Tag: alcoholism

Addiction, Women

From Medium: I Was a “Fun” Drunk. Until I Wasn’t.

This piece, which has been lightly edited for sexual content, originally appeared on Medium. It was inspired by the responses to Susan Orlean’s recent series of tweets about getting wasted, which were celebrated by thousands of people and featured the following day in a laudatory piece in the Washington Post.

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When I quit drinking, there was no one around to suggest that I didn’t have a problem.

My friends were gone. My family was distant. My world consisted of an elliptical path between the grocery store, the bus stop, and the 600 square feet of my apartment, full of dirty dishes and half-eaten pizzas and empty bottles shoved into suitcases in the closet in case anyone dropped by.

My drinking took me to that point. But it didn’t start that way. Instead, like many women in their 20s, I started drinking because I wanted to fit in — at work, where everyone seemed so much older and more sophisticated, and in my social circle, which came to consist mostly of other drinkers—women who could shut down the bar, take a guy home, and wipe away the hangover with a few Bloody Marys in the morning.

It wasn’t just that no one ever told me they thought I might have a drinking problem — my drinking, like that of many young women, was celebrated, and the more over-the-top my behavior was, the more “fun” people considered me to be. I remember one night, out at a dive bar called the Jade Pagoda, when I danced on a table while my coworkers cheered, then made out with one of those coworkers on that same table while they cheered some more. What I learned from that experience, and from countless others, was that people liked me more when I was drunk and “fun.” For years, I took the lesson to heart.

I was fun. Until I wasn’t.

The parameters of acceptable femininity are wide enough to accommodate women who have “funny” meltdowns or who take their tops off or who sleep through Sundays. They don’t have room for women who lash out when they’re drunk, or who wonder whether they really gave their consent, or who say, in so many words: “This isn’t fun. Stop clapping. I need help.”

In all that time, no one ever suggested that I might consider taking a break from drinking. Why would they? Women who act out in a certain way — by being a certain acceptable type of “messy,” the type that isn’t too picky about men’s behavior and cracks jokes about her drinking (“Drinking problem” always worked when I spilled my cocktail) and laughs uproariously — are celebrated. Everyone loves a “fun” girl, a “cool” mom, a “wacky” older lady with a martini in hand. (Note that these parameters are not just gendered but aged — a 60-year-old throwing herself at young men is seen as pathetic, while a “wine mommy” who heads out to the bar while her husband takes care of the kid is irresponsible; why isn’t she celebrating “wine o’clock” at home?).

The parameters of acceptable femininity are wide enough to accommodate women who have “funny” meltdowns or who take their tops off or who sleep through Sundays. They don’t have room for women who lash out when they’re drunk, or who wonder whether they really gave their consent, or who say, in so many words: “This isn’t fun. Stop clapping. I need help.”

Women who fall into addiction — a neurological, psychological, and physical brain disorder that many people still consider the result of personal failings — are not celebrated. Strangers don’t show up to cheer when you pass out on the sidewalk, or check yourself into treatment, or say “I need help,” although addictions that lead to these behaviors tend to start benignly, with the kind of drinking women are socially permitted to do.

I thought about all this when celebrated writer Susan Orlean posted a series of increasingly incoherent tweets on Friday night, in which she acknowledged being “falling-down drunk,” embarrassing her husband in front of their neighbors, and apparently infuriating her family. “I am@being shunned by my family because I am drunk. Yes ok I am fine with that FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING FUCKERS,” she wrote. As I write this, the most recent responses — of thousands in this vein — are “Cheers to you!! This is definitely not the right time to be sober(within reason)I’m having a few with you!!,” “How wasn’t I following you until now? Best 2020 Friday night entertainment” and “Hey Family, leave her alone! Let the girl drink and tweet! 😜. Got your back”

These people piling praise onto a celebrity’s timeline are ostensibly “celebrating” Orlean for “living her best life,” as many of them put it. But in reality, they’re projecting a narrative that’s as American as Lucille Ball.

