Two Share How They Overcame Denial, Anger at Family Losses
Last New Year’s Eve, Leigh Anne Vick* was celebrating, and not in the way you might expect. The day before, she had come to her regular Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting to announce that she was “two years’ clean.”
But when she came forward—attractively dressed in indigo and black, her almond-colored hair stylishly coiffed—to be recognized for her two years without a drink, she admitted, in spite of her smile, that she’d gone two years since a relapse, not since her first attempt at the abstinence that AA requires. She wanted those assembled to know the real deal—that fighting back against her alcohol addiction has been, by no means, an easy journey.
And in a later interview in Vick’s immaculate, organized office at a Williamsburg bank, she says emphatically that she has relapsed “so many times.” She says she has only drunk alcohol on four or five occasions in the past 10 years, but numerous times she started with AA, then stumbled. Because of the AA requirement of total abstinence, she’s had to start counting her drinkless days over and over again.
“Denial is such a function of the disease”
The odds of addiction were likely against her from early on. Her mother was an alcoholic and, after she and Vick’s father divorced and then abandoned Vick as an infant, her grandparents took her in and raised her. Vick experimented with drinking in her teens, as many do, and though she felt she sometimes drank too much, she always had “rational thinking to justify my behavior.” After learning about her mother’s history, she researched alcoholism and her own risk, but as her drinking in young adulthood began to increase, she denied it might be a problem. She married in her mid-20s, had two children, then divorced and remarried and had two more children, but throughout that time she recalls “long periods of sobriety.”
Her drinking escalated when her family moved into a “party neighborhood,” and especially when her oldest daughter decided to move out and live with her father, Vick’s first husband. But when Vick’s second husband noticed her increasing drinking, she insisted she wasn’t any worse off than “the other heavy drinkers in our neighborhood.”
Vick asserts about alcoholism, “Denial is such a function of the disease.” Hers persisted because “I knew, if I admitted I had a drinking problem, what a struggle I was going to have. I kept telling myself, ‘I’m going to stop drinking on my own.’ ”
She finally attended a few AA meetings, intoxicated, and an AA member told her she wouldn’t succeed because she “hadn’t hit rock bottom.” Once, while drunk, she did $4,000 damage to her car but had no recollection of the accident when her husband questioned her later. Still, she refused to believe she needed help. She says now, “It was classic addiction thinking.”
Her game-changer was the AA member who, after Vick’s latest relapse, offered to be her sponsor (a guide that the program recommends for completing its 12 steps). The woman had struggled past a relapse herself and, after finally coming clean, she became known as a sponsor who would patiently walk new AA members through the 12 steps [more on these in a later article]. “She really helped me apply them to my life,” Vick says. Now, she believes she will succeed at staying clean because she’s finally committed to the AA path. At last, she says, “I’m not trying to do it my way.”
“I was on top of the world”
Like Vick, Desmond Jackson* has new optimism that he can steer clear of his previous drug of choice—marijuana—but his optimism, too, was hard-won. A few decades Vick’s junior, he has already seen how drug addiction can up-end life.
In an interview at the counseling center that turned his life around, he’s clad in a black striped sweater and slacks, and he has a subdued manner, considerable height and a sturdy build. Fifteen and a sophomore at a Norfolk high school, he’s been raised by his mother and grandmother, and he didn’t learn until a few years back who his father was, or that he’s been incarcerated since Jackson was 8.
Jackson first tried marijuana at 11 years of age—he had a cousin who smoked joints, and “I was just curious”—but he didn’t like it at first. At 12, he wanted to try it again. His cousin was reluctant to supply him, but on a day when Jackson had some extra money, he just observed people in the neighborhood, and “I spotted one dude who was real flashy and had nice shoes.” Jackson had his source, and soon he also had a reason to smoke pot. After he tried it, he recalls matter-of-factly, “I felt like I could do anything, like I was on top of the world.”
He didn’t want to get in trouble, but he soon wanted to smoke more often, so he began lying to his mother and grandmother to get money for more joints. After they each caught him smoking and were “on alert,” he began stealing from their wallets and shoplifting.
During his worst period of drug use, Jackson “smoked [pot] every single day,” spending close to $5,000 on his habit. That school year, his freshman year, he sums up now as “a lot of ignorance.” He recalls how he “would smart-mouth the teachers,” made “straight Fs,”
and got repeatedly suspended.
“The littlest thing would make me angry”
In March 2015, a fellow student at school inexplicably threw a carton of milk at him at lunch, and the fight that ensued resulted in a 10-day suspension for Jackson and a five-day sentence in a juvenile detention center due to charges of disorderly conduct and obstruction of justice. When he didn’t fulfill an additional community service requirement, he was sent back for a 30-day sentence, followed by supervised probation. He couldn’t smoke pot at the facility, and Jackson remembers, “I was angry; I couldn’t do what I wanted to do.”
In April, when a drug test upon his release revealed that he had smoked pot before his sentence, he was sent to a counseling center for drug-using teens, and also assigned to work on anger management issues with his mother. At that time, he remembers, “the littlest thing would make me angry.”
Jackson’s work at the counseling center helped him realize that his difficulties in recent years stemmed from anger that “I didn’t grow up with a father.” He had only found out in 2012, accidentally on Facebook, who his father was. At first, he says, “I was hyped,” and they wrote a few letters back and forth while his father was in prison, but at one point his dad found out he smoked pot and told him to stop. Jackson felt his father could have contacted him years before, but hadn’t, so who was he to tell him, after all that time, how to behave?
“I don’t really need him now,” insists Jackson. “I’m half-
grown already.”
‘Would I rather get high or be locked up?’
Jackson’s probation officer had drug-tested him two weeks after his release and could tell he hadn’t quit his marijuana habit, so he laid out Jackson’s options. “He told me that smoking [pot] is breaking the law, that I’d have to come back [to juvenile detention] if I started again,” Jackson says. “I told myself, ‘I’m going to stop,’ but it was a real hard challenge.”
During the coming months, he sometimes struggled to resist the temptation, but “I’d ask myself, ‘Would I rather get high or be locked up?’ If I could stop smoking [pot], then I’d be free.”
Jackson was finally able, through his own determination, to quit smoking pot, and since then he’s had more energy and feels his attitude has “gotten way better.” His relationships with his mother and grandmother have improved, and this year in school, he’s getting higher grades and has had “no trouble; it’s the best year I’ve had since fourth grade.” Now, in his free time, he enjoys writing rap songs, making “beats” on his computer.
“I’m doing good, real good,” Jackson says quietly with a smile. And to others wrestling to resist drug use, he urges: “Don’t stop trying. You can do it!”
* Names and identifying information have been changed.
