Fourteen years ago today I took my last drink. I’m not sure exactly what it was because much of that night remains a blur – in and out of a blackout. I remember going to a party where there were massive martini glasses on each table filled with goldfish. I was determined to SAVE THE GOLDFISH! when the clean-up crew started flushing them down the toilet. Ah, the joys of being the last one at the party.

I have a few other snippets of drunken debauchery from that night but I clearly remember waking up and my neighbor coming over and asking if I was okay because my front door was wide open when he went out to get his paper that morning and some of my clothes — the kind of clothing that neighbors usually aren’t privy to seeing — were strewn about my front yard.

I stumbled into a 12-Step meeting later that day, sat in the back and realized I was in the right place — even though I thought it was insane that these people could be laughing at stories like mine from the night before! How dare they take this so lightly! Can’t they see how much pain I am in? What is wrong with these people?

A guy from Flagstaff, Arizona called me the other day out of the blue. He wanted to talk about some of my writings and we covered a lot of ground. A co-worker and I had a smorgasbord of a conversation yesterday – discussing parenting, quirky, brilliant friends and investigative journalism.

What struck me about both conversations is that the topic of mindfulness came up. Seems kind of weird because mindfulness isn’t a topic that gets dropped into  conversations with strangers and co-workers. I’m taking it as a sign that I need to bone-up on my mindfulness practice.

I first learned about mindfulness when I got sober 14 years ago. As part of my 12-Step journey I decided to research some of the world’s great religions. I was brought up by a devout Irish-Catholic mother and attended a Catholic elementary school. I figured between mom and mother superior, I had the Catholic thing down. But I had never read the Bible. Parts of the Bible had been read TO me. But I had never read the whole thing.

There is something to be said for food.

I’m about halfway through a 24-hour fast for my colonoscopy tomorrow and my mood is turning — fast. One of the first things we learn in a 12-Step program is HALT: Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. When you want to indulge the urge to pop a few Xanax or pour a stiff one, ask yourself if you are hungry, angry, lonely and/or tired. I apply the same thing to my depression, especially lately since I have had a couple of losses – relationship ending and my daughter going back to college.

Right now, it’s hunger that is messing with my head.

I have food issues anyway. When I am in a depression I stop eating. I have no hunger. I just forget to eat. The longer and deeper the depression, the more weight I lose. I don’t feel I’m starving myself. I just don’t want to eat. So, I stop eating, which makes my depression worse.

When I am not in a depression, I can spend waaaaaaay too much time thinking about food. I feel hungry all the time, I crave sugar, I want chocolate. I work out like a fiend. I always feel fat, even though number-wise I’m just right. I weigh myself a lot. It’s called anorexia.

Today is the day the rubber hits the road. The pedal hits the metal. My alcoholism, depression, bipolar hit the proverbial fan. And a bunch of other stupid idioms that somehow seem appropriate right now.

My five-year relationship with a childhood sweetheart ended after he casually mentioned, while describing his “epic” vacation, that his ex-wife tagged along. He couldn’t believe I wasn’t more understanding because, really, it was in the kids’ best interest. Really?

The last time something like this happened  I ended up in a major, major, major depression – a frog’s hair from a bottle or three of chardonnay – and on disability for two months. Depression is a bitch and relationship angst is my biggest trigger.

So, today I get to blow the dust off of all those tools I have acquired in countless therapy sessions, 12-step meetings, self-help books, feeble attempts at meditation and a stint in co-dependency treatment center. I am hoping they work. I am praying they work. I am counting on them working, along with my medications.

There are three dates I commemorate every year: December 18 – my birthday; August 27 – my sobriety date; and today April 25, – the date I slipped into my last – and hopefully final – major depression.

April 25 is the day the lights went out. That’s how I describe it. Game over. Done. I had tried to keep it together but on the morning of April 25, 2006 but I bonked. The woman who had run marathons and triathlons, restored her 80-year-old house and raised her daughter as a single-working mom could go no further.

I got up early that morning feeling spiritually and emotionally bankrupt. Crying but numb. I dragged my ass to the gym, thinking the endorphins from a spin class might help. I closed my eyes and pedaled so hard that my cheeks flapped like a racehorse and foam formed in the corners of my mouth.

When I finally got off the bike, my legs wobbled and I waited for the endorphin rush but there was none. Just failure, exhaustion and brutal anxiety

Source: Bravo TV

Sometimes the power of a bad example is as powerful as a good example. I’m thinking of Kim Richards, one of the housewives on The Housewives of Beverly Hills.

My daughter got me hooked on that show when she came home from college on winter break.  There was a time – not too long ago – when that little intellectual dilettante in me would have dismissed such a show as a complete waste of time only to be watched by the mindless, vapid masses. Thankfully, I shut that little dilettante up and now I’m watching all the re-runs – thank you very much.

Watching Kim’s slow, self-destruction over this last season is good for me. I am, like Kim, am a single, somewhat middle-aged, mother whose child has grown up. We are both trying to keep our hair blonde and minimize our wrinkles. I am not going to pronounce Kim an alcoholic, but let’s just say there was a day – before I got sober 13 years ago – that I would have partied with Kim in a heartbeat.

