normal size. I looked six months pregnant. The first hospital I went to was UCLA, for a biopsy. They did a whole bunch of other tests, too. The doctor told both of us, "You have four choices: you can go to AA, stop cold turkey, go for psychiatric help, or die." Those were my four choices. I tried AA and I can't say AA didn't work for me. I just didn't let AA work for me, and if you don't let it, it won't.
I went to see an endocrinologist before I saw the psychiatrist. He talked to me plain and simple about the alternatives you have if you're an alcoholic. Lee and I were going away for a long weekend, and I said, "I'm not going to have a drink all the time we're there. I will not take a bottle." And I meant it. That was a long weekend and I didn't have a drink. I was proud of myself for that. I couldn't wait to tell the doctor because I thought he would be so pleased. I said to him, "Guess what? Lee and I went away for a long weekend and I didn't have one drink the whole time. How about that? That's the first time I've ever been able to do that for three to four days." He looked at me and he said, "Are you kidding?" I said, "No, I'm not kidding. I wanted you to know that because that would be a little bit of a step forward." Then he said, "You know that's not true." I said, "Why would I tell you if it's not?" He said, "I don't care what you say, all drunks are liars, they are cheats, they are sneaks, they are never to be trusted." I got so mad that I yelled at him. I really told him off. I said, "That is the most awful thing to say to a person. Do you know what you are saying to me? You are telling me that you will not accept anything I say as truth." He said, "Alcoholics will never tell the truth." He didn't add, "as long as you're drinking or unless you get help." That hurt me so badly. I got so mad at him, I was ready to kill him.
Now, the stigma of going to a psychiatrist was as bad as alcoholism, as far as I was concerned. But Lee found a psychiatrist who was recommended by our church. I don't think I went more than a week. Every time I went I would just rack my brain all the way over there, trying to think of things I could tell him. I felt he was looking at his watch most of the time. Did I hate my mother? Did they beat me as a child? I thought to myself, Even if we decided what caused my drinking, then what would that do? How would that stop me from drinking? He said he felt that the right thing to do, what would help me the most, would be to put me in Cedars-Sinai psychiatric ward. I didn't like the idea but I said, "If you say that's going to help me, that's what I'll do," and that's what I did.
There was an experience. I went in for seven days. I hurt so for the other people but I kept thinking, Maybe they're going to help me. They had group therapy. I had never experienced group therapy and I thought, Maybe this will do it. I got so I said, "I'm an alcoholic" to the group and I'd burst into tears. I admitted it and I thought maybe that was the key, to be able to say it. I left because I had been booked for a theater in Arizona, but I promised I would come back in.
When Lee left me there the second time I was hanging on to his coattail. I was screaming and crying when those doors shut. They put me in with a roommate who was manic-depressive. They let me go home some weekends, and Lee said he couldn't believe it. I would sit like a vegetable, I was taking so much medication. Lee took me out of there and right over to Las Encinas, which was like heaven because the other had been so bad. I stayed there for several months. I came home on the weekends and drank. Lee didn't know about it, except for one time when I was on Antabuse and had a drink. My Lord, I turned beet red. Your respiration can stop with that; it scared the living daylights out of both of us. I never did admit what caused it. I started drinking again when I left Las Encinas for good. Immediately, as soon as I got home. Just as I had before.
Finally I went to Raleigh Hills. When Lee took me, I said, "Honey, I cannot answer all those questions. I can't. You know all the answers better than I do." He said, "Don't worry, I'll answer them for you." So the only thing that the counselor asked me was what did I drink. I told him, vodka. In about two minutes, a nurse appeared at the door with a tray and two glasses on it, one with water and one with vodka. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. They were bringing me vodka. That's how they detox you, on the poison you've been putting into your own body. They don't have television. They don't have radio. They want you focused in on liquor all the time. They want you to have complete concentration on the bottle. They bring you a drink every two hours for a certain length of time, night or day. They wake you up and give you that vodka or whatever you drink. Then you dwindle down to every three hours. Then it stops. This is all within four to five days. Your body becomes stabilized. If they had been giving me pills, I wouldn't have made any connection with what they were doing to detox me. It kept my mind right on the bottle.
