Читать книгу Out of the Woods - Diane Cameron - Страница 10
ОглавлениеChapter Two
ONE DAY, MANY YEARS AGO, I woke up with a terrible pain in my back. I didn’t remember doing anything in particular to cause it but the pain was bad. I went to a chiropractor and I expected him to fix my back. I thought he’d make a few adjustments and I’d be all better.
The doctor did an examination, and then he had me walk and move and sit and stand up and sit down again while he watched. He had me try some stretches to test my flexibility. And he made notes. He did a few adjustments and then we sat and talked. He talked to me about how I sat and stood and moved. We talked about my writing and reading and my sleeping habits, and how I drove my car.
He explained that I had not hurt my back overnight. The injury had been a slow process of incremental habits building up to cause weakness in some areas of my body and overcompensation of certain other muscles, and to my impatient dismay, my healing would follow the same course: I would have to incorporate new habits over a long period of time.
The doctor told me I would need to change my desk and my chair and also my steering wheel and my pillow—all of which would feel uncomfortable at first because I was used to the unhealthy habits. I would have to learn new ways of sitting, standing, and driving, and by doing that—and doing it over time—my weak muscles would get stronger and my misused muscles would realign.
We start with the physical. Our addiction has almost always caused physical damage—whether it is from drinking, smoking, eating, sex, or other behavioral/process aspects of our disease like television or technology; there is almost always injury to our physical health.
He explained that my back would recover as I learned these new movement patterns, and that I would have to practice them until they became second nature. The repair and healing would come from small, incremental changes over time.
It was much like my recovery from my addiction.
Addiction is a three-part illness (body, mind, and spirit), and it requires a three-part recovery. We start with the physical. Our addiction has almost always caused physical damage—whether it is from drinking, smoking, eating, sex, or other behavioral/process aspects of our disease like television or technology—there is almost always injury to our physical health.
So our recovery began with the physical too. We stopped using, drinking, hurting ourselves with food or work or cigarettes or worry. Then as our recovery progressed, we learned to continue with our physical care. We stopped smoking, lost weight, started to exercise, took yoga classes, or learned to dance. We went to healthcare practitioners (and we followed their advice) and we stopped procrastinating about the dentist, the gym, and learned to eat better.
If we were to take a look in the medicine cabinets of women with more than ten years of recovery, we can see there’s no “one-right-way.” Yes, again, the colorful, messy stage.
One recovering woman may have a bare medicine cabinet with only Band-Aids and aspirin. Another recovering woman looks like she’s got the local pharmacy in her cabinet, although a closer look reveals nonnarcotic and nonalcoholic cough medicine, anti-inflammatories, antidepressants, and tubes of different antibiotic salves. For this woman, these medicines are health remedies and they are used strictly according to directions. In yet another recovering woman’s medicine cabinet you’ll find Chinese herbs, vitamins A to Z, St. John’s Wort, arnica cream, and Bach Flower remedies; for her it’s all about natural choices. And still others may feel that even an herbal remedy is off limits for their recovery.
LOOKING GOOD AND FEELING GOOD
At some point in recovery most women begin to take better care of their bodies. It’s a natural progression. Maybe dieting didn’t work before because we were drinking half of our daily calorie allotment, as well as eating. Or maybe we had to stop jogging in early recovery because our exercise compulsion was out of control. But at some point in our double-digit years we’ll begin to look at diet, exercise, and our overall health.
We also find that as our life gets better we want to have more energy to enjoy that life and enjoy it longer. That too will lead us to pay attention to nutrition, fitness, and preventative healthcare. We know that becoming physically strong can increase our psychological strength as well. Most of us have seen the articles and news reports that detail the research showing that regular exercise can help us to manage stress. Women in recovery—who may have a variety of additional stressors—can benefit especially.
MEDICATION USE
An important part of taking care of our bodies is being mindful of medications. This is always a tricky area for people in recovery, and as people in long-time recovery we have to be especially aware. It’s possible that the longer we are in recovery, the more comfortable we become, and the more “normal” we may feel, especially with issues around healthcare and medicines.
It’s also true that the longer we are in recovery, the older we are, and that simple fact of aging means additional health-related issues. Now, I’m not a doctor and even the doctors we meet as comrades in recovery are not experts on medications for recovering people. We need to turn to true experts—our own physicians who know about our history of addiction, or doctors who specialize in addiction medicine.
For example, most of us avoid the class of medicines called benzodiazepines (or benzos, in slang parlance). Benzos include Valium, Xanax, Ativan, Klonopin, Librium, etc., and are often prescribed for anxiety or depression. Any usage should be only at need, and then strictly supervised by a doctor who knows us and knows of our addiction.
Also to be avoided are prescription painkillers and other opioid-based drugs: morphine, methadone, Vicodin, Oxycontin, Percocet, Dilaudid, Lortab, etc. A trip to the dentist can lead to disaster for a person in recovery who takes these, even as directed, unless strict precautions are taken.
Aging bodies can lead to new hips, new knees, and back surgeries. And those often come with the need for temporary use of serious pain medications.
