Thursday, August 5, 2010

pink, my ferret









Divorce sucks. I never felt so alone. I got a theripist and a little furnished studio apartment in town, which I hated since the first day I woke up there alone. I drank. I went to the bar and drank. I came home and drank and popped xanax and got stoned.



My therapist suggested a pet....a little something to love and be 'responsible and sober' for: to feed and play with and snuggle and love. I watched the revenge divorce movie 'Along Came Polly' alot. I liked the part where they kill the bed pillows. Anyway, Jennifer Aniston had a ferret. I thought I read that ferrets sleep 23 hours a day, eat once a day, and poop in a litter box.



Owning a ferret did nothing to get or keep me sober. I couldn't stop. But my ferret and I survived active addiction. She still suffers from OCD. Every Sunday Morning, we trot to our Living Sober meeting. She sits on my lap and listens to the shares. Her name is Pink. Now does that surprise you?


have my pink cake and eat it too









Soon after my ex-husband surprised me with a divorce, I began experiencing panic attacks. These attacks provided me with my soon to be favorite of all time drugs: xanax. yum. A few years later, I crawled into rehab with a couple of pills left.
















In one group, clients began yelling and I had a panic attack. My counselor helped me out of my paralizing state with a sensory visualization that I could take with me into sobriety. I was to visualize my favorite cake: I chose a vanilla cake with pink vanilla icing. I took a deep breath in, smelling and tasting and touching the cake in my mind. As I would breathe out, I would blow out the candle and make a wish, smelling the smoke, wax, and vanilla.
















In the beginning, I would have rather had a pill and gone into oblivion. Today, I still use this visualization, and quite often, I actually eat some cake too.