When I woke up I found myself on my living room floor. I couldn’t remember anything, but I knew that something was terribly wrong.

When I made it to the bathroom and pulled myself up to look in the mirror, I was shocked at what I saw.

I did not recognize the reflection staring back at me. I was covered in blood, one eye was black and swollen to almost twice its normal size, I had several bumps on my head, and my body was covered in bruises.

I didn’t know what had happened. I wondered if I had a seizure and had blacked out. I began to shake. I was scared, uncertain, disoriented…

10 Years Earlier…

Having been accepted by UCLA Law School, it looked like all those years of endless studying had finally paid off. I was 22 and my life was full of promise.

I was going to become a lawyer, just like my dad. My life was going to be perfect, or so I thought.

Sure I partied and experimented with drugs in high school and college, but it never interfered with my schooling or anything else.

The only close call had been when my boyfriend turned me on to cocaine during a semester off one year in college. But after a few months of doing it, I realized that I would have to snort cocaine all the time, 24/7, or not at all because I loved the high but couldn’t stand coming down. So, I quit.

The summer I was accepted into law school, I went to see a doctor about my migraines and he prescribed for me a nasal spray that I had never heard of.

It seemed like a good solution; one I had no apparent reason to question but should have because before the end of the week, I was hooked.

(Later when I researched the medication I found out it was not just a nose spray, but actually a form of liquid morphine).

Using this prescription set off a chain of events during my first year of law school that would eventually lead to my demise.

After my prescription ended and my headache specialist in Los Angeles would not prescribe anything stronger than Imitrex, I began taking the Vicodin I had.

I had never abused Vicodin before, but when I ran out of that nasal spray, I began to feel violently ill. In order to make it through the day or even function, I had to have something in my system.

Unfamiliar with addiction, I had no idea at that time what I was suffering from was withdrawal symptoms. All I had done was take some medication that my doctor had prescribed to me, and he had never once warned me about the possibility of becoming addicted to it.

During this same time, I began experiencing extreme anxiety and panic attacks, so I went to see a psychiatrist who immediately put me on benzodiazapams, which are more commonly known as benzos.

I was prescribed Xanax and valium for my anxiety, induced by the withdrawal from the nasal spray, as well as Ativan for sleep. By the end of the year, I had built up a tolerance not only to pain pills but benzos as well.

Trying to quit taking the pills, I was horrified when I found out that I could not stop. By the beginning of my second year of law school, I was a mess, both physically and emotionally. Sharing my predicament with my mother, a therapist,
and father, a lawyer who is also a strong advocate of AA, they admitted me to an alcoholic rehabilitation center.

This is where I was introduced first hand to Alcoholics Anonymous so commonly referred to as AA, and its sister programs, Narcotics Anonymous, NA, and Cocaine Anonymous, CA, and the whole “incurable and progressive disease” concept, which was grilled into me as the one and only undeniable cure.

I was never told that there were any other solutions or treatments in existence.

And so began my Nine-year nightmare, where my life ceased to be my own, where I was told to stop thinking for myself, because “it was my best thinking that had gotten me here in the first place,” and that my intelligence was actually going to be my roadblock to staying sober.

But staying sober wasn’t my problem. It was the pills that were my problem and I was very clear with the rehab people in regards to the help I needed.

I needed help getting off the pills so that I could get back to my life. Knowing this as truth, I brought my law books and laptop with me as not to fall behind in my studies.

However, they refused to listen and continually insisted I was an alcoholic and took my laptop and studies away.

My boyfriend came to advocate for me and they refused to listen to him as well. I pleaded with them that I had never been addicted to alcohol or any other drug in my life until now.

I showed them the warning labels on the prescription pills, which stated they might be habit forming and addictive, and lo and behold, I did get addicted.

They laughed, patted me on the head and said, “Don’t worry, honey. You just don’t know it yet, but by the end of your stay here, you’ll realize that you’re one of us, that you are an alcoholic. Right now you’re in denial.”

And so I attended the required AA meetings, 90 meetings in 90 days, and found what they were saying to be true: “Go to enough meetings and you’ll end up just catching alcoholism!”

This might sound ridiculous, but this is exactly what happened. I caught alcoholism! Stating, “I’m Melanie and I’m an alcoholic” over and over, sometimes twenty times a day, was not only a negative affirmation, but I began to internalize it as well.

Before I knew it, I had created this entire story surrounding the fact that I was a victim of this incurable, progressive, fatal disease called alcoholism, and that there was no way out.

I was so vulnerable entering rehab, as most people are. I was lost, confused and I started believing what the “professionals” were telling me. (I now know that most “professionals” at traditional rehabs are merely drug and alcohol counselors who have had some “clean time” in a 12-step program).

At the end of my 30 days, my counselors told me I needed to go into their sober living program and I complied since I still needed their help and my dad’s financial assistance.

So I listened to him and did whatever they told me to do. My life just got worse with frightening speed. I was told that anyone who was not an alcoholic or an addict would not be able to understand me.

My boyfriend, the love of my life, was not an addict. He was what they called a “normie”, so I broke up with him because I believed that he couldn’t possibly understand me anymore or what I was going through.

Soon, law school became too stressful and began to interfere with my “recovery” and all of the AA meetings I had to attend, so I quit. I couldn’t hold down a job anymore, so I decided I had to go on disability, because I was not well and had this incurable disease called alcoholism that was “trying to kill me on a daily basis”.

I was now officially on the recovery merry-go-round. Staying sober in the program for 6 months to a year, I would eventually relapse, ending up in a rehab or hospital emergency room, or sometimes even a psych ward.

This had become my life!

This insanity continued for nine long years, as I spent all of my time trying to get and stay sober with the use of a 12-step program, which I had been told by countless rehabs, doctors and other 12-step members was “the only way” out.

With each relapse, I ended up feeling more and more hopeless, thinking towards the end that I must be one of those people that the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous talks about as being “constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves”.
 
My life was becoming more and more meaningless. Even while sober, my life revolved around working the steps and going to meetings and relapsing again and again. And again.

With each relapse, I became less and less confident in myself, to the point that even with six months sober, I decided to put myself into a sober living and stay there for over a year because I had lost all faith and trust in myself that I could stay sober living on my own.

That became my sole focus in life. Nothing else mattered except that I stay clean and sober. I no longer knew who I was, except that I was an “alcoholic” and an “addict.”

I had completely lost myself. I no longer knew who I was. I had lost touch with my friends and family. I had left my life, my home and my animals behind.

My family lost respect for me, thinking that once again I had failed the program and that there must be something terribly wrong with me.

I was caught in my own personal hell that I thought would never end. I did not think I would ever see the light again. I was caught in a vicious cycle of institutions, rehabs, sober livings, AA meetings, relapsing, and ending up back in rehab, again.

This cycle fits perfectly under AA‘s own definition of insanity: “To do the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.”

In fact, I’ll just quote James DeSenna’s definition of insanity:

Insanity: 12-step addiction treatment and lifelong “recovery,” that is, doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results, despite its lack of efficacy and obvious negative, and sometimes deadly, consequences.” (DeSena, Overcoming Your Alcohol, Drug and Recovery Habits, 2003).

Excerpted from the book AA-Not the Only Way, by Melanie Solomon
www.aanottheonlyway.com