Call me a whore if you must, but I have to say the following:
THIS BLOG HAS RECEIVED A MILLION HITS!!!!!
I am famous!
*insert maniacal cackle here*
OK, not really. After all, other blogs get a million hits a day. And many of those hits are looking for things like “fat cunts” and “big ass girls give blow jobs,” so I’m not all that. But it’s still pretty exciting.
I am grateful that any of you, ever, come here and read this and support me in this crazy quest. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I will never forget the day I was in the hospital, waiting to get the bad news about the last pregnancy; Sarah printed out every single comment you guys wrote and brought them to me. It made such a difference in my sanity during that tough time.
So, thanks. I couldn’t do it without you.
Now, bring me my goddamned coffee. Heh.
In regards to my last post, many of you asked, “What do you think started you down the path of drugs and alcohol?” I think many of you were actually asking, “Holy fucking shit, how do I stop my kids from being like you?”
Truth is, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what I think. I believe, firmly, that Alcoholism/Addiction is a disease—an often fatal, and sadly, incurable disease. Because I have that disease—which I believe I was born with—my path was inevitable.
In other words, NOTHING could have stopped me.
Unlike most of you, alcohol and drugs fit my brain the way a key fits in a lock.
Let’s take a look at a not-so-random sample of alcoholics: Sarah, Charlie, and me.
Sarah grew up in a happy and loving home with happily married parents and an older brother. She lived in a good neighborhood in the suburbs, went to great schools, and then went to a good college. She was middle class, Jewish, and had plenty of great opportunities.
Charlie grew up with a workaholic father and an abusive mother. They were upper-middle-class and lived in thriving urban centers, but moved often between major East Coast cities. Charlie’s dad died when he was 17, but he managed to graduate from high school and get into a prestigious Ivy League university, and graduated from there as well.
I grew up as the only child of a single mom, my father having left when I was an infant, when my mother was only 20 years old. We were horribly poor. While I read early and skipped a grade in elementary school, by middle school I’d already given up on school. My mother returned to college when I was in elementary school, and we moved across the country before I started high school. I screwed up both of my chances to get a free college education, and have yet to finish my degree.
The only thing we have in common is that NONE of us had a lot of alcohol or drugs in our homes while we grew up. Yet all three of us ended up in the same house, doing the same things, and getting sober around the same time.
Like every other disease, Alcoholism does NOT discriminate.
Could my life have been different? Hell, I don’t know. All I know is this: when I was a kid, I felt crazy, left out, like a freak. I was sure everyone knew my game and no one really like me. But one day, someone put a drink in my hand, and lo and behold, I felt normal. While you may have had your first drink and thought, “Ug, I’m so nauseous and the room is spinning, I can’t believe people do this for fun!” Not me. I thought, “Oh, god, FINALLY. That’s what I’ve needed all this time.”
I can see different turns my life could have taken; I could have stuck with my "no drugs" rule and ended up as a fifty-year-old bar whore. I could have chosen drugs over alcohol in high school and gotten sober at 17, or overdosed at 20.
But do I believe that a life without the influence of alcohol and drugs was possible for me? No. Not really.
As for your other question, “What will you tell you kids?” God. Who knows? We’ve talked about it, of course. If the child is genetically related to us, we’d want to make them aware of the fact that they are genetically predisposed to the disease of addiction.
And here, safe in the “we don’t actually have kids yet” zone, we can say we believe that experimenting with drinking and drugs is normal, and it’s unrealistic to think that a kid is never going to come home trashed.
We’d like to tell our kid about the dangers and safety issues surrounding drinking and drugging. We’d like to believe we'd say, “Please call us anytime you are in trouble and we will help you without judgment.”
But how we’ll actually feel, and what words will come out of our mouths when that kid is actually sitting across from us? I have no idea.
A handful of pregnancy updates; I’ve developed the linea nigra (I never did last time; weird, huh? Oh, and my belly looks exactly like the one in the photo; HA HA HA HA HA), which is kind of cool. Also, this morning I was leaning back in bed (oh, alright, I was lying on my back. It was only for a minute, don’t shoot me!) and I coughed, and saw my belly develop an alarming point while I was coughing. I imagine that means my stomach muscles have separated (all the links I've found are fitness related, sorry) and I’m seeing my uterus and other innards poking through. It’s gross and cool at the same time.
Lastly, remember my constant complaints about my dry mouth? About how it’s probably just another pregnancy symptom and I have to live with it?
Did I also mention that I’m a fucking idiot?
A couple days ago I noticed a white paste on the roof of my mouth. Recognizing it for what it is, I went to see my general practitioner and sure enough: I have oral thrush.
Oral thrush, for those of you who don’t know, is a yeast infection of the mouth and throat. Nice, huh? I get it sometimes because the inhaler I use for my asthma contains a topical steroid. If I don’t rinse my mouth properly, the bacteria in my mouth can go all whacky.
Chances are I’ve had this the entire. fucking. time. Yeah.
So now I’m gargling with nystatin, the same medicine they give to babies with thrush (usually I have to suck on these lozenges that are basically sugar-flavored Monistat). It’s not bad, but I have to say this:
Do drug manufacturers actually taste the “flavored” medicines they give to kids? Cause this shit tastes like banana flavored ASS.
