Lessons from Addiction and Loss

"You'll never be stronger… than when you get to the other side of despair." ~ Zadie Smith

In the last two decades, my health has deteriorated.

I had moved to Hollywood to become an actor, but after a few years in Tinsel Town things did not go as I had hoped. My paralyzed anxiety prevented me from getting tested, overconfidence led to overeating almost every night, and the inability to be translated into a group of good weather friends.

At the end of ten years, I discovered the last lethal ingredient in my toxic lifestyle: opiates. A few small painkillers opened a part of my brain that I did not know existed: my calm, self-assured, and numb version that seemed more practical than the mental imagination I used to do.

At first the pills were like an unusual treat - I would take a few before the nerve-wracking test or the first day, in the same way other people can have a few drinks before leaving town. But my unusual relationship with opiates was short-lived: soon the pills were no longer prescribed for negative days or neurological tests, and were instead needed for any type of movement or encounter.

I knew I was going to cross the invisible line when I first felt sick without the “dose” of medication. The physical pain they were supposed to suffer was long gone, but they created a growing need for more use. I soon became ill if I did not take the pills, at which point I began to walk a long distance to get more.

I desperately wanted to quit but felt trapped in a bad journey: I woke up hating what I had done the day before, and with great embarrassment I made a firm commitment to quit - then in the afternoon would come, signs of withdrawal. With my stomach turning and my head spinning, I have lost the decision to stop and start looking for my next fix. With that correction would come a few hours of relief, followed by another cycle of self-loathing, a vow of abandonment, and further failure.

It was a spin cycle that could have killed me if life hadn’t intervened in ways that at the time felt so painful; within two weeks my “normal” façade collapsed and, with it, many pillars of my life. Like a house of cards that collapsed, I lost my job, my car, my relationship, and I was evicted.

It sounded like a normal country song where the artist lost everything, apart from those songs that person is often loved and innocent — but in my case, I felt like a bad person.

As I watched my whole life unfold in my heart, I had no choice but to return home to seek refuge with the only person who had always supported me - my mother.

My mother raised me with such qualities as honesty, accountability, and kindness, even though I had never lived with them for some time. A single mother struggling to raise two children on her own took us off a food train to a nursing school, and she looked helpless as I entered the same addictive cycle that had taken my father's life.

He told me that I could stay if I was stupid; I promised to try, even though I had stopped believing my promises long ago.

In a recovery program I discovered recently, there was a repetitive saying on every wall: "It's always very dark before dawn." Taken literally, it makes you wonder what the sky is like at night before dawn… how heavy it is, how close it is and how much to eat. Before the light returns, it may sound as though the darkness never ends.

That's how my early days felt.

But as I got together for a few weeks and a few months, I began to feel a little more confident about myself. With self-control and treatment, thinking and a sober society, the seemingly hopeless despair all began to split open.

I went to live in my apartment, went back to school to complete a long-term college degree, and got a job as a waitress. Then, after a year of sobriety, I received a call from my brother that would change everything.

"Melissa, you need to come home," she said, her voice full of tears. "Mother."

My stomach churned as I held the phone, and suddenly I felt about five years old. I later learned that it was a heart attack.

I felt the darkness descend again.

-

In the days following her death, I felt that I was a helpless baby. I dragged myself through my teeth, dressed, and arranged for her funeral; it was as if my heart was still with him.

The same thought kept swirling around my head - how could I live my whole life without my mother?

I never thought of being with him when I graduated, got married, or became a parent. His disappearance from my future brought a worse fear than last year — but as I began to settle into my misery, I realized that I had a way through this time, if I was determined to take it.

The tools I made professionally will prove useful in the dark days that follow. I share them below as a gift to anyone who walks through the dark night of the soul: simple steps to remember when you don’t see the way forward.

Take things one day at a time.

Modestly, you learn that thinking for the rest of your life without any other drink or drug can be so frightening that you just give up and get loaded. So instead of borrowing future worries, you learn to stay in church, day, and time.

I didn't know what it would be like to have a wedding without a mother - I just needed to eat breakfast. I didn't need to think about my graduation - I just needed to go through one more class. As I put my future together for one minute at a time, I found that I was able to manage the emptiness with pieces of bite size. I didn't have to understand everything — I just had to move on.

Let the feelings come and trust that they will go.

Much of what I was running as an addict was emotionally unbearable. I did not want to be rejected, so I challenged myself to be liked;