While I was briefly recalling COVID the other day, a lot of weird memories came back to me.**  I find this particularly odd, because I didn’t think I really had any memories of that first year and a half (March 2020 – fall 2021, the latter time being when I made some major adjustments to my personal life and when things started to take shape again).  Everything after that announcement by the World Health Organization became blurred-together days and weeks and months, somewhat punctuated by depression, but mainly just living in a stupor, a limbo.  My live-in partner at the time wasn’t at all affected by the pandemic since he worked in the very essential services of logistics and transport, but I was entirely lost and deflated. 

This wasn’t so much to do with the dumb virus as it was to do with a huge life plan and project I had embarked upon, one that was immediately pulverized by the sudden announcement of COVID on March 11, 2020.  I consider myself beyond fortunate that I didn’t have any colossal disappointments or financial quicksand to endure; no self-owned business going under, no first-time homeowner stuff, no brand-new-career sprint that abruptly found itself slammed into a wall.  Nothing like that, but my plan to finally take my health seriously came to a halt with all the finesse and fluidity of Operation Dumbo Drop.    

Consequently, there I was, shambling around the creepy panorama of downtown Vancouver with its abrupt influx of hundreds of junkies and psychologically-compromised folks, this mostly due to their tent cities being dismantled and its residents stationed in various hotels on Granville Street.  Or I was moored at home where my partner and I decided to hang onto cable TV for a little while longer, and I watched talk-show hosts sitting several metres from each other, masked up like we all were, attempting dignity and enthusiasm while everybody was suddenly hurled into this…situation that we had never prepared for or expected.  It was all so weird, so grey, so ill-defined, and so nonsensical.  

Along with transport, logistics, retail, health care, and a few others, another essential service at the time was liquor stores.  I happen to live a block and a half from one, but that doesn’t matter: anyone hooked on the stuff will travel high and low to obtain it, whether it’s just a few steps from your front door or in the next hick town over.  Now, because hospitals, urgent care centres, and clinics were crammed with every demographic of people convinced by the media that they were going to drown in their own phlegm, alcohol needed to remain available to alcoholics due to how dangerous it can be to stop cold turkey (I addressed this in my very first post). There were simply no medical resources available to those who had developed a serious physiological addiction to ethanol, therefore it was a logical idea to give them regular access to their drug of choice rather than risk another sort of pandemic consisting of withdrawals, seizures, delirium tremens, and death.  Medical professionals often don’t have the patience or flexibility to deal with alcoholics at the best of times, and this most definitely was a Dickensian Worst of Times.  

…so it’s worth retelling the story of the surreal, almost laughable luck I experienced when, for the first time in my entire life, I decided to really get a grip on my alcohol-use disorder and enroll into an inpatient rehab facility.  After going through an initial screening, a medical referral, an application process, financial and payment arrangements, an interview, and an orientation, it was determined that the first day of my stay at Turning Point Recovery Society in Vancouver would be March 1, 2020.

I also need to add a quick disclaimer that I am in no way painting myself as a victim of anything apart from terrible circumstances, and compared to countless other people, got off relatively easy.  After all, I’m here, and doing better than I ever was back then.  I’m simply telling my own tale of how COVID jumped out of the shrubbery and attacked me as I was on my way to a good place.  It did so for everyone except the pharmaceutical industry.  Oh, and Jeff Bezos, to whom I still find myself giving money every month.    

* * * * *  

It was expected that all newcomers arrive at the facility with adequate sober time under their belts, although this was hardly ever the case.  I mean, we were there to figure out how to live on a day-to-day basis without our drug of choice (let’s call it DOC from now on), and break the nightmarish bonds of addiction, habit, and compulsion.  Relying on addicts to stay diligently sober for a week before rehab seemed hilarious.  I think I managed to not drink the day before, and the day I checked in, my breathalyzer blew clean although I was on a bit of Ativan for my nerves.  

