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samtheflamingomain · 3 years

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one week down

I went into inpatient rehab last Monday and figured now would be a good time to give an update. I have a lot to say, but I know not everyone cares deeply about every minute detail, so I'll do a quick highlight reel for those mildly interested.

There's 5 of us, 3 men, 2 women. I'm the youngest by 7 years, and the only one here for just alcohol and weed. We have 6h of mandatory classes/groups every day except weekends when it's 1.5h. The classes are pretty boring and mostly stuff I learned from entry-level CBT/DBT with a few hidden gems of wisdom here and there.

We wake up at 8, DIY breakfast, class for 2.5h, lunch, 1.5h class, break, 1h class, dinner, an optional walk around the block, another 1h class, then bedtime meds and last smoke break at 10pm. No mandatory lights out time but I'm usually exhausted and out by 10:30.

The food sucks, but I'm trying to lose weight so I'm glad it does. I've already lost 6 pounds. On the other hand, I can't remember the last time I ate 2 meals with vegetables for a week straight. I'm smoking 3 times as much as I ever have, because everyone else is a "pack-a-day" smoker and it's been great to take away cravings and also socialize.

I really like the people in the group, and there are 2 staff members who are very well-liked because they're great, 2 that are okay, 2 that are serious hard-asses, and one who's just an outright asshole piece of shit with no business being in the healthcare field.

I'm in a weird kind of mindset where I go back and forth between "I never need to drink again" and "I can probably get drunk once or twice a month, the others here are much worse off than me, so comparatively, my addictions aren't such a big deal". I know that neither of these mindsets are truly healthy. The first because I know there will be days where I will want to drink and I need to plan for that, and the second because I simply cannot do moderation, and my life and problems aren't diminished by the existence of others' problems.

As for poppers, the other thing I'm quitting, I know I can never do them again. Poppers are all-or-nothing. It's impossible to moderate them because I would just do them all day every day, and the few times I've tried to quit them myself, by day 3 I'm digging through garbage to make a DIY bong. Quitting alcohol makes me restless, which I can manage. Quitting poppers makes me so depressed that I get suicidal.

Sorry, that was the "short" version but it got away from me. Now for a bit more detail.

I had to be 5 days sober of alcohol to come in, so it's been nearly 2 full weeks since my last drink, and exactly 2 weeks since the last time I got drunk. I still fantasize about getting sloshed again, but the rational part of my brain is slowly coming back and overriding those thoughts. I haven't had a severe craving to the point where I want to quit or even to the point where I've been super restless, largely because they keep us busy.

Poppers however... on day 2 I was having a fucking breakdown. On the floor sobbing. I went out for a smoke and one of the girls, call her Lisa, was out. I told her how bad I wanted to rip a popper and she said this: "What if you sucked really hard on the cigarette, held it in, then exhaled?" And it fucking worked. Instant headrush. Only about 20% as good as a real popper, but enough that I instantly felt better. Homegirl is a life-saver; I never would've even thought of that because I'd never imagined it would work. Part of doing a popper is smoking a piece of unfiltered cigarette very quickly, so I assumed smoking through a filter wouldn't get the job done.

I miss my kitty, but I'm not homesick like everyone else. They all have kids and 3 are in long-term relationships. 2 are likely going to prison for shit they did while fucked up on opioids and want to show the court that they're working to better themselves and get clean. They have reasons to quit. I... I feel like I really don't.

Yeah, my health has been slowly deteriorating for the past 4-5 years, and I've been very overweight for the past 2-3 years (beer belly), and I spend more money on alcohol than I'd like to admit, but what I spend in a year, Lisa spends on heroin in a weekend. To make things harder for myself, I literally have not had a hangover in 2+ years. I could drink a 26er in 4 hours and wake up absolutely fine.

But I know that my way of life, getting blackout drunk 7 days a week, isn't sustainable. I know that some alcoholics do that for 50+ years, but I'm still pretty young, and I don't want to wake up at age 40 realizing I've pissed away 1/3rd of my life just being drunk.

I guess, when I really boil it down, I want to go back to who I was before I started drinking. I had so much potential to do great things when I graduated high school, and since then it's been a steady decline in my productivity and motivation.

Something that's surprised me about being here is that I've gotten more shit done in the past week than I do most MONTHS. There's a piano that I play for an hour a day, which I haven't done since I was a teenager. There's a treadmill I've used a few times. There's enough down-time for me to work on some embroidery and drawing, but most importantly, I started writing again.

