How Do I Get to Tomorrow?
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Description
Did you know 1 in 4 suicides involve alcohol? Some studies actually place it closer to 40%. Where is the line between having a drink to decompress and getting black out drunk because you don’t want to exist? This week, we talk to Ana Marie Cox and Air Britt, about how alcohol helped them feel comfortable in their own skin…until it didn’t anymore. How do you go from waking up wanting to die, to feeling grateful every day that you’re still here?
This episode features Ana Marie Cox, host of With Friends Like These, and Air Britt, Senior Director of the SAFE (Stop The Addiction Fatality Epidemic) Project.
Resources from the episode:
- Listen to Air’s episode of In Recovery, another Lemonada original
- Tune into Air’s podcast, Beauty in the Grit
- Check out Ana’s podcast, With Friends Like These
- Wondering if your alcohol use is becoming a problem? Take the CAGE quiz
- When Someone You Care About is Struggling With Addiction
- Find an AA meeting near you
If you or someone you know is struggling emotionally or feeling hopeless, it’s important to talk to someone about it now. Contact one of the resources below for a free, confidential conversation with a trained counselor anytime.
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
Crisis Text line: Text “Connect” to 741-741
The Trevor Project: 1-866-488-7386
Season 2 of Last Day is created in partnership with The Jed Foundation. The Jed Foundation (JED) empowers teens and young adults with the skills and support to grow into healthy, thriving adults. You can find tips, tools and resources for taking care of your emotional health available at: www.jedcares.org/lastday
To follow along with a transcript and/or take notes for friends and family, go to https://lemonadamedia.com/show/last-day shortly after the air date.
Stay up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia.
Click this link for a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this show and all Lemonada shows.
Transcript
SPEAKERS
Ana Marie Cox, Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Ariel Britt, Speaker 4
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 00:00
If you are just tuning in, I encourage you to go back and start listening from Episode 1, it’ll make more sense. As for what you’ll hear today, we have worked hard to ensure that our storytelling around suicide is as safe as possible. But we can’t address this issue by tiptoeing around it. Instead of warning, who should and shouldn’t listen before each episode, we want to encourage you to press pause if and when you need to. We’ll be here when you’re ready to press play.
Ariel Britt
From the very beginning, I came into the world screaming and I feel like there’s a part of me that always will be screaming for some reason. When I put alcohol into my body, for the first time, it was, I was like, “oh my gosh, I can relax.” And it was the first time in my experience that I felt a sense of peace.
Ana Marie Cox
That first time I got drunk, I realized like, “Oh my God, this must be what other people feel like all the time.” They’re not paralyzed by insecurity. They’re not thinking all the time about what other people are thinking. And I kind of chased that feeling for the next 25 years.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Yesterday, my daughter asked me to rank my favorite Disney movies. And of course, number one was Inside Out. This isn’t something comes up for debate. And if you haven’t seen it, I strongly recommend that you press pause right now. Go watch it, and then come back. It’s just such a brilliant way to literally illustrate how much is going on inside of our heads. It can be so loud, and each of us has our own way of turning down the volume. One way that’s fairly common. Alcohol. One of the first facts I remember learning this season. Was that one in four suicides involve alcohol. Some studies actually place it closer to 40%. Alcohol comes up a lot, actually. In the research. Suicide risk for people with a history of dependence is up to 10 times greater than those in the general population.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 02:11
And 14 times higher than for people who inject drugs. I think these numbers are particularly scary, because a lot of people drink, especially right now. It is such a culturally acceptable form of escapism. I mean, I had to take my kids to the doctor last week, and my toddler was having one of those epic tantrums that you see online that force everyone in the room to stare with absolute horror. And I was kind of dragging him out of the office and flippantly said to the receptionist, “oh, I need a drink.” And she responded without missing a beat. It’s five o’clock somewhere. I mean, there are t-shirts that say this. But drinking when miserable is so fundamentally backwards, because alcohol is itself a depressant.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
So this week, we talked to women. About how they figured out. How to exist in this world without it. I’m Stephanie Wittels Wachs, and this is LAST DAY.
Ariel Britt
Just even in my skin, I’m a very sensitive person. I feel the world’s pain, my own pain, trauma, joy, you know, everything. I feel it.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
This is Ariel Britt who goes by Air. Last week, we talked about highly sensitive people. Folks who just absorb everything and carry it with them. Air falls into this camp for sure. Even as a baby, she experienced things so intensely.
Ariel Britt
My mom paints this picture of me being really uncomfortable. Being put down. I didn’t like the feel of grass. And oftentimes I felt like, like I had leprosy just like this itchiness from the inside out. This rawness. And then I would find myself not even just in my body, but in my mind, trying to manage that. Trying to manage the thoughts.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 04:20
And her thoughts were as irritating as that scratchy grass. She was easily overwhelmed.