We celebrate women — particularly famous women — when they embarrass themselves, or get falling-down-drunk, or go on harmless-seeming tirades against their families. “No one on my house is talking to me right now ok!! YeH whatever I hzte you too.” We stop celebrating them when their behavior tips over into problematic territory — when Britney shaves her head, or Lindsay passes out in her Mercedes. Being a “fun” drunk is a trap, but you won’t know that until you get down off the bar, or stop live-tweeting your life like it’s a sitcom, or say something publicly that’s just a no-two-ways-about-it bummer, like expressing shame, helplessness, or regret. Watch how fast the crowds dissipate then.

Read the rest of this essay on Medium.

Addiction, Featured

Launch Day for QUITTER, My Memoir about Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery!

My book Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery (Viking), is finally out and available on Amazon, at your local independent bookstore, and everywhere else books are sold! (Eventually, when we all have access to libraries again, it will be available at your local library as well). You can buy Quitter in hardcover, electronic, or audio form—and if you buy from Elliott Bay Book Company, which sponsored my virtual book launch at Town Hall late last month, there’s a very good chance you can snag a signed copy! (I’m signing them tomorrow, so I suggest jumping on this one)

If you don’t follow me on Twitter or Facebook (or haven’t read my posts about the book here), Quitter is a memoir about my experiences drinking, relapsing, and eventually finding recovery after years running the gauntlet of the treatment industry.

Quitter is an unusual recovery memoir—one that rejects tropes like “rock bottom” and talks bluntly and unflinchingly about relapse as part of recovery. I went through many rock bottoms, and more relapses than I can now count, before checking myself into detox for the last time in February of 2015. My story isn’t the kind of story we’re used to hearing about women who get sober, although it’s more typical than you might think—my drinking was ugly and messy and made me impossible to be around, and it took me a long time to get where I am today: Happy and stable and glad to be more than five years removed from the time when my addiction was spinning me out of control.
Claire Dederer, the author of Love and Trouble, called the book “relentless” in its portrayal of relapse and the grim work of maintaining a late-stage addiction when she interviewed me at my book launch event. But my story is also a hopeful one, because every time I relapsed, I learned more about myself and the deadly brain disease that is addiction, until I was finally able to cobble together my own version of recovery.
Buy Quitter, tell a friend about it, and share photos and thoughts about the book on social media using the hashtag #QuitterBook. And keep an eye on this site, on Twitter, and on my Press and Events pages for info about upcoming events, interviews, podcast, TV, and radio appearances, and much more!
Addiction

I Quit Drinking. Suddenly, Alcohol Was Everywhere.
From marketing phrase to actual wine.

This is the first in an occasional series of essays about my experience as a person in recovery. If you came her looking for local news only, scroll up or down and you’ll find it.

It’s easy to laugh, in 2020, about people who drank the fizzy malt beverage Zima in the ’90s, and harder to remember how heavily Zima was marketed to young people as a lighter, sparklier alternative to beer — literally, clear beer.

Read the rest of this post at Medium.

Read an excerpt from my forthcoming book, Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery, and preorder your copy here.

Addiction, Drugs, Featured, Health, homelessness, King County

Using Private Funding, King County Provides Alcohol and Cigarettes to Patients at Isolation Sites
Beer, Mug, Refreshment, Beer Mug, Drink, Bavaria
Image via Pixabay.

King County has been providing alcohol, tobacco, and, until two weeks ago, cannabis products to some patients with diagnosed or potential COVID-19 infections who are staying at the county’s isolation/quarantine and assessment/recovery sites, The C is for Crank has learned. These sites serve people who are homeless or who cannot isolate safely at home.

The program, which is not funded through public dollars, is similar to efforts in other cities, including San Francisco, to enable patients who have tested positive for COVID-19 or have been exposed to the virus to remain isolated safely while mitigating or preventing withdrawal symptoms.

