Grief Coping and Guest Posting: Thormoo, Part 2

As I said in Part One of this series on coping, people handle their grief differently. The nature and complexity of grief a person experiences, combined with their ability to cope with stress prior to their loss, greatly affects their ability to contend with their post-grief reality. People don't generally talk about grief, so when it happens, it can be a scary and isolating feeling. If the bereaved is too overwhelmed by their loss, turning to drugs and alcohol for warmth, comfort, and reprieve may seem natural. Unfortunately, it is not that uncommon for some to turn away from their grief induced sadness, anger, guilt, and ambivalence by self medicating; as was the case with the parent who came to see me those times in my office. Accordingly, choosing to cope by not coping, or numbing, increases the likelihood that they will develop dependency. While I think the urge to do so is understandable, this avoidant style of coping only serves to prolong the pain and make furture trials that life presents feel even more insurmountable..

With that, I want to introduce you to my guest blogger, Thom Davis. Thom writes a candid blog called "Shell Shock Serenade" about his experience with recovery from substance abuse. His story is compelling to me because much of what led him down the path of addiction was his struggle to cope with grief. He's a brave person for sharing his story of recovery, but even braver for his willingness to share the painful story of it's origin here on my blog. Here is Thom's moving and shocking story:

"Good Grief"

Good Grief! Ah yes, the old familiar refrain from my man Charlie Brown. But did good ole Chuck have any idea what he was talking about, in this his most famous and repeated phrase? Is there such a thing as GOOD grief? I know as I have experienced grief in my life, at the moment I'm experiencing it there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of GOOD going on. Yet I know from experience that it is a necessary process for me and others of the human species or we'll simply implode or explode. And for me specifically, my grief…drowned in a river of booze/drugs, long ignored and suppressed, quite simply took me to the brink of self-destruction.

Before I continue,  let me introduce myself. My name is Thom, blog name is thormoo and I typically can be found at thormoo.blogspot.com writing a little ditty called Shell Shock Serenade. The original intent of the blog was to capture A Life, (in real time) of a recovering alcoholic and addict. Warts and all with nothing, absolutely NOTHING left out or overlooked. That particular person’s life (mine as it turned out, I was the only one who volunteered!) also included being sexually assaulted at the age of 12 and an attempted suicide amongst other life experiences. So I have experienced grief in several of its variations including 3 major events in my life, 2 of them occurring decades ago and one back in 2006: 

I lost 3 of my closest friends to an alcohol and drug related auto accident. I was 18 years old at the time and a Senior in High School. As a result of that accident, I spent nearly two decades of my life feeling somehow responsible for its occurrence and the emotional wreckage it brought down on others as a result.

I've also felt the intense loss of innocence and youth after I was sexually assaulted as a dangerously naïve pre-teenaged boy, an experience that I basically kept secret for over a decade after it happened. As an alcoholic/addict, now in recovery for nearly 5 years, I have learned ever so slowly, over a long period of time how to deal with those emotions and how they affected me at the time they occurred. And even more importantly how they can still affect me and impact my life today.I simply had to find a way to deal with the lost innocence, the pain and heartache of those experiences for the rest of my life, so it was critically important that I find a way to co-exist with those ghosts and their memories as soon as I possibly could. Holy Crap I wasn’t prepared for how difficult that was going to be….

I do not think there really is a simple answer to the question I posed at the beginning of this post. Grief is unavoidable in life, at one time or another we will all grieve. It is a natural part of life, as long as we love, cherish and care about something…we will grieve the day when it is gone. So I’m not so sure that grief in itself can be good or bad, it just IS. But the experience of grieving is something else all together. Going through a period of grief most certainly CAN be a good experience in the long run if one is able to deal with it and process it in a healthy manner. It is my belief that we never really get over it or stop grieving…it is a life long process but that does not mean it needs to lead to life long misery either. I also believe that there isn't a magical way to process it and move on with life...it is different for each of us. And most certainly the opposite can be true as well: there can certainly be negative or BAD ways to deal with grief. Most of my experiences, at least originally would fall into that category.

If I was to try to tell the complete story of my life, addiction and recovery…I would need more space and time then I have here today in a single blog post. I think the relevant factors to his post certainly are my alcoholism/addiction which basically IS the foundation story of my life and the incredibly painful impact of two major events in my life: Rape and the deaths of 3 close friends and how I was changed forever by those two experiences. Plus the fact that I lived with those memories for all these years. In some significant ways, how I chose to deal (or not deal) with those events over the years impacted me in the long run almost as significantly as the events themselves did.

For the sake of background, I will say that I was sexually assaulted by three grown men at the age of 12. It was unprovoked, unexpected and simply the single most violent and horrific experience of my life.  I’d rather not go into specifics to when and where it occurred but I will say that it was a direct result of my addiction to drugs/alcohol, which was already a factor in my life at that normally innocent age. The men were never caught…basically because I never reported it. My black eyes, bruises and generally battered appearance were explained away to friends and family as the results of a fight with other kids on a Saturday night. My story was accepted at face value…what my family couldn’t see were the terrible scars that were already developing deep, down inside of me as a result of what happened that day.

