My Last Hangover

By Inner Peace Press

When it comes to the road to recovery, antiquated notions abound. This book was created to highlight how, in the world today, there are actually many ways to get to and stay on the recovery path. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inner Peace Press
• Release date: Sep 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9781958150030

Book preview

My Last Hangover

Personal Essays by 11 Authors on their Truth About Sobriety

Whitney Bishop, Jill (Jbro) Brown, Kezia Calvert, Jamie Carroll, Shari Hampton, Natalie Hanson, Payton Kennedy, Ester Nicholson, Nicholas Stabenow-Schneider, Mandy West, Tammi Salas

image-placeholder

Inner Peace Press

Copyright © 2022 by Inner Peace Press

Each Author retains copyright of their individual contribution.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without written permission of the publisher except for the use of quotations in a citation. 

To request permission, contact the publisher at:

[e-mail]

Subjects:

SELF-HELP / Substance Abuse & Addictions / Alcohol

BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs

PSYCHOLOGY / Psychopathology / Addiction

image-placeholder

https://innerpeacepress.com/

Contents

1. Overcoming Addiction

Heather Felty

2. Preface

Mandy West

3. Tammi Salas

My Creative Recovery

4. Ester Nicholson

The Recovery Of My Soul

5. Nicholas Stabenow-Schneider

The Revolutionary Change

6. Whitney Bishop

A Life Under My Own Influence

7. Payton Kennedy

Moments of Surrender

8. Jamie Carroll

Re-Membering the Truth of my Soul

9. Natalie Hanson

Mile Markers: The Twelve Steps and My Recovery Journey

10. Kezia Calvert

Untethered

11. Jbro Brown

What Day Is It?

12. Shari Hampton

A Splattering of Blacks, Browns, and Grays

13. Mandy West

No Longer Living the Life I Never Dreamed Of

14. Overcoming Alchohol Addiction

Useful Resources

Overcoming Addiction

Heather Felty

The numbers are staggering and may be a real eye opener. As a culture we are taught to hide (or worse, ignore) obvious problems – any of those things that no one wants to talk about. But this topic is one we cannot ignore. We’re talking about all aspects of our health – physical, mental, and spiritual. We’re talking about getting sober. Mainly from alcohol, but really from any addiction/habit that doesn’t serve our best interests. 

Alcohol creates a dependency that many people have a hard time letting go of. In fact, stats show that one in 14 Americans suffer from some sort of addiction. In our culture, we’ve been told that alcohol in moderation is ok, and even has some health benefits. This is an unhealthy notion, espeically considering the majority of people who drink these days are far from moderate in their consumption. Statistics show that binge drinking is increasing, and with a myriad harmful health consequences.

Health problems include liver, pancreas, heart, central and peripheral nervous system, and muscle diseases. According to the World Health Organization, the consumption of alcohol is one of the top ten risks for worldwide burden of disease. Alcohol is noted as one of the top ten substances that cause cancer. This doesn’t even mention unintentional injuries, which occur from motor-vehicle crashes, falls, drowning, burns, and firearm injuries.

In addition to the host of health issues that result from the misuse of alcohol, our society faces an escalating mental health crisis due to alcohol dependence. From frequent mood swings, increased anxiety, and depression to suicide – not to mention making poor decisions/choices. Some call it self sabotage. 

National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has assembled an impactful website¹ with staggering facts about alcohol use, such as: Alcohol is a factor in about 30 percent of suicides, about 40 percent of fatal burn injuries, about 50 percent of fatal drownings and of homicides, and about 65 percent of fatal falls. 

