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Malus
Contributor

Alcoholism and Beyond

Hello! I am Malus and I am an alcoholic. 
Most of my recovery journey centres around alcohol and alcohol-ism – this is the primary frame that I view my recovery with, but it is made up of a few other and equally important parts.

Quick disclaimer - this is a very long story (sorry! haha) and mentions alcohol and substance use and abuse quite a few times. I have refined this story over time to make it as general and trauma-informed as I can, but please be aware of your own triggers and seek support, care for yourself and love yourself when and how you need to if reading this brings up anything difficult.

A quick preface - I choose to use the word ‘maladjusted’ to describe many parts of who I was and am and in doing so, I hope to own the potential stigma of the word and make it mine – I am aware, however, that this is a problematic word for others so I would like to clarify that I use this word for my own experience only. If you have any questions or comments about the language used to describe my experience, please feel free to ask – I am an open book about what I am about to describe and it would be a privilege to give my perspective and take feedback on this matter.

Firstly, I think it’s important to quickly outline what I mean when I differentiate between alcohol and alcoholism. The ‘ism’ of alcoholism is what describes the state of mind of an alcoholic, alcohol or no. To put it into context in my own experience, alcohol is not my problem. Drugs aren’t my problem. I had and oftentimes now, still have, a chronic ‘reality’ problem and alcohol in particular, but drugs also, were my solution to an inability to cope with life on life’s terms. The quickest way to explain this idea is that there are many parts of my thinking and consequently, my actions, that have been or are totally maladjusted to the world in which I live.

When I say ‘maladjusted’, I'd like to specify that I mean that my first thoughts about many things are usually the least reliable thoughts that I have – whether that be about myself or especially, about the world around me.

Looking at this idea of being ‘maladjusted’ and my use of alcohol and drugs, it has been handy to use the biomedical model of mental health – I have ADHD which is diagnosed and Complex Post Traumatic Stress which is undiagnosed but speaking anecdotally, a sure thing. I also have a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder, which I am a bit less sure of nowadays. I have a strong internal culture of self-advocacy and I have established all of these diagnoses for myself before then taking them to a professional – in that sense, I have been lucky to avoid a lot in the way of systems trauma. What I have also realized about myself in recovery, however, is that my ability to self-advocate has often been in excess, to compensate for my fear of being pigeonholed and mistreated. Thus, I haven’t given professionals much of a chance to share their opinions of what I’m experiencing with me – go figure, haha.

Growing up, my parents were also maladjusted to the world they lived in and not coping under the weight of their own upbringings and traumas. They split up when I was 18 months old. To explain generally, they were unpredictable and volatile – my mother was more commonly cold, distant and hyper-independent and my father was demandingly needy and co-dependent. I loved them, but I learnt to fear them as well and I was never sure how they would react to just about anything. My relationship with my parents was the foundation of the attachment issues and disorders that I still experience to this day – I have good relationships with them both now, however.

My experience of school was not great, overall – I had ADHD then and I only got a diagnosis and medication in September this year. I was constantly told that I was smart and able, but I just didn’t apply myself hard enough and was distracting to other people in class – if I look back at any of my school reports, I can find at least one element of undiagnosed ADHD and the consequent stigma and misunderstanding that I experienced in them. It is estimated that children with ADHD receive 20,000 more negative messages about their conduct and ability by the age of 10 than children who live without the disorder.

In school, I had next to no social skills, no idea about the inherent social etiquettes and boundaries that you’re expected to have and know in childhood. Making friends was hard, keeping friends was harder.
I had no real way of regulating my emotions, nor attaching to my peers at school in a way that was healthy. I was regularly bullied, regularly getting into fights with people and it felt like I was almost constantly having “conversations” with (being talked at by) teachers, principals and my parents about my consistently poor behaviour. School was not a great place for me to be – I was smart and I had plenty of potential, but as I was constantly told by those in positions of power over me, I just didn’t try hard enough. School represented a crushing and years long blow to my self-esteem and to the way that I thought and think about my ability, my self-confidence and myself as a person, generally.

At the age of 12, I went through the period of rebellion and identity formulation that you’d typically expect of someone aged 15 or 16 – I started thinking for myself, discovered death metal and I discovered the internet and a way to socialize with people that wasn’t so high pressure. I also found self-harm as a coping mechanism and this would stay with me for well over 15 years. I was at a very sheltered, private Christian school at this time – not a great place to be, considering what I was discovering and the mental and emotional change that was taking place. I don’t feel like anyone, including my parents, knew what to do – they couldn’t and didn’t understand what was taking place inside of me. This made for a very isolated and stigmatized experience of year 6.
The next year, I moved to a typically blokey, sports and academic focused public school – this was a total culture shock and I had no idea what to make of it.