I don’t think I even so much as mentioned that experience for a full 12 years, until I became good friends with a survivor of Child Sexual Abuse: A young woman and co-worker who had been molested by her Dad’s sister from the age of 12 until she was 17. It was during long conversations over coffee that I unexpectedly blurted out that experience of so long ago…

Today after much therapy and self-examination I now understand that I was dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I had lived with horrible nightmares for years, I was re-living the event over and over again almost daily in my head, I was Depressed, I trusted NO ONE and generally preferred to be left alone. Though already showing signs of alcoholism, I spent years trying to drink those terrible memories away yet those attempts to do so always proved futile in the end.

As a result of talking about being sexually assaulted to friend from work, I sought traditional therapy from a psychologist who talked me through the experience, how I felt, how I thought it had affected me and my life, etc. etc. I really felt after over a year of sessions that I was better, that I had DEALT with the attack and had put it behind me for good. And I felt better at that time about things…the only problem is that you can never truly put an experience like this one BEHIND you forever or even for a little while. Plus I had not been completely honest in my dealings with the shrink. I wasn't forthcoming about how much I was drinking at the time and I was also specifically not addressing certain questions and issues that had bothered me since the assault had taken place. Issues/Questions dealing with my masculinity, was I a homosexual because I was raped by other men and the state of my over all self-image/self-esteem.

It would be another 18 years or so before I would even begin to deal with those issues and only after going to the very bottom of the despair barrel because of my alcoholism/addiction. At this junction in this little story of life and loss I think it is important to state that I don’t put my Alcoholism/Addiction, Sexual Assault, Grief and any other life experiences in their own little separate sections of my life or my experiences. They are irrevocable intertwined. I have always believed what the American Medical Association stated in the 1950’s: That Alcoholism is a disease, terminal but treatable by total abstinence. Some people vehemently disagree with this notion of alcoholism is a disease and that is fine with me, it’s their prerogative, they can think what they like. Me…I could care less what anyone else thinks about it only what I know in my heart is true. They of course, do not have to deal with my addictions: I do! It is my obligation and responsibility, especially now that I know that I have this illness to do something about it. And it’s worked for nearly five years now…

Based on my experience in recovery and having not had a drink or a non-prescribed, correctly taken prescription medication since mid-2006, I don’t think my Alcoholism was caused by moral deficiencies, lack of will-power, my being raped, being adopted, losing loved ones in death or any of the other things I have experienced in my life. I was born with a pre-disposition to it, the signs were there very early in life. Certainly those experiences complicated and contributed to the total emotional CHAOS that is alcoholism. There is also no doubt that my coping mechanism for everything negative or positive in my life was to drink/drug, a behavior I assumed I learned as I went along: “My 3 best friends died so I’ll get hammered or it’s a glorious day, let’s PARTY!” Those were unconscious choices I made that were totally based on the way I chose to live my life…my alcoholic way of life.

My life in recovery began 8 or so days after I tried to end my life by taking an overdose of Narcotics, Tranquilizers, Sleeping Pills, Muscle Relaxers, Anti-Depressants, Anti-Anxiety Pills and others. I recall four rather large pill bottles full of pills, separated by what they were. I had been stashing then for quite some time. It was late in the day…I had been partying, drinking heavily and snorting large amounts of Cocaine for several days and I just could not take living like I was any more. I was still having flashbacks of being raped, I was absolutely filled with guilt for things that I had done and not done, said and not said…I had arrived at a place where I hated myself so much and what I’d become that I truly believed I was doing my family and the few friends I had left a favor by ending my life. They wouldn’t have to worry about me any more and I would have to bother them ever again. It wasn’t hard to convince myself that others must hate me as much as I hated myself. So I made another drink and swallowed the pills down. I don’t recall much about that moment other then I was gagging some so I taped my mouth closed with Duct-Tape and laid on the floor.

I woke up over a week later in the local hospital. That memory is burned, actually seared into my consciousness for all time. I was cold, the room was white though the shades were drawn and I remember realizing I was alive. And I just broke apart…I could not believe that I had failed once again. I was restrained by my wrists and ankles and quickly there were several nurses and a doctor in the room asking me questions but I couldn’t…er, wouldn’t speak. That was the single, lowest point Emotionally, Physically, Psychologically and Spiritually in my entire life. I simply didn’t know what to do…I was BROKEN, completely and totally HOPELESS.

Little did I realize at the time that it was the beginning of a whole new and better way of life. Yep, it would be new and better but this different life would also be harder in one very important way: I would have to re-build myself from the ground up as I had lost everything. But I would have to do the Soul Searching, the growing, changing and starting over completely and totally SOBER. I didn’t know if I would ever be able to find a way to do that…..

To read more from Thom's blog, go to http://thormoo.blogspot.com