We must beware of stimulants, as well. Illegal ones include cocaine and meth, of course, but also prescriptions, such as Ritalin and Concerta. Even some over-the-counter asthma medications have a stimulating effect. There is even some controversy in twelve-step circles over the use of so-called “energy drinks,” or excessive caffeine consumption.
We also want to be careful even as we face the good news of better medicine. Aging bodies can lead to new hips, new knees, and back surgeries. And those often come with the need for temporary use of serious pain medications. We have all known people in long-term recovery who have been led to relapse by correctly and legitimately prescribed pain medication, so this is an area for special care. When we face a surgery or treatment that does require pain management we need to tell everyone ahead of time. Tell your doctors, recovery friends, sponsor, and family members before the surgery. Make a plan so that it’s okay for them to check on you when you are using the prescribed medications.
But not all medications are prescribed. We also want to be careful with remedies we buy in the drugstore or at the health food store. A popular tea called kombucha is a true health aid for many people with digestive problems. It’s sold in health food stores. But we have to be careful. Kombucha is a fermented beverage. It contains alcohol. That’s one example.
A joke I heard recently with an implied warning goes like this: “Be careful with Geritol and NyQuil; there’s a reason they come with a shot glass.” Yes, those are but two of many over-the-counter medicines that contain a high percentage of alcohol. Read labels, and avoid ingesting even a small percentage of alcohol; even if your drug of choice was marijuana, why risk relapsing over a shot of 50-proof NyQuil?
MENOPAUSE
Women who stay in recovery for a long time will have to face perimenopause and menopause exactly like women who are not in recovery. Yes, real life again. But women in recovery have a few special considerations. For a woman in recovery, menopause can be a time of additional vulnerability.
One of my early sponsors joked about recovering women and menopause saying, “The hormonal swings of menopause can make you feel like you are drunk, and if you have ever been drunk, then you know that the best way to fix that is to have another drink.” So we want to be careful as those midlife hormonal changes begin.
Some of the physiological changes for midlife women include loss of muscle mass, changing levels of sex hormones like estrogen and progesterone, and a dropping metabolic rate. Again, these are all pretty normal occurrences, but the consequences and how we feel about them can impact our recovery.
A study from the University of Colorado suggests that over the roughly ten-year period of perimenopause through menopause, about 50 percent of women will gain ten to fifteen pounds because of their lowered metabolic rate. It’s safe to say that few women are happy about gaining weight and for most women, both in and out of recovery, that brings feelings of being unattractive, less desirable, and getting old that can jeopardize our sense of well-being.
Menopause raises medication and health questions. Night sweats, insomnia, mood swings, and libido changes all have a physiological basis, but they have emotional and behavioral manifestations, too.
Tabitha Kane, a gynecologist in Albany, New York, confirms, “Most women will see a decrease in libido and they will experience vaginal dryness. The insomnia can be really significant, with resultant irritability. It’s a stressful time for any woman. There is a general increase in irritability. Divorces occur.”
Concentration and memory can be a problem too, which, for women whose self-image is tied to their professional functioning, is especially hard. “They will take a hit there too,” says Dr. Kane. And anxiety can increase. “Some women feel like they’re going a little crazy.” So with all those factors combined, menopause can significantly affect our relationships and self-image.
Several doctors have confirmed that women who have no history of depression could have more than twice the risk of depression during the menopausal transition. “Yes, this does resolve soon after menopause, but for some women that ‘transition’ can take a couple of years,” according to Dr. Kane.
So how do we sort out our behavior as we are going through menopause? You’ve heard the jokes:
“Question: What is the difference between a terrorist and a woman in menopause?”
Answer: “You can negotiate with a terrorist.”
Yes, it’s funny because there’s an element of truth.
For a woman in recovery who is trying to be self-aware and mindful of her behavior and her communication—how can she know if her less-than-desirable behavior is evidence of a character defect or the result of declining estrogen?
We have to be mindful at this time because we could either use menopause as an excuse not to take responsibility for our behavior or we could be tempted to try a chemical remedy for our sadness or our anger. We might recall and start to romanticize the ways that wine, marijuana, donuts, or the attention of a new man made us feel better in the past. And yet, we also need to know when professional medical attention and even prescription medications are the right next step.
WHICH BRINGS US TO SEX
For many women it was something in the sexual sphere that got us into recovery. It was either too much or too little, and often it was with the wrong people. Better sex and better attitudes toward sex may be a marker of how far we’ve come. Pre-recovery, we may have had sex with too many people or the wrong person, or sex was bad because we were numbed out or we didn’t have enough sense of self to ask for what we needed.
Even in early recovery we may still have done it with the wrong people—that cute newcomer in our home group or the married guy who was thirteenth-stepping us. But the good news is that as we get better in recovery, our sex life can get better too.
When I was twenty years old I knew so little about sex. When I was twenty-five I thought I knew some things but I still didn’t know enough. At thirty I was learning how to give pleasure, but it took almost ten more years to learn how to receive it. And surprisingly, sex does get better with age.
