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2006-11-29 - 5:39 p.m.

This is somewhat late, but I assure you it was very hard to write. I am thankful for Nya in countless ways. But right now I want to express how thankful I am for her honesty. Some weeks ago she was acting particularly despondent. This used to be a not uncommon event. Usually when we were in bed at night, but sometimes during the day, she would get horribly depressed. Frighteningly, her sadness would often come around to her crying �I don�t want to do this anymore!� � �this� meaning �go on living�.

This terrified me of course and I didn�t understand it at all. But I would try my hardest to listen and talk her through things. The root of her depression seemed to change almost every time. It was because she hadn�t made enough friends in our new life in Chicago. It was because she wasn�t sure there was a future for her in comedy. It was because she felt her mother didn�t support her. Or something else.

It was all so confusing and I felt like there were fires on all sides. As soon as we had addressed one issue, something else came up and it would come back to �I don�t want to do this anymore!� I really didn�t know what to do. I knew that I obviously didn�t want her to not �do this anymore�, but I had no idea how to make her happier. Furthermore, I didn�t think she�d always been like this; it seemed like just since the summer.

In early October we had spent the day with a friend who�d come in from out of town at the Museum of Science and Industry, where Nya works. At the end of the day, she got called into the office for a meeting with the management before going home. On the way home, she didn�t say much about what the meeting had been about, but she really seemed beside herself when we got in. Once again I didn�t understand what was wrong, but I tried to cheer her up.

�Hey, don�t be so upset. Things aren�t that bad.�
�Yes they are! My life is going to hell!�
�Come on. We�re warm with a roof over our head because we own our own home. You act and write for comedy shows. You have a day job at the museum that you�re awesome at and you love.�
�I just fuck everything up! I�m a complete mess.�
I shook my head.

�No. Absolutely not. You wanted to move to Chicago to study comedy and you did. You convinced me to come here too.�
�But I have such a sorry past.�
�Don�t be ridiculous. You were gorgeous when we were kids, the first time I understood what beauty was, and you�re even more gorgeous today. You�ve had your down times and you got over them. You used to be too morose to even work in Denver. Here, you got a job and then got a better one. Hell, you used to be a junkie and now you�re not!�

She started tearing up again, but acknowledged, �No, I�m not.�
�Okay, so there you go. You�re not a junkie, not a dopehead, not an alcoholic.�
She started crying. �Yes. Yes I am.�
I didn�t get it.
�Well, even if you have proclivities, you�re not an active alcoholic.�
Her voice got quiet.
�Yes. Yes I am.�

She went on to lay it out for me. It had started with a drink or two after work. Then it was a couple more. Now, and for the last couple months, she was up to a whole bottle of vodka every day. That was why she�d been throwing up. She didn�t have some medical condition, like the fibroids they were testing for. She was just trashed. The reason she lapsed into moroseness many nights was also because she was trashed. The reason she managed to lose so many things in our small apartment was also because she was drunk.

I just didn�t see it. She would be downing booze in the kitchen while I was twenty feet away in the bedroom. Being a crip, it�s not like I was going to accidentally walk in on her. She told me how careful she was to hide it, to keep it secret. She�d try hard not to seem obviously inebriated. But the meeting at the museum had been to show concern about her drunkenness. Someone had smelled alcohol on her breath. I never had. It makes me feel like I wasn�t paying enough attention. No matter what lengths she went to hide it, it still hurts that I didn�t pick up on it. As they say: denial ain�t just a river in Egypt.

Still, I�m incredibly proud of her for admitting to herself that she has a problem. This speaks to a self-awareness that she never could have had when she was 18 and hooked on smack. When a rehab program was something you were forced into by others rather than a course you choose yourself. Recognizing that something is wrong with your behavior and taking steps to correct it are I think the essence of maturity. I realize that recognizing a problem and initiating corrective action are only the beginning of a long � probably lifetime � process. But you can�t start the journey without taking that first step.

Nya�s been going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings since then. I�ll admit that in the past I never really bought the whole AA classification of alcoholism as a disease. I felt that made it easier for people to excuse bad behavior, like �See, I beat my wife because I was an alcoholic� (well no, you beat your wife because you�re an asshole). But I�ve rethought this. AA is an immensely powerful, long-lived program that�s helped millions of people. You can�t just ignore its central tenet that individuals are powerless before alcohol and can only save themselves by surrendering to a higher power (usually God, but sometimes society or AA itself).

I�m still not sure if alcoholism is a �disease� like MS is a disease, with the implication that it�s caused by some foreign pathogen. Then again, no pathogen that causes MS has been identified. Maybe I�m just quibbling over semantics. Maybe the definition doesn�t really matter. What matters is that alcoholism is a problem and is real, as real as post-traumatic stress disorder or other realities that used to be not believed. If people are doing something negative and find themselves incapable of stopping, there�s a problem by definition.

While I�m trying to be as supportive as possible, I should probably be doing more. To my discredit, I haven�t yet been to an Al-Anon meeting. This is a group for the loved ones of alcoholics. One of the things they do is share experiences and techniques being with alcoholics. Yeah, I should definitely be going. For Nya and for myself. This is really hard when I think about it and it would be helpful to hear how others do it. Or at least to have it confirmed that I�m not the only person going through this. I�ll be accompanying Nya to an AA holiday party December 9th and there�ll be an Al-Anon meeting at it. We�ll see how it goes.

At a meeting last week, Nya was saying how, while she didn�t miss throwing back a whole bottle of vodka, she would in fact miss having two glasses of Chardonnay with dinner. Someone said she had never just had two glasses. Nya thought about this a second and then retorted that yes she had had two glasses before. She just kept filling them up over and over again�

� 2006 Geoff Gladstone

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