Courtney Flood
There is Power in the TRUTH
(and in the LIES I Told Myself)
I wasn’t supposed to be an addict. The never-ending list of things I wasn’t supposed to do and managed to do is overwhelming to put on paper, and honestly, not necessary. What’s important is what happened after. Not because it looks pretty or has a fantastic outcome (it does) but because there is still pain in my life, there is still struggle, and there are still mountains to move to maintain a level of mental stability.
To literally just live.
I remember sitting in the chapel at the Plymouth House, inpatient treatment, day one, “This is where we get quiet for a period of time and meditate to listen for the answers to our prayers.” I thought, so let me get this straight, I wake up in the morning, one hour before my children, because I have enough awareness about myself to know that if I wake up to the demands of other humans before I have taken a moment to find gratitude around the things that I “get to do” today rather than what “I have to do?” I am stirring the pot with a recipe for disaster.
What that meant for me was that there was a laundry list of things that I needed to do—that “normal” people didn’t need to do—just to be okay. Are you dialed in? Are you listening closely? All I know how to talk about is “I” and how I need to perform to be perceived—received—and to be able to succeed and move forward. I am not going that way until I know that there is some element of return for me. I was completely blind to what was going on around me with an absolutely mutilated sense of self that could only be fed with praise and admiration. I was crumbling, a self-recorded flat line if you will. I wasn’t able to see the damage in my wake or the bridges that were in an inferno around me. But I was fully prepared to surrender.
Sometimes.
“I can think of thousands of clichés that best describe how intricate and how simple the mind of an addict can be. I truly believe that I was born this way. I am not special, I am not an exception to any rule, and there is no back door entrance to recovery that will work for me; I need to storm through the front door with my bags packed.”
My internal systems are forever at odds. My ego is so inflated that I could talk for hours about the amazing things I can accomplish and I can paint a picture of the person that you want me to be (or the person I think you want me to be). But when it’s quiet and I get to be alone with myself, it feels empty and unfamiliar. I am seeking external solutions for an internal problem. And so it begins: The circus of my life attempting to melt into a mold that was not created for me. And so that is what I do. I create the version of myself best suited for the occasion and the return on investment is monumental: validation, rationalization, explanation, denial, then shame. My way of life now. The issue is, among many others, I judge myself and who I was, on my intentions, which are always good, but I couldn’t deliver; I never followed through. Thousands of unfinished projects that carried a small amount of potential. I was pretty good at many, many things and was never able to pinpoint anything that was of any real interest to pursue.
Wait, back up, let me tell you how I got here. Sometimes I forget to connect the dots, my ADHD running rampant.
I believed I was, essentially, designed to fail. I am from a great family with purpose and opportunity. And opportunity was not to be wasted. But I. Was. Wasted. To be even a fraction better than your lowest low, you will have to understand how you got there. When you get on an airplane, if you listen closely to the emergency instructions, they clearly state to establish your own oxygen mask before securing the needs of others. Have you ever really thought about what that means? We cannot be of service to others until our own house is clean. The blind leading the blind, I can think of thousands of generic plays on words that best describe how intricate and how simple the mind of an addict/alcoholic can be. I truly believe that I was born this way. I am not special, I am not an exception to any rule, and there is no back door entrance to recovery that will work for me; I need to storm through the front door with my bags packed.
I won’t bother you with the minute or grandiose details of the past—the past looks like a hard line on November 3, 2017. I didn’t know at that moment how much my life would change and that the most dramatic changes were coming in a short period that your mind will not allow you to envision. Think about the most confusing, entertaining, raw, dramatic, heart-wrenching, heartwarming, empowering movie you have ever seen. Think about it with the acceptance that you’re never going to understand it and that you don’t need to because the return is so great that the details don’t matter.
When I was what is to be considered a child, aged 12, old enough to understand the ramifications of my actions and what is right and wrong but young enough to accept the direction of adults and assume they are made with good intentions because that is all that we know, there was an incident of sexual abuse. I don’t know why I always refer to this in such a textbook way. Maybe it’s my brain helping my heart with the acceptance piece. But the reason this is an integral part of my story, and I want to stress this, is to say that this is not why I am an addict. My addiction is not a result of my experiences. Drugs are not my problem. I am my problem. I simply cannot get out of my own way. I am intelligent enough to identify areas of concern and possible solutions. I am capable of laying this out in a plan of action. But I am incapable of taking action. That’s okay. I have the awareness now, right? And that is essentially the framework of the roadmap that we need to build around this. Whoever made up this culture of “barreling-through-issues” bullshit was clearly not an addict. My addiction is not going anywhere, and I am blessed with addiction for eternity. I am not looking for ways to push through. I am the problem, and it’s my responsibility to navigate how I move through this life while I am here on this earth and adapt to my “isms” so that I can have peace in my heart and a good conscience.
