Chapter 3: The Housewife Who Drank At Home
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She hid her bottles in clothes hampers and dresser drawers. In A.A., she
discovered she had lost nothing and had found everything.
MY STORY HAPPENS to be a particular kind of woman's story: the story of the
woman who drinks at home. I had to be at home---I had two babies. When
alcohol took me over, my bar was my kitchen, my living room, my bedroom, the
back bathroom, and the two laundry hampers.
At one time the admission that I was and am an alcoholic meant shame,
defeat, and failure to me. But in the light of the new understanding that I
have found in A.A., I have been able to interpret that defeat and that
failure and that shame as seeds of victory. Because it was only through
feeling defeat and feeling failure, the inability to cope with my life and
with alcohol, that I was able to surrender and accept the fact that I had
this disease and that I had to learn to live again without alcohol.
I was never a very heavy social drinker. But during a period of particular
stress and strain about thirteen years ago, I resorted to using alcohol in
my home, alone, as a means of temporary release and of getting a little
extra sleep.
I had problems. We all have them, and I thought a little brandy or a little
wine now and then could certainly hurt no one. I don't believe, when I
started, that I even had in mind the thought that I was drinking. I had to
sleep, I had to clear my mind and free it from worry, and I had to relax.
But from one or two drinks of an afternoon or evening, my intake mounted,
and mounted fast. It wasn't long before I was drinking all day. I had to
have that wine. The only incentive that I had, toward the end, for getting
dressed in the morning was to get out and get "supplies" to help me get my
day started. But the only thing that got started was my drinking.
I should have realized that alcohol was getting hold of me when I started to
become secretive in my drinking. I began to have to have supplies on hand
for the people who "might come in." And of course a half- empty bottle
wasn't worth keeping, so I finished it up and naturally had to get more in
right away for the people who "might come in unexpectedly." But I was always
the unexpected person who had to finish the bottle. I couldn't go to one
wine store and look the man honestly in the face and buy a bottle, as I used
to do when I had parties and entertained and did normal drinking. I had to
give him a story and ask him the same question over and over again, "Well,
now, how many will that bottle serve?" I wanted him to be sure that I wasn't
the one who was going to drink the whole bottle.
I had to hide, as a great many people in A.A. have had to do. I did my
hiding in the hampers and in my dresser drawers. When we begin to do things
like that with alcohol, something's gone wrong. I needed it, and I knew I
was drinking too much, but I wasn't conscious of the fact that I should
stop. I kept on. My home at that time was a place to mill around in. I
wandered from room to room, thinking, drinking, drinking, thinking. And the
mops would come out, the vacuum would come out, everything would come out,
but nothing would get done. Toward five o'clock, helter-skelter, I'd get
everything put away and try to get supper on the table, and after supper I'd
finish the job up and knock myself out.
I never knew which came first, the thinking or the drinking. If I could only
stop thinking, I wouldn't drink. If I could only stop drinking, maybe I
wouldn't think. But they were all mixed up together, and I was all mixed up
inside. And yet I had to have that drink. You know the deteriorating
effects, the disintegrating effects, of chronic wine-drinking. I cared
nothing about my personal appearance. I didn't care what I looked like; I
didn't care what I did. To me, taking a bath was just being in a place with
a bottle where I could drink in privacy. I had to have it with me at night,
in case I woke up and needed that drink.
How I ran my home, I don't know. I went on, realizing what I was becoming,
hating myself for it, bitter, blaming life, blaming everything but the fact
that I should turn about and do something about my drinking. Finally I
didn't care; I was beyond caring. I just wanted to live to a certain age,
carry through with what I felt was my job with the children, and after
that---no matter. Half a mother was better than no mother at all.