At the age of 14 or 15, I discovered vice – cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, relationships.
Myself and some school peers would go to the local park specifically to smoke darts – it was an “event” in itself, haha - to be young again, huh? I discovered that I quite liked these things – what I didn’t discover or realize in full until last year, however, was that these things gave me what I didn’t believe I already had. Things that were, honestly, not within my reach at the time. Self-confidence, the ability to relax in social settings, the ability to take away worry and anxiety, the ability to talk to girls, the ability to share connection with others – ultimately, the ability to function normally in a world that I had no real understanding of.

When I was 16 or 17, I was kicked out of that blokey public school for a variety of misconduct – I was glad to leave. I finished my exams and moved to a school that suited me far better.
At this school, students were treated like TAFE students – free dress, the ability to leave campus at recess and lunch or if there were no classes on, calling teachers by their first name, electives. This felt like freedom – finally, I was given the flexibility I needed as a person with ADHD to excel at school.
Whilst previously, my grades in just about everything had been Cs or Ds, I got consistent As and Bs in all of my subjects at this school. That same year, however, I became homeless and I only just scraped through VCE – my attendance was terrible, but my grades were still great. The school was really good about accommodating this and I graduated. I still have no idea what my ATAR was though and, amusingly, after all the pressure that is heaped upon one’s year 12 exams, I have never needed to know nor use it to do anything in life.

Whilst finishing year 12, I had been living at a friend’s house after having been kicked out of the share house I’d been living in – not great, but I wouldn’t have wanted to live with me either to be honest.
I looked up to him because he was the first “cool” or popular person that had ever sought out my friendship – but he was a terrible role model for what healthy masculinity is and can be. We spent many of our nights doing graffiti and eventually, this caught up to us – we were both caught. I moved back into my Dad’s place and would stay there for the next 8 years. Luckily, I’d been caught when I was 17 so I received a good behaviour bond and a fine, rather than 13 indictable criminal offences and $20,000 in restitution.

After leaving school in 2011, I quickly discovered Psytrance culture – I’d been experimenting with weed and psychedelic drugs in my teens and my father was always quite spiritual. Mum was always playing hard-techno CDs in the car when I was young, too, so I’d developed an inclination towards bass-centred music over time. Transitioning into an obsessive interest with Psytrance happened pretty seamlessly, as a result. Psytrance culture, bush doofs and festivals were where I started to discover who I really am – it was the first community of people in which I felt like I belonged, was respected and valued. My father is a musician so I was playing violin, like him, from pretty much day 1. I’d lost interest in violin for guitar when I discovered metal and similarly, lost interest in guitar and became obsessed with making and DJing Psytrance when I discovered doofs.

Psytrance felt like the thing that had been missing from my life – it kept me sane, it gave me social connection, it gave me a way to be useful and be recognized for it. I built up a reputation as a good DJ and I also became professionally involved in some event management, stage building, site management, stage management and eventually, running an entire stage at a large Psytrance festival, which I still do to this day. The darker side of my experience with all of this, however, was that my relationship with drugs and alcohol further intensified – for an alcoholic or an addict, this was not a bad place to be. Drinking and use were and are common in these environments and circles and this suited me just fine. My involvement with this culture was my lifeline, but it fanned the flames of a serious addiction problem – there are pros and cons to everything.

Outside of this involvement, I worked a string of dicey hospitality jobs in kitchens – the typical exploitative, underpaid and psychosocially hazardous culture and jobs that you might expect from the industry. I had no real interest in this – I was a great kitchenhand, it suited my ADHD perfectly – systems, moving quickly, constant novelty and challenge, etc. But I got bored with this – when I’d worked out a new kitchen and it was no longer novel, it was generally just hard and boring work for crap money. After one too many of these jobs, I started working as a Signwriter with a family member, who owns a sign shop. This career I liked more and at times, I entertained the possibility of doing it permanently – but as with hospitality, the hours were long and the work environments were often stressful and psychosocially hazardous.

Whilst all of this was going on, I was in a series of unstable and traumatic intimate relationships which I won’t describe in detail. My living situations were unstable, my jobs were nearly always casual and unstable as a result of either a) my getting bored in them and starting to act out, as I do having ADHD or b) the work simply not being there and I had no sense of financial security just about ever – always week to week.
Over time, my relationship with alcohol and drugs grew more problematic – alcohol was the number one offender. Alcohol was and is easily accessible and it solved most of my problems. It started off as magic in my teens and at this point, it had become medicine. It quickly progressed into misery.
It affected my relationships, my job, my finances, my everything – yet, it had such a strong pull over me.
This is the tragic reality of alcoholism – it was my solution to life, but it caused me to burn my life to the ground several times over.

When lockdown hit, I was content to stay at home and drink. This suited me fine, because I was mostly interested in drinking in isolation at this point. Quickly, it became too much for me to handle. I’d attempted periods of sobriety in the years prior with minimal success, usually 2 weeks to a month without it – but, and this is an ism of alcoholism, without alcohol, I didn’t know how to live life.
I didn’t know how to cope with my emotions, with other people, with outside stressors – because I’d developed an internal culture of drinking on all of these things. Time after time, I’d pick up again and I’d be off.

