Juby - Nice Recovery: A Memoir

NICE RECOVERY

ALSO BY SUSAN JUBY

Alice, I Think

Miss Smithers

Alice MacLeod: Realist at Last

Another Kind of Cowboy

Getting the Girl: A Guide to Private Investigation,
Surveillance and Cookery

Nice Recovery

Susan Juby

VIKING CANADA

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3
(a division of Pearson Canada Inc.)

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand
(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published 2010

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (RRD)

Copyright Susan Juby, 2010

Author representation: Westwood Creative Artists
94 Harbord Street, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1G6

Excerpts from The Natural History of Alcoholism Revisited by George E. Vaillant, pages 22, 263, 268, reprinted by permission of the publisher, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, copyright 1983, 1995 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Excerpt from Tweak: Growing up on Methamphetamines by Nic Sheff reprinted with the permission of Atheneum Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Childrens Publishing Division. Copyright 2008 Nicholas Sheff.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Juby, Susan, 1969
Nice recovery / Susan Juby.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-670-06917-0

1.Juby, Susan, 1969. 2. Recovering alcoholicsCanadaBiography.
3. Recovering addictsCanadaBiography. 4. Authors, Canadian
(English)21st centuryBiography. I. Title.

PS8569.U324Z472 2010 C813.6 C2009-907030-8

Visit the Penguin Group (Canada) website at www.penguin.ca

Special and corporate bulk purchase rates available; please see
www.penguin.ca/corporatesales or call 1-800-810-3104, ext. 2477 or 2474

For everyone who has ever tried, and failed,
to learn to drink like a grown-up

Recovery is for quitters.

overheard in meeting

P r e f a c e

ADDICTION MEMOIRS have an odd reputation, and I find myself a little embarrassed to be writing one. Not because I am ashamed of being an alcoholic, or because fabulists have given the genre a bad name, but because there are a few things that make them tricky. So before I begin to tell you the story of my downfall, which was not of the epic but rather the badly bruising variety, I will state outright just how much truth and accuracy you can expect herein.

Just because I was a teenage alcoholic and have been in recovery for many years doesnt give me the right to tell anyone elses private business. That means that Ive changed other peoples names and details of their stories and combined or disguised their identities to protect their privacy. Also, this book is not about my family. Its not my job to go embarrassing them. Ive done enough of that already.

Some timelines and specifics may be inaccurate in my stories and those of others. This is because Im writing about a period during which I and my subjects spent considerable time in a blackout. It surprises me that people go to addiction memoirs looking for accuracy. Its like going to the Amnesia Society looking for detailed family histories. Im also highly suspicious of any addiction memoir that describes in minute detail exactly what happened when. Addicts and alcoholics are notorious fabricators. Just be aware. In short, you might want to look to memoirs of teetotalling genealogists with photographic memories if perfect recall and accuracy is your bag.

Most twelve-step programs are based on a principle of anonymity. That means that members do not break their anonymity at the level of press, radio, and film. Or books. My discussion about my (or others) membership in any self-help programs will be kept general to respect these traditions. This book touches on twelve-step programs and what they entail, but if you want more information, each program has its own literature. Its very useful stuff, and if youre interested, I encourage you to read it.

What you can count on being accurate is the general trajectory of my drinking and using career (determinedly downward) and how that affected every part of my life when I wasnt drinking. I have invented no dead friends, possible homicides, or trips to Turkish prisons (or Turkish baths, for that matter).

The sad truth is that, as I think about embarking on this book, I worry about not being hard-core enough. This is not uncommon. Some people in recovery worry about that sort of thing a lot. Until they get over it. I was never a Blood or a Crip or a full patch member of the Hells Angels. Nor was I homeless or a prostitute. I did not use needles except to sew. I did, however, cheat extensively on my eye exam in an attempt to get cute reading glasses and consistently told the dentist that I flossed when I didnt. This is the sort of person you are dealing with. Some of the profiles of young people in recovery include more crime and street involvement. The reality is that its all the same. If you scratch the surface of any alcoholic or addict, underneath the veneer we seem to have the same busted equipment for dealing with life. When we let go of our illusions, our denial, and our love affair with our substance of choice, many of us feel like brittle shells constructed of equal parts fear, self-loathing, and self-obsession. Whether a person is addicted to alcohol, pot, crystal meth, cocaine, or heroin, or most likely some combination of these, there always seems to be a gaping hole where the sense of self should be.

I and the people I spoke with for this book know what it is to be beaten within an inch of your life by an addiction, to see your waking hours filled with anxiety and obsession and to have an already tenuous self-esteem obliterated by your own self-destructive behaviour.

The other thing we know is what its like to sober up as a young person (in my case, at twenty) and to stay sober over the long haul, a task that requires faith, courage, and epic quantities of assistance; it is a journey as fascinating as any a person can take.

The newly sober, especially those who are young, often resign themselves to lives of colourless monotony. It turns out that while the highs and lows arent quite so reminiscent of The Perfect Storm, there is also less degradation and pain involved in being sober. Its a completely involving journey with limitless nuance and, best of all, possibility for actual and profound change.

If telling these stories about addiction and recovery helps one person, it will have been worth it. Just please dont sic the accuracy police on me. Ive done the best I can with the tattered remnants of my abused memory.