I needed that alcohol. I couldn't live without it. I couldn't do anything
without it. But there came a point when I could no longer live with it. And
that came after a three-weeks' illness of my son. The doctor prescribed a
teaspoon of brandy for the boy to help him through the night when he
coughed. Well, of course, that was all I needed---to switch from wine to
brandy for three weeks. I knew nothing about alcoholism or the D.T.'s, but
when I woke up on that last morning of my son's illness, I taped the keyhole
on my door because "everyone was out there." I paced back and forth in the
apartment with the cold sweats. I screamed on the telephone for my mother to
get up there; something was going to happen; I didn't know what, but if she
didn't get there quick, I'd split wide open. I called my husband up and told
him to come home.
After that I sat for a week, a body in a chair, a mind off in space. I
thought the two would never get together. I knew that alcohol and I had to
part. I couldn't live with it anymore. And yet, how was I going to live
without it? I didn't know. I was bitter, living in hate. The very person who
stood with me through it all and has been my greatest help was the person
that I turned against, my husband. I also turned against my family, my
mother. The people who would have come to help me were just the people I
would have nothing to do with.
Nevertheless, I began to try to live without alcohol. But I only succeeded
in fighting it. And believe me, an alcoholic cannot fight alcohol. I said to
my husband, "I'm going to try to get interested in something outside, get
myself out of this rut I'm in." I thought I was going out of my mind. If I
didn't have a drink, I had to do something.
I became one of the most active women in the community, what with P.T.A.,
other community organizations, and drives. I'd go into an organization, and
it wasn't long before I was on the committee, and then I was chairman of the
committee; and if I was in a group, I'd soon be treasurer or secretary of
the group. But I wasn't happy. I became a Jekyll-and-Hyde person. As long as
I worked, as long as I got out, I didn't drink. But I had to get back to
that first drink somehow. And when I took that first drink, I was off on the
usual merry-go-round. And it was my home that suffered.
I figured I'd be all right if I could find something I liked to do. So when
the children were in school from nine to three, I started up a nice little
business and was fairly successful in it. But not happy. Because I found
that everything I turned to became a substitute for drink. And when all of
life is a substitute for drink, there's no happiness, no peace. I still had
to drink; I still needed that drink. Mere cessation from drinking is not
enough for an alcoholic while the need for that drink goes on. I switched to
beer. I had always hated beer, but now I grew to love it. So that wasn't my
answer either.
I went to my doctor again. He knew what I was doing, how I was trying. I
said, "I can't find my middle road in life. I can't find it. It's either all
work, or I drink." He said, "Why don't you try Alcoholics Anonymous?" I was
willing to try anything. I was licked. For the second time, I was licked.
The first time was when I knew I couldn't live with alcohol. But this second
time, I found I couldn't live normally without it, and I was licked worse
than ever.
The fellowship I found in A.A. enabled me to face my problem honestly and
squarely. I couldn't do it among my relatives; I couldn't do it among my
friends. No one likes to admit that they're a drunk, that they can't control
this thing. But when we come into A.A., we can face our problem honestly and
openly. I went to closed meetings and open meetings. And I took everything
that A.A. had to give me. Easy does it, first things first, one day at a
time. It was at that point that I reached surrender. I heard one very ill
woman say that she didn't believe in the surrender part of the A.A. program.
My heavens! Surrender to me has meant the ability to run my home, to face my
responsibilities as they should be faced, to take life as it comes to me day
by day and work my problems out. That's what surrender has meant to me. I
surrendered once to the bottle, and I couldn't do these things. Since I gave
my will over to A.A., whatever A.A. has wanted of me I've tried to do to the
best of my ability. When I'm asked to go out on a call, I go. I'm not going;
A.A. is leading me there. A.A. gives us alcoholics direction into a way of
life without the need for alcohol. That life for me is lived one day at a
time, letting the problems of the future rest with the future. When the time
comes to solve them, God will give me strength for that day.
I had been brought up to believe in God, but I know that until I found this
A.A. program, I had never found or known faith in the reality of God, the
reality of His power that is now with me in everything I do.