Day 2

October 21, 2007

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.

Carl Jung

Last night I tossed and turned and for the first time for as long as I can remember, I had a dream. It was about my father, who was also an alcoholic, and who died in his 50's of liver disease. In this dream my father was trying to talk to me but I couldn't quite hear him. As a psychologist it's easy to make some guesses about what this dream might mean. Perhaps my father is warning me not to go down the road that he followed. But I can't hear. Perhaps it's just too soon.

I went to work today feeling like an impostor. For the first time in quite a while I'm not hungover or worse yet still drunk, and today I'm getting a glimpse of how people must experience me while under the influence. I've become so good at conning people I'm known as a wonderfully cheerful person, but today it feels like I'm being unfriendly. Much of this is certainly in my own head. I go into my office and shut the door, not wanting to talk to anyone until my first patient arrives.

Later that morning one of my easiest patients arrives. She is a 50 year old woman who is newly single and navigating her way in the dating world for the first time in a long while. She tells me a story about how she had 3 glasses of wine and felt she "lost control" while on a recent date. I want to tell her that I know all about losing control, and that just yesterday I woke up in a pool of my own urine. What I do say, is "So you feel like you lost control, tell me about that" parakeeting back her remarks to her which is the old psychologist stall. Sure we rationalize this technique by calling it "reflecting" but what we're really doing is buying time. In these moments we've lost our insight into the human condition and tread water until we can conjure up another cogent thought.

We end the session talking about the importance of maintaining hope, which is advice I'm giving myself as well as to my client. She looks like she actually believes it and for a moment I do to. Watching her walk out of the office I admire her courage while also silently thinking about how nice a glass of wine would be right now. I have been sober for about 30 hours now and a drink is starting to sound pretty good. I return to my office, jot down some notes from the session and put on a Cd that relaxes me. I realize I can get through the rest of the day without a drink and get ready for my next session.

Later in the day I have a much tougher client. He's an alcoholic, resistant, difficult, and argumentative. I dislike him immensely, while also seeing a lot of myself in him. Entering the room he looks especially pissy and I know this is going to be a long 50 minutes. He begins by remarking how there is "something different about me today" and immediately I again feel like a fraud. I have been drifting through the last 6 months of my life in a daze, and now I have to pick up the pieces of the life that I have built. I'm still a relatively young man and realize there is a large part of me that wants to start again. I do my best to pay attention to that part for the rest of the day.