This doesn’t look pretty every day. The timing of this opportunity to share a piece of myself with the world is impeccable and uncanny. Go figure.
“Whoever made up this culture of ‘barreling through issues’ bullshit was clearly not an addict. My addiction is not going anywhere, and I am blessed with addiction for eternity. I am not looking for ways to push through. I am the problem...”
This past year has been incredibly difficult, and I am forever grateful for the immense support system that I was both born into and have built throughout my deepest moments of rock bottom and the highest levels of “Fuck yeah” moments. I never felt quite like I was whole, for no real reason to be honest, just something missing, some unattainable goal that will eat you alive until you do something about it to lessen the pain. Every experience for me is like watching a movie of someone else’s life. A prisoner in my own head, I am serving a life sentence of doubt and insecurity. I don’t recall a whole bunch of my childhood, how I felt, and what I experienced, but now that I am putting this on paper, I realize how much sense that makes. I didn’t feel human, so how can I remember feeling or thinking at any notable time in my life? I guess you could think of it this way: I know that I am loved unconditionally, I didn’t accept that as my reality, so it’s not what I remember. And then it just makes me think of myself now and the way I am with my children.
“I don’t know! For Christ’s sake!” I want to yell at them sometimes. Or, “I don’t know and I will investigate it further.” And other times, “I don’t know and I don’t care!” The narrative in my head is set to “negative.” I wake up in a deficit and I spend the entire day trying to break even. So in an effort to get this done quickly, I learned how to people-please and manipulate outcomes.
Alas! The lack of control came at a young age for me when I could not manage my emotions. I was surrounded by some heavy adult issues (mental health crisis in the family, death in the family, taxing work responsibilities) and at some point in my first 6 or 7 years on this earth, I learned that I needed control. And I had absolutely none. So I started to sit on my foot instead of using the bathroom. It was the only thing that I had in a world full of chaos. I found myself hysterical, sitting on the toilet in Children’s Hospital, unearthing all of the pain that my little mind thought I had under control. That storyline plays out over and over again. I was a decent student, sub par soccer player, a shotgun start on anything and everything that I got myself into, until it, too, fizzled into the abyss of missed opportunity and wasted talent. Most of my significant friendships were with men. Platonic, but notable because that was the audience where my manipulation and emotional warfare would carry the most weight with the highest possible return. I was a shadow member of several different groups of friends at a time. I remember that I was always the driver, not because I was sober but because it gave me the power to choose. I knew that I was never going to give up the power to choose. That is, until the power to choose was taken from me.
From the outside looking in, for all intents and purposes, I believed it to be fairly normal. Work hard/play hard. We had rules in our house, we had morals, and we understood the ramifications of our actions. We were to behave with respect because we had respect for ourselves and we carried ourselves with dignity and honesty. We were wise with our wallets and selective with our words. We listened intently, not to answer but to learn. But outside of the walls of what I knew to be right, I was acting out like a caged animal.
“I was engaged to be married to a Catholic, suit-and-tie finance guy ... This was going to complete the story of my life. But before our first anniversary, I decided I wasn’t prepared to be anybody’s wife. I justified this by telling myself that I was sparing him a life of pain if he stayed with me ... I was surviving on Coors Light and Adderall. I appeared to be having a great time while I admired the hollow look of my collarbone in the mirror and smiled, becoming more and more unstable and volatile. This was around the time I fell in love with opiates.”