After you have had the detox, you have a complete physical, and then you start your first "treatment." I prefer to call it counterconditioning rather than aversion. The principle is that you have to condition yourself to learn to drink, as I know I had. Gradually I had gotten used to the taste of it and to enjoying the way it made me feel. This is conditioning your body and your mind. What Raleigh Hills does is reverse that process and use psychological counterconditioning; they build you up again so you think you're worth something. The aversion therapy, or counterconditioning, takes place every other day for five days—about fourteen days in all. Every other day you have a "treatment." The treatment nurse is very important. She has to be a well-trained, skilled person because each patient is different. You get up at 5:30 and you've had nothing to eat from before 12:00 the night before. There's nothing in your stomach except liquid. You've just had tea or coffee or water. You go into a small room where there are shelves all around with every kind of booze you've ever seen in your life. Many I had never heard of. She has these glasses lined up. They give you an injection of Emetine. They have in front of you a full-length mirror. You watch yourself. The nurse talks to you the whole time. She's talking about alcoholism and the good things about not drinking—it's very positive. You're in there only about twenty minutes. They'll start you out with vodka; it would vary every treatment—vodka, gin, bourbon, beer, wine. Of course, you start to upchuck after you have had a drink. Emetine adds to your nausea, and you start getting very nauseated. You get so sick that you upchuck again and again. It's just liquid so it's not quite as revolting as it sounds, but, of course, it's not pleasant, either.
There are five treatment days, one every other day. Every morning, the doctor makes his rounds and checks on you. They also have round-table discussions and they are marvelous. I found out from the doctor at the first round table I went to that alcohol affects every cell in your body. He made me understand that your brain cells are affected, too—that's a real grabber. They also focused on things like self-assertiveness. I had no idea I had given up so much, such as the right to an opinion. I didn't know I'd given thai: up, but I had. I didn't feel worthy.
After the stay there, you go back for what are called recaps for one year. The first recap is two weeks after you leave. The second one is four weeks after you've been out. The third one is six weeks. In other words, the time since you left gets wider and wider, but you are still cementing. They find that if a person doesn't go back, it's very easy for him or her to start drinking again.
When I was released from Raleigh Hills, I was really afraid to leave. I thought, Oh, my God, what if I react like I did every other time? The minute I plunk down in my regular surroundings, will I head right for the vodka? I didn't know for sure, but I felt I wouldn't because I had learned so much and I understood so much. That was the first hospital where they told me it was a disease. If they had said that to me in any other hospital I went to, I would have gotten off my back sooner. I wouldn't have been so hard on myself, because I would have known that it was a disease. It isn't a case of using will power, doing it yourself. Those other hospitals didn't know what to do with an alcoholic, because they were not hospitals for alcoholism. If they don't know about it, how are they going to help a patient?
When I came home from Raleigh Hills, I didn't want to drink. Not one bit. And I knew that for sure. Not too long after I had gotten out, I was sitting by myself at the dining table, reading a book. All of a sudden I started to laugh out loud, which is strange when you are alone. I just laughed and laughed because it was so wonderful. I felt so good. I had absolutely no temptation. I expected to have circumstances or situations that might lead to drinking, that I would have to fight temptation at times. I fully expected that. I just assumed that was part of it. But what I was feeling was freedom. What a beautiful word, I thought, freedom. How marvelous. I hadn't had a word for it before. The feeling was freedom. When I considered what Raleigh Hills had done for me I thought that it had to be something God had planned for me. At first I had thought, What a waste those three other hospitals were—the pain, the suffering. What a waste, when all the time, here it was. Then I realized it wasn't a waste at all. If I had not had those prior experiences, those failures, the three hospitals where I failed completely, I would not have had nearly as firm a foundation for stopping. I feel that God planned the whole thing. I was never ready until I went to Raleigh Hills. And in all the time since then I have not had one split second of temptation. Nothing. That's the metamorphosis. I'm born again. I came out of the cocoon. I changed.