I "finished" my first novel 8 years ago, and I've been trying to rewrite it in its entirety ever since. Draft One was 150,000 words, and Rewrite has been stuck at 25k for almost 2 years now. After a week, it's up to 35k.

And I think I have to attribute this to my lack of drinking. I never realized just how much it affected my motivation before. I used to open the document, force myself to crunch out a paragraph or two and then put it back on the shelf for a few months.

Now, I'm not forcing anything. It's coming to me. I'm inspired. I'm confident. I'm excited.

I've been feeling like I'd lost my spark, my drive to create things, for years now. And it's only been 2 weeks sober and I'm getting that spark back. I guess I do have a reason to quit: I'm not going to accomplish anything, or at least not anything I'm excited about, if I go back to drinking.

Another thing I've noticed is that I'm much more process-oriented. The task of writing always seemed too daunting and stressful because I just want the fucker to be done already. Now, I'm truly enjoying just getting through a scene or chapter. Even just a clever turn of phrase releases the Happy Chemical for me now.

To wrap up this absolute saga of epic length, I want to talk about the people a bit more. It's pretty rare that I get put into a group of people and I genuinely like all of them and none of them annoy me. The last time I was in a classroom with others, we were literally "learning" to identify parts of sentences and doing absolute beginner-level word processing. It was agonizing, because every single person in that class was a fucking idiot and would ask the stupidest questions, take forever to read a paragraph aloud while mispronouncing very common words. I'm not being a know-it-all dick, either. It's objectively true. How do I know? Out of 25, only me and one other person passed the course despite them all attending class regularly.

All that to say, these people are genuinely smart and likeable. John is an absolute encyclopedia on guitars, machinery, cars, and has done pretty much every skilled trade under the sun. He's also had a lot of interesting life experiences. Rick is a yoga guru who brought 12 books ranging from Zen Buddhism to abstract physics, and while I don't believe in 'chakras' and 'healing energies', he doesn't annoy me because he really only talks about it in relation to himself and how it's helped him, which I can respect. Christy is a PSW, and I mention that because she has a way of phrasing things in a wise, educated way, because that's how PSWs get good: they learn to communicate very well. She actually native and lives on a reserve, so she always has something interesting to talk about. Lisa is so well-traveled that when I mentioned I could name all the capitals, she pulled out fucking Tajikistan. She'd never been there. She's also South African and lived during apartheid, and is much more knowledgeable on the subject than myself, and I consider myself pretty well-read on it.

There's no stupid questions that take up half the class to answer, nobody takes 15 minutes to read a paragraph, and everyone is truly putting in the work.

I'm still nervous about coming back home, but my worries get less and less daunting with each passing day.

One week down, 2 more to go. Back at 'er at 9am tomorrow, rain or shine.

Stay Greater, Flamingos.

#rehab #alcoholism #drugs tw #alcohol tw #sam

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conversationswithhank · 7 years

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Me: Hank?

Hank: Yah?

Me: Come find me.

Hank: (unenthusiastic) Coming.

Me: (scrubbing veg in the kitchen sink)

Hank: What is it, mama?

Me: Summer Session: Soup Making 101

Hank: But I…

Me: Haven’t done anything worth wile today being stuck home because of the rain?

Hank: No, that isn’t true. I organized my school cabinet.

Me: That you did and now you will help me organize these vegtables into a soup.

Hank: (annoyed) What do I have to do?

Me: Come here and observe first. A basic Portuguese Sopa de Legumes (Vegetable Soup) to be healthy it is believed needs at least ten different kinds of veg. We don’t have ten today, we have about six if we count the garlic, so this will be only a moderately healthy soup. We have 5 potatoes, one turnip, a handful of carrots, 4 small onions, three cloves of garlic and I have purslane, which is called beldroega in Portuguese, from our veranda which we will add after we make the caldo (broth).

Hank: (already bored)

Me: What veg do you want to peel?

Hank: Carrots, I guess. (miffed)

Me: We need to peel and rough chop all of this and add it to the pressure cooker.

Hank: (annoyed body language)

Me: What’s wrong? Am I tearing you away from something important?

Hank: No.

Me: Then what is wrong?

Hank: (full of sass) What makes you think that something is wrong?

Me: Your body language, your tone of voice and your lack of enthusiasm. You would have thought I asked you to scrub a toilet, not peel a carrot. What is it?

Hank: I haven’t said anything.

Me: You can say a lot without words, young man.