Ariel Britt
This is how my brain is wired. And it’s not like most folks, I used to think that everyone may be fat like me at some point, but nobody was saying it. But I’m always constantly worrying about these higher-level things. I just would also just constantly feel alone.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Air grew up in Michigan with her mom and three sisters. When she was little, her mom carved out a space for all of that sensitivity. She’d hold Air on her hip while she cleaned the house. into chores and cook dinner. But she also wanted her to be strong.
Ariel Britt
One thing that she really instilled in us was education. Making sure that we were always focused on doing better because as black young girls, how else were we going to be able to succeed in the society, she just saw that as a pathway for herself. And that’s how she was raised. And so I’ve had to, you know, assimilate and find my way in predominantly white spaces, because my mom would bust us for an hour just to make sure that we could go to that really good school.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Unfortunately, that really good school, sometimes made Air feel really bad. By the time she got there, she already knew that she was tuned in to this frequency that no one else could hear. But she was also struck by the fact that she didn’t just feel different.
Ariel Britt
I realized I wasn’t white. When I started going to school in that same way. My mom would say, “Oh, you have the most beautiful skin.” And she would do that. My sisters are light skinned. And so I felt colorism too, on how they were seen as beautiful and I wasn’t. And it just felt like the wave from a very, I just felt like there was always a loom like, I felt like this is gonna be hard. I got to figure this out, you know? I got to figure this out. And so when you’re going at that with a four-year old’s mind, and how you’re going to navigate life like it’s, you’re doomed, right? Like you’re doomed after you trying to figure out how to survive at such a young age.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 06:30
This brings us to the other story of this episode. A woman who, for her own reasons, also felt doomed early on.
Ana Marie Cox
So, I believe I was born an alcoholic, and I come from a long line of alcoholics and addicts.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
This is Ana Marie Cox. She’s a well-known political columnist, and host of the podcast WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE. Before, she was a poised Media Pro. She was kind of a nerd.
Ana Marie Cox
You know, I was a completely self-conscious kid, who was very awkward. I had glasses starting in third grade, and they were like, big coke bottle glasses. And that made me bad at sports, which I didn’t realize until much later in life, that the reason I’m bad at sports is that I can’t see. Like, it’s not that I’m just like, incredibly clumsy, which is what I kind of thought is that if you throw a ball at me, like, I’m gonna have a hard time figuring out. Yeah. So that, you know, and I just preferred the company of books to people.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Growing up, it was just her and her mom who drink pretty heavily. But in a way that was functional enough to fly under the radar. Like Air, Ana didn’t really notice that something was up until she started comparing herself to the other kids.
Ana Marie Cox
So I just knew that my household was different. Like I knew that other you know, little girls and boys didn’t have to probably take care of their parent as much as I did.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 08:10
There was a lot of day-to-day uncertainty. She couldn’t be sure if the electric bill would get paid, or if her mom would be there to pick her up after school.
Ana Marie Cox
But the part that I really didn’t understand was unusual or dysfunctional, was the emotional chaos. Like, the administrative chaos is something I can tell you about as a signifier. Like if I tell you like she forgot to pick me up from school a lot. You’re like, “Oh, yeah, that’s a sign that’s totally a sign.” But the thing that probably had a bigger effect on me was not knowing who I was going to have dinner with. Was it going to be sad mom? Who doesn’t really cook and instead just pours herself wine after wine after wine? And I have to kind of scrounge? Or is it like super hyper, manic happy mom who will then pour me a drink because she doesn’t want to drink alone?
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Everyone in the house was in survival mode. Her mom was doing her best to parent and protect her addiction at the same time. And Ana was reeling from her parents’ divorce and looking for a way out.
Ana Marie Cox
I’ve thought about suicide since I was a kid. Like we had a big atrium in our house. And there is this when the stairs went up, you could you know, look down to the entry way and it was a rock tiled. And I remember standing up there and looking down and being like, well, if I jumped headfirst I wouldn’t be alive anymore.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Ana, is a journalist for a reason. She’s got an innate curiosity and says about all sorts of “hmm” things. But this “hmm” marked a real turning point.
Ana Marie Cox 10:02
Like just it was like a piece of information. Does that make sense?
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Yeah.
Ana Marie Cox
It wasn’t like, I’m gonna act on this, or I want to act on this. It was just like; this is a thing that could happen. And that’s the part that and I say with love is not normal.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
And so, so you would have that thought, very young. And then what was the next thought?
Ana Marie Cox
For a long time, it was just like, that’s an it turned into something that was like, well, that will be an option, if I really need it.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Mm hmm.
Ana Marie Cox
But it wasn’t necessarily tied to depression for a long time. Like, it was just like, things are really bad, I feel really bad. You know, things get really, really bad. I can always kill myself.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
It was like a tool in the toolbox. It was an option.
Ana Marie Cox
Yeah. I get to a point where this is unbearable, I can always kill myself.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
The other tool in the toolbox. Alcohol.
