Mommy Doesn't Drink Here Anymore: Getting Through the First Year of Sobriety

By Rachael Brownell

“Gives the reader insight not only into the effects of addiction on the entire family, but solutions for those in the grips of family trauma.” —Barb Rogers, author of If I Die Before I Wake

With three children under five, a set of twins and a newborn, Rachell Brownell wanted to feel like an adult again. So she turned to three bottles of white wine a night.

Through wit and honesty, Brownell lets readers into her world of addiction, but also towards hope. Examples of community, wisdom, and support provide a map for anyone trying to get through the early stages of recovery.

Learn how a couple of glasses of wine lead to a big problem. Understand how mommy cocktail groups and the desire to feel like “more than a mommy” can lead to addiction. In Mommy Doesn’t Drink Here Anymore you will find:

• The good, the bad, and the ugly of parenting
• The truth about the first year of recovery
• Hope for a light at the end of the tunnel

“Whether you are struggling to reconcile your addiction or looking for guidance as a mother, woman, human being, Brownell’s journey of self-awareness and self-discovery is sure to motivate and inspire. A triumph of a memoir for all women enduring.” —Rebecca Woolf, author of Rockabye: From Wild to Child

“Comfort, encouragement and support are interwoven with her words. A gift for anyone who is seeking their own Truth regarding addiction and recovery.” —Barbara Joy, author of Easy Does It, Mom

“In this frank memoir, she journals her slide into alcoholism and her first year of recovery . . . Brownell doesn’t pull any punches about the ugly side of her addiction.” —Library Journal

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Aug 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781609250201

Rachael Brownell

Rachael Brownell is the mother of three and a recovering alcoholic and perfectionist. She writes a monthly column, "Rugrat Reprieve," for the Imperfect Parent, wrote a daily column for Babble's "Strollerderby Parenting" blog, and was recently managing editor for supereco.com. She lives and breathes books and language. "I want to be the kind of mother who never talks about diapers or potty training, who doesn't dream of boring you with which child did or didn't wake Mommy up last night. I want to be the kind of mother who loves her children without losing herself and whose sassy sense of humor is slightly off kilter and makes engineering husbands deeply uncomfortable.

Book preview

introduction

Mommy Needs Many Drinks

It is a sunny spring afternoon and the video captures our three little girls playing outside in the big plastic pool, sliding down the orange slide, squealing with delight and denying they're cold, despite blue lips and shivers. They seem so small and fragile when I look at them in pictures or home movies, but on this warm, bright afternoon they fill up the inside of my brain with shrieks of joy and delight. I don't take my eyes off of them, nor do I put down my glass of white wine. In the video, I'm in and out of frame, helping our youngest into her life vest, assisting the older girls with swimsuits and towels, looking away from the camera, always with a drink in my hand. It's a jelly glass, the kind some people use for juice, with only a splash of white wine left in the bottom. I hold on to it despite the juggling act this requires. Like a one handed circus act, I fasten Velcro, lift 30 pounds of child, and bend to remove a spider from the pool.

If I close my eyes now, more than a year later, I remember other things about that day.

The wine is from a huge box they've started selling next to the flower arrangements and balloons at the grocery store down the hill. With its easy-pour spout and sweet wine that tastes like soda pop, it's easy to ignore that it holds about two and a half bottles of wine and that I can put away one of those boxes in two days or less. I explain it away as a lark; something fun to spice up a family afternoon at home. If it's after 4 P.M., I've already had two or three glasses and I'm warm and cheerful. I'm more than happy to make dinner, assist little swimmers, and make funny asides to the camera—to accommodate the seemingly endless needs of our small children. How I drink isn't that different from many of my friends. What is starting to be different is how my day begins to revolve around it. I'm a little planet, and crisp white wine is my sun.

And I like to believe that no one notices. I usually don't drive anywhere, I mostly don't make any calls, and no one ever asks why I drink so much, mostly because I lie when they do. I intentionally do not count the growing number of refills each afternoon and evening, but one or two is becoming four or five more and more frequently.

It's not really a problem.

Plenty of parents drink.

I think this secretly, but I never look at the camera and I do not look into my husband's eyes. I look down and away, keep myself moving and only vaguely present, my body an apparition held aloft from reality by a river of white wine.