Yes, I always knew that “older” people had sex. When I was thirty-three years old, my seventy-year-old mother, who had been widowed many years, was newly remarried. She told me that she and her second husband, Don, had sex almost every day. I thought, Good for her, but I also secretly thought, How good could sex really be at their ages? Now I know. And I’m sorry I laughed at the people who told me that sex gets better as you age. I didn’t know. But now I do.
At fifty-nine, my sex life is better than I ever imagined. Yes, I wish my skin was smoother and I wish I was firmer, but I now know more about how to give and receive pleasure. Having confidence is part of it—that comes with recovery too—as is learning what works, and being fearless about trying things, and then trying them again.
This is a gift of recovery we don’t talk about much in meetings, not even in women-only meetings. But I have learned about my sexual needs and how to meet them. And even that has been a process over years of recovery.
In my pre-recovery and early recovery years all of my character defects applied to my sexual behavior and my sexual sensibility, just as they did to my workplace and social behaviors: I was a people-pleaser, not always honest with others and rarely honest with myself. I didn’t know myself well enough to be honest.
In those days before recovery, I managed my fear or anxiety with alcohol or other drugs or food, and I was alternately obsessed with my body or wildly out of touch with it—so truly experiencing the sensual didn’t have much of a chance.
But I was always an athlete—runner, gymnast, swimmer—so I knew something of the body’s mechanics; hence, I learned sex mechanically too, and as a codependent I read every article about how to please men. I knew how to seduce without ever feeling seductive. Yeah, I faked frequently.
In those days before recovery, I managed my fear or anxiety with alcohol or other drugs or food, and I was alternately obsessed with my body or wildly out of touch with it—so truly experiencing the sensual didn’t have much of a chance.
But my saving grace was twelve-step recovery, a sponsor who was a nurse, and oddly, Helen Gurley Brown—the longtime editor of Cosmopolitan magazine and the author of many books including Sex and the Single Girl, which, despite the title, was all about work and careers, not libido. (Helen was married to the movie producer David Brown, who knew the importance of an impressive title.)
Helen’s later books were about relationships and aging and sex. In her book The Late Show, which she wrote in her sixties, Helen made the point that women over fifty have to decide that they want an orgasm—and then go for it. She got my attention. When I first read that statement I wasn’t exactly sure what she meant, but I have since come to understand.
I AM RESPONSIBLE
It turns out that “going for it” is about self-esteem, self-care, assertiveness, and the best kind of seduction. I can’t tell you how glad I am to give up faking it, and in that process I’ve learned valuable information about my own erotic sensibility. (By erotic sensibility I mean what it takes to get in the mood, which fantasies work for me, and exactly what needs to happen in the, um, athletic sphere.) A woman does need to take responsibility for her orgasm. It may sound a tad “transactional” but it’s true. I mean, this too is about being happy, joyous, and free.
Taking responsibility means getting in the mood, using fantasies, erotica, maybe even toys, and it means speaking up. There are countless good books about sexual communication, and with the growing baby boomer demographic, there are many good books on how to keep sex energetic and spirited in a long-term relationship. Women in recovery are passing those books to their friends and they—the books and the friends—are worth it.
AWKWARD OR UNCOMFORTABLE SEX
Sometimes, and it can happen in new relationships or in longstanding ones, sex gets uncomfortable or awkward. What does a recovering woman do then? Maybe something doesn’t work; maybe you can’t “perform” or he can’t. Or one of you wants something that the other person can’t or won’t do. Or you both want to try something new and it bombs.
This is, I think, the critical moment when you know whether you are a couple or not. How do you handle sex that doesn’t work? Do you laugh? Yes, with each other. Do you cry? Maybe that, too. And then, hopefully you also talk. To each other.
“This is us,” I have said. “This is our sex life, not anybody else’s; we get to make the rules.”
“Yep, this is us,” he says.
And then we hold each other.
SURROUNDED BY HELP
All of this means that we need to take care of our bodies. Most of us will need some outside help. It might be from our doctor, gynecologist, therapist, nutritionist, and maybe a massage therapist, coach, or personal trainer.
Our bodies are the vehicles that carry around our minds and our spirits. So as recovery progresses, we need to keep investing in learning about and caring for our physical well-being.
AN IMPORTANT PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: KEGEL EXERCISES
This is information I wish I’d had years ago: Kegel exercises will make your sex life better, with or without a partner. When I learned about Kegels, I swore I’d spread the word to other women, so here goes: To have orgasms and better orgasms you have to have strong pelvic floor muscles. I’m not a doctor, so I won’t do an anatomy lesson here but you can look it up. You can Google “Kegel” or ask your doctor or a good friend or your sponsor.
Then do your Kegel exercises. You’ll be glad. I promise.
TWIGS FOR CHAPTER TWO:
Physical: Bring the Body
• What new thing are you doing for your healthy body? A new food? Exercise technique? What did you love as a kid—swimming, dancing, hiking, biking? Could you try that now?
• Attend one of the many women’s networking nights with a focus on women’s health. Your local Chamber of Commerce or YWCA may be the host.
• Invite a friend and try a new fun kind of exercise: NIA (Non-Impact Aerobics or Neuromuscular Integrative Action), dance, yoga for round bodies, tap dance or clogging.