***
"I am the exception," says Grace Slick and cautions you not to compare your drinking with hers. However, like so many alcoholics, Grace did compare herself, when she was drinking and drugging, to those around her and didn't see herself as different. Just the opposite of Gale Storm, Grace's drinking and drug use was very public. In the rock world, the more bizarre the behavior, the better. One of the most common characteristics of the alcoholic personality is a change in behavior after drinking. It was always after alcohol and/or drug use that Grace's Jekyll-and-Hyde personality changed.
Grace Slick is an alcoholic. She is a writer and the female lead singer with the highly successful rock group Jefferson Starship.
I didn't see myself as being different. Everybody around me had a drug of choice that they were using to the fullest extent. I would see people around me whom I considered to be straight and I'd think, How sad for them. How very boring their lives must be. I didn't have a particularly ugly time with drinking. I enjoyed it most of the time. It gives up when it's going to give up on an individual, and it gave up on me when I was somewhere around thirty-four or thirty-five. It started losing its fun value.
It wasn't as awful as it could have been, and I thought I'd never say this in my life, but one of the reasons I quit drinking is that I was caught by the highway patrol before I was ready to stop. If I were still going now, I would be miserable. I'm very stubborn and real stupid as far as continuing anything that I like. I'd still be going at it and wondering why my life was just awful. Fortunately, the highway patrol in California is very strict, and they caught up with me before I caught up with myself. The highway patrol was definitely ready for me to stop. My behavior helped in that. I was not a closet kind of pass-out drunk. I was real obvious. I mean, I'd be numb and telling everybody where to get off or driving 125 miles an hour. That made it easier for other people to make me aware of it. But I thought I was having a great time and everybody was spoiling my fun. The denial system that I had, that most alcoholics have, was very strong.
I'd say to myself, "The odds of having an automobile accident if you have driven for twenty years are very high, drunk or sober. So what if I have an automobile accident?" It's that kind of denial. The fact that alcohol may have precipitated my fighting with the band, was not something I was going to look at. The same attitude applied with people calling me an alcoholic. I'd think, yeah, probably, so what? The business of taking drugs to an extreme was hardly unusual in my circle.
Is your nose stuffed up? Snort a little coke. Tired from jet lag? Snort a little coke. Want to calm down a bit? Have a little alcohol. You want to do this? Have a little of that. There was always something for everything. It is hard to figure out that something that has been your friend, basically, and has given you joy for a long period of time has turned on you. Nobody wants to admit it, believe it, or acknowledge it.
I'm an old person in a young person's business. I was old when I got started. I was twenty-six when I got started in rock 'n' roll. So the first thing was alcohol. The second was definitely marijuana. Then, I think, cocaine. A lot of people had pills, but for some reason I didn't like the way they looked. I guess most of the pills were speed, and I'm pretty wired already, so I didn't think I needed that. Later on I did Quaaludes and acid. But my drugs of choice were cocaine and alcohol, because they feed each other, or Quaaludes and cocaine.
There is an old saying, "Let's go get paralyzed," and it refers to alcohol. It's from my parents' generation. Well, one night I was in a recording studio, sitting cross-legged on the floor and reading some lyrics. I had a bottle of wine. I was leaning against the wall and all of a sudden I couldn't move anything but my eyes and my mouth. I could speak, but the rest of my body couldn't move. I was scared shit. I did not know what was happening. I thought it was some horrible disease. I had them call the doctor. He was sort of a rock-'n'-roll doctor, who said, "How much have you had?" I said, "Oh, hell, I don't know." He said, "You're paralyzed." I said, "Yes, I know I'm paralyzed. What is it? I'm scared." He said, "You just drank too much." I said, "No shit?" And he said, "Yes, just sit there and wait awhile." And, sure enough, pretty soon I was able to move. I had actually paralyzed myself. The odd thing was that I wasn't drunk enough to pass out. Apparently it was my body chemistry at that time.