In the video, as in most of my drinking evenings, I'm happy for a while, a traveler on a road leading away from this place. Drinking gives me patience for the tasks at hand: repetitive conversations with young children, dishes, diapers, bills, and discipline. I grew up with an alcoholic, and I've learned to keep my ears tuned to drinking trouble in others, yet I remain stubbornly oblivious to my own. There is always a know-it-all voice inside my brain: You drink an awful lot like an alcoholic, but it's the same voice that tells me I should run every morning, eat tofu, and wear a size 4, so I feel justified in paying it little mind.

Killjoy inner voice. Who needs you anyway?

As well as Mommy's Little Daily Vacation, drinking is also my muse. Hired to write for Babble.com, an online magazine for a new generation of parents, I now have another excuse to pour the wine. Booze fuels my snarky rejection of sunny assumptions about mothers portrayed in mainstream media. On Babble's Strollerderby blog I write about sex, kid-free vacations, divorce, and other previously taboo topics. Getting loose makes writing feel rebellious and assures me I'm part of a revolution, where we talk and write about our kids but aren't afraid to assert our artistic, sexual, authentic selves over the din of our old lives falling away.

Add to this the proliferation of memoirs addressing the existential challenges of modern parenthood, and it's clear that this revolution is happening in text as well as online. Many of these writer-parents share breadwinning and childrearing and are interested in raising well-loved and well-adjusted children but are also rebels with a deep-seated longing for self-expression. I count myself among this group. We may be confused and narcissistic, but we are also on to something.

From books like Rebecca Woolf's Rockabye: From Wild to Child to blogs like Jessica Ashley's Sassafrass, descriptions of transforming oneself from an individual to a parent are everywhere. The subtext (because in my generation—X—there is always a subtext) to all this jawing and writing and confessing is that parenting is hard and we're not afraid to talk about it. The conversation can be predictable (having a baby is hard), but also transformative (How can you recapture your sexual self after having kids?). And for many of us, our real or imagined inability to fit into the neighborhood playgroup makes virtual socializing more crucial than ever.

It may seem overly simplistic to think reading, writing, blogging about the necessity of cocktail playdates substantiates our claims that we're happy, free, and unconventional, but it works for me, and I suspect for many others. Even though true addiction has nothing to do with intellectual proclivities, social movements, or parenting philosophies, I've since learned that the disease is latent in many of us, just waiting for any old excuse to rage across our lives.

For me, that excuse is motherhood.

I like to joke that life without alcohol isn't worth living. I say it in jest, but I am speaking in code, looking for other parents who laugh with me, then nod and say, Can I get you another? I can easily identify my type of people by whether they drink (relaxed like me) or not (too serious). I keep the conversation light, but drinking is the crux of the matter, the primary purpose for any gathering, not kids and not husbands or work. There are books everywhere agreeing with me—blogs with cocktails, martinis, and headaches in their titles—all signs suggesting I am part of a swift current of parents who know not to take it all too hard. Where a prior generation said, Never trust anyone over thirty, I secretly believe, Never trust a mother who doesn't drink.

It is cute and clever.

It is killing me.

When I decide to sober up, I have three children five years and younger, a house, a job, and a second husband. Their care and well-being keeps me committed and clear in my intention to stay sober in the face of all of the great reasons to keep drinking. On the other hand, getting sober while parenting young children is torture. No matter how exhausted, sick, confused, and emotional I feel, the kids count on me to make lunches, do laundry, and provide love, hugs, and kisses. Since I choose not to go to treatment, they get front row seats into those first months of hell. Poor kids.

Furthermore, when I awaken from my alcohol-induced five-year slumber, I am not the same person; and neither are they. As we all find out, the road to recovery from alcoholism is long and arduous and never ending. Add in the task of parenting and figuring out life as a sober adult, and the whole thing gets interesting fast.

Of course, many parents manage with far more equanimity and grace than I possess to find a way through new parenthood with enough built-in health and support to get by. It didn't happen that way for me. Motherhood sent me on a journey, equal parts self-discovery and self-destruction. Whether wrought from stubbornness or a proclivity toward addiction, motherhood sent me into full-blown alcoholism and nearly toppled everything dear to me in five short years.

The transition to parenthood—the letting go of self, the deep responsibility for another human being, the occasional despair when encountering the tectonic shifts parenting requires—amplifies the best and the worst in each of us. For those with potential drug or alcohol problems, these challenges are compounded by fuzzy thinking, addiction, and an obsession with obliterating reality. We might tell ourselves that we're just having fun and cutting loose after long hours at the beck and call of wee dictators. We might tell ourselves anything just to keep up the façade of keeping it all together. But the truth is, we drink because we must.