“Limited and controlled quantities of alcohol and nicotine have been provided by the health and behavioral health clinicians on site as part of clinical management of withdrawal symptoms and harm reduction practices to support patients to safely stay in isolation,” Department of Human and Community Services spokeswoman Sherry Hamilton says. “In all cases, this clinical review and approval for a requested item is required.”

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While programs like King County’s have been controversial in other cities, they are based in the principles of harm reduction, a set of strategies at reducing the negative consequences of drug and alcohol use. Other examples of harm reduction include methadone clinics, needle exchanges, and the Downtown Emergency Service Center’s 1811 Eastlake project—not to mention things like nicotine gum and marijuana as an alternative to heroin.

Hamilton did not say how many people had received alcohol, nicotine, and cannabis products, but said that the department’s director, Leo Flor, has been paying for these items out of his own pocket while the county secures “private foundation funding as a more sustainable approach to funding moving forward.” It’s illegal to spend public funds on alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana. Hamilton was not able to immediately provide details about how much these “initial harm reduction supplies” had cost.

Providing people with substances they would otherwise seek out makes it easier to keep people from spreading COVID-19 in the community surrounding the county’s quarantine and isolation sites, and makes it more likely that people will stay at those sites for their entire isolation period instead of leaving against medical advice. In the case of alcohol, it also may be saving lives—for heavy, daily drinkers, withdrawing from alcohol without specialized medical intervention can cause seizures, heart failure, and death.

“For those who cannot do so, or who do not have a home, the County has created isolation and recovery sites,” Hamilton said. “We try to keep guests safe, stable and comfortable so they will stay the entire time, and harm reduction is one strategy that helps to achieve that goal for some of our guests.”

I have asked for more details about funding for this program, including how much DCHS director Flor has spent out of his own pocket, and will update this post when I learn more.

Addiction, Featured

Can You Drink (and Puke) Your Way Sober? A Seattle Rehab Says Yes.
Image via Pixabay.

 

This piece originally appeared at HuffPost.

By the time Tara wound up at Schick Shadel Hospital, a 10-day inpatient rehab facility just south of Seattle, she had hit a personal low. She’d always been a drinker — alcoholism runs in her family — but things had spiraled over the past few years. More than once, she found herself sobering up in jail, trying to remember what made her husband call the cops the night before.

She had already tried traditional rehab at an inpatient facility in Eastern Washington, as well as Antabuse, the drug meant to help patients stay sober by making them violently ill when they drink. Neither kept her sober for more than a few days. Alcoholics Anonymous was a bust, too: “I went to my first meeting, cried all the way through it, then went out and proceeded to get massively wasted.”

Tara, who is being referenced by a pseudonym to protect her privacy, realized that if she didn’t do something, she was going to lose her family. It was her husband who pushed her to try Schick Shadel, a treatment center in Burien, Washington, that promises to eliminate cravings within 10 days and claims a success rate of nearly 70%.

There, Tara found a type of treatment altogether different than the spiritual transformation emphasized in most 12-step-based programs. Schick Shadel treated addiction with brute force, like a physical foe. “It was nice to have permission to reject AA,” Tara said.

But Schick Shadel’s treatment involves some strategies experts consider fringe, even borderline unethical. The center administers high doses of alcohol combined with a nausea-inducing drug or mild electric shocks‚ a method called “aversion therapy.” It also involves interviews with counselors when the patient is under sedation. A 10-day stay at the center costs roughly $22,000.

And although Tara and others say they have benefited from the program, Schick Shadel’s unconventional methods don’t appear to be any more effective than other kinds of treatment. The most comprehensive long-term study of Schick Shadel’s success over time showed that 77% of former patients had returned to drinking after 10 years.

Drinking — And Puking — At ‘Duffy’s Tavern’

Dr. Charles Shadel founded Shadel Hospital outside Seattle in 1935 offering aversion therapy in a “homelike setting” — the same year Bill Wilson started Alcoholics Anonymous in Akron, Ohio.

