What it was like, what happened and
what it is like today.
I grew up in an alcoholic home, my
earliest memories are of my father’s drinking. I clearly remember being 4, 5 and 6 years old and
he was never without a beer. I used to
like sit on his lap and takes little sips of his beer or the last drip of
whisky in his shot glass. I saw my father as a very happy when he was drinking and
I equated drinking with happiness.
As I grew up my father’s drinking got
worse, my younger brother and I quickly seized upon his drinking habits and
begin stealing his drinks when he wasn’t looking. There were many rum bottles
emptied into our root beer and bottles of brew that would go missing from the
fridge. Wherever my father went, there was sure to be booze about, so we liked
to tag along. Invariably he would share
drinks with us or we would steal whatever was about.
By 13, my father’s drinking was out
of control and it was very easy to get a drink whenever I wanted. He had no
idea of how much alcohol he had in the house. I was taking airplane bottles of
liquor to school, drinking wine on my morning paper route and sneaking a beer
before bed. I felt pretty cool doing all
of this.
A year later, with my drinking
habits taking off, my father got sober and all the alcohol disappeared from my
house. This left me a very confused and frustrated
teen. I became very shy and had difficulty transitioning from Junior High to
High School.
The next two years were very
difficult. My shyness grew exponentially. My grades suffered. I had no idea how
to talk to girls and the kid next door who was 5 years younger than me was my
only friend. All I had was television. I watched 8 or 9 hours of TV a day. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was depressed
and lonely. I knew my life could be better, but I did not how to do so. I really longed for a fresh start; someplace new,
but where could I realistically go? As I
result I held a major resentment toward my parents. I blamed them what was wrong
with me. If they hadn’t moved to a different town when I was 9 years old, my
life would not be this bad.
When I was 16 years old I got a job
in a supermarket in the town next to me. There were many kids my age working there
and none of them knew me. This was my chance for a fresh start. Quickly I made
friends with a kid named Mike. He had an
older brother who buy him alcohol. He invited me over to his house one night
while his parents were out of town to have beers.
I remember this night vividly.
Sitting as his kitchen table drinking my first beer in a few years. A warm glow
overcame me with my first swallow and suddenly I didn’t feel so shy. The more I drank that night, the more I felt
the tight knot in the center of chest dissolve. That night I had felt the best about myself
than had in the past. I drank three beers in quick succession, I was dizzy,
nauseous, throwing up, and falling down drunk and I LOVED every second of it.
Everything changed with me that
night and I set upon catching up for lost time. I made friends with the older
crowd at my job, and was quickly taken into their group. They bought alcohol for
me, took me out with them to parties and sneak me into bars. It was great. I no longer had a problem with shyness or
girls. Everything in my life was getting better and better.
I decided that I needed my own
drink. Growing up a child of the 80s and fearful of the Cold War, I decided
Vodka was good choice for me. It had a cosmopolitan flair to it and was a grown
up choice. I thought I was such sophisticated 16 year old clutching a bottle of
Absolut.
I had no problems with drinking
other than drinking until I was falling down, vomiting or both. There were many
nights my friends would drop me off on my doorstep, ring the doorbell and
runaway, leaving me in a stupor for my parents. But I rarely got in trouble for
me excesses. The adage boys will be boys
rang true in my home.
When it came time to go away to
college, I made my choice based upon its ranking in Playboy’s top 10 party
schools and the closet proximity to my house. West Virginia University was
ranked #7 and was only a 6 hour drive away.
In August 1987 I entered my freshman
year and immediately fell in with the drinking crowd. Within 24 hours I was
drunk off my feet with my new schoolmates. Schoolwork was secondary to me, I
wanted my college experience to be just like movie “Animal House” and that the
exact lifestyle I set out to live. I even rushed a fraternity as I thought this
would help me to achieve this goal.
Within two weeks of being at
school, non-drinking people in my dorm started asking me if I ever studied,
went to class, or didn’t drink. I was insulted by such questions. I would say
“of course I go to class” but I would purposely avoid these strange people who
liked to study. My first month of
college was one long drunk. I barely drew a sober breath. I quickly gained a
reputation as someone who like to party, and it’s a label I wore proudly.
Sometime during my first month of
school I had met a girl during a blackout. I only know this because while doing
laundry during the week, she came up to and starting talking about this night
we had together. A night I didn’t recall but I figured she liked me and maybe I
could have her as my girlfriend. We dated for a couple weeks before she broke
it off. She liked me well enough, but she didn’t want a boyfriend who was
always drunk.
I took her rejection rather badly,
and during drunken walk back to the dorm, alcohol turned on me. I was instantly
depressed and didn’t know why. When I got back to my dorm, I thought it a good
idea to commit suicide. I have no idea what prompted me to do this, I was a
very happy drunk up until this point. As
I said, booze turned on me during that lonely walk back and my drinking would
never be the same. Alone in my dorm room I wrapped an extension
cord around the bar in my closet and tried hanging myself. The bar broke,
clothes scattered all over the place, and I wound up with a concussion. The morning after my ill fated attempt at my
life, I had to see a alcohol counselor. She asked me a whole battery of
questions about my drinking, none of which I answered honestly, yet she still diagnosed
me as an alcoholic. I was taken aback by her accusations. How dare she call me
an alcoholic? I was only 17, there was no way I was an alcoholic. I admitted to
a certain depression, but not alcoholism. I chalked up actions as an
aberration, not to be repeated.
