Wow…so synchronistic for day 40!!! 120 day cleanse

Today I toured the Lindner Center of Hope in Mason, Ohio.  They are committed to helping people with mental disorders including addiction, depression, eating disorders, anxiety, ocd, and more.   I’ve had many participants of the Elemental Cleanse work with the Lindner Center adjusting their anti-depressants and recovering from addiction.  Great work is being done there so having the opportunity to tour was awesome.  It is incredible.

I learned so much today and can only use my own experience with alcohol as a baseline.  I grew up with a father who is alcoholic and abusive and a family of co-dependency.  I personally started drinking alcohol at the age of 13.  I’ve always flitted in and out of alcohol consumption mostly related to who I’m hanging out with.  The co-dependent and people pleaser in me that has absolutely no boundaries will pretty much go along with the crowd.  If I hang out with non-drinkers, I don’t drink.  If I hang out with drinkers, I drink.  Because of my ability to drink or not drink…to seemingly choose, I’ve never had a therapist, healer, or otherwise confirm that I am an alcoholic.  This confuses and terrifies me.

I drank in high school, but probably no more than the average teen trying things out.  College was a wild time, but by the age of 21 I had met what was to become my first husband and he barely drank.  So, I spent a good 16 years with him not really consuming too much.  When I hurt my back at the age of 32 is when I turned to alcohol again.  I mixed it up with painkillers, sleeping pills, muscle relaxants, and anti-depressants.  It was a horrible period of my life.  After about one year of abuse, I found meditation and then yoga and quit.

Of course the back injury and probably the yogic lifestyle (that’s another blog to come) contributed to the demise of marriage.  The first two years of divorce found me out and about with girlfriends living that single life and we partied.  I would then start to worry about partying (reflecting on my father) and stop partying, but sure enough, would meet some guy who ended up a boyfriend and classically replay the relationship with my father.  I don’t think I dated one man that wasn’t an alcoholic in the first four years of my marriage ending.  So I’d drink with them. The last alcoholic I dated turned into an engagement and turned into a period of self-sabotage that was close to insanity.  I literally ended the engagement to save my life when I realized there would be no healthy living in the partnership.

So back to the present….

I like to have a glass of wine.  Just sometimes.  I have incredible boundaries around it and then I obsessively monitor my thoughts, emotions, and of course look out for cravings associated with alcoholism because I just don’t know.  Am I my father? Am I co-dependent?  Am I alcoholic?  Am I in denial?  Was I in a groove that people go through and then they get out of?  Most of this is fueled by the “engagement” years that I never want to revisit.  The insanity that takes place in my head after alcohol consumption to assure no alcohol abuse is, well, insanity. 

So back to the Lindner Center for Hope….

Today it was explained to me that tens of millions of people in America are  “pre-alcoholic.”  There is about a 13-year window of what I just described above.  At the end of that window, people have either chosen a life of sobriety or are alcoholic.

I’m 44.  It’s been 12 years since my first real thought of “this is out of control.”  The relief that washed over me today was immense.  I’ve got this.

Do you “got” this?

(btw…synchronistic in that 40 days is a magical day and also we are having a gorgeous trine of spiritual energy today and tomorrow….neptune, saturn, and jupiter are all in the watery signs of the “escape artist” aspecting my “escape artist” pisces nature.  )