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) includes harmful use of alcohol, alcohol abuse, and alcohol dependence. In the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), alcohol abuse and alcohol dependence are no longer distinguished and are identified together as AUD. The prevalences of 12-month and lifetime AUD among adults in the United States in 2012 and 2013 were 13.9 percent (32.6 million individuals) and 29.1 percent (64.5 million individuals), respectively. Between 2006 and 2010, there were, on average, nearly 85,000 deaths per year related to alcohol consumption in the United States.² I can only imagine how much those numbers have grown in the last decade. Now we throw in Covid and see cases of AUD (not just alcohol, but drugs overall have had an impact) increasing at a devastating rate. A March 2022 The New York Times article shares some of the depressingly impressive stats:

Binge drinking is defined as a pattern of alcohol consumption that brings the blood alcohol concentration level to 0.08% or more. This pattern of drinking usually corresponds to five or more drinks on a single occasion for men or four or more drinks on a single occasion for women, generally within about two hours.³

Excessive drinking both in the form of heavy drinking (drinking 15 or more drinks per week for men or eight or more drinks per week for women) or binge drinking (drinking five or more drinks on an occasion for men or four or more drinks on an occasion for women), is associated with numerous health problems, including liver cirrhosis (damage to liver cells); pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas); various cancers, including liver, mouth, throat, larynx (the voice box), and esophagus; high blood pressure; psychological disorders; increased injuries, chronic diseases, and poor pregnancy outcomes.⁴

According to the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, more than half of US adults report drinking alcohol in the past 30 days. About 16% of adults binge drink and 6% report heavy drinking. Nearly all adults who drink heavily also binge drink.⁵

It is all just so much! 

Why is it so hard to stop a habit? 

Many who are dependent on alcohol try to fight their alcoholism battle on their own. Unlike many other health problems, those who are affected might find it difficult to seek professional help, as it doesn’t seem to be an emergency situation. What’s more, in addition to any inner conflict about deciding whether or not to accept help, there is also a social stigma around dependency, which often deters people to seek support.

The fact is it is challenging to overcome an alcohol addiction on your own. Depending on the level of addiction, you might need professional help because suddenly stopping alcohol can cause physical reactions such as seizures, but regardless if you see medical support or not, any means of connection with others will support anyone deciding to make a drastic change in their life. The essays in this book share insight on the many different approaches you can take if this is a decision you are currently facing. 

When Mandy approached me with the idea to do a book on sobriety, I thought it was an excellent idea. We need to hear more voices on this topic, to understand the vast difficulty alcohol and other drugs are causing to our society, and to share the hope of recovery. The authors of this timely book share their truth about getting sober and provide resources and groups for you to connect with and that will support you should you be looking for support. I hope their stories inspire you to also move toward your own truth. 

Footnotes

1. https://www.rethinkingdrinking.niaaa.nih.gov

2. https://www.ahrq.gov/

3. https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/faqs.htm

4. https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/data-stats.htm

5. https://www.cdc.gov/brfss/

Heather Felty is the Publisher of Inner Peace Press. 

Preface

Mandy West

When it comes to the road to recovery, antiquated notions abound. This book was created to highlight how, in the world today, there are actually many ways to get to and stay on the recovery path. 

For most of my life, I thought there was only one path to recovery but over recent years I’ve discovered there is actually a series of well-lit trails and they all lead to the same place.  

In this book you’ll read 11 stories of return. Return to living. Return from the darkness of dependency and addiction as told by the people who walked the road. The 11 contributors in this book, myself included, talk about the circumstances that led up to their point of choosing recovery and why it was so important for them to remain in recovery today. 

While no one story is ever exactly the same as another, when it comes to addiction and dependency, universal themes inevitably emerge. 

When I was in the trenches of early sobriety one of the most helpful things for me was to recognize myself in another’s story. Before I began my road to sobriety, I had no idea that anyone else was struggling with the exact same things I was struggling with. When I became aware of this, I felt both threads of hope and exponentially less alone. 

In this book, common themes from people in the midst of struggle range from feelings of never being enough, perfectionism, constructing a façade that projects everything is ok, lack of trust in one’s self, feeling that the next geographical location will fix everything, the legacy of family addiction, self-isolation, living a life of secrecy, living in abusive relationships, denial, shame, unworthiness- and the list goes on.

In this book you will read about the variety of ways that contributors found their way back to themselves. It was done through ways such as 12 step programs, online sober communities, online sober meetings, educational, nutritional, and personal growth programs, reaching out for and accepting help, finally listening to personal intuition, traditional therapy and books, blogs and podcasts. 