Ana Marie Cox
I got drunk for the first time around 13. And loved it. Yeah, my form of the disease was escaping myself. Being me it was too much. And that’s why I think eventually, like the combo that I got to was bourbon and benzos, which I was talking about that at a meeting went to him in some person who is really knew was like, that’s not a fun combination at all. I was like, no. No, it’s not fun. It’s oblivion, it’s just you blackout immediately. And that’s kind of what I was looking for. I just didn’t want to exist.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Which brings us back to Air, who very much wanted to exist, but struggled to do it comfortably around other people. That was until she got to high school and discovered drinking.
Ariel Britt 12:02
And I remember, just this moment of a few can’t beat them, join them. And when I put alcohol into my body, for the first time, it was, I was like, “Oh, my gosh, I can relax” I literally can breathe, and relax. And it was the first time in my experience that I felt a sense of peace with just within my body that I could show up that I was kind of dumbed down for my capacity to be such a sensitive person. And I could laugh and I could play and I was the joke in the life of the party. And it felt so good in the beginning, until I felt like I needed it. Right? And so the voice in my head was saying, like, we have to do this again, as much as possible and keep it going. And that’s when it became a problem.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
As her addiction got stronger. So did that voice inside of her head.
Ariel Britt
Thinking about addiction in the way that I’ve experienced it in my life. It’s this moment where the party’s over. And it’s not fun anymore. But yeah, I found myself still participating in using. It was as if there was a moment where it was no longer about feeling good. It was, it became a need. And I didn’t even know it. Because it’s so interesting, the way that the disease of addiction works. It has this capacity to control the only organ in your body, your brain. That tells you don’t have a problem. That tells you to keep on going. It’s so hard to distinguish.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
This is the fucked-up part about addiction. I mean, there are many fucked up parts, but this is one of them. If there is a problem with your heart, every symptom is your body trying to sound the alarm and get help. But when your brain is dealing with addiction, it’s like, Nope, nothing to see here. Everything’s fine. You just keep doing that thing that you’re doing. But we need you to do it right now. Like right now, like now. I mean, it didn’t matter, that the consequences were starting to clearly outweigh the benefits. Air’s brain was like, “Hey, remember when you used to feel uncomfortable in your skin all the time. That is what’s in store for you if you stop.”
Ariel Britt 14:23
It was as if my body was just looking for that. It was looking for that relief. And then what happens when it stops working, and you still find yourself using. Despite consequences, despite trauma that you’ve experienced, it seems like it’s your only friend because at one point it worked. But it’s not anymore and that was the most devastating point in my journey for sure.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
She eventually dropped out of school, it was 2010 and that Alicia Keys and Jay Z song New York State Of Mind was playing literally everywhere and it became the sort of rally cry for her to dream big and start fresh. So as they say in AA, she did a geographic and moved to the Big Apple. But after a year, her reality felt nothing like that song. In fact, things were worse than ever.
Ariel Britt
I didn’t have any friends other than my drug dealer boyfriend. And it just seemed like I was painting this perfect picture of this is just what I’m going to do for now. But eventually, I’m going to like stop using, I’m going to like get the picket fence, the right partner, the life, and it’s going to be great. And instead what happened. And I think this is like, where I find joy and consequences. My body started breaking down, I just was deteriorating from the inside out. And I’m grateful because I think this is something that breaks my heart about substance use and the experience of using the experience of trying to navigate this disease.
Ariel Britt 16:04
Not many people will have that moment, right? That moment of clarity, just enough to say, I’m going to put this down for a little while and I’m going to go seek help. And I’m going to stay there no matter what. And for me that was a moment. I was at a bar in New York City, all alone, tried navigated myself home in a blackout, and I just looked at myself in the mirror, and I just was like, what happened to you. And as if my past, my future flashed before my eyes. And I just said you’re done. You are done.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Her next step or steps rather, after the break.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
We’re back. Before the break, we left Air in New York City, realizing that she was done. Someone suggested she try a 12-step meeting. And her original plan was to go and try to get 30 days sober. This was her super cunning brain trying to protect her addiction and reasoning with her that if she could make it 30 days, she could get back out there and start partying again, but this time with a little moderation. She was in Park Slope Brooklyn at the time. And found a meeting in the neighborhood. For Non-New Yorkers. Park Slope is like the white helicopter parent capital of the city, which is what she was expecting to see. But fortunately, or maybe, cosmically. She was wrong.
Ariel Britt
There was a black woman sharing her story. This one is able to describe what I’ve felt to feel that to not feel alone in your own experience. It’s so healing
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
After a lifetime, navigating predominantly white spaces and trying to adapt to fit in. Here was someone who finally got it.
Ariel Britt 18:00
And so I just was crying. And I had shown up, I tried to look cute. And I was in the middle of the room in this church, just bawling my eyes out because her, her spirit saw mine, and she didn’t even know it. And I’ll never forget her face. I’ll never forget that moment of finally really being seen. And then having that moment where I’m like, maybe I am more than this. You know, maybe this is exactly where I need to be. And so I started chasing that. I started chasing that.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Soon, 30 days turned into 60, 60 turned into 80. And then right as she reached the 90-day mark, something shifted.
