Addicted to Recovery: The Interactive Memoir

Back from rehab, I believed, due to a few months of sobriety, that all the problems in my life would solve themselves. Alcohol had been the problem. The thing that was holding me back was removed, so nothing could stop me!!!

Stop me from... organizing my books and haircare products? Catching up on the TV I missed?
I found myself more and more preoccupied with the things that NOT drinking was preventing me from doing, or would at least stop me from enjoying

The problem was I hadn’t created an alternative life model. I just thought I would insert my sober self into my old life and everything would be the same except without the nasty consequences of being a sloppy drunk. However, the first time I tested that hypothesis, I found it was not that simple.

Talk to me about it! [email protected]

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Thanks to Bensound.com for the intro and outro music

Suicide crisis hotlines by country:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines

Here are links to support groups with an online presence that can be vital in recovery:

For a comprehensive list of 12 Step Meetings:
https://12step.org/social/online-meetings

Smart Recovery:
https://www.smartrecovery.org/community

Refuge Recovery
https://www.refugerecovery.org

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The last month at Portage I was looking for an escape route. Now this wasn’t a literal, Shawshank redemption, crawl through the sewers kind of escape, it was escape through focus, which I was determined to be on anything but my role in the community, the therapeutic model, or even my alcoholism, it was, often, on everyone else and THEIR problems. 

And planning my marriage to a guy I'd spoken to once, puzzling over the logistics  of whether it’s OK for addicts and alcoholics to get wasted on important days like their own weddings. Surely this whole abstinence thing was just a suggestion, there must be cheat days, just like with diets. Surely I’d be allowed some reprieve. I wasn’t expected to live a joyless life forever, right?

And Just by that line of thinking, I should have known I was missing the point, but I was almost a decade short of believing, even theoretically, that a sober life is its own reward. So long as I saw sobriety itself as suffering, and alcohol as a privilege that had been removed, I was not going to last long.

Though I knew mine and Rehab Guy's marriage was unlikely, it was a stand-in for all the other occasions that would be robbed of pleasure without alcohol, events that could theoretically be considered ‘exceptions.’ If I only got drunk on special occasions, that isn’t a PROBLEM.

Talk to me about it! [email protected]

Share this with someone you think might relate to it. Ask for help if you need it. We never know what little things might make a difference in someone acknowledging their own need for help.

Join the Facebook group!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/156764336366378

If you like what I’m doing and find it useful or entertaining, recommend it to a friend, subscribe, rate it, share it, or all of the above!

Looking for an outpatient resource? Get in touch with my friends at Basecamp:
https://www.basecamptreatmentcenter.org/contact?fbclid=IwAR0EGE-HGH92qoQVJ46K66rNzIRJBPnmH16sSg2MU9q9LQjA1YMbbx7lOEM

Thanks to Bensound.com for the intro and outro music

Suicide crisis hotlines by country:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines

Here are links to support groups with an online presence that can be vital in recovery:

For a comprehensive list of 12 Step Meetings:
https://12step.org/social/online-meetings

Smart Recovery:
https://www.smartrecovery.org/community

Refuge Recovery
https://www.refugerecovery.org

Support the show

It seems the Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard trial made me have a whole lot of feelings.

Particularly, where do ideas and 'victim' and 'perpetrator' fall apart when there is wrongdoing on both sides, or when an environment or relationship is in itself intrinsically chaotic. I have been in plenty of mutual destructive relationships, and substance abuse seems to change the rules of engagement.

To what extent do we hold people to different ethical standards when they are intoxicated? Should we? To what extent do we hold ourselves to different ethical standards when intoxicated? And also, should we?

Talk to me about it! [email protected]

Share this with someone you think might relate to it. Ask for help if you need it. We never know what little things might make a difference in someone acknowledging their own need for help.

Join the Facebook group!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/156764336366378

If you like what I’m doing and find it useful or entertaining, recommend it to a friend, subscribe, rate it, share it, or all of the above!