There is no one way that works for everyone, every time. It is instead a matter of finding the way or, more accurately, the combination of ways that works for an individual. 

There are healing themes that also emerge in early sobriety and in active recovery. Some of the themes found in this book include creating systems of personal accountability, seeking human connections, stepping into vulnerability, learning to be honest with oneself, reconnecting with one’s inner child, practicing gratitude, finding unharmful replacements for old, harmful patterns and behaviors, spending time in nature, dance and body movement, creative writing and/or journaling, making art and adding spiritual practices. 

My hope is that anyone can pick up this book and find something useful to take away. For people in active recovery, this book can serve as a reminder to be grateful as we look back on the places from where we came and just how much our lives have changed for the better by choosing recovery. 

For the many, many people who keep waking up to what seem like endless Day 1s but who also know they want a change and so they keep trying- this book is for you. 

This book is for the sober-curious. It’s for those who are receiving external or intuitive messages that tell them it’s time for a shift but don’t know where to begin.

This book is for anyone who loves someone who is struggling or has struggled with dependency or addiction. Perhaps this book can offer new perspectives and open the doors to empathy and compassion and a better understanding of addiction and AUD.

Shortly after I stopped drinking in 2018, I came across a poem that perfectly described where I was at that time in my life. It was so precise that it felt like a prayer written just for me but it’s for everyone who has ever stepped into the brand-new reality of a life-changing, life-saving transformation. 

The Magdalene’s Blessing

You hardly imagined standing here,

everything you ever loved

suddenly returned to you,

looking you in the eye

and calling your name.

And now

you do not know

how to abide this ache

in the center of your chest,

where a door

slams shut

and swings open

at the same time,

turning on the hinge

of your aching

and hopeful heart.

I tell you,

this is not a banishment from the garden.

This is an invitation,

a choice,

a threshold,

a gate.

This is your life calling to you

from a place

you could never

have dreamed,

but now that you

have glimpsed its edge,

you cannot imagine

choosing any other way.

So let the tears come

as anointing,

as consecration,

and then let them go.

Let this blessing

gather itself around you.

Let it give you

what you will need

for this journey.

You will not remember the words—

they do not matter.

All you need to remember

is how it sounded

when you stood 

in the place of death and heard the living

call your name.

© Jan Richardson

2017 update: This blessing appears in my book Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons.

Please remember that there are more options, resources, and tools than ever before and that countless others have successfully blazed these trails. 

Entry points are all around… maybe your trailhead will be found in this book. 

Tammi Salas

My Creative Recovery

ON NEW YEAR’S DAY 2014, I committed to a daily art practice that would guide me through the next 365 days. I’d been following artist Lisa Congdon for quite some time and was drawn to her year-long creative accountability projects. The idea of making art every single day for an entire year really spoke to me. The decision was made... I would create my very own creative accountability project and I committed to drawing or painting every single day for the 2014 calendar year.

I had no idea that this simple practice would lead me to sobriety, but it did.

I made a date with myself at the kitchen table each morning and kept it. All I had was an old cigar box full of broken crayons and colored pencils, imperfect and broken, that belonged to my son. They would be the tools I would use to explore the inner calling that was telling me to make something, anything. My nervous system screamed at me to stop before I even started, but I pushed through. What I lacked in talent and self-confidence, I made up for with determination. Every morning, I schlepped myself from the bedroom to the kitchen, usually hungover, and sipped coffee and drew something – my name, geometric shapes, stick figure drawings, or scribbles. It wasn’t about making art, per se, it was more about keeping my word to myself that I was going to show up and do the thing I said I was going to do. And, for some reason, I didn’t want to let myself down this time. 

It felt like a calling from a higher source. I meant business.

During the process, a lot of negative self-talk immediately sprung up and my inner critic had a lot to say. I decided to name her Vikki. I knew Vikki meant well, but she was so fearful, so full of reasons why I shouldn’t be wasting my time on this silly art exploration every day. She kept asking me the same question: Tammi, who do you think you are?