In the years leading up to my rehab decision, my dependency on alcohol had gotten entirely out of control–as it does, and as it will do with increased use–yet I had never been to anything more than the local detox facility a few times.  

Detox will ensure that you are locked up, medicated, fed, and safely monitored as you go through the process of withdrawal and detoxification, but it is not rehabilitation.  It is merely a few-days-long medical process, and many people leave detox feeling as though their bodies and brains are whistle-clean and reborn, only to head straight for the liquor store or their dealer’s pad.  It happens with shocking regularity.  Being a repeat customer at detox is extremely common; the staff there know many patients by name.

Rehab, however, did not usually include the detox process.  You were expected to have medically detoxified prior to coming in so you could begin the big undertaking of life rehabilitation, wherein you’d learn how to restructure your days and nights so that succumbing to–and having your entire existence revolve around–addictive behaviour was a thing of the past.  This would include counselling, education, social activities, an emphasis on healthy lifestyle, group work, and various creative tasks (i.e. art therapy, writing class) as outlets for expression and even a means of getting used to actual expression, as opposed to demolishing your feelings with drugs and alcohol.  

Because this is my blog and it’s all about moi, I want to add that I’ve never had issues with expressing myself or feelin’ muh feelin’s.  I quite plainly and simply drank because I enjoyed getting annihilated on booze, and sometimes, that’s all it really comes down to.  A real Occam’s Razor.  There was no trauma, no mental illness, no abandonment issues that drove me to the bottle.  I began drinking quite late in life (24 years old) and it was a fun thing to do until it became a great big problem, infiltrating most aspects of my life and turning them severely upside-down.  This can happen to anyone, although some are more predisposed to dependency and the immediate dopamine gratification.  Drinking for the sake of getting tipsy or downright torpedoed is a very common thing to do, and for around eight out of ten people, remains something they are in control of.  It’s when the practice of getting merrily fucked up becomes a physiological, medical mess that things take on a brow-raising urgency. 

So I was very much looking forward to being in an environment in which my only priority was recovery, 24 hours a day.  My partner would take care of my plants, the cat, the apartment, and various expenses during the time I was away, which would be at least one month.  The recommended time to spend at rehab is usually 90 days, but I was going to take it month-by-month as I wanted to absorb as much as I could, then apply it to my life straightaway and get on with it.  To be perfectly frank, I was very functional and normal and healthy and housed; I just happened to be an incorrigible binge drunk, was all.

* * * * *

Sunday, March 1, 2020, my parents dropped me off at the recovery centre, all of us hoping that this would be the Wonka golden ticket to wellness.  

Turning Point Vancouver was situated in a very large character home in the west side of the city.  Unlike detox, where you had to sleep on a hard cot in a “dorm” with about five other women (with no actual door, just a curtain), at Turning Point I was to share a large upstairs room with one other woman who had her own section cordoned off.  I had a comfortable bed, a bedside table, a dresser, and a spacious walk-in closet all to myself [see header pic].  As per the rules, I was not allowed access to my cell phone for the first week, and was not permitted to leave the premises during the scheduled blocks of free time to go to the gym, to outside recovery meetings, or even to visit home.  I could go for a walk or to the store to buy goodies, but only with a staff chaperone.  Those community outings, which were encouraged and granted to clients under an honour system, would be available to me after ten days.  Yes, plenty of clients were known to go out and never return–falling victim to their addictions and urges–but as I learned over the next few days, the majority of people there were really making an effort to pull their acts together, and ultimately respected the unsupervised field trips. 

I can’t quite remember my first day–I may have to dig out my journal If I feel it’s important enough to summon details–but since I arrived there mid-afternoon, I did my orientation and check-in, handed over my phone and two prescriptions (to be doled out at scheduled intervals), and then hung out in my bedroom until dinnertime, which would take place where all the meals and cooking were done: in the large communal downstairs area, replete with one long, giant table and a nicely-outfitted kitchen.  I soon learned that clients took turns signing up for week-long duties to make food for everyone, and I eagerly signed up for next week’s post since this week had already been booked.