I became someone else when I stepped outside of that house. The behaviors came long before the substances. I was wild and could not be tamed. I was drinking and smoking weed, sexually active, and incredibly arrogant. Or so it appeared. I was dying on the inside; I was miserable and couldn’t connect the dots. I could not find my way out; there was nothing, no answer, no fix, no bottom line, no target. I didn’t know how to operate in a space where there aren’t boundaries and rules and aspirations and goals and deadlines. So my family stepped in, and I began seeing a therapist. I lied to my therapist. Sometimes I told the truth, but more often than not, I was lying. It became second nature to lie, so I used it as a tool. I lied about everything. For no reason at all, most of the time it would be to embellish something to make it seem more appealing or an excuse to get out of a situation or explain away what we cant’ accurately get on board with. But sometimes, it was for no reason at all. This proved to be very challenging to remember all of the lies that I was telling people, constantly trying to cover up one lie with another lie. Then I am stuck with both to remember and it was absolutely exhausting. Just running circles around myself to keep my brain occupied because I was bored. I was thoughtful at times. I would think of a sentimental gift that seemed appropriate for someone close to me and eagerly give it to them. The problem here is that I was seeking a reaction from them, it wasn’t authentic joy for them, it was authentic praise for me. Go me, I’ve done it again. The negative self-talk is what came next because what human can withstand such a rat race of identity crisis without consistent negative self-talk? Later, realizing that I couldn’t lower the bar fast enough to meet the standards of my life when I absolutely needed success like I needed air. This is when I learned to fill the void externally. But I couldn’t accept failure or take accountability for anything, so I fled.
I left home when I was 17, just after graduation, which I did not participate in. I could have; my mother and the rest of my family supported me through absolute hell for 12 years to watch me walk across that stage. But I didn’t have the miniscule amount of human decency to give them just that. Instead, I took the $40 bucks for a cap and gown and kept it movin’. I lived with a girl a little older than me who had a toddler. I loved that kid like she was my own, and I took care of her a lot. Imagine thinking that was an appropriate living situation for that kid? I started working in restaurants like any other lost graduate with no goals or aspirations. I lived in many different apartments/houses, typically a toxic romantic relationship situation. I couldn’t keep a job very long because I couldn’t adhere to any type of schedule with the intricacies of my addiction and when I was or wasn’t going to be okay. I suppose I didn’t keep a relationship much longer, either. I dated my boss from the bar where I worked when I was roughly 19, or 18 maybe? Anyway, after a couple of years of chasing bands across the country, we landed in Baltimore, Maryland. This man was a vicious alcoholic. He was going 100 miles per hour in the wrong direction, and he was taking me as a hostage. We worked together, lived together, together, together, together. Get me? Two years later and several emergency room admissions, a handful of arrests, one three-month stay in prison, and financial and emotional bankruptcy, I asked for help. My mom came and got me in the middle of the night in a minivan. This is the time that I disclosed the abuse to my parents for the very first time in a fit of rage but I don’t remember any moments at all of this happening.
A new start.
I lived in Jamaica Plain with my brother for a few years, giving me the opportunity to re-center and become part of my family again after disappearing for so many years. I felt like I had reached a place where I could finally breathe. I wasn’t quite in the grips of addiction with anything that would spin me so out of control I wouldn’t be able to straighten the wheel if need be. What I didn’t put together at that time was that the reason that I felt as though I could finally breathe was not the rekindling of my relationship with my family. It was not the financial stability of my relationship with my dad.
For Christ sake, it wasn’t even the comfort of knowing that I wasn’t “in trouble” anymore!
It was solely because I wasn’t hiding anything anymore, I could breathe because I wasn’t concerned about being “found out.” What a concept. Tell the truth about behaviors that you’re not ashamed of because they were choices that you made, whether intelligent choices or teaching choices, but choices nonetheless. Stand by. This doesn’t happen overnight.
The number of nights that I couldn’t remember who I was with or what I was doing or where I was was increasing rapidly, and I desperately needed to make more money. I was able to get a job at a bar that was opening in the Financial District of Boston, which pivoted my entire life. I end up doing well at this bar and making good money. Within a year I became the manager. I moved into a one-bedroom apartment in the North End by myself and I was enjoying life. What I could remember of it.
The money and the parties have a way of making you forget about the hole in your soul that no amount of any emotion could fill. So instead, we find the next inappropriate major life event to fix us. In 2009 when the market crashed, with the help of my parents, I bought a condo in Dorchester. In the meantime, I was engaged to be married to a Catholic, suit-and-tie finance guy, the oldest of 4 boys. This was going to complete the story of my life. But before our first anniversary, I decided I wasn’t prepared to be anybody’s wife. I justified this by telling myself that I was sparing him a life of pain if he stayed with me. I am now bartending in South Boston, and I am newly single. I am surviving off Coors Light and Adderall. I appeared to be having a great time while I admired the hollow look of my collarbone in the mirror and smiled, becoming more and more unstable and volatile. This was around the time I fell in love with opiates.