In lockdown, however, I had the time and more importantly, the money to start having a proper look at my emotional health – it was trashed. Having access to my super and to increased government support at that time meant that I could start a Certificate IV in Mental health, which eventually landed me a job as a Community Mental Health Peer Practitioner - the first job I've had that I feel is the perfect mix of purpose and fulfilment and financial stability.
Most of all, lockdown meant that I had no external distractions from my relationship with alcohol – there was no longer any excuse, no parties to normalize my use at, no outside stressors to blame my use on.

By means of a serendipitous interaction with a fellow addict in recovery, I discovered AA and I got stuck in – this was in August last year. I haven’t been sober that whole time and am about 5 months sober now. But the process of recovery and reclamation began. Throughout that time, I went through the most challenging and traumatic experiences and periods of my life, but I held on – Saturn returned to my life and I went through the darkest night of the soul yet. But I held on to hope - I completed my studies, I always found my way back to the program of AA and I put an honest and thorough effort into working the 12 steps of recovery. As a result of my current recovery and sobriety, I was able to see a psychiatrist who would diagnose me for ADHD (finally) and prescribe me medication for it. I was able to get this job.

Today, I am grateful to be a sober alcoholic. The fellowship that I have in AA is like nothing I’ve had before – like the community I found in Psytrance, but totally detached from drinking and use. I have been given a new solution to life that doesn’t involve burying my problems in alcohol. I have been given a new lens to look at life through and a life that I never thought I’d have. I live in a stable home, I have a stable job, I have a good level of social connection. I am coming to know myself in a way that I never thought possible – simply because I wasn’t aware that this level of self-knowledge and self-love exists.

Life in recovery isn’t all cash and prizes, of course – life still has its stressors, its challenges and its rollercoaster rides, but I am very grateful to have stepped off the merry-go-round of being unwell and actively using and onto the rollercoaster that is a normal, sober life. When things go wrong today, I have a way to manage. I have a fellowship to lean on. When things go wrong, I no longer have to pick up a drink in response. As well as this, I have the opportunity to help others who are experiencing alcoholism and use my own experience to assist in their recovery.

Without the experience of alcoholism and complex mental health issues, I wouldn’t be who I am today – but I am glad to have detached myself from the bottle and I am grateful to be here today to use my story and experiences in a way that is useful to others.

Thanks for reading - great to be here :).

13 REPLIES 13

Re: Alcoholism and Beyond

Hi and welcome, @Malus , it's good to have you.

 

Oh gosh - you have quite a story - I am sorry about the past homelessness and your traumatic experiences. 

 

I'm impressed with how self-aware you are. And congratulations on being 5 months sober! 

 

Am glad you now have a stable home and are a Community Mental Health Peer Practitioner. 

 

A handy forum tip is if you type @ and click on a name in the drop-down box, that person will get a notification and wn't miss your reply. 

 

I hope you enjoy being a part of the forums. 

Re: Alcoholism and Beyond

Hello NatureLover 🙂 

Thank you - I appreciate your kind words.
Recovery is a gift nowadays. 

Enjoy your day 🙂 

Former-Member
Not applicable

Re: Alcoholism and Beyond

I too have life experience to my name @Malus but not to the degree of yours, I guess everyone has a different story unique to them. Currently I'm  studying mental health. I hope to find it uplifting and engaging when helping others through a experience they didn't ask for but have to battle. All the best see you around

ohRe: Alcoholism and Beyond

Excellent read, I can identify, had alcohol problems at one stage, found Al-Anon was a big help.

Re: ohRe: Alcoholism and Beyond

Wow @Malus ,

 

Thank you for your story of hope and recovery. It was a great read. 

I see so many youth spiralling into similar situations where addiction was used to numb and mask the pain deep down.

 

 You're work in mental health would be undoubtedly invaluable.

 

Im so glad you have shared your journey with us. The ups, the downs and the round and rounds!

 

BPDSurvivor

Re: Alcoholism and Beyond

@Former-Member 
Yes, that is what makes lived experience so valuable, I think - our stories are our own and they are of value to someone, somewhere. What field of mental health are you studying in? And what do you aspire to do in that field? 

Re: ohRe: Alcoholism and Beyond

@Owen45 
Thank you 🙂 yes, the fellowships are a wonderful place to seek out peer support - I'm glad you found one that helped 🙂

Re: ohRe: Alcoholism and Beyond

@BPDSurvivor 

Thank you 🙂 it is my pleasure to share.
Yeah, addiction is an insidious and destructive beast of a thing.

I am glad I am here too 🙂 thank you for your kind words.

Former-Member
Not applicable

Re: Alcoholism and Beyond

Mental health cert iV and counselor @Malus . It was good reading your story by the way  - ensured me I'm not alone and by no means were you judged for your story - how are you finding work, after your studies in that field, as a peer worker I believe I read?

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