Ariel Britt
So I remember being 90 days sober. And I had come off of this, this moment where I’m doing everything. I’m finally finding connections and it felt so good and but I remember being at my home in my apartment and thoughts, the suicidal ideation came back rigorously. And it was so stunning to me. And I remember thinking to myself, Oh, wow, this is why you drank right? This is a part of it. To dumb out that voice. What are you going to do?
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
For so long, Air had used alcohol as a numbing agent for her mind. She was still the same sensitive person. But drinking softens the hard edges and made it easier for her to comfortably exists around other people. The voice in her head that was now giving an ultimatum was the same voice that tried to separate her from others in the past. This voice was crafty, and had taken many forms over the years.
Ariel Britt
Sometimes it can sound happy, right? Like everything’s great. Life is awesome. It’s just an it’s just a voice and then it can suck me right down in the next breath.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
I will literally be walking down the street The sun is shining. Everything is amazing. I’m walking to the grocery store by the time I get home, as if it’s completely set me up to have this great day. And then it switches like, this is it like, and it sounds like me. And I think that’s the most frustrating thing about it. It sounds like me. So here’s Air, holding her three-month chip. Thinking that sobriety was the way to keep the voice quiet and calm. Instead, her inner voice took her to court and presented overwhelming evidence that actually things were worse than ever. And she should just give up. And that message was received loud and clear.
Ariel Britt 20:43
I had plans to harm myself that day. And I had a dear friend of mine. He called me and said, Hey, how are you doing? It’s a fellow person recovery. And I just was honest with him about how I did not want to be here anymore, I did not want to exist. And he came right away, picked me up in his minivan, and drove me around the city. And we listened to music. And that was the first time that I found myself. In a place of willingness to be so vulnerable, that I lacked, someone else helped me, where I knew that the only true solution that I had up until that point was to drink over, you know? Was to act on it. And it was so scary.
Ariel Britt
But to allow somebody to hold space for me and drive me around the city, we were listening to Dell and rap, like whatever we could until I just could kind of get through that wave. Because sometimes the waves are just too big for me. You know, I’m not meant to hold space just for myself, like, I’m a human being. I am here for connection, like we are social creatures and thinking that I didn’t deserve that or that nobody could offer that for me. That’s the biggest lie I could ever tell myself.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 22:12
We all probably have some version of this lie that we tell ourselves when things feel impossible. Air’s was, I don’t deserve connection. Mine goes something like, there is a big black cloud that follows me in life. So no matter where I go, chaos and sadness will surely follow. You know, for some of us, our brains are just ready and willing to send the meanest cruelest messages at the darkest moments. In the past Air’s go to response to that message was to drown it in alcohol. This time, she reached out, she hopped in the car and rode out the wave with the help of a friend. And Adele. Finding people who really understood and supported her was a huge part of her recovery. It was pretty critical when things got hard, which, as we learned in basically every episode of this show, they always eventually do.
Ariel Britt
About four years into my recovery, I got an opportunity to move away from the north, where I was living in Michigan, down to Georgia, and to work at this university supporting other students in recovery. And it was just going to be an awesome experience, I think, especially coming fresh out being a young professional, I’m so excited to be there and to show up for these students the ways that folks had shown up for me.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Being a young black woman from the north, brand new to the south. Her supervisor introduced her to some mentors who could help her build connections and feel secure in this new pretty foreign environment.
Ariel Britt
And 60 days into me living down there and being and trying to navigate my experience and finding mentors, one of them sexually assaulted me. It was, wow. I’m living alone. I’m trying to navigate what my recovery looks like down there. And I just moved there. You know, I didn’t see this coming. Like I saw all of the rosy things. And I think there’s nothing really different than that 90-day experience of everything’s great. Everything’s gonna be wonderful. And then boom.
Ariel Britt 24:38
But this time, it was a person that took advantage of me. And I said, No, you know, and I’m sober now, you know, and this shouldn’t be happening. I’m a young professional, I’m in recovery. And it did and I’ve never had to fight my mind more than I’ve had to, since I can’t even remember. And I almost lost. Like, that’s the most heartbreaking thing about it. I’ve never had a fight so hard to want to live.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Air was tired of fighting. She’d already won so many battles to get to where she was today on that campus with a great job, and a loving network and long-term sobriety under her belt. And that’s the thing. When Air was drinking, bad things happened. On some level, she expected things to be different in recovery.
Ariel Britt
You know, I’d been in recovery for a while. I was starting to learn and feel more comfortable in my body and learn what it feels like to have anger, frustrations, and get through it without using substances. But how do you get through something like that when you can’t escape the one place you’re trying to escape, which was my body at that time. Trauma lives in the body, and where you’re not able to be in your body. And all you have is your mind? It’s not good.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 26:27
The assault in Georgia triggered more trauma that had been stored in her body for a very long time.