I had a good childhood. I liked my parents. I can't remember feeling different as a child, or unusual. In high school I was a cheerleader. That's what I wanted to do. I hung out with the crowd I wanted to hang out with. College the same thing. But I did something I guess I should have noticed at the time, back in high school. On Fridays everybody would decide who they were going out with. But my girlfriend and I would say, "We're going out with Gordon Gilbey. We're both going out with Gordon Gilbey." Gordon's and Gilbey's are brands of gin, of course. Her parents drank Gilbey's, mine drank Gordon's. We'd get one of each. That's who we went out with. She and I would go out and get paper cups, about five of them, because gin eats its way through the cups. That alone should tell you about drinking the stuff. Anyway, we'd just sit around and drink gin.
I got a good job early, made a lot of money. I've enjoyed the people I've been with. There is absolutely no excuse for my abuse of alcohol. People say, "Well, you were always drinking a lot because, because, because, because..." I think it's a genetic disorder, myself, and it slips right by you. You can become an alcoholic/addict simply by continued overuse.
In all the times I've had run-ins with the police in the car, it was never moving. I've never been stopped. There is no number for my offense in the vehicle code, I don't think. Drunk Mouth is what I call it.
Once I was sitting with a book, a bottle of wine, and some cheese, being arty. I think I was reading poetry—in a pickup truck in the hills of Marin County—and a cop came by. I was having a loaf of bread and wine and cheese. He came by and said, "I'm going to arrest you for sitting half in and half out of your truck, drunk in public." If I'd had my wits about me, like most women when they get arrested, I would have said, "Oh, officer..." Women pull that, and a lot of times it works. Not I. What do I do? "Drunk in what public?" I say. "What do you mean? What are we talking about, the trees, these deer here, these leaves on the ground? What public? You're the only public here, and if you hadn't stopped you wouldn't et cetera, et cetera." I'm doing that to a cop. So of course, I go down for Drunk Mouth.
Another time I was driving my Aston Martin about 125 miles an hour over Waldo Grade. I didn't bother to check the oil gauge. So, down at the bottom of a hill, on the Richardson Bridge, smoke and flames started coming out of the engine. I pulled the car over. Someone in a Volkswagen pulled over and said, "Do you want me to get the highway patrol for you?" I said, "Yes, please." So he went and got the highway patrol. This cop weighs 205 pounds and has his thumbs hooked in his belt, which has a potbelly over it. I just didn't like the looks of him. He said, "O.K., what's going on here?" Remember, there are flames coming out of my car. I said, "What the fuck does it look like is going on? I'm having a goddamn party at four A.M. with fucking flames coming out of my car." That's the way I'm talking to him. "Down to the Civic Center, you drunk," he says. Drunk Mouth, again.
The other time I was fighting with Paul Kantner; that's when I was living with Paul. I was driving. We were mad at each other for something. We were going slow, and he pulled the keys out of the Aston Martin, threw them out the window, opened the door, and walked home. The reason he did that is because he didn't want me to be able to follow him and badger him, in case I wanted to keep fighting. He wanted me to have to look for the keys so he could run down the block and get out. So the Aston Martin is in the middle of the street—can't move without the keys. I'm over on this woman's lawn on my hands and knees, looking for the keys to my car. I had had two drinks, which smelled. The cops came by. "What are you doing on your hands and knees? What about this car in the middle of the street?" I said, "Oh, I do this all the time on purpose. I throw my keys." I'd just start in on the cops when I was drunk. Down to the city again. It was always my reaction to them that got me into trouble. It was violent, offensive.
We're talking about Jekyll and Hyde. Yes, real pleasant. There's a little hole in the rafter in my home. It's a bullet hole. One night I couldn't remember if I'd ever fired a gun, so I just fired it straight up at the ceiling. I liked weapons. Another night I heard some kids outside my house, so I chased them with a samurai sword. I was home alone and I was scared. Instead of waiting or listening the way I would sober, to see if it was just kids, I decided some people were coming to get me, and I got the samurai sword and ran out there like a madman.
The California Highway Patrol sent me to my first AA meeting. One of the people down there at the Civic Center said, "Take a card and go to AA and get the card signed." It was kind of like parole. "No," I said, "you don't understand, I can pay for my own dinner." I thought AA was like St. Vincent de Paul's, where they give drunks free meals. I couldn't figure out what she was telling me. Anyway, I took this little card and had it signed so they'd know I had been to the meeting. And I liked it. I didn't resent it or anything. It was very interesting. I loved hearing the stories. These were real people. These God-awful horror stories. I was just amazed.
