“My whole life, despite the fact that I was smart, attractive, in good shape, a nice person, I believed that I was useless, completely useless. And I felt brown on the inside and I didn’t know why. I remember just being puzzled at observing people around me that had a zest for life, and I remember kind of envying that. And then also looking at my own life and realizing I have everything and feeling guilty for my feeling terrible. My self-loathing, or self-hatred, that didn’t make sense. I should be more grateful. I should be loving life.”

Meet Kelly, a 52-year-old doctor, who drank alcoholically for years while still maintaining a successful practice. She has been sober since 2013.

“My patients love me. My staff thinks I’m the best. I never had a complaint. My staff didn’t know I had a problem. They still give me alcohol as gifts sometimes. I’m quite surprised that they didn’t know. I was still making good money.  Everybody would have thought that I had the world by the tail. I’ve got beautiful children. But after work I would come home and drink really fast. I’d drink a bottle of wine or two, have a few smokes on my deck by myself.”

KELLY’S STORY

Kelly’s father was an alcoholic and his father was an alcoholic. She says she lived in a “typical alcoholic home” where everybody is walking on eggshells: “It was quite violent at times in my house. And I was told as a child, by my physically abusive father, that he was there because God couldn’t be. And so, I had this vision of a very punishing, unforgiving God. I was told that I was worthless. I didn’t have much hope, I didn’t have much joy.”

In high school, when she was depressed, “I was told to just pull up my socks when I would go to my parents crying, ‘Pull up your socks, what the fuck is wrong with you?’”

Regardless, Kelly was still a hard-working student and no trouble to her parents. She excelled at school, skiing, diving, ballet, modelling and competitive public speaking but she, “never felt good enough at anything. I wasn’t praised for my achievements. I was criticized when I fell short of the impossibly high bar. As a very sensitive child this was very damaging, and my core concept of self-worth was that I was terribly inadequate. For many, many years of my life I was passively suicidal.”

As an example of her insecurity, Kelly didn’t think she would be accepted to any universities, so she applied to ten including Harvard and she got accepted to all of them. She went to med school at the University of British Columbia.

“I needed alcohol to feel comfortable in the social university scene. Drinking helped me feel adequate…just adequate. It helped me overcome my social anxiety. I fit in with the popular people.

“When I first started practicing, I would look forward to having a beer or a glass of wine after work,” but drinking was not a problem yet.”

ALCOHOL TURNED ON HER

“Then my drinking turned a corner in 1998 when I was pregnant, and I found out that he had a trisomy defect: The baby wasn’t going to live. I was advised to terminate the pregnancy. And the doctor literally said, ‘You might as well just go home and have a drink,’ And so I did. And that’s when I started drinking almost every day.”

When Kelly was counselled to terminate the pregnancy, “I just couldn’t imagine it ending that way. I just thought for as long as I have this baby, I can carry it peacefully. But that was really hard because I didn’t tell my patients at work. So, I’d be going to work and being really pregnant, and then, ‘So, when are you having your baby?’ and me knowing this baby’s not going make it. That’s when my drinking turned into being something more. It was to numb the pain. And I feel like I didn’t really grieve that baby properly until I got sober.”

Kelly went on to have five more miscarriages, and two healthy children. Her obsession to drink was lifted during her pregnancies.

HOMELIFE

Throughout all this her husband was not supportive: “I knew after that first baby, in 1998, that I probably shouldn’t be married to this guy. We drank together. That was the only thing we actually shared as a past-time. So, probably around 2002, I got to the point where I was starting to hide alcohol. We would have people over, and I would have a stash in one of the bathrooms where I could go in and drink a beer really quickly.”

Kelly eventually learned her husband was cheating on her. They split in 2007. They had joint custody of the children.

“You lose all these babies, and your husband’s an asshole, and you don’t get a lot of enthusiasm for believing everything happens for a reason.”

Kelly had two DUIs and was not allowed to drive so went by transit to work which took an-hour-and-a-half each way.

“I never drank at work, but for sure I was hungover. If I didn’t have the kids, I would drink every night. And then I would work the next day. If I did have the kids, I managed to not drink very much, or wait until they were in bed.”

NO DIFFERENT THAN THE BUMS ON SKID ROW

Kelly says, “When I looked at people on the street, in that kind of shape, I knew that was not far away for me. Their insides looked like their outsides. There was a disconnect with me because my insides did not look like my outsides.”

KELLY HITS BOTTOM

Kelly’s children did not know she had a problem until the final few months of her drinking: “By then I had lost my kids. My ex-husband found out that I was drinking, and it was the right thing to do. He took them. And I still couldn’t stop drinking.”

But the kids would visit. One day when they arrived after school, she had been drinking so heavily she just couldn’t face them.

“I tried to go hide under a bed and I was just wasted. I remember the fear on their faces.”

That was the ultimate turning point for Kelly, her bottom.

REHAB

Although she was in and out of treatment since 2007 Kelly has been sober since 2013. That final time when she got to the treatment centre, “I was so beaten to a pulp that I was on my knees.” About two months later when she had finished her time in rehab Kelly says: “I realized I was seeing in color again. I realized one day, ‘Oh my God, those trees are green.’ I’d been seeing in gray.”

MEDICAL MONITORING PROGRAM

After treatment Kelly was obliged to participate in the British Columbia doctors’ medical monitoring program for five years.

“You have to get an addictions doctor to give you an independent health assessment and the doctor dictates how long your licence is revoked. Mine was about a month.”

Then there are random urine tests. The alcoholic-in-recovery needs to report to the lab within a certain period of time when notified that a urine test is due.

“So, there were literally a couple of times I had to cancel patients. For example, if they called me today, I would have to be there before the lab closed. If I’m working until six and then I’m scheduled to work from eight until four tomorrow I’m hooped, I have to cancel patients.”

STAYING SOBER

“I really believe in the program of AA. I really do.” Kelly says that since she has been in the 12 Step program, she has had a number of spiritual awakenings: “Alcoholism is a spiritual malady. Being in recovery is so much more than just quitting drinking. It’s a life-long pursuit of spiritual freedom.” She has learned to believe in a power greater than herself: “I realize now that all my life what I needed was a spiritual program like this. It’s the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

HELPING OTHER ALCOHOLICS

“We have addiction on both sides of our family so now that I’m sober, I’ve been able to help my own family where it would’ve just been swept under the carpet and got worse and worse over time.”

“I think the more of us that are able to speak up to the stigma of alcoholism the more we can really change the way it’s looked at and treated in society.”