Thanks to Bensound.com for the intro and outro music

Here is a list of suicide crisis hotlines by country:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines

Here are links to support groups with an online presence that can be vital in recovery:

For a comprehensive list of 12 Step Meetings:
https://12step.org/social/online-meetings

Smart Recovery:
https://www.smartrecovery.org/community

Refuge Recovery
https://www.refugerecovery.org

Support the show

My first rehab was awful. Often, when I externalized my misery in one way or another, I can look back and say, naw, well, that was really more of a me thing. Yet with this rehab, I look back and still think it was awful.

Was I miserable the whole time? Absolutely. Was I also sober the whole time? Yup. For many of the residents there being in portage meant they weren’t on the streets, they were away from abusive relationships, they were out of prison, and many, probably, just not DEAD, and that’s not trivial, and many of my objections were, in perspective, kind of trivial. Maybe all the ways it was a bad fit for me are exactly the ways it was just what someone else needed.

Not everyone gets 12 plus shots at recovery like I did. Many people don’t even get one. So if you’re in a place that isn’t helping, or a program of recovery that doesn’t resonate with you, or a community that makes you feel bad, there’s no harm in investigating the other options. 

My misery was partially due to my skewed expectations. I’d romantically assumed that rehab was a delightful teahouse of tortured artists, who would gather their heavy hearts together debating existentialist philosophy and comparing poetry. I’d constructed a vision of a kind of creative retreat, surrounded by people like the ones who wrote the addiction and mental illness memoirs I so cherished, that we’d be huddled together on a couch near a fireplace after curfew because we MUST, we absolutely MUST continue our esoteric forays into the deep cellars of the soul. 

My illusions were quite viciously shattered.

Talk to me about it! [email protected]

Share this with someone you think might relate to it. Ask for help if you need it. We never know what little things might make a difference in someone acknowledging their own need for help.

Join the Facebook group!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/156764336366378

If you like what I’m doing and find it useful or entertaining, recommend it to a friend, subscribe, rate it, share it, or all of the above!

Thanks to Bensound.com for the intro and outro music

Here is a list of suicide crisis hotlines by country:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines

Here are links to support groups with an online presence that can be vital in recovery:

For a comprehensive list of 12 Step Meetings:
https://12step.org/social/online-meetings

Smart Recovery:
https://www.smartrecovery.org/community

Refuge Recovery
https://www.refugerecovery.org

Support the show

My grandfather passed away, and I was useless. I didn’t go to the hospital in his last few weeks. Hospitals really bummed me out. I mean I was fragile. God forbid I carry any extra emotional weight. I checked out. I did nothing but try to drink less, feeling terribly burdened by this sacrifice, and that was all I could summon. 

I couldn’t handle complex emotions, my own or others’, without alcohol. However, WITH alcohol I ran the risk of completely mishandling those emotions. I spent all my focus on trying to drink 'just enough.' I even told I was drinking FOR my mother’s sake, like, she had enough to deal with, her father’s passing and siblings bickering, without dealing with what a wreck I would be if I wasn’t drinking. It was compassionate intoxication.

Also, what are the RIGHT reasons and the WRONG reasons for quitting drinking, drugs, or any destructive pattern of behaviour? Do you have to do it 'for yourself?' People talk about ‘wrong reasons’ to go to treatment like it’s a season of Bachelor in Paradise and you’re trying to get instagram followers. I believe there is no wrong reason to GET sober or make the first step in changing your life. Reasons to STAY sober or integrate those changes can be worked out on the way.

Talk to me about it!: [email protected]

Share this with someone you think might relate to it. Ask for help if you need it. We never know what little things might make a difference in someone acknowledging their own need for help.

Join the Facebook group!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/156764336366378

If you like what I’m doing and find it useful or entertaining, recommend it to a friend, subscribe, rate it, share it, or all of the above!

