Patience and Recovery: Steps 4 and 5

PACIFIC OCEAN

09.24.2023

Story by Petty Officer 1st Class Preston Jarrett 

USS Nimitz (CVN 68)   

PACIFIC OCEAN - Step 4 - Action

Let’s shift direction a bit: following a decently-long period of being alcohol-free, my last time seriously drinking was on a two-week vacation to New York City in early 2018.

Two of my good friends and I had the deliciously disgusting idea to get tipsy on alcoholic root beer and orange soda. Though the latter proved to be a particularly unsound investment, we chugged it to spite our dollars wasted, embracing that room-temperature mix of candied disdain and chemical burn. Already sick to our stomachs, we, the triumphant trio, stumbled through Manhattan in a daze, with the blur of city lights like bokeh opposite glass and condensation. Despite the surface-level beauty of the moment, those warm chills, comforting stomach churns and the ever-questioning spontaneity were a sunbeam through my foggy conscience telling me, “This is why you quit.” The only problem was that the whisper of a bottle managed to overpower it when it counted, or maybe I just wasn’t listening to myself closely enough.

It took me embarrassingly long to realize that the trigger pulled before each shot only fired when others were around. In retrospect, the common thread from “attempt” through to “success” in quitting alcohol wasn’t motivation or even discipline; it was loneliness, which took me years to process.

“Social dependence is something I talk about in the 20-hour class,” said Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Ryan Tellier, Nimitz’s Substance Abuse Rehabilitation Program (SARP) director. “Let’s say you’re hanging out with your bandmates, and you guys play music every day. Then, one day, you’re like, ‘You know what, guys? I still want to hang out, but I don’t want to play music anymore.’ What are the chances they’re still going to want to hang out with you as much? Alcohol’s the same way. That’s part of why it’s important to learn new hobbies, get connected with other people, find new groups for hiking or stuff like that. Also, like I said earlier, it bares down to coping. If that’s my one stress or relaxation skill, and then I stop doing it, I’m probably going to stew in my crankiness until I learn something else or until the cravings pass. It all boils down to learning skills and working through stuff.”

One technique that Tellier uses during treatment is recontextualizing patients’ issues, helping them to objectively evaluate their individual relationships with alcohol.

“I have some clinical guidelines that I use, but not everyone uses the same approach. I tend to be a very worksheet-driven person because I tend to be very analytical in my approach, so I do a lot of thought exercises,” said Tellier. “For example, if you tell me the only way you know how to relax is using alcohol, I’d ask, ‘So you’re telling me you’ve never felt relaxed without drinking?’ Then if you tell me ‘no,’ I’ll ask, ‘So ever since the day you were born, every time you’ve had a bad day, you drank? What other skills have you developed? Do you play video games? Do you play sports?’ We all have our coping skills or relaxation skills, but it’s easy to say that drinking alcohol is the only one you have. Let’s look at that thought. Is that really all you know how to do? Is that a fact or an opinion about yourself? What’s the evidence for or against that?”

Though the program is a valuable piece of mental health treatment aboard Nimitz, there are numerous resources available to anyone who might need help from a different angle, encompassing realms outside of substance abuse. Fortunately, many Sailors don’t need to utilize them all in order to learn new ways to cope with personal struggles.

“We’ve got a mental health team, but even before we’ve got them, we’ve got the DRC. You also have all the chaplains, who are trained in formal counseling. There are a lot of different resources,” said Tellier. “For most people in this demographic – military, young, relatively healthy – alcohol issues tend to be more symptomatic, whether that’s of life stuff or something else, or more often just binge drinking and getting in trouble because of it. A lot of the binge drinking is not having other skills or just wanting to cut loose and not knowing other ways to do it. There’s also ‘Nimitz Tough,’ which is more on the peer-led side. I would say, honestly, for someone who wants to learn skills, go to both. Nimitz Tough is kind of like AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) in the fact that it’s all peer-led, and you’re learning from other people. Going to the deployment resiliency counselor doesn’t end up on your medical record. Then you have us too, but on the medical side, we tend to want to have people try the other stuff first, because one: when you see someone on my team, it goes on your medical record, and two: PSYCHO (the ship’s psychology officer) and the mental health techs are very busy because there are so few of them and so many of the rest of us, so it’s trying to sift people out and get them the help they need without going ‘nuclear’ by seeing one of the medical professionals. A lot of people here don’t really need that. Some do, but a lot of us just need support in learning other skills.”

Step 5 – Maintenance

If my experience is worthy of prying a lesson from, it’s not that difficult to “quit” an addiction or any other negative behavior.

OK, now, hear me out.

We all likely get fed up with ourselves and decide to make that change we’ve been waiting to make for however long; only problem is, that’s often the easiest part. The real challenge comes in committing to it the next day, then the one after that, and then even after a relapse or slip-up, being able to regain momentum because you refuse to go back to who, what or where you were before.

Daily commitment to change is essential to self-betterment, but as important as discipline is, having a support network can be the difference between success and failure. One well-known example for people recovering from alcohol abuse is Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), which is even offered aboard Nimitz.

“AA is all about peer support. We have it on the ship Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 1900. It’s on the green sheet. They call it ‘Friends of Bill,’” said Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Ryan Tellier, Nimitz’s Substance Abuse Rehabilitation Program (SARP) director. “The difference is that what I do is more of a clinical model. AA is where you reach out to other people struggling with the same concerns and connect with them to create a sober support network. They do have their whole ideology of looking into resentments, past wrongdoings, opening yourself up to see the of yourself that you don’t want to. A lot of stuff I do clinically kind of mirrors what the 12 steps are; it’s just different in the approach.”

Throughout Tellier’s counseling career, the biggest reward has not only been watching his patients succeed in the program, but witnessing their personal metamorphoses beyond what anyone may have imagined.

“I think it’s just how appreciative and considerate a lot of people in recovery tend to be,” said Tellier. “One of my clients wrote that poem. *points to the wall* They care enough to make things for other people. They could’ve written that in a journal or a Facebook post, but they chose to give me copies so I could post in front of people who might need to see it. For me, it’s the small stuff like that. A lot of facilities will get letters and stuff like that from patients, and it’s really rewarding to be able to see it. This was a person who we all thought might fail or get kicked out. We had some tough conversations, and look at them now, helping people even where they’re at.”

So, as of writing this sentence, I’ve been virtually alcohol-free for about five years. Though I’ve faced harassment, social isolation, struggles with mental health among other difficulties along the way, I acknowledge that I am ultimately responsible for my alcohol abuse as well as my problematic handling of sobriety, and that I am still lightyears away from being an ideal version of myself.

If this still somehow seems like a “happy ending,” I’ll stop you here. I’ve also made numerous mistakes that likely would’ve been circumnavigated had I not attempted to quit on my own. Sobriety carried me through some of the darkest points of my life, and it’s a miracle that the stars aligned for me to make it this far. It wasn’t really discipline; it was a perfect blend of circumstances that forced me to change, and though I’m grateful to have them in my rear-view mirror, I never want to experience them again. If I could go back, I would’ve changed nearly everything.

Please, don’t do what I did. If you suspect that you or one of your coworkers might have a problem, seek out avenues to get the necessary help for a healthy and successful recovery.

• Date Taken: 09.24.2023
• Date Posted: 12.22.2023 11:57
• Story ID: 460675
• Location: PACIFIC OCEAN