Ariel Britt
Sexual assault trauma of that nature. That’s been part of my history. It’s been part of my childhood; it’s been part of my addiction. And I wanted to try to do something different and speak on it instead of hiding it. I couldn’t afford for me to do that.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
So I just want to clarify something that you just said. Did you say that you experienced sexual abuse as a child as well?
Ariel Britt
Mm hmm.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
I’m so sorry. I did not know that.
Ariel Britt
No, it’s not something that I don’t really talk about it. But it’s something that I’m feeling like I need to start talking about more because it makes so much sense.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Did you tell anybody about it when you were a child?
Ariel Britt
No, I told my sister when I got older when I got into recovery. That was the first time that I said it out loud.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
There’s a strong association between childhood trauma, substance use and risk for suicide. Researchers have found that over a third of female rape survivors have contemplated suicide at some point after their assault. They’re 13 times more likely to have an attempt. The sexual assault that happened in Georgia brought Air right back to how she felt as a kid. All of that trauma came rushing back all at once. And the voice became unbearably loud.
Ariel Britt 28:09
For me, I think that after that happened, it was a complete ricochet. It was as if that area of my life, my relationship with men and how I’ve related with him, my entire life was flashed before my eyes, you know, being a child and having to navigate and learning what love is, right? And when you are taken advantage of physically by an older person. You think that’s love, right? Like that was also the weirdest thing for me being a young kid and going through this and such an isolated experience.
Ariel Britt
It’s like, I thought that this person loved me, and that this was their form of love. And growing up and realizing that that’s not what that was, and the level of shame that I experienced. For this to happen. It ricocheted that same level of shame. It’s like, what did I do? How did I move? What were the signs that I was giving off? That allowed this to happen? Right? Because I should have known better, I should have known better. And that was the loudest voice like you should have known, you should have known. You should know better now.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Even though the voice sounded eerily familiar, Air was in a very different place. When she was little, she felt crippling isolation and loneliness. And that just wasn’t the case anymore.
Ariel Britt
During that time, what I’m grateful for is I had family I had friends that helped me to navigate how that wasn’t my fault, right? I think my brain was trying to rationalize it, was trying to find the why the reason behind why this always happening instead of just feeling into it. And so I’m grateful that at that time, I had a supervisor or director who said, Take time, we will carry you and we’ll allow you to do what you needed to do. So that was really helpful. But then again, what was my solution other than to be alone, right? To be alone with my thoughts and in my home, thinking and trying to ruminate. And for the first couple weeks, it was just, it was just a constant folks calling me.
Ariel Britt 30:36
And it was amazing how you know, new people came into my life, at that time are also in recovery that I was able to connect with on a weekly basis. I started to just give myself permission. And I knew I just needed to make a different plan. And so for me, my healing is spiritual, it’s mental, it’s emotional, and it’s physical, I had to figure out somehow how to get back into my body. So I made an appointment with a therapist, I started and honored my commitment to work out every morning like 6AM. And do CrossFit lifting something heavy, getting that aggression out, getting that anger out. And then I just told myself, like, no matter what’s going on in your brain, like we just need to allow you to feel like you get to feel angry, you get to feel sad, you get to feel frustrated.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
We talked about this last week with Jackie’s story. It’s actually a theme throughout the season, that a feeling is just a feeling. And sometimes getting it out of your body is the best medicine. I mean, literally not five minutes ago, my daughter was having some very big feelings about the fact that her dad and I rent in a movie last night. But I wouldn’t allow her to rent a movie today. It doesn’t matter what the details are. The point is, I started to leave the room and she shouted at me. “Wait, I just want to talk about how I’m feeling.”
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 32:05
And I sat down and faced her. And we talked about it. And it helped. anger and frustration are real feelings that are no less valid than joy, and satisfaction. Air is a sensitive person; she’s never going to stop feeling things intensely. And unfortunately, life is never going to stop throwing really hard things her way, because that is what life does. But this time, air didn’t bury the trauma, or try to numb it with drugs and alcohol. she faced it, head on.
Ariel Britt
It’s taken probably about three years after that. Two to three years after that of intense work EMDR all the things to heal that, right? To really heal the root of that. So that I can learn how to set even better boundaries, but also not take responsibility for things that aren’t mine. Just for the sake of this false sense of safety.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Listen, aside from the Last Day production team EMDR is the unsung hero of the season. A bunch of people have mentioned it in their stories. It stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It may sound woowoo at least it did to me, but it’s not. It’s a legit method of treatment that was originally designed to make traumatic memories less debilitating. I’ve dabbled a bit myself and found it quite soothing.
