Drinking to Survive

The extreme nature of my alcoholism that hits me quite hard is the fact that there were times that I HAD TO drink to be able to stay alive. Literally. I remember my meeting I had with a gentleman to discuss getting into treatment/rehab, and one of his questions was: how often and how much do you drink? My response: every single day. I always had a liter of vodka in my freezer and drank about that much every day, sometimes more, sometimes slightly less, depending on if I passed out. There wasn't one day I could get through without drinking. My drink of choice at that time was straight, chilled vodka, sometimes with a Gatorade chaser, sometimes with a cigarette chaser. (I still have a hard time drinking certain flavors of Gatorade.) Toward the end of the that meeting (which was interrupted by calls from my work office and from my property manager letting me know that Sheriff's deputies were looking for me because they had a warrant for my arrest for violating my bond), that man told me in no uncertain terms that I would have to continue drinking until a bed opened up for me in treatment; if I stopped on my own, death was a very real possibility. To this alcoholic, I barely heard the life-threatening nature of his warning; I heard I had a green light to keep on drinking...music to my ears! I made the most of that mandate.
At this time, I was a practicing attorney. I would wake up in the morning and always have to decide if I could handle going to work that day, which usually involved going to at least a few different courts to handle cases. (I mainly practiced criminal defense.) If I thought I could manage to walk out the door, I would start by taking a shower. When I emerged from the shower, I would stand for several minutes in front of the mirror, barely able to look myself in the eye, and shake profusely, gag and have severe dry heaves, and sweat like crazy with tears running down my face from my always blood-shot eyes. The tears weren't from crying; the tears were from the physical torment my body was experiencing.
I would eventually finish "getting ready for work." I always looked like shit because I was so physically ill that I couldn't spend much time trying to look presentable. Every single step of the days I'd go to work was overwhelming. Often I'd forget one thing or another that I needed for the day, including case files. One of the most telling and humiliating occurrences during those work days was how much I'd be shaking. I can't even count the times that I would have to sign documents, directly in front of judges, clerks, and fellow attorneys, and my hand would be shaking uncontrollably. Sometimes I'd have to steady my writing hand with my other just to create some semblance of a signature. I'm pretty sure I wasn't fooling many people, as I looked like an alcoholic mess.
After treatment, I went around to various courts to talk to the same judges, clerks, etc. to explain that I was trying to pick up the pieces and get back on track. People are SO forgiving and understanding! Unfortunately, I wasn't "cured" and didn't utilize the tools treatment gave me so it became "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." People will forgive you, but they won't forget. Moreover, they don't, and shouldn't, give you countless chances to get your shit together. In my case, that was more than understandable, as I had the enormous responsibility of helping people during some of their most trying times in life, not to mention I had their freedom in my hand. It makes me sick to my stomach today to think about that. How dare I.
Post-treatment, once I put the booze down for awhile (due to a probation violation and threats from my significant other that he was going to leave me if I didn't quit), I "coped" by using prescription drugs, namely Ativan and Xanax. I've heard before that Xanax can be a drink in pill form. That was true for me. I recall showing up at court one day, all hopped up on Xanax, only to receive word from the staff that the judge was removing me from the case. When I asked why, the response was that I was drunk. Oh, the indignation I felt at that false accusation! Immediately upon leaving court, I went to a drug/alcohol testing facility to request not only a Breathalyzer, but a urine test for alcohol that would detect the presence of alcohol as far back as the previous three days. Upon receiving the negative results, I wrote a scathing letter to that judge, basically saying: "how dare you! I quit drinking!" I eventually received an apology, justified in my mind at the time, but let's keep it real: she was right; she merely named the wrong substance. The way the addict mind thinks though! It's incredibly disturbing. Thank God she protected "my" client from me.