I don’t think about David Funchess much anymore. I watched him die on April 22, 1986 in Florida’s electric chair. He was the first Vietnam Veteran executed in the United States. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder had yet to be discovered when Funchess, a highly-decorated combat Marine, fatally stabbed a couple during a hold-up in Jacksonville in 1974.

Death Row, Florida State Prison

I was a cub reporter and was morbidly thrilled to have the opportunity to cover an execution. The little motel where I stayed in Starke, Florida was excited to see me, too, and had posted “Welcome Christine” on its roadside marquee. This story would be the crown jewel in my growing collection of clips – mostly stories of last night’s school board meeting and car wrecks. That’s how I looked at it.

On a personal level, I was hoping the execution would finally settle my doubts about the death penalty. I was brought up Catholic but having covered a few murders, I was not convinced that the death penalty was unjust. I was on the fence. I had heard of reporters who had fainted or barfed covering executions. I did not know how I would react.

The great thing about being a journalist in south Florida is you get some really weird assignments. Couple of years ago I went alligator hunting with some wounded vets courtesy of the Wounded Warrior Project. I’ve been assigned to go scuba diving to cover damage to coral reefs. Chased oil in the bayous of Louisiana after the BP disaster. Been to more crime scenes than I can remember and lived to write about three hurricanes. I walked on death row a few times. Watched a man die in the electric chair. Even sat in the electric chair during one visit.

So, last Saturday night when I walked into the newsroom for my occasional, obligatory weekend shift and my editor said, “I’m going to rock your world, I knew it was going to be an interesting evening: “You’re going to Mar-a-Lago to interview the governor and his wife,” she said.

Mar-a-Lago is the palatial, oceanfront estate and swank club owned by Donald Trump on Palm Beach. I’ve been there a few times. Once I rode my bike to a fundraiser luncheon and waited in the valet line with the Bentley’s and Roll’s. Amused the hell out of the valets.

Anyway, I went home, put on the LBD (Little Black Dress), lipstick and my red, patent leather, pointy-toed stilettos and headed over to The Donald’s. The thing about these $500/plate galas is you realize, immediately, that rich people – the top one percent of the ten percent – really aren’t that different from you and me. They have money. Lots of money. But that’s it. They are still people – human beings. We may think they are insensitive, arrogant, self-righteous, clueless bigots but I am no longer willing to write them all off as insensitive, arrogant, self-righteous, clueless bigots. They’re people who just happen to have a lot of money. A whole lot of money.

My meds FINALLY came in the mail. Amen. I take three meds, but I ran out of one before the refills came in the mail. Three days without one of the meds. Three days. My brain was starting to feel squishy. I had a horrible nightmare and I could feel a tsunami size headache building behind my eyes. Just a day after resuming the med I felt like my delightful self again.

Am I an idiot or what? I went to my nurse practitioner today and told her about my little refill snafu. She writes me scripts for three months worth of each of my meds. I send them to my insurance company’s pharmacy  and, voila, three months worth of meds arrive in the mail. She explained that I don’t have to wait until I am almost out of my meds to send in the refill prescriptions. I told her I knew that. She shook her head. I know. There is no excuse.

I like Pat, my nurse practitioner. I see her every three months and have been doing that for about five years, unless she changes the dosage.  Then I have to call her and visit her every week for awhile. Kind of a pain in the butt but I trust Pat with my life. She saved me, along with my therapist. You gotta trust the person writing your scripts. This is very, very important. It’s not like the kind of trust you put in the doctor who writes you a script for a Z-Pak and a couple days later that infection is gone.

I am talking about the kind of trust you put in someone to whom you have given your brain. Literally. You have to really, really trust this person because you have only one brain. We’re not talking about kidneys or eyes and ears. You lose one of those and you can still live. But you have one brain. That’s it.

And so that was Christmas…

Another one over, and just one more holiday remaining in the emotional trifecta known as Thanksgiving, Christmas/Hanukkah and New Years. We’re almost there! Just a few more days and the tree comes down, the sales begin and my moods no longer zip around like a hockey puck.

Of the three, New Years is the easiest for me. Thanksgiving kicks off the season with a guilt-inspiring glutton fest. As for Christmas, there seems to be no escaping those despicably sweet diamond commercials or those damn Jingle-Bells-barking dogs. New Years is the home stretch. I am almost there. I have survived.  I have persevered. I have used all the tools given to me by my therapist and the meds prescribed by my doctor. I refuse to ring in the New Year looking like those triathletes who crawl across the finish-line at the Ironman in Hawaii.

My mental health needs a nice, relaxing New Years. I need simplicity, serenity and gratitude – not pointy hats, noisemakers, champagne and wet, drunk kisses. How will I do this? Ix-nay on the booze. Amongst the reverie it’s easy to forget that alcohol IS a depressant. I know it’s hard to believe when you’re dancing on the bar at 11:59 p.m. but trust me, alcohol IS a depressant. Think of it as guilt and regret in a liquid form. Your first thoughts in the new year should not be where you left your car, purse or underwear.