No longer hopeless

After trying every possible method to escape the pain of her past, this successful
business professional, published author, and mother found the help she needed to break
free from her dependence on alcohol and drug, and is now happy, joyous, and free.

I spent the majority of my life in hot pursuit of what, I know not. I just knew I had to keep running. I was raised as the only child of a mentally ill, alcoholic, extremely abusive mother and a passive, enabling father. My childhood years are so dark that I enter even the memory of them with fear and trepidation. To get me through I turned to food, through which I was somewhat able to “stuff” my feelings, and to perfectionism, which I felt was the key to getting the love and approval I was so starved for. I felt lonely, afraid, angry and most of all, desperate. Desperate for release. With that in mind, I left for college immediately followed by graduate school. Upon receiving my Master’s degree I headed for Manhattan and never looked back. (At least that’s what I thought.) What I didn’t realize, however, was that the emotional pain I carried inside became my full-time companion and most unpleasant company. You can take the girl out of the environment, but until discovering Be Totally Free!, the environment was deeply ingrained in the girl.

By the time I was in graduate school, I went to the first in a series of diet doctors where I received amphetamines. I thought they were the true magic bullet to my weight struggles but after the initial weight loss, I kept taking them to cover my pain, pushing it further and further out of my reach. My despair, agitation, and pain were increasing, but the speed only caused me to run faster. Over the years, I saw a series of diet doctors—one more degrading than the last—but I needed that “fix” to feel what I thought was complete. The racing effect drove me to alcohol and as the quintessential “party girl,” it just seemed like the fun thing to do—and of course another great escape. Once again, however, this escape came with a great price—physically and emotionally—and a great deal of “clean up” work, regarding embarrassing behavior and the ensuing guilt.

In spite of the fact that I’d sworn I would never drink because of the horrors I’d experienced with my mother, I did drink, and drank until I was drunk more often than not. Although not on a daily basis or almost daily basis until closer to the time of learning about Be Totally Free!, my excess in that area was brought to my attention on a number of occasions. Those incidents were, however, outweighed by the number of people who found me highly entertaining and I relished being the center of attention. I also felt it gave me that extra measure of courage I needed to somehow get through life. These “positive” aspects of drinking also helped to justify, somehow, the tremendous guilt that accompanied it.

The only times I abstained completely were during my two pregnancies. Shortly before becoming pregnant with my older son I discovered pot, and I eagerly anticipated the day I could return to smoking it. My desire to have that escape often—although not used every day—was the main reason I had no desire to breast feed. I justified it by saying that I’d had a C-section, and the babies were started on a bottle, as well as the fact that I’d “given my body to science” for 9 months and that was enough! Of course I was also married to a man who could have been my mother’s clone. He was a lawyer, which seemed to pacify my father’s desire to have me get married, but he was also an alcoholic who beat me so badly prior to our marriage that I broke seven bones. Still, not wanting to cause “trouble,” I went through with the marriage with the thought that “it was better to be a divorcee than an old maid” to comfort me. Although he went to Alcoholics Anonymous prior to our marriage, it didn’t make a dent in his demeanor—he remained verbally and emotionally highly abusive; I also resented the “fun” and escape I’d have to forgo on losing my drinking buddy.

By 1989 I had a 2 year-old and a 6 year-old, general other misery, and was facing the imminent loss of the only person, besides my children, who had ever really loved me, my aunt. I thought she was my fairy god-mother, and although crippled emotionally by her own childhood experiences, she was my salvation. She bought all my clothes and paid for anything really extravagant I wanted. Shortly before her death, I went to Maine and spent a week in the hospital with her, often sleeping there. I had a chance to tell her how much I loved her and what she’d meant to me and she told me she did it because my childhood was so pathetic. We were limited by our sense of both being defective and I believe often gave each other a reason to go on. I’m sure this experience is what caused me to equate love with money and the thrill that I found in being “rescued,” something I’ve perpetuated in one way or another until recently. She also controlled my mother to some degree with money and I internalized the power I perceived it held. It was during her final illness, which included her greatest fear—complete lower body paralysis, that I began having severe panic attacks on a very regular basis. Thinking it was a heart attack (although my husband—who had also had them—told me otherwise) I went to my internist. He immediately referred me to a psychopharmacologist who prescribed a battery of antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications. My aunt died in February of ’89 and over the next eight months I lost another aunt and my closest cousin who was only 2 years younger than my mother and succumbed to AIDS. The following week my best friend told me that she was infected with HIV—a tumultuous journey I would travel with her over the next 4 years until she died of AIDS in 1993.

All this time I remained on the medications prescribed by the psychiatrist and underwent close to three years of twice-a-week therapy, ironically, at my request. Prior to my marriage I had been in therapy with an individual who had an M.S.W. In fact, she saw both my husband and me together, and was the one who suggested Alcoholics Anonymous for him and advised me not to marry him!

Over the last two years of my drinking, my drinking and pot smoking increased. As my son became a teenager, I even smoked pot with him (this was during the few months leading up to my finding Be Totally Free!). The summer before, he had overdosed and almost died at my parents’ home on a combination of my mother’s Darvocet pills and my father’s scotch. He was 15 at the time and I had been watching television with him just 10 minutes prior to finding him unconscious and turning blue. It was touch-and-go until we got to the emergency room where I spent the worst night of my life.

By the time I read the story of a woman who had recovered through working the Be Totally Free! process, I was unable to find a moment of peace, in spite of any mood altering substances, and was truly in despair; I felt I was at the end. And I wasn’t the only one: my younger son, who had just turned 12, began displaying such extreme signs of anger and frustration that he punched a hole in the bathroom door. This was one week before we were all thrown a life jacket and new hope and purpose in life via a call to Roy Nelson, the founder of the Metasteps process.

With that one call, I was able to put down the drink, and did not even desire alcohol after that. A few days later, following a few more conversations with Roy, I realized that I no longer felt the need for the antidepressants I had been taking to get me by. The desperate loneliness was gone and the friends and family that had witnessed my sad demise were amazed by the obvious change in me. My children were relieved and encouraged by my new demeanor, which was one of happiness and calm, qualities they hadn’t seen me display in years. I began to make positive changes in my life with the support and guidance I received from Roy and Tricia, changes that prior to starting with the Be Totally Free! process I was totally paralyzed to make. And it wasn’t until a few years later that I realized that I have not had a single panic attack since I had my first conversation with Roy. I am so grateful for my new life, and hope that my story can encourage even one person to make that life-saving call that changed my life.