Addicted To Relapsing
The dangerous pattern within the pattern
When the blood orange rays of the morning sun crept their way up the gray-stoned sides of Bantle Hall and in through the blinds of my window overlooking the Chesapeake Bay, I knew it was time to rise and shine — or at least rise.
This was my third stay at Ashley Treatment Center — a world-renowned rehab that once treated the likes of Chris Farley and Lindsay Lohan — and it was the onset of COVID-19.
Like much of the free world, I started drinking heavily when the lockdown began, but for me, tipping the glass was a particularly hazardous endeavor.
I wasn’t a normal drinker. I wasn’t even a normal problem drinker. I was a chaotic binge drinker.
This meant that once I started, I usually kept drinking around the clock — until something horrendous happened.
Or until a kind-hearted friend who still had enough love and time for me decided to intervene — I was starting to run out of those.
The pandemic and the ensuing lockdown made it even more difficult for my most empathetic of friends to do anything to help, even if they wanted to.
