I snap out of a blackout to find that I have just put my foot through the windshield of the bar guy's car. I have no idea why. I've had seventeen double martinis—I know this because I count them so I won't drink too much. I fly out of the car and down the icy street in my dress and heels. He's chasing me. I'm pulling out of his grip, screaming. I run up the stairs to the apartment and call a friend, who is surely delighted to hear from me at midnight on Valentine's Day. I lie on the kitchen floor in my dress, pouring a bottle of wine down my throat. My friend tells the bar guy to take me to the psych ward.
Dr. Lentz: How are you feeling this morning?
It's bright. I'm still in my dress. The sunlight pierces me and I am filled with despair. I'm still drunk. I tell him I feel like Cat. You know, from Breakfast at Tiffany's? I slur, lifting my head off the pillow to look at him and letting it fall back. She doesn't name him because she doesn't want to get attached to him? So he has no name? He's just Cat? Get it?
I am greatly relieved. He always understands.
Do you know what your blood alcohol level was when you came in last night?
No.
It was point three-five.
Is that a lot?
That's higher than hell.
Even my psychiatrist is disgusted with me. By my count, that makes everyone, including me.
And now I am sitting in a dirty snowbank on Central Avenue. I've fallen into it. I'm holding a near-empty quart of vodka. I'm crying, mostly because the liquor store's not open yet. It's seven A.M.
I give up and stick my head in the snow.
Maybe it sobers me up. Anyway, I find a cell phone on my person. I call my father, crying.
Marya, put the bottle down, he says firmly.
I am stunned. Truly, stunned. I have never heard such an amazing idea in my life.
Carefully, I dig a little hole in the snow for the bottle, and I put it down.
I'm lying with my face against the door of a cop car. My cousin is a cop. My father has called her to come pick me up. She's not impressed.
I'm lying in the ER. My aunt and uncle—I've gotten the whole family involved now—appear when I open my eyes.
It's the shits, ain't it? Aunt Andy says.
I nod. It is, I manage to spit out of my cottony mouth.
She nods. I know.
I'm on a psych ward, screaming for more Klonopin. Klonopin acts on the same neuroreceptors as alcohol, and when you're taking enough of it and go off suddenly, you can get pretty sick. It doesn't occur to me that the same thing will happen once I come off the alcohol itself. Don't you understand that I'll go through withdrawal?
No offense, says the nice nurse, you're already in withdrawal.
I am in a room, which is spinning. I stand up and try to find the door, but I crash into the walls and give up and stumble into bed again.
I'm sitting in a folding chair, looking around a crowded room. Someone is standing on a platform, yelling, Hi! My name is Connie, and I'm a drunk!
Hi, Connie! everyone yells.
Motherfucking Christ. I'm in rehab. They've finally got me. It's over.
In a way, it is—at least this part, the years when alcohol both disguised and worsened the bipolar. As I've said, sobering up won't cure me. Getting sober, in fact, exposes the bipolar in all its awful glory. But getting the alcohol out of the picture at least gives me a chance at managing my mental illness. When I get the alcohol out of my system, Dr. Lentz finds a combination of medications that brings the world into focus. Even I can tell that the madness is receding.
I walk out of rehab two months later. Over the next several weeks, I slip and have another drink more than once. But one day I wake up sober. June 9, 2001. The sun isn't too bright. The crushing bear of depression is gone. The mania has broken. I lie in bed, watching the branches covered with new leaves sway back and forth across my window. I can breathe.