- Alcohol
Cookie was an alcoholic who never drank like a normal person. She also never wanted to stop. When she attended her first 12-step meeting, she experienced that same feeling of not belonging that had haunted her for as long as she could remember.
“I felt I was brought here from another planet, and someone was going to come get me,” she recalls. “No one liked me. Everybody hated me.”
Despite those negative feelings, Cookie also had a lot of dreams. She believed there wasn’t anything she couldn’t do, within reason. Raised in a wealthy family as an only child, there was a lot of time for dreaming and introspection. When she began using, her drug of choice was simply “more.”
In looking back at why she began using in the first place, she chalks it up to making choices back then that put her in situations that weren’t good for her. Not that there weren’t other contributing factors or pains that she was trying soothe. Her father drank and her mom had a mental illness problem, often leaving young Cookie to hang out with her building’s doorman.
“For a long time, I was convinced I had this problem because I grew up with an alcoholic father,” Cookie says. “After three husbands and six children, though, I realized I had a problem.”
It was a long and winding path that led her to that realization. She was convinced that having a child would make her life better and that motherhood would keep her from drinking. Then, it was love that she thought would fix all her problems. She met the man of her dreams, and they blended their families and moved to Long Island. There was only one problem: he was a child molester and abusive. Cookie didn’t find out her daughter had been abused until she ran away at age 17, adding to the list of hurts that she felt that she needed to self-medicate with substance abuse.
When her father died, Cookie made sure she had enough booze in her to fly to New York and confront his family. She asked for her birth certificate and finally found out she was adopted. Then she had to contend with her aunts’ anger at her for having the nerve to be upset over this long-hidden revelation.
At 42, Cookie finally realized that the only way to health was to figure out what was stopping her from having her best life. She attended her first 12-step program to deal with her weight but she arrived drunk. She met her sponsor there, eventually entering treatment for codependency. While she was there, they gave her a sign that said “No Trespassing,” and Cookie began to learn how to make different, healthier choices.
Once in recovery, she began working in the field. She found her calling in crisis response, becoming an interventionist. She tells her clients that, when you enter treatment, there’s no promise of what you’ll find on the other side. But for Cookie, she’s found peace. After more than two decades in recovery, she realizes that she is worthy of grace. She also just started a new job and is planning to write a book.
She says, “My life is beyond my wildest dreams today because I can feel the emotions and none of them control my life.”