Thanks to Bensound.com for the intro and outro music

Here is a list of suicide crisis hotlines by country:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines

Here are links to support groups with an online presence that can be vital in recovery:

For a comprehensive list of 12 Step Meetings:
https://12step.org/social/online-meetings

Smart Recovery:
https://www.smartrecovery.org/community

Refuge Recovery
https://www.refugerecovery.org

Support the show (https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=PYGYDK9EHG2AW)

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Back at Concordia University, I set some boundaries with myself and alcohol. Since I still wanted to drink all the time, I had to strategize how my ‘normal’ drinking was going to go down. Was there an event being hosted at a bar? Was there a  poetry reading, an open mic, someone in the program’s birthday? Well, yes, as it turned out! Almost every night, yes!!! If not, I knew the haunts I could reliably find other students or teachers having a drink after class. There were book launches and writers in residence events with free wine, cheese and elegance. I was having a sophisticated experience at an institution of higher learning, and alcohol was part of that recipe.

I was able to ‘keep it together’ was not because I was suddenly any less of an alcoholic. It was because I was getting some of my needs met by something that wasn’t alcohol. Drinking always rushed in to fill the gaps following a loss, or to cover up an absence. Finding a sense of belonging, having my writing acknowledged, having things I didn’t want to be drunk for, like class, and, yes, even having things I was encouraged to be drinking for, allowed me to compartmentalize. The drinking was all above board now. My greatest fantasy was to be able to maintain this balance indefinitely.

In this culture drinking was not only acceptable it was a kind of currency. In those dimly lit pubs, in the company of Real writers, professors with their names on actual, published books, the barrier between us was softened by alcohol. The more I drank, the more that line receded entirely. That the line itself was only ever a construct in the first place did not occur to me. I was fully convinced the booze itself held magical properties of status equalization. I could feel like I deserved to be in the company of the writers whose works were mounted behind a glass case in the English department. I deserved to be invited to where the higher ups did the real drinking, not to the reading that everyone knew about to but to the after party, and then the after AFTER party. It was like being inducted into a secret society.

Talk to me about it!: [email protected]

Share this with someone you think might relate to it. Ask for help if you need it. We never know what little things might make a difference in someone acknowledging their own need for help.

Join the Facebook group!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/156764336366378

If you like what I’m doing and find it useful or entertaining, recommend it to a friend, subscribe, rate it, share it, or all of the above!

Thanks to Bensound.com for the intro and outro music

Here is a list of suicide crisis hotlines by country:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines

Here are links to support groups with an online presence that can be vital in recovery:

For a comprehensive list of 12 Step Meetings:
https://12step.org/social/online-meetings

Smart Recovery:
https://www.smartrecovery.org/community

Refuge Recovery
https://www.refugerecovery.org

Support the show

Warning: This episode contains descriptions of sexual assault that may not be suitable for some listeners. Want to talk about it? Drop me a line at [email protected]

The second after I accepted that Leo had really dumped me, I plunged into the project of ‘getting him out of my system’ by sleeping around. The best way to get over someone is to get under someone else, as they say, I was taking my power back, yessiree!

This was all utter bullshit, and even drunk me was aware of it on some level. This prowl was showing up at acquaintances parties drunk, looking for someone to want me. The prowl was showing up at bars by myself when i ran out of acquaintances to impose on believing if a guy bought me a few drinks he’d bought me for the night.  I wasn’t an empowered, sexually liberated modern woman. I wanted to disappear completely, and just being drunk wasn’t enough anymore.

Until a point I could still pretend this was all a game I was playing, that I was in control, that I was having a good time. Until that story was replaced with something more sinister.

Rape crisis hotlines: https://ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

Share this with someone you think might relate to it. Ask for help if you need it. We never know what little things might make a difference in someone acknowledging their own need for help.

Join the Facebook group!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/156764336366378

If you like what I’m doing and find it useful or entertaining, recommend it to a friend, subscribe, rate it, share it, or all of the above!

