was missing out on. But now there’s half a glass staring at me. A sniff can’t hurt. I lift the glass; it smells heavenly. The rich, deep red is still fragrant with tannins and earthiness. It smells like autumn, like Italy, like lamb shanks, like making love in front of a crackling fire. It smells like the good times, the happy times when I was alive, when I wasn’t an alcoholic.
If I drink this half glass of wine will it awaken the monster? Will I suddenly have an uncontrollable urge to binge? Will the last six months’ worth of therapy prove to be a waste of time?
If I drink this wine, I won’t be able to kiss David all day because he’ll smell it on me and probably never speak to me again. We have plans to go to the beach and walk around Third Street Promenade, maybe buy that new mouse for him at the Apple Store, and get some fresh fish at Santa Monica Seafood. These plans will be ruined.
I know that if I drink this wine I will be toying with the monster. I’ll be presuming that I am powerful when I am not. I am weak. I am a drunk just like the guy I saw passed out on the sidewalk in front of Starbucks. I am no better or worse.
I miss red wine. It’s like not being able to dance with your favorite partner. I sound like a battered housewife who keeps making excuses for her husband. I love the wine, despite the fact that it’s trying to kill me.
I pour the leftover wine down the sink. It’s All Saints’ Day. The veil between our world and the spirit world is still thin, so maybe Patrick’s watching over me today. But tomorrow it’ll just be me, myself, and I. Will I ever feel normal again?
My diary was filled with entries like that one. I wrote hundreds of sorrow-filled pages about my struggle. Tear stains marked pages where I’d fallen off the wagon, coffee stains marked pages where I’d been sober for thirty or sixty or ninety days. There were copious musings about how much better my life would be if I were sober forever, and there were diatribes about how shitty it was that I couldn’t even have a glass of wine at a dinner party. There are letters written to my parents apologizing for my behavior and thanking them for their support. There are entries complaining bitterly about inheriting their fucked-up, alcoholic genes. My diary is filled with self-absorbed post-binge musings, manic scrawls, even suicidal rants. I have thick diaries and I like to write—a lot. It’s one of the ways in which I try to make sense of things.
When I came back from the UK I was miserable, still stuck in my sober-binge cycle, so I decided to stop waiting for the phone to ring and start living. I took classes in languages, art, and writing. I started hiking every day.
In the summer of 2008 I met a new man, master photographer and lighting guru David Honl. David was a departure from the kind of guy I normally dated. He was my own age, for a start, and he had a depressive streak, but also a very dry sense of humor that I enjoyed. And man, could he make me look good in a photo! He was very encouraging when he’d photograph me, very complimentary, just the thing I needed at that time in my life. He’d lived in Turkey for years, had spent time in Afghanistan and Iraq during the wars. I liked him—a lot—and I was determined that even if everything else in my life was fucked up, my relationship with David wouldn’t be, at least not as much as the last string of guys I’d dated.
The smartest way to do that was to try to stay sober most of the time and hide my disease from him. He couldn’t be allowed to see the monster. Our relationship was just budding, and the monster was emotional napalm, enough to wipe out a forest.
When I was recovering from a binge I’d pretend that I had a cold or some other illness. The swine flu epidemic bought me a whole week. He appeared on my doorstep unannounced one day, his brother standing beside him, and asked me to come out to lunch. I kept running into the bathroom to throw up, and I looked like shit. I thought I’d die of embarrassment. I’ll never forget the disappointed look he gave me as he left. Non-addicts take offense at all sorts of small inconveniences and slights, because they don’t share the same perspective; they don’t realize that you’re fighting for your life.
I started meditating and read a book a day, even though it killed my eyes. It took my mind off of drinking and guilt and helped pass the time until I was once more socially acceptable.
David liked an occasional drink and was very supportive of my sobriety, but he got confused when I’d suddenly fall off the wagon and overdo it. He could see that something was wrong with me, but his vision was clouded; he was in love, and he just couldn’t connect the dots because he’d never known an addict. But I couldn’t hide the monster away forever. I knew she’d eventually emerge from her cave and then David would turn and run and never come back.
I was so scared of telling David the truth that I started running around like a headless chicken, trying anything and everything to make me well—anything except drugs. I’d seen where that had taken Jeff Conaway and other friends of mine. What started out as medication to manage one problem could quickly turn into a whole other addiction. What if I failed to beat the booze with drugs and then found myself hooked on both?
I made up a to-do list that included every kind of nonmedical solution I could think of and got to work on it:
1. GO TO DOCTOR AND GET LIVER TESTS.
“Claudia, your liver is ruined! How could you do this to yourself? Don’t touch another drop. One more mouthful and your liver will explode, leaving you to die the most horrible of deaths.”
That’s what I’d been hoping to hear, but the tests showed that my liver was completely healthy.
I amused myself with the theory that I was part cockroach, built to withstand even a nuclear disaster. My other leading theory was that the alcohol had pickled my liver, preserving it in perfect condition.
2. BECOME A VEGETARIAN.
I tried, and when that didn’t help, I even went macrobiotic and completely cut out sugar. Maybe those hippie therapists at the rehab resort were right. Maybe sugar lured the monster out of its cave. No such luck. It was nuts. I was poring over my past again like a detective, digging up old cases, revisiting past conclusions in case I’d missed one vital clue that would make sense of everything.
3. GO TO CHURCH AND PRAY—HARD!
I’d decided to get back together with God when I was in England but he didn’t seem to be returning my calls. That was understandable. I’d called things off a long time ago, and now here I was suddenly wanting to patch things up. I needed to go to church and make an official effort; then maybe he would take five minutes to come down off the cloud and sort my life out.
I had a very bad Easter in 2008, and I’d heard about a healing ceremony in this Catholic church in the valley. The priest was famous for bestowing blessings on the sick, and there had even been some reported miracles.
When I arrived there were lots of people on crutches and in wheelchairs. My goddaughter came with me and we sat through Mass. Part of the service was in Spanish, part in English.
When it was my turn to stand before the priest he asked me, “Do you need to be healed from something?”
And I just burst into tears.
“Yes. I do. I’m sick.”
So he put oil on my forehead and on my chest, and all the while I was weeping, praying for a miracle.
And I did feel something go through my body. I felt some sort of healing, and after that any time I felt like a drink I’d throw myself on my knees and pray for help. I’d pray for strength, pray to get through the day, pray not to have cravings, pray not to think about it. And when the craving passed, I’d give thanks for one more day of sobriety.
It was two months before I fell off the wagon again, and man, did I feel guilty. I haven’t felt guilt when I cheated on people or when I stole things as a kid. I always justified everything, but now I felt that I was cheating on God. At the same time, I was reminded just how powerless I was against my disease. If God couldn’t help me battle the monster, then what hope was there? Then I got angry at God. Why had He done this to me? Why did He piss in my gene pool? How come my brother Vince got off scot-free?
I put a line through number 3. That was okay, I still had two more options on the list.
