Excerpt from ‘Licking Honey Off a Razor Blade’ by Valerie Grimes, CHt

A book on alcohol dependency and alcohol addiction and hypnosis

Available on Amazon and Medium

Chapter 26

Hitting Bottom?

Over the course of four years I watched Sal ‘fight through’ events that most would consider ‘hitting bottom.’ And through all of them booze was by his side. He actually was the only person I saw drink the leftover red wine out of the bottle within ten minutes of getting up in the morning. During my time with him, I witnessed him going through:

• Job loss with no new job prospects
• Loosing his apartment and most of his possessions
• Moving in with parents
• Entering another treatment center (his 3^rd one)
• Receiving phone calls to repossess his new truck (he totaled the other one)
• Having his 2^nd accident in new truck
• Getting into another fight in local bar, and going to jail
• Receiving demand letters from creditors and the IRS
• In an all terrain vehicle accident, fractured hip
• Having suicidal thoughts
• Getting into another bar fight and fractured hand, while on crutches from the hip accident
• Sleeping on a friend’s couch
• And loosing me.

“Do you want help now?,” his family would ask, “No! I’m a fighter,” he’d reply. “I’ll be okay.”

He seemed to see ‘the bottoms’ as temporary, something to fight through. He resists getting sober even when things are going badly in his life. He had always has to be good at weathering the storms and booze helps him weather those storms.

According to lovefirst.net, Addicts don’t want to cause trouble or hurt the people they love. Quite the contrary: they struggle to be the person they think they still are, the person they were before the addiction took hold. They can’t make sense of their own actions. As their addiction progresses and troubles mount, they work harder to manage their lives, but addiction never lets anyone lead a life free of trouble. There are always problems, big and small. Bad behavior, poor decisions and emotional upheaval are all symptoms of this disease that affects both the brain and soul. Families are confused, too. Not understanding what is happening to their loved ones, they mutter: “When will he learn?” But addicts can’t learn because addiction keeps tightening its grip, demanding complete allegiance.

For Sal, there doesn’t seem to be a bottom. For him I feel it is the source of the drinking that is his issue, the pain he feels, the hurt he carries from very old wounds. He is still fearful and fighting to protect him self from those old events and the wounds they produced even though he is really safe now. Nothing has changed in his subconscious. And until he deals with the pain, nothing will. No bottom will be deep enough.

Every once in a while, I’ll get a message from him:

“I love you and since I left my heart has only grown fonder for you.  I know this is not the last of us my princess, we will fly together. You are my girl. Love you, Sal”

I don’t have the heart to tell him we will never be together. Now it is his illusion of us that keeps him going and perhaps alive.

Epilogue

For me, I’m in control of alcohol. That means drinking in moderation. I am comfortable going to a party and not drinking or stopping at two or three. It feels different now because the reason I drank is resolved.

One of the challenges in writing this book was how to present the therapeutic part of the hypnosis that helped me deal with the overuse of alcohol.   My training as a hypnotist (Dallas Hypnosis Training Institute and Clinic – 2001) and with my subsequent experience working with hundreds of clients I was qualified to do all of this work myself and I did, but that doesn’t make for good story telling.

Ann is actually me. I created the alcohol program in honor of Salvador (not his real name).  I went through my own program inspired by hypnotist Wendi Friesen.

I also worked with another hypnotist Cheryl O’Neil on the relationship and inner child aspects.

I changed the name of my hypnosis practice to The Flow Center and have worked with about 25 people (at the writing of this book) to assist them in getting to the source of their drinking issue. This book is my way of reaching out to others to let them know there is another way and that they can ‘heal their lives while living their lives’.