Went to see The Wolf of Wall Street the other night.. wow nothing like watching a bunch of horrible people get right royally fucked off their tits for three hours straight to put you off being a wastoid. Please excuse my language but OMG that's all these dudes seemed to do. Get utterly wasted on drugs and alcohol at every opportunity.
There's this scene late in the movie when the Leonardo DiCaprio character has been sober for a while and his friend comes to visit and asks him what it's like "not being able to get wasted any more". The Leo character says; 'It sucks. I want to kill myself.'
I'm not surprised he felt like that. The dude (the Leo character) struck me as an emotionally stunted, hollow person with a vacant soul. He needed the drugs and alcohol to feel alive.
But, you know, it's different for everyone. And I'm just judging from the outside anyway. Inside (where the truth lies) everyone's reasons for drinking/using is different.. what the drink/drugs did for us is different.. what we discover about ourselves in recovery is different and how we develop as people when we get sober is different.
As I said on The Bubble Hour.. reading widely lots of recovery stories is helpful because various bits of different stories might resonate. But your story is your own.
Me, I used alcohol to stay upbeat and squash down negative emotions. And I believed alcohol was the necessary ingredient to have a fun time. I'm simplifying massively but this is the quick gist of it.
Recovering for me meant learning how to live with feelings I did not want to feel (like sadness, anger and stress), and learning that alcohol does not have the power to make fun times fun (other things do like people and food and music and atmosphere and the sun shining and new shoes and all manner of glorious things that don't fuck with my head like alcohol did).
I'm still a work in progress… I still feel like I'm wearing a hair shirt on the weeks when I'm a bit glum and flat (like last week).. but I'm happy to report that like a phoenix from the flames I have risen again this week to feel cheery and positive.
Ebbs and flows. Life's like that. And now.. off to watch American Idol! With a cup of herbal tea and NO CHOCOLATE!
Love, Mrs D xxx