Ariel Britt
I literally used to think hyper vigilance was a good character trait six months ago, okay? Like looking out for danger at any point in turn like that is not. That’s also how the mind works. My mind works, right? It’s always prepared for something crazy to happen.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Learning how to feel safe is such a huge part of growing up. Eventually, you can’t claim to your mom’s hip while she cleans the house because it’s so much softer than the cold hard floor. Sometimes you develop really effective ways to feel strong. Other times you pick up skills for survival that don’t serve you after the crisis has passed.
Ariel Britt 34:18
I had to go through the same experience. I’m nine years into recovery now. And we are in such a tough time for folks like me, especially I’m an extrovert. I live alone. I’m single, like I’m all of these things. And I have to do the same thing. The waves are really strong right now. But I have enough evidence now in my recovery that when I opened my mouth when I try my best to allow other people to hold me. And take a different action. It’s not going to make it go away, but it’s going to allow me to get through it.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Remember earlier when I said that Air’s voice felt like some harsh prosecutor taking her to court presenting overwhelming evidence that she sucked in every way. Yeah, in the courtroom drama didn’t get canceled, it’s still very much in production. But after so many years of trauma therapy and AA, friends swooping in to save the day, the defense’s case has gotten much stronger. When we come back, the metaphorical courtroom drama continues with Ana Marie Cox on the stand.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
When we left Ana, she was looking for oblivion with bourbon and benzos. At this point, she’s in a marriage that she describes as very unhappy, while also dealing with undiagnosed bipolar two. But on the outside, things look pretty good.
Ana Marie Cox
I, you know, this late 30s, I had a lot of the outside markers of success. Although that was becoming harder to keep up.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 36:08
Her career was soaring, she was a total media darling. And she bought in to the image of savvy stable Ana as much as anyone.
Ana Marie Cox
I thought I was so smart that I there would be a way for me to solve this. Like I could just put, I could just find the solution. If I thought about it hard enough, I would figure out the thing that would fix this. And, yeah, that’s not how this works, especially if you are an addict alcoholic.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Pouring alcohol on top of bipolar two is a powerfully depressive combo. If you’re not familiar, this diagnosis is not necessarily more mild than bipolar one. Both are marked by extreme moods. But bipolar one skews more towards mania and less towards long periods of depression. Ana’s experience was the opposite. Her highs were not manic candy colored rapid speed dreams.
Ana Marie Cox
But the lows can still be pretty fucking low. And they were getting lower. And it was getting to the point where pretty much every time I used, even if I started out, like this is going to be fun, we’re all going to have a good time, like, We’re going out for drinks. celebrating something, there would be like a switch that got flipped at some point that I just, I would start thinking about suicide.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
And she thought about it a lot.
Ana Marie Cox
The fact that I thought about suicide as much as I did, is not normal. Like every time I’ve ever talked about this in public, I’ve gotten feedback from people saying thank you, because they didn’t realize that was something they should be working on. But I’m telling you now, you may think it’s not a problem, because you’re not actually suicidal or you don’t actively think about ways to do it. But if it’s a part of your thinking, you need to talk to someone about it. And work on strategies for dealing with it. Because what happens is it just gets closer and closer and closer to the mainstream of your thought. You get kind of a nerd to it. Like it just stops being such a taboo, it stops being something that’s unthinkable.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 38:32
And I had multiple attempts, and PS all the language around suicide sucks. Hopefully we all know now to try not to say committed suicide because that sounds like a criminal act, but attempt, fails. These words suck too, because then it sounds like a completed suicide is a success. Anyway, I’ve been meaning to bring this up for a while. And I’m glad that I did. The point is Ana tried to end her life several times. And she has her own feelings around the language.
Ana Marie Cox
Sometimes, somewhat, halfhearted attempts at suicide get described as like cries for help. But that’s somehow dismissive. And I’m like, no, they’re a cry for fucking help. Because like my very I took a while to call it a suicide attempt because I was like it was such a pussy thing to do. It wasn’t really suicide, but like I was when I got I guess I can’t even say this. I got caught DWI. And I was alone in the jail cell and I started rubbing my wrist up against a sharp piece of metal. And the cops had to come and take me like put me somewhere else. Can’t believe I’m laughing about that. But like I didn’t count that for a long time.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
While you were doing that, though, what..
Ana Marie Cox
I wanted to die. No, I wanted to die. Because I thought that was my bottom. I thought nothing could possibly be worse than this. The shame, the consequences.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 40:07
She was seeing a psychiatrist at the time. And after this episode and the jail cell plus the DWI on her record, the doctor knew it would be irresponsible to keep prescribing her benzos. So they did the right thing. And up. Wait, no, nope. Just kidding. This is America. And that was over a decade ago. So you know, that doctor just kept the Xanax coming.
Ana Marie Cox
So the second time, like, I took like, a few too many. Probably, I think not enough that it was really good. I don’t, I didn’t really know how much would gonna do it. But I may have taken like four or five or something like, and then I actually called a cab to go to the psych ward, because my therapist was like, because I called my therapist and my therapist was like, you have to go right now. And I did, I did stay awake long enough to kind of get myself to the emergency room.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
And that time too, the thought was the same?