Me: (peeling)

Hank: (peeling)

Me: (deep breath)

Hank: (deep breath)

Me: Soup takes five minutes of work to make and is the most important culinary skill I can teach you. I want you to be independent. In a few years I want to call you and say, “Hank, I will be home in 30 minutes. Make a soup for dinner please and have Molly make the salad.” And if you can do that when you are 12 then I won’t ever need to worry about you when you leave home. Basic cooking skills: Soup, omelet, quiche, pancakes…

Hank: (cracking a smile) Chili and tacos.

Me: Totally. Once I know you can make those things, do laundry without turning a whole load of clothes blue or pink and scrub a toilet then my work is done. You already are a master of cleaning floors, organizing and making your bed.

Hank: (tone of voice brightens, shoulders lifted, attitude adjusted) I like to do those things and I like to cook. I don’t know what was wrong with me a minute ago. I wasn’t thinking strait.

Me: You have the ultimate power over your attitude and your attitude makes any job easier or harder.

Hank: I feel better. Before I felt tired and terrible and annoyed, but then I listened and soup only takes five minutes.

Me: (having peeled all my veg like a pro) Two minutes down. Are your carrots all peeled?

Hank: Yup.

Me: Cut off the ends and hand them over. (moving the pressure cooker to the sink) Now, do you see here where the top of the veg sits in the pot?

Hank: Yes.

Me: Mark that spot with your smallest finger and you will know you have enough water when the height of the water reaches your fourth finger.

Hank: Four fingers of water. I have heard this before but didn’t ever understand it.

Me: It’s a Portuguese thing. This measurement will never fail you when it comes to soup. (resting my pinkie-finger against the outside of the pressure cooker and adding water until it reaches my pointer finger)

Hank: That is easy.

Me: (lifting the pot to the stove) Now, I know this will be your favorite part.

Hank: What?

Me: Seasoning.

Hank: Huh?

Me: (fetch olive oil, bouillon and sea salt from the cupboard) Sopa de Legumes requires two bouillon cubes, a tablespoon of salt and a ton of olive oil.

Hank: (excited) I want to do the olive oil.

Me: You can do it all, my dove. Put enough olive oil that you have a slick of it on the service of the soup about the size of um carcaça (bread roll, hamburger size). I wouldn’t recommend this amount of olive oil in American or abroad.

Hank: (still pouring olive oil from our cruet in a long thin stream) Why?

Me: Because the olive oil in Portugal is so good we add it for flavor as much as for necessity. You don’t get this level of quality outside Portugal and olive oil is often bitter and very expensive.

Hank: Really? That is so sad.

Me: Chega, ja chega (Enough, that’s enough)! Now boullion…

Hank: Two cubes. (plopping them in one by one)

Me: You can use which ever flavor you like and then salt.

Hank: Can I use a spoon?

Me: Let me teach your muscles the right amount of salt to use. Cooking is as much muscle memory as it is recipe. (taking his hand and placing a tablespoon of sea salt into his palm) Take a moment to feel the weight of this salt. Learn to cook with your whole body and you will learn to cook faster and with better instincts.

Hank: (bouncing the salt in his hand) Can I put it in now?

Me: Yup.

Hank: Now what?

Me: Last but not least, we seal up the pressure cooker and once it starts singing…

Hank: It sings?

Me: What one person might consider the sound of steam spitting angrily from the pressure cooker valve I consider singing. You want your pressure cooker to sing for about 15 minutes, 20 if you are making a bean based soup, before you turn off the heat, release the pressure valve, wait for all of the pressure to be released and the pot to go quiet before you open the pot, purée the vegetables to make the caldo (broth) before you add the purslane and let it simmer for another 5-10 minutes.

Hank: So now we wait?

Me: Yup. You can go back to whatever you were so grieved to be pulled away from before.

Hank: Okay, but mama, don’t forget to call me for the next step. I want to help finish the soup.

Me: You will hear when it is time for sure. Once I release the pressure valve the singing turns to screaming.

Hank: (on his way out the door, turns back) Mama, Monica (Hank’s cousin) said when she tasted Dalia’s (Hank’s grandmother) soup it tasted exactly like Aldina’s (Hank’s great grandmother, Dalia’s mother) soup, so does that mean I will learn to make your soup and that my soup will always taste like yours?

Me: That tends to be what happens. (lighting the gas under the pressure cooker)

Hank: I love that.

Me: (gathering vegetable peels) Love is the best ingredient in food.

Hank: (coming back into the kitchen to help clean up)

#recipe #life skill #domestic chores #domestic knowledge #soup #sopa de legumes #Portuguese food #bilingual #family blog #teaching my son to cook #love #legacy #basic cooking skills #life skills #conversations with hank

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