Decades later, a stay at Schick Shadel includes mandatory counseling, aftercare planning and other trappings of traditional treatment. But its most distinctive feature remains aversion therapy, which is based on the idea that if you associate a substance with an unpleasant experience, you’ll want to avoid it.

Schick Shadel patients are given a nausea-inducing drug followed by a cup filled with their drink of choice, which is repeated over and over again, and again, and again. If a patient’s body can’t handle vomiting, they can opt to swirl alcohol in their mouths while getting a series of mild electric shocks; if a patient is a drug user, Schick Shadel offers authentic-looking simulacra to snort or smoke.

The treatment room is like a bar from a nightmare — fluorescent lighting turned up to 11, a rolling cart stocked with warm gallon jugs of Fireball and vodka, and a giant mirror over a stark steel basin that is easy to imagine brimming with 85 years’ worth of vomit.

Although other former patients say the process of repeatedly drinking and throwing up was miserable, Tara was willing to try anything. “I was a serious bulimic for like 10 years, and they asked, ‘Is that going to be a concern?’ and I was like, ‘I don’t care about throwing up,’” she said. “I had done enough unsavory things that I never thought I would do that I said, ‘Fuck it, [my husband] really wants me to do this; maybe it’ll work.’”

Schick Shadel refers to these vomiting sessions as “duffies” — a reference to a fictitious bar that doubles as an in-joke among people in the program. On days when patients aren’t doing “duffies,” they have “sleepies” — interviews under sedation that are supposed to give counselors direct contact with a patient’s subconscious mind.

Until fairly recently, Schick Shadel used sodium pentothal, the so-called “truth serum,” for these sessions, but that drug became unavailable in the U.S. after European suppliers objected to its use in executions. Schick Shadel switched to propofol, a drug commonly used in general anesthesia.

“There’s a reason that they don’t put in the advertisements that you’re going to be given a duffy or an electric shock,” said Pete, another former patient using a pseudonym who went to Schick Shadel after his 12-drink-a-day habit started giving him morning shakes. “They know that if you knew that going in, you probably wouldn’t go.”

In the hospital, the aversion sessions are treated like a kind of shared trauma. Many wear navy “I had my last drink at Duffy’s Tavern” hoodies, which are available for $30 near the reception desk, over their green hospital scrubs.

“People say they need something more physical,” said Mark Woodward, Schick Shadel’s director of business development and marketing. People come here because of the promise behind all that suffering: that they will lose the compulsion to drink by permanently turning off brain receptors that lead to cravings.

“We are confident that we can help a patient lose their cravings in 10 days,” Woodward said.

Does Aversion Therapy Work?

The research on aversion therapy for addiction is sparse, and much of it has been funded or conducted by people associated with Schick Shadel, including its longtime medical director, the late James Smith, and Schick Razor Company founder Patrick Frawley, a onetime Shadel Hospital patient who purchased the hospital through a spinoff company in 1965.

Like most studies that treatment centers conduct, the results are limited to self-reporting from former patients who responded to surveys, and rarely include results beyond one year after treatment. The most comprehensive modern study of Schick Shadel’s method was in 1993, and suggested that about 65% of former patients surveyed said they were still sober after a year; however, 29% of the patients contacted did not respond to researchers at all, so the real “success” rate was likely much lower. Studies show that reported one-year relapse rates vary from 30 to 70% for all kinds of treatment, including one-on-one therapy. A more meaningful number would be the number of people who manage to get and stay sober over a longer period, but treatment centers, for various reasons, don’t typically track patients long-term.

Fred Muench, the president of the nonprofit Center on Addiction in New York, considers aversion therapy “outdated” and said it only works as long as the negative reinforcement is present. “When you’re in treatment, almost anything works, because you’re in a controlled environment,” Muench said.

Read the rest of this story at HuffPost.