AA basically ruined my drinking. They did a real good job, which I'm glad about now. When you go back to drinking, the alcohol still works, but it isn't quite as much fun after being at those meetings and discovering you're an alcoholic. You think, What the hell are you doing, killing yourself, you jerk?
I'm very comfortable around AA because it's a part of my life now. It was not then, it was sort of an excursion. It was like going to study voice lessons for six months. I was interested, I paid attention, but it was not part of my life. It was like going to a movie. Six months into it, I thought, That's enough of that. Now I'll get drunk. And I did. I went out and tried drinking again. My husband was right on top of it. The next morning he took me to Duffy's, which is sort of an Olympic swimming pool retreat. It's a good place. Once again I went back to AA. I'd go to the meetings for another six months, liking it, saying, "I'm an alcoholic," but not buying the progression. I'm still thinking my problem is the car and my sarcastic mouth.
The last time I drank was in New York City. I was going on national television. From singing, I'm used to using my mouth and I don't worry about slurring my words, so I was going to try controlled drinking. It didn't work. I hated it. Within half an hour I thought, Oh, God, and went out and kept having more. So I kept drinking all day. I woke up the next morning. I knew that I had been on television. I knew that much, and that was all. I had been in a blackout the whole time.
My heart just sank. All my friends, my parents, my daughter, the band—everybody knew I had stopped drinking. I've blown it, I thought, on national television. It was the only time in my life I've ever felt close to being suicidal, thinking, You're the biggest asshole in the world. Nobody would be in AA and go out and drink on national television. Nobody's that stupid.
I called the record company to find out what had happened. I was scared to ask because I had a real flamboyant mouth, and I didn't know what the hell I had said on television. "What did I do last night, Barbara?" I asked. "Oh, nothing," she said. "You were fairly lucid most of the time." She was real casual. She said, "What's the matter?" Finally I got out of her that it was a pilot and on tape, not a live show. The pilot never sold, so in the end it didn't matter. But I had scared myself. That's when I started taking the AA program real seriously. If you're that out of control, you need a lot of help.
Today I don't like to fight with people, but when I was drinking there was usually somebody whom I had offended either the night before, or the week before. There was always something abrasive in the air because I hadn't quite cleaned up something I had done while drunk. There was always something going on that had to do with my drinking. It could either be direct, like mouthing off at somebody, or it could be indirect, something I was not doing because of drug use or alcohol, like not taking my daughter China to the beach. I know several people today who are having trouble recognizing the effects of their drug use because the offense is what they are not doing. It is easy for these people to deny their own problem when they compare themselves with me. I'm real flamboyant. It was perfectly obvious: cars, police, badmouthing people, staging stuff. That is not the rule. I'm the exception, and I want to keep reminding people of that. That is not the rule of alcoholism. It is usually a slower, grimmer process, and it's usually sins of omission rather than commission. I was really obvious. I got paid to be that way. The more flamboyant you are, the more they come to see you. It was the same with Keith Moon, Joe Cocker, and Alice Cooper. The weirder you get, the more people love it. It feeds your addiction. I feel bad about that because it is such a convenient thing for a lot of people I know to say, "I've never done anything like that." What is happening to them is the more common problem, which is not taking care of business. I always showed up, and people were sorry I showed up. For most people, it's not showing up for work, not talking to the kid because you have a headache, not doing what you're supposed to do. I wish they didn't have my example to hang on to.
God, I wish I could say something that would make everybody believe that it's O.K., that it's wonderful to stop drinking. People who are the type of alcoholic I am, whatever that is, are afraid of a boring life. "I guess this is the end of my life, because I've got to stop drinking. I guess now it's all downhill." Well, it isn't. You find that you are perfectly capable of having a great time—and you can get so much more done. I know that any positive thought that comes into my head about me and alcohol is nuts. Alcohol is not an option for me.