Ana Marie Cox
Oh, yeah, I want to die. I want to die. I want to not exist actually. That’s maybe the thing that is more helpful to people to hear. It’s not, because it isn’t exactly die, I want to not exist. I want to be a blank space in the world, I would don’t want to be a burden to other people. I don’t want to have to deal with the consequences of my mistakes. I don’t want to have to work through how not to make more mistakes. Because when you’re in the place that I was at. The idea that you could continue to exist and not just have more and more problems, and more and more consequences and more and more problems in your relationships was, I couldn’t imagine that.
Ana Marie Cox
My vision of my future was just things were going to get worse and worse and worse. And I was always going to be in pain. And like when people say they don’t understand why someone would commit suicide, like how could they hurt some other people in their lives? Like how could they do that? I’m like, imagine your hands in a fucking vise. And there’s just no way out of it. Like your hand is being crushed. You’d cut it off. And that’s what that’s like, that’s what suicide feels like in that moment. Not I’m gonna die, and fuck all of y’all. It’s just I just don’t want to feel this anymore. And I don’t have any other solutions.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 42:32
When Ana said this, I thought about my brother, Harris. There were so many moments when he was using his own self-loathing was so fucking intense. He would say, “I hate myself. I’m sorry, I can’t come home. It’s not you. I just feel like I’m dying inside.” So, yeah, when I asked him over and over again, why would you want to use? It’s because he was in pain. Why did Ana want to die? It’s because she was in intolerable psychological pain. Her hand was in a vise, and it was time for inpatient care.
Ana Marie Cox
I did check myself in but once I was there, I was like, Oh, no, this is a huge mistake. I don’t need to be here. I can solve this. Y’all are wrong, I can take care of it. And I lied and lied and lied. And I denied and denied and denied. And I just refuse to look at what was wrong with me. And if you are in denial about your disease, and you’re in the place where they can help you. Like it is going to come back worse the next time.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
I’ve heard people say when they’re not using that their addiction is just doing pushups in the background and getting stronger waiting for the moment to have a comeback. This is what was happening to Ana, only the thing doing push-ups in her mind was a Frankenstein disease. Her words strung together from alcoholism, bipolar and post-traumatic stress. Her time and fancy treatment didn’t defeat the monster. By her third attempt. He was stronger than ever.
Ana Marie Cox 44:15
I happen to have a whole bottle of Xanax and I was really, really drunk and just took them all. And at that point, I made it to the degree I was thinking coherently. It was nothing is ever going to get any better. This is what my life is. And I don’t want to do it anymore. You know what changed for me is after that third attempt, which was quite serious, and I had to go to a much more gritty psych ward than the first one I went to a public hospital but wound up being it saved my life. The difference was when I got to the public hospital psych ward, I was like, Okay, yeah, I’m sick. I am sick and I need to be in a hospital. And these are the people that are sick like me and I belong here. I belong here because this is where people who are sick like me start to get better. And that just changed my life.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
She was ready to surrender, an unfamiliar sensation that started to creep in when she woke up in the ER, after taking a full bottle of Xanax.
Ana Marie Cox
And my first thought being Oh, fuck, that didn’t work. Shit. I wasn’t angry about it. Like some people. I’ve read other accounts of people like being upset. But it didn’t work. And I wasn’t angry. I was more like, just like, Alright, fuck it. I guess you want me to live? You know, like, I did my best. I went one on one with, you know, God, or whatever. I went one on one with the universe. And the universe denied me. So the metaphor that I came up with later is that feeling that when you’re on a trip with someone, and you’re lost, and you’re bickering about No, we should go this way. No, we should go that way. No, we should go this way we should turn around. And at some point, maybe you say fine, you drive. That was what it was you drive, okay, fuck, like, I don’t know, we’re lost. I don’t know how to get out of this, you want to get out. You want to take responsibility for getting out of the situation? Fine, you take responsibility for getting us out of the situation, I give up.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 46:39
Since Anna was in a public facility, there wasn’t a ton of staff available to run individually tailored groups. Everyone had to do everything together, which included AA meetings. By this point on, I knew she was an alcoholic. And she’d gone to meetings before that were largely ineffective. She didn’t expect it to be any different here. But these two guys got up and parts of their stories, hit so close to home. She was chatting with them after the meeting. And they all started talking about what they do after they got out. Remember, inpatient psych wards are usually temporary solutions, you have to figure out where to go next. One guy said he was going to stay with his one family member who wasn’t using. The other guy’s best option was securing a spot in a drug trial, that would give him a bed for eight weeks.
Ana Marie Cox
And they go to me and they said, What are you going to do after this? And I said, Well, they want me to go to treatment. And both of them, bless their hearts fucking go, “Oh, my God, or go to treatment. That’s so cool. That’s amazing. Wow, where are you going?” You know? Like, what are you going to do? Like, are you going to go? How long are you going to go? You know, what do you think is going to be like they were so excited for me. And so it was like the generosity of it. Like, I was so oblivious to my privilege in that moment when I said that. And of course, I mean that I had, honestly then I had to go like, I had that moment of like, What the fuck are you doing, Ana? Like? Yeah, why would you turn this down?