My habit was becoming very expensive, and soon all of my time, energy, and finances were spent on drugs. The most dangerous thing about me is the way I managed to fly under the radar with little-to-no consequences and my uncanny ability to keep up appearances.
I met “M” when I was working in South Boston. I am almost positive I made a wildly inappropriate comment about our future together, although we’d never spoken. Four years of a Molotov cocktail relationship later, and we are pregnant. We embraced the idea of having a baby girl. I wasn’t well, but it wasn’t showing on the outside. After my daughter was born in 2017, the instability took over, and one Tuesday afternoon, I was involved in a head-on car accident.
“You are going to detox, so figure it out. You have a couple of days to yourself to get ready.” I remember the shame that I felt. It ran so deep I did not think I could survive. But as soon as I allowed the anger to pour out, I was able to move into a tailspin of denial and acceptance. This was not the radical acceptance I would need to make changes in my life, but the kind that would get me help. I felt oddly at home in detox. My daughter was 10 weeks old. It was Halloween, and I wondered what costume she would wear. It was the first but (still) not the last time I would wear guilt on my heart like a coat of armor. What I realize now is that I couldn’t fully understand what was happening or what kind of emotions I was having because I wasn’t of sound mind.
After a week of detox, I was given a couple of options for rehab. It was raining as we drove in almost complete silence for several hours to the base of the White Mountains. As I watched M hand over his credit card, I felt like a puddle with absolutely no sign of a backbone. At that moment, I decided to at least put in an honest effort. Unfortunately, honesty wasn’t exactly something I was familiar with. After my first week, hard lines were feeling a little softer, small smiles escaped my lips from time to time and the weight of it all didn’t feel quite as heavy. Because I went to a facility that doesn’t accept insurance, they were able to speak with my family in any way that they felt necessary. I fought hard to preserve my right to privacy, which meant my right to keep my deep dark secrets as such. Turns out that was the best thing to ever happen to me. The staff was relaying to me the nuances of my addiction and what that looked like for my friends and family. They weren’t trying to ruin my life like I had told myself, more so to save it. And save my life they did.
“I lied to my therapist. Sometimes I told the truth. It became second nature to lie, so I used it as a tool. I lied about everything. For no reason at all, most of the time it would be to embellish something to make it seem more appealing or an excuse to get out of a situation. But sometimes, it was for no reason at all. This proved to be very challenging to remember all of the lies that I was telling.”
Remember the chapel I told you about earlier? I spent many hours writing my fourth step there. I filled 6 notebooks with tales of what I thought was and what actually was. I was humble enough by the end of my time there to recognize all of the roads that led me there and how I had chosen to take them or how they had chosen to take me. I gained insight into who I was in a way I didn’t think I could. I left the White Mountains for a sober living house in Dorchester. Living in a house with 12 women didn’t pan out to look like the hell on earth that I had envisioned. We built structure and security around each other while navigating uncomfortable waters. We told each other the truth and supported each other when that truth proved to be more difficult than we could have imagined. I worked at CVS inside South Station in Boston. A friend asked if I felt embarrassed crossing paths with people I knew. Imagine being embarrassed by my employment with the condition my life was in at that moment? I lived in that sober house for 3 months. With DCF involved in my life and the eyes of society burning holes in the back of my head, I was determined to get home. A week before I transitioned back home, I found out that I was pregnant during routine urine checks at the sober house. Our relationship had already suffered so much doubt and incredible damage. It was unclear how we were going to move forward together or separate in insanely early sobriety with 2 children under 2 years old. The daunting reality of what was in front of us was unspeakable. After a very ugly few weeks of intense learning, talking, compromising, bending, and twisting, we decided to give our all to provide the best possible life for these kids that we could. We bought a house on the South Shore in Marshfield, and I became a stay-at-home mom. I relished it. I loved it. I was the mom at the beach with grapes cut into quarters and sandwiches with no crust, all the beach gear you could picture. And we were there every day. I threw myself into recovery and all it had to offer. I went to meetings, I sponsored women, I spoke at commitments, I ran groups, I went on retreats, I prayed, I meditated, I wrote inventory.