I had deliberately chosen a facility that was mixed, rather than one that was women-only.  There were several reasons for this, “balance” being the most important of them all.  As a woman, I know how things can get in an environment that is all chicks, all the time, and adding recovery and substance management into the mix wouldn’t have sat right with me.  The clients at Turning Point were split right down the middle–50% men and 50% women–and segregated somewhat onto separate floors in the house.  There would be no interest in or opportunity for hijinks or rehab romance, either; not only did I live with someone, but a) even if I hadn’t, this wasn’t my purpose in going to a recovery centre, and b) I would say over half of the men there were gay.  This latter fact actually came to be a blessed relief and a comfort.  

*   *   *   *   *

The next few days simply found me getting used to a schedule and routine that was entirely new to me.  Innumerable failed (although earnest) attempts at staying on the wagon all by my lonesome hadn’t worked out, no matter how many SMART and AA meetings I attended, no matter how many daily visits to the gym I made, no matter how often I visited my excellent counselor.  The habitual behaviour was now a routine, almost unconscious; drinking alcohol no matter the occasion was part of my lifestyle and psychology.  The neuroplasticity of my brain had bent and molded itself into becoming very accustomed to the instant dopamine rush of imbibing ethanol and reaching for it whenever I felt the occasion called for it…and there was always an occasion that called for it.  

The complexity of addiction cannot be fathomed properly by those who haven’t endured it.  The amount of scorn, ridicule, judgment, and hostility I have encountered because of my lottery-losing alcoholic nature is exhausting and unquantifiable at this point.  There have been a handful of instances in which, yes indeed, my drinking caused fright and concern in others; in which my behaviour morphed into that of someone unrecognizable and fairly monstrous, generally exacerbated by a situation in which I was unhappy or angry to begin with. I don’t make excuses for this, and I absolutely dealt with the consequences of those times.  However, I can say in all truth and fairness that the only person I hurt terribly over the years was me.  Over and over again.  My body, my brain, my bank account, my employment, my self-worth.  I never drove, never went out to drink, didn’t have drinking buddies, didn’t get sloshed publicly.  My live-in partner had absolutely no use for the stuff, although he himself developed a damaging addiction to cannabis that caused eventual psychosis (because it does).  I drank alone unless he was around to helplessly watch.  When I was in the whirlpool of a bender, I didn’t go out unless it was to procure more liquor, and during my bouts of self-loathing and depression, I would “cave up,” as I called it, and stay in my bedroom with its dim lighting and blackout curtains for days.  

These terrible, sad, dark days of alcohol abuse didn’t go on for years on end, but for at least two before I decided to check myself into rehab.  Prior to that, I didn’t exactly have a stellar relationship with the bottle, but I hadn’t deteriorated to the point of true dependency.  By the time I went to Turning Point, I was caught in a very dangerous and distressing cycle that makes me uncomfortable to accurately describe even now.  My own judgment of myself keeps surfacing as I recall the obscene pas de deux I did with booze: the most dysfunctional love affair I have ever had in my entire life.  And I’ve had a few.   

**I don’t know what I mean by “weird memories,” but I think it’s because the world became a planet of confused inhabitants attempting to paddle a sea of cold molasses.  There was the guy in the high-rise building across from me who faithfully smashed away on his tambourine every night, on his balcony, for ten minutes each time.  There were the vagrants defecating into the tree planters along Davie Street in the middle of the day.  There were attempts at cheering-up graffiti all over the dumpsters in the alleys.  There were the residents of my neighbourhood having crying jags in public.  There were break-ins attempted in my building.  There was Bonnie Henry, long-since disappeared after making sackfuls of money as a propaganda peddler.  There was weight gain. There was isolation. There was a whole lot of nothing.  

To be continued…  

(Reach me at nadya@nadzvera.com)