This is my story. Maybe it's yours too.

PART ONE

away

CHAPTER 1

before . . .

I am a ten-year-old bookworm of a girl, living in a cozy house on the edge of a forest of tall evergreens that slope down a hill just beyond my back yard. As you enter the woods, you can easily imagine that you're all alone and free. It is exciting to have adventures this close to home, safe but distant. My two brothers and I dominate our domain with wild calls and double dares. We climb trees and look for bugs and whoop and holler and act tough. These are the happiest days of my childhood.

And they are numbered.

My room is across from my brothers' on the top floor of the house. My mom and I had recently hung pink, white, and blue flowered curtains with a matching bedspread and pillow shams from Sears. My beautiful room is so pretty and quiet; snug, cozy, and warm. There are shelves against the far wall that display my dolls and books and a funny old jewelry box from my grandmother. My very own room! And even though I hang the No Boys Allowed sign, I always relent and let my brothers in. They are my best playmates, even when they refuse to follow orders. I like to sit on the floor near the window overlooking our woods and write in my diary. Sometimes I write about how I drink wine like Mom (it isn't true, but it's fun to pretend) and about the birds I see in the woods behind our house.

One afternoon, my brothers and I sneak

Reviews for Mommy Doesn't Drink Here Anymore

[Lisa · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It was like reading my own story. Adamant that I didn't have a problem, that my drinking was under control and within the limits of acceptable. I'm still between 30 and 60 days sober, so I got a glimpse into my life at 90 days and 6 months and 1 year. It gives me hope.

[dorolerium · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I feel like my choice to receive this ARC, and consequently read it, might need a little bit of background story.Since I mentioned previously that I’m not so into self-help books, my reading this may seem strange. However, alcoholism is something that runs in my family and I decided I wanted to read something that would maybe help me get some insight into the addictions no one wants to talk about, but we all know exist.For the record, I myself do not have a problem with alcohol (and no, this isn’t denial on my part, hehehe), but I also am very aware that I could. Statistically speaking, children of alcoholics or drug addicts have a much higher risk of becoming addicts themselves. And lucky me, both of my parents are at the very least alcoholics.Because of my desire to have a better life than the one I feel they have had, I made a decision to not be a drinker at all for a really long time. As I’ve gotten older, I have occasionally had a drink, but have always had limitations because I can feel the alcoholism in me. I know that I am constantly one bad day away from it, and fortunately I have remained stubborn enough to avoid alcohol on bad days. But this also means I avoid it on good days, and have to make a point to make no easily opened alcohol in my house when I’m alone.Anyway, I tell you all this because I want to make it clear that this book was a very personal experience for me. I read it in less than 24 hours, and really if I added it up, I would say I just spent a couple of hours total reading the book. I’m not sure if it really was that easy of a read, or if I was just so interested in the subject matter that I found it difficult to put down.I was near tears on pretty much every page of this book, and I honestly think that if I had been by myself while reading the majority of it, I would have been bawling. The stories the author told, especially of what happened in her childhood, are ones I am so familiar with. The feeling of needing to take care of a parent is one I can very much identify with, and something I continually wish children didn’t have to experience.I was impressed by the authors ability to rehash her drinking to write this book. I’m sure it’s hard enough to get sober, let alone go through the process of telling the world about it afterwards. She is someone I wish I knew, so I could help her down her path of sobriety and watch her progress as she continues to get her sobriety “birthday” chips.One of my favorite parts was when she was able to start thinking she maybe had a problem with drinking. It was a relief to see that it didn’t take a really horrific experience to get her to this point. No DUI’s, losing of jobs or family members, no trips to detox. That in itself says something positive about her, I think.I wish that my mother had been able to see these problems in herself when I was five. I’m envious that the authors children are going to be able to grow up with memories of their mother sober, rather than the ones I and countless other adults now have. Wishing obviously doesn’t change anything, so all I can really say is I’m very proud of the author for being able to do this.I also really liked that the author never mentions specifically what 12-step program she joined. Because I am familiar with them, I recognize it and could name it, but I’m of the opinion that there is no right or wrong program. Whatever gets you sober and keeps you there is right, that’s all that matters.For me, the moral of this story is that everything takes hard work, there aren’t always perfect endings, but once you make the decision to overcome addiction it becomes much easier. I genuinely hope all the addicts in my life get to the point where they can finally see their problem and want to change it. That change can only come from within, and all I can do for them is continue to hope they will some day reach the point where the author did, and see that just *maybe* they might have a problem with alcohol, or whatever their substance of choice is.Read this book if: You are a child of an addict, think you may have a problem with alcohol, or are in recovery…especially if you feel like you’re going to backslide. If you don’t have a problem yourself, I can’t promise this book will change your life, but hopefully it will help you understand the people in your life who do have these issues. And be prepared to cry.