“There are no dues for membership, just the desire to stop drinking.” There it was in black and white: I could never understand how all of this was considered “dues.” Let me tell you: Somehow, humility brought me the ability to enjoy these things. These are the reasons I am sober, the reasons I can maintain sobriety, and I enjoy doing them. Then it dawned on me: These are things that I do to show the growth and validity of my word—and show people that my intentions are pure. They see actual results and real change, and people can count on me. If I say I am going to do something, I do it. If I am struggling, I reach out for help. When I am feeling resentment in my life, then I know that something is missing and that I am not keeping pace with what I need for mental stability and peace in my heart.
I am not cured. I am flawed in so many of the most ugly and the most beautiful ways. What’s different now is the awareness. I can recognize when my thoughts and actions are negatively affecting others, and I have the ability to be honest and make changes accordingly. I can move around this earth with my chin up, knowing that I have acknowledged my actions, and I have changed them, and in turn, I have changed the results of those actions. I still have ADHD, still get angry, still get sad, and I still get lazy, but my ADHD looks slightly more organized, my anger looks far less scary, my sadness looks a lot less suicidal, and my laziness looks a little more productive. I have accountability, and I lessen the expectations of others. I am an addict to the core. Everything is measured in quantity; more is better. For Christ’s sake, I even abuse my laundry with 2 pods instead of one because more is better!
Today, I get sick (about money, men, exercising—you name it) if I am not diligent about caring for myself and giving back to others. I need to continue to get out of my own way. “Work on others, and you’ll work on you,” is what a friend used to tell me all the time. In 2020, during the height of COVID-19, my relationship was declining again. I decided to return to work when offered a position in admissions at a newly opened addiction treatment center. Hesitant, nervous, insecure, and also really excited, I put my kids in full-time daycare and signed an offer letter for $50K a year as an admissions counselor, while paying nearly 40k in daycare costs. It sounds insane, but I wanted to allow myself to want something for personal growth instead of personal gain for a change.
Again, as history would show, I became addicted to work, sometimes in healthy ways and sometimes in not-so-healthy ways. I absolutely loved what I did, I loved who I did it for, and I loved the life that I had created for myself. I had something that was mine that I worked really hard for and had something to show for it. I rose to the top of my company and became the Executive Director within 2.5 years. The experience allowed me to see the business from every lens. I doubled what was asked of me and often impressed myself with what I was capable of. I am so grateful to have gotten in on the ground floor of a company that grew so quickly and been given the opportunity to experience this field in so many ways. I worked alongside the owners to open new businesses and explore what I was capable of.
“I am a grown ass woman, I will survive, I can handle the emotional toll and the consequences that come with it, I told myself. What I cannot handle is the toll that it also took on my kids.”
M and I split up, and I moved into an apartment with the kids. We couldn’t get along for more than 5 seconds by that time, and it made the first year incredibly difficult. I made many, many mistakes, I made rash decisions, I settled on inadequacies, and leveled with myself about my inability to read between the lines. While building an incredible career and feeling like I continue to fall short in other areas, I grasped tightly to a relationship with a co-worker who moved entirely too fast. Fast forward, and we’re engaged, I bought a house in Marshfield, and we began to renovate. M and I were getting along better than ever and our co-parenting was on point. Everything pointed up. Well, to the untrained eye.
What I couldn’t see was the writing on the wall. Remember when I told you how that could happen? I was people-pleasing, overcompensating, ignoring, looking past, denying, and unwilling to see, and it ultimately drove me to a nervous breakdown—he was cheating on me. I was shattered. The weight of the situation took me to a low I had never experienced in sobriety. I was essentially surviving for the kids and my job.
I am a grown-ass woman, I will survive, I can handle the emotional toll and the consequences that come with it, I told myself. What I cannot handle is the toll that it also took on my kids. They are now 6 and 7 years old and they are wonderful. They suffered tremendously after losing an important person in their life whom they loved spending time with. They lost someone they felt they could trust and who protected them when they were too young to understand what was happening around them. I will struggle with how this affected them forever.
I know how to put myself first these days. It allows me to maintain some level of normalcy and peace. Today, my priorities are lined up in a different order. This past year has taught me more pricey lessons, but I am on the other side of it with authentic relationships and I couldn’t feel more blessed (and my newest lesson is in self-employment!)
Breathe and remain humble and kind.