Thanks to Bensound.com for the intro and outro music

Here is a list of suicide crisis hotlines by country:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines

Here are links to support groups with an online presence that can be vital in recovery:

For a comprehensive list of 12 Step Meetings:
https://12step.org/social/online-meetings

Smart Recovery:
https://www.smartrecovery.org/community

Refuge Recovery
https://www.refugerecovery.org

Support the show

I wake up to my phone ringing through a lacerating headache. I ignore it. The person calls again. The guy sleeping next to me grumbles enough that I pick it up, mumbling hello, my breath acrid, my mouth chalky and sticky. There is a frantic woman on the line demanding “are you Tara?” I grunt affirmative. “I’d like to know what this magical evening you spent with my fiance is all about.” Shit. Which one was that? I’d been flinging my body around so carelessly, to whoever would take it, I wasn’t keeping much track of their names, let alone details like which of them might have had fiances. She’s asking me these questions about whether we use protection because she doesn’t want to get an std and I look over at naked guy next to me and he’s hearing the whole rant. After I manage to get the woman off the phone, he asks me to leave. Shucks. He didn’t even want to kiss me goodbye. He was one of the few I’d actually slept with more than once, and I’d been hoping it might turn into something more, if it wasn’t for that hysterical woman. Not my fault some guys can’t keep it in their pants. I’m not the engaged one.

I gathered my clothes then crept into the living room sucking out the remaining droplets of beer and wine in the abandoned bottles, as there was no booze left in my bag. I look up and the guy who’d slept with me just a few hours before is standing there with his arms crossed looking at me like I’m all kinds of trash. I think to myself ‘how the Hell did I get here?” 

Send questions, comments or just say ‘hi’ at

[email protected]

Call to action: Share this with someone you think might relate to it. We never know what little things might make a difference in someone acknowledging their own need for help.

Join the Facebook group!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/156764336366378


If you want to support the podcast, the book, and my ability to keep doing it, you can show your support at:

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/recovery


Find me on Twitter!

https://twitter.com/ToMemoir

If you like what I’m doing and find it useful or entertaining, recommend it to a friend, subscribe, rate it, share it, or all of the above! 

Thanks to Bensound.com for the intro and outro music

Here is a list of suicide crisis hotlines by country:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines


Here are links to support groups with an online presence that can be vital in recovery:

For a comprehensive list of 12 Step Meetings:
https://12step.org/social/online-meetings

Smart Recovery:
https://www.smartrecovery.org/community

Refuge Recovery
https://www.refugerecovery.org

Support the show

My classmates in Creative Writing would understand how edgy, cool and tortured I was, and how cool my drinking was. 

The first writing assignment I workshopped in my fiction writing class was from my *ahem* novel, a chapter in which the narrator, reeling from a devastating breakup, hurtles into alcoholic drinking and ends up in rehab. Funny how I was writing things, as ‘fiction,’  that hadn’t happened to me yet, but were going to. Was it prediction? Manifestation? But a story about rehab, that would certainly make everyone think I was edgy, cool and tortured. I didn’t even bother to mask my breath if I came back from swigging wine in the bathroom at break, because that’s what someone who was edgy cool and tortured would do, and because I WANTED them to talk. I imagined them having whispered discussions about me in the hallway, wondering if I had indeed been to rehab myself, because that would just be so ME, given how edgy cool and tortured I was. 

Want me to talk nerdy to you? Check me out on the Ryan Stick show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynHQudyAyuk&t=4110s

Send questions, comments or just say ‘hi’ at

[email protected]

Call to action: Share this with someone you think might relate to it. We never know what little things might make a difference in someone acknowledging their own need for help.

Join the Facebook group!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/156764336366378


If you want to support the podcast, the book, and my ability to keep doing it, you can show your support at:

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/recovery


Find me on Twitter!

https://twitter.com/ToMemoir

If you like what I’m doing and find it useful or entertaining, recommend it to a friend, subscribe, rate it, share it, or all of the above! 

Thanks to Bensound.com for the intro and outro music

Here is a list of suicide crisis hotlines by country:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines


Here are links to support groups with an online presence that can be vital in recovery:

For a comprehensive list of 12 Step Meetings:
https://12step.org/social/online-meetings

Smart Recovery:
https://www.smartrecovery.org/community

Refuge Recovery
https://www.refugerecovery.org

Support the show