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 48:18
So she went. And treatment was the first step in a really long process of recovery. That’s still ongoing. Because we did 26 episodes on addiction in season one. I am just going to jump to today and hope you can fill in the blanks that treatment is not just 30 days, and recovery isn’t the flip of a switch. The waters are choppy, you ride one wave and the next crashes right on top of you. But you take it one day at a time, and you keep showing up. Today, Ana and Air are both nine years sober, both of them. A wild coincidence that feels really right. You know, I usually end every interview with some version of the same question, which is, what would you say to someone who’s struggling right now. And frankly, it seems like the best way to wrap up this episode. Because when I look around, a lot of us are struggling. And we need to hear that it is possible to get through it.
Ariel Britt
For me, there came a point in my life that I am willing to do whatever it takes to have a better life. If I look over the vast experience that I’ve had, I have no idea how I’m still standing. I don’t know what that is. I just know that in this moment. You know, in this life and for me, I try to live it right here right now a day at a time. That I’m going to win, you know? Like, I am committed to loving myself, no matter what. I am committed to thinking that I am beautiful and worthy. That, you know, the greatest pain that I’ve experienced has done nothing but free another part of myself that I didn’t know existed.
Ariel Britt
You know, five years sober when I was sexually assaulted, I stopped asking why at some point, and I started knowing that this experience is going to help somebody one day. Is going to help somebody one day, I will not find purpose. on my own, I will find my purpose when I speak about it openly and vulnerably. And to be in a position where I can talk about that, and to help other people get through it. And they don’t have to go through assault, they don’t have to have intrusive thoughts, to know what it’s like to feel alone, to know what it’s like to feel like they don’t want to be here anymore. And I get to say, I got it. I’m with you. Like Let me tell you a story.
Ana Marie Cox
I am on the other side of it. And you don’t have to live the way that you’re living now. And I didn’t think that was possible. I had. I did not believe that I would be able to live a life where suicide wasn’t a constant companion in my mind. Where drugs and alcohol were in a constant companion, where I would not go to bed hating myself. It happened. I look back at my day. And I’m like, wow, God was present in my life. Today, I’m sober. Everything else can go wrong.
Ana Marie Cox
I can have the shittiest day possible. But if I go to bed sober, God was present in my life. And I know not everyone believes in God. But like, think of it is the universe was president or the universe was watching over you today. Because I’m sober and I shouldn’t be this disease by its nature. You know, the odds are pretty shitty, as you know.
Ana Marie Cox
And so that into so that’s how you, but that’s important because the shit that happened to me like especially in early sobriety, like, you know, I was in a relationship with another addict. And that was very tumultuous and my mom died of alcoholism. My first year I was sober. Like, lots of shit, I got divorced, I moved across the country, you know, lots of shit happen and the kind of stuff that would have sent me over the edge in my previous life. But every night I could say to myself, I’m sober.
Ana Marie Cox
A plus goldstar You don’t have to try any harder. Because I’m a perfectionist. I’m an overachiever. And I can find a thousand things wrong with myself at any given moment if you let me. But what sobriety and recovery have allowed me to do is to give myself grace. And that gets me to tomorrow and that’s all you really need to that’s how you build a life, is getting to tomorrow. I mean, it seems simple, but..
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Well, it’s like the contrast of wanting to not exist and ending each day with gratitude that you have existed is like I mean, like it makes me like cry. Like it’s so that is very fucking powerful.
Ana Marie Cox
You know, I never actually thought of it in quite that way. But yeah, that is the night and a shift in my life is going from I don’t want to exist and thank God. Thank God, I’m here.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Next week, the grand finale. Where we give you concrete tools for when you or a loved one is in crisis.
Speaker 4
Hi, Stephanie. Are you feeling suicidal today?
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 54:12
Yes.
Speaker 4
Okay. All right. I’m really, really glad that you called and reached out, the best thing you could possibly do.
CREDITS
LAST DAY is a production of Lemonada Media. Our supervising producer is Jackie Danziger. Associate producers are Giulia Hjort and Claire Jones. Technical Director is Kegan Zema. Music is by Hannis Brown. Executive producers are Jessica Cordova Kramer and me Stephanie Wittels Wachs. We are so thrilled to partner with the JED foundation this season and grateful for all their wisdom and support. You can find them online at @JEDfoundation. And you can find more mental health resources at jedcares.org/lastday. If you want to hear more LAST DAY, we have an entire first season. Please go listen to that wherever you get your podcasts. And while you’re there, please write us a review, rate the show and subscribe if you have not done so already. You can find us online at @LemonadaMedia, and you can find me at @wittelstephanie. I will see you, next week.
