Rock Bottom

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The Bottom of the Bottle

Suggested pairing: Rock Bottom

2 ounces vodka

2 ounces tequila

2 ounces gin

⅓ ounce lemon juice

⅓ ounce lime juice

⅓ ounce pineapple juice

 Pour vodka, gin, lemon juice, lime juice and pineapple juice over ice.  Shake well until chilled and combined.  Strain into martini glass  Slowly pour in tequila.  Cheers, you’ve hit bottom.

Over the decade-plus that I’ve been, in one way or another, directly or inadvertently, coping with another’s alcoholism, I’ve heard the phrase “rock bottom” more times than I can count, and enough times to make me sick.  It’s come up in conversations with friends, disagreements with former family members, sessions with therapists, and sharings in Alanon meetings.  

Here’s what I’ve learned about rock bottom:

Rock bottom, as the Cambridge Dictionary defines it (and they seem to be a pretty credible source for words and shit) as an informal noun meaning the lowest possible level.  With regard specifically to alcoholism and addiction, the term rock bottom is often employed when an individual has devolved into a financial crisis, lost a job, destroyed a marriage, landed in jail, wrecked a vehicle, become violent, went cruisin’ for a bruisin’, rehabbed then relapsed, lost custody of a child or, in this case, all of the above.  Basically, it’s the type of place you’d never want to travel, the level of toxicity you wouldn’t wish on your enemy, and a sort of existence comparable to wearing a wool sweater over poison ivy while having to take a massive shit in an airplane bathroom surrounded by disgruntled flight attendants, wailing babies, passengers with significant body odor and, of course, snakes.

Rock bottom, as it is advertised in brochures and on television, is essentially a self-inflicted hell so deplorable that an individual vows never to return.  It’s brutal and pathetic and excruciating and shameful and lonely and bleak and endless. According to Google Maps, it lies at a proverbial fork at the end of a long road full of bumps and littered with denial and bullshit, where going left takes you to recovery and going right takes you to the mortuary.

Here’s what else I’ve learned about rock bottom:

Rock bottom is a myth.  

It’s a fantasy, a legend for alcoholics that is kept an arm’s length away, just close enough to intimidate and just far enough away to mediate.  It’s something that happens to dirtbags and losers and criminals, not high-functioning, upstanding, classy drunks who are “fine”.

Rock bottom is a unicorn, a false hope and a mirage for family members and loved ones.  It’s a broken promise that eventually things are going to get better, even after getting worse, and that someone they love will experience an imminent epiphany, miraculously turning their life around to be the walking ray of sober sunshine they were always destined to be.  It’s a futuristic event never present on the calendar, yet ever-present in the mind, that we wish for and pray for and cry for, but almost never arrives, because when it comes to a raging alcoholic, sometimes their bottle has a false bottom.

Rock bottom is bullshit.

Alcoholism, as I have come to understand it from my colorful experience in dealing with someone enveloped completely in its wrath, can become a perpetual cycle of destruction marked by big mistakes, bad behavior and bold-faced lies, all of which stem from a nearly impenetrable layer of denial, so thick that not friends nor family nor God himself are capable of breaking, because it is a one-sided mirror that people choose not to gaze into for fear of their own reflection, shatterproof from the outside-in but, from the inside-out, is able to cracked by choice and desperation and self-preservation, much like a fire extinguisher behind protective glass in the center of a massive blaze.  

Believe it or not, I have come to understand and somewhat sympathize with the plight of making a choice to surrender to this disorder, to accept responsibility and to begin the arduous process of recovery and rebuilding one’s life from the bottom up.  

When an existence has become so empty, so devoid of connection and meaning, it may seem too much and too late to change.  

But it isn’t.  Ever.

When bills have piled so high and expectations fallen so low, convictions become so frequent and meaningful relationships so rare, hope seems lost and only troubles can be found, it may seem like it isn’t even worth trying.

But it is.  Always.

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