[dmcco01 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Mommy Doesn't Drink Here Anymore," is a fun and thought-provoking read for those in recovery, those pondering their own drinking habits, and anyone who enjoys "slice of life" stories. It's a quick and breezy read despite its serious subject matter. Brownell shows that recovery doesn't have to be a somber path; it is life-or-death business, but it's filled with learning, grace, and hilarity.

[harahel_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Recovery books have a tendency to take on a familiar pattern after the third or fourth one. Mrs. Brownell escapes that handily. She tells her story honestly and clearly in nearly blog-like entries. Sometimes the pace felt a bit rushed and the present tense narrative was occasionally confusing, but you can practically hear her narrating the events to a dear friend. She gives us alcholism in its more insidious form, where there is no DWI or horrible bottoming out, just the slow grinding loss. Her recovery story is inspiring and forthright.

[emr093 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Rachael’s memoir has the ring of truth, and I know,‘cause I’m a Recovering Alcoholic, too, But it’s a good, easy-reading story for anyone. Once you start to follow her travails, starting innocuously enough with her toddlers, and their unending demands, you will be hooked on this little book. The early stages of Recovery aren’t easy or fun, but as Rachael shows, it gets better, and it saves your life!

[acornell_13 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mommy Doesn't Drink Here Anymore by Rachel Brownell is my early review for the month of July. A forty something woman from Seattle who writes and blogs for a living, Ms Brownell told her story of recovery from alcohol addiction. Lately, I have been interested in the idea of addiction. As I get older I discover that most of us do have an addiction of some form or another. Some people's addictions land them in jail, some just overweight, some strapped for cash and others are simply in a sorry mental state. Whatever the addiction, if yours is one, like Rachel's, that beats up your psyche, your marriage and ultimately your relationship with your kids, getting help is imperative. Rachel sought out Alcoholics Anonymous and was able to beat her addiction to alcohol. She writes her story of how she got addicted to wine and her first year in recovery.This very short memoir read like a series of blog posts combined with being a self help manual for recovering addicts. The entire story was a quick read and each entry--representing a chunk of time on the road to gaining her 1 year chip at the AA meetings--felt like something from a blog. Each entry left me wanting more. For example, one of the first people she called after she left her first AA meeting was her mother, who was also a recovering alcoholic. She did not recount any of the conversation or let us know what her mother said. As a reader, I missed this conversation. This is actually a testament to how good the writing was. It felt original and very raw. Her story was incredibly honest... for example, at one point she writes, "I'm proud to call myself an alcoholic, because I'd rather be something real than hide away any longer and pretend everything is just fine when it isn't..." She successfully built suspense around whether her marriage would survive or not, and she really helped me to understand what it was like to be addicted to alcohol. I loved that for the first 90 days of recovery she wasn't even sure she was an alcoholic and how she came to the conclusion that she had a problem and the pain and grieving she went through as she said good-bye to her former best friend (wine). In addition to the thought provoking testament to the hardships of addiction and recovery, some of her entries were about things you can do as a family besides cocktail play dates and how to know if you have a problem with alcohol. They seemed sweet to me because if you are not an alcoholic, they were self evident. Also, these entries and her revelations about the sweetness of motherhood were really lovely.Ultimately I would recommend this to anyone who has an interest in addiction and recovery. It is a great road map for success or could be a great support to someone struggling with the same issues. Mommy can be read in an evening.

[shadowmatter · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

While reading this book you just might recognize yourself on one of the pages and when that happens it's like a spotlight has been turned on. No matter what direction you move that spotlight follows you and you must now evaluate yourself and ask questions. The book doesn't apply just to alcoholism. You could substitute any number of addictions or bad habits and find the author's journey informative and helpful.I especially liked the fact that the author did not preach or tell the reader what to do, but merely shared her experiences and what worked for her.I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone who may or may not have a problem that they wish to explore.