Addiction and mental health. Two words that evoke strong emotions and thoughts with almost everyone, and unfortunately they carry an immense stigma with them. I have experienced some of the stigma first hand and in some ways it’s as painful or even more painful than the events of my actual breakdown. I’m not an expert, I’m just a human who allowed alcohol addiction and neglected mental health to lead me into the darkest and lowest place of my life. I’m going to take a stab at some things that I’ve experienced since my fall.
So first of all the actual breakdown was ugly, and I have no doubt that despite details being different for everyone, the ugliness of what I experienced and what I did are similar across the board. It involved people I love begin confronted with things and words they never imagined, it involved me completely losing control of my mind and my body, it involved me causing harm to people and objects, I am sure that the conversations and arguments were raw and visceral and mean. I know the physical confrontations, both with those trying to get away from me and those trying to prevent me from doing more harm to myself or others were terrifying. I know I had given up hope, I saw no future and no way out. I was at the bottom, except I wasn’t, I was staring into that last hole that you never come back from. It was all so ugly, for everyone involved, so shocking for the people who witnessed it and the aftermath – both the physical carnage and the emotional and mental damage. And it’s shocking and ugly for me, I can’t believe I did these things, I can’t believe I fell off this ledge.
“Sometimes you honestly don’t realize what you’re doing, and who you are hurting, until you’re looking back months later. I wish people could understand the suffocating guilt.”
KJK
And here’s the first problem we need to tackle. Nearly everyone in my small and large circles of friends have talked for years about the importance of providing tools for people in my industries to have access to appropriate mental health resources and tools. I have had numerous conversations with people who have witnessed small pieces or events of my darkness, who have always asked me to reach out, that they are there without judgement, call anytime. I have been guilty of saying the same things to people I have seen walking the edge of the void. And I have been there a few times to help someone back from the edge, and I wasn’t there a few times and those friends are no longer here. I have some guilt about it, some I’ve carried a very long time, but I’m learning to work through it.
But something funny happens when the breakdown happens in your front yard. When all of the people involved are friends or part of your circle. Sides are chosen, walls are built, fingers and accusations fly. Anger and shame are levied at the person who lost control. Hard words and statements that cut deeply in the name of protecting others. And I understand part of it, I understand the anger, I understand protecting people you love, I understand being confused about what occurred, and I even understand pulling back from me. Two people who I had confided in, who had helped me immensely on a previously tough spot, have scolded and then removed me from their lives, and it hurts, one of them is someone I long to talk to, who I know has some similar life experience and we’ve talked about some of this is the past. It’s hard to face the fact you’ve done something so awful that a person or people you thought would be a potential rock in a stormy sea, completely cuts you off. Maybe I’m different, I’ve seen my friends in some bad places, jail, psych restraints in hospitals, drug overdoses, and alcohol related mayhem. I’ve been angry, confused and hurt by it all. But I’ve always been there to pick them up, or back them up. I would like to think life has taught me to love my friends first, try to understand the causes and consequences and make appropriate judgements later. It’s not easy. I have been angry. I have had to step away, to give myself time to absorb facts and understand what occurred, but in the end, I have always found a way to see the person I love inside them, no matter how badly they behaved, tough love is more useful for healing than shaming and abandonment have been in my experience. So it was all so ugly. I’m mad at myself still, how did I let this get so out of control? I am learning how addiction, compounded with CPTSD lead to a true loss of control. Various parts of your brain hijack your logic and reasoning, you lose emotional control and memory gets hazy. In hindsight, it was a slow slide to a very rapid (3-4 day) collapse. And I’m not mad at anyone, everyone has the right and need to process what they have experienced in their own way, at their own pace. For me it hurts a lot, it’s hard to not dwell on the fact that the two people I feel have the most to offer me on my healing path refuse to talk to me. I hurt them badly, and I pay the consequences of it each minute of each day.
“Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”
Aldus Dumbledore
We are all human, we make mistakes, and some are worse than others, but no one is dead, everything can be repaired with time and effort, I take another step on the path each day. If reading this somehow triggered feelings of guilt that’s ok, it’s never too late to reach out, to tell the person who wronged you or someone you love, that you don’t accept what happened but you accept who they are, you understand they are struggling, and you still love them.