I was forced to see my counselor
once a week along the school shrink. I assured them all I was quite okay and
not drinking to excess. I had my new friends to look out for me. I would ask them
if they thought I was an alcoholic, their normal reply was no, because they
drank like I did, and they were not alcoholic. If there weren’t I couldn’t be.
That is exactly what I hoped to hear, and I continued to drink the way I wanted
to drink.
My counselor asked me to pick a
role model. I chose Jim Morrison of The Doors who was a prolific drunk. I
identified strongly with him and I felt I was the same misunderstood genius he
was. I patterned all my drinking after him. And tried my hand at obscure
poetry, but it was his drinking that I liked and that was who I wanted be. But I was no Jim Morrison. The depression
inside of me continued to build and I drank as much as I could whenever I could
to keep that depression at bay.
After my first semester at college
I had 1.8 GPA. My parents new I partied quite a bit, and they threatened to
pull me out of school. This was
sufficiently scary enough to straighten me out a bit. I buckled down. I am blessed be of reasonable intelligence. I
found school easy if I showed up to class. Rarely did I have to study and was
carrying a 3.5 GPA while I continued to drink.
As I said, Vodka was my drink of
choice. I drank a lot of it. On my way
back to my dorm after a night out of hard drinking, I passed a girl I fancied
quite a bit, but was too shy to approach. Back in my room, one of my friends dared to me
to call her. So I did, and made a complete fool out of myself. After the call I
felt like a complete loser. Filled with
the remorse of rejection I tried killing myself again. This time with stabbing myself with pair of
scissors. When they were taken out of my hand I swallowed a bottle of aspirin
and tired jumping out of my 5th floor window, where I was pulled
back in my shirt tails. Booze, women and suicide all go hand in hand with me.
This
night got me landed in a psychiatric hospital in Morgantown West Virginia where
I was court ordered to stay. I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t think I
belonged there. I couldn’t explain my actions, but I was convinced that my
problem was Vodka. Bad things happened to me when I drank Vodka. I swore it off
for good. Still I was forced to be there
so I played the game they
wanted me to play.
I was able to manipulate the
hospital, school officials, and my parents to allow me to go to a rehab in my
home state of NJ. I stayed in Carrier Foundation in Belle Meade NJ for 28 Days,
where I did what they told me to do. I
had no intention of staying sober. I was going through the motions so I could
go back to school and start drinking again. Again it was vodka that caused all
my problems, of this I was quite sure.
I left
the rehab and went to AA meetings with my father. Again playing the part I
needed to play. I had some AA friends. We played softball and went to movies
together. Nothing great, but better than working all summer long. I was just
waiting for August when I could go back to school.
One
thing I did take from rehab was the belief that I learned a certain amount of
knowledge about drinking to keep myself out of trouble. I was “armed with the
facts”, and knew that none of the bad things would happen to me again. When I
got back to school, I stayed in a private dorm unaffiliated with the school. My
best drinking buddy lived next door to me as well. I took on a fake southern
accent, chewing tobacco and my switched from vodka to bourbon. Jim Beam was the fix that would save me.
For two
weeks I had no problems whatsoever. Life once again was great and I was having
the time of my life. Once school was in full session, I again had people coming
up to asking if I ever studied, ever went to class, or was ever sober.
Truthfully I was not. I was off on another run.
Within 6 weeks I had burned through 1000 dollars on booze and booze
alone. I was left penniless and started
donating my plasma twice a week for 40 dollars and stealing school books to
resell them back to the bookstore.
My
depression worsened. It took over a fifth of Beam to keep it away. The second I
felt it creeping back was just another excuse to drink. My Fraternity, whom I
joined because they were bunch of “good old boys” from West Virginia, accused
me of being an alcoholic. They ever went as far to make an intercession with AA
materials for my benefit. They also cut me off from drinking. No Fraternity
Brother as going to let me drink any more. I did what any good alcoholic does
disassociated myself from them. I chose the people I wanted to drink with and
they drank like I did.
I wound
up with another dreary attempt on my life, this time a box cutter to my
wrists. I ended up getting pulled out of
school and forced by my parents to get a job and go to AA. My parents were no
nonsense this time, saying they spent tens of thousands of dollars on school
and rehab. If I wanted to go to college, I would have to pay for it they said. I drank when I could but not the way I wanted
to. Still I was getting drunk plotting
my next move.
I went
through 3 jobs in a few months, read a couple Tom Clancy books, and decided to
join the Navy. I thought the military was the perfect thing for me. I went to
see a Navy recruiter and 3 days later I was in boot camp. I cruised through
basic training, finding the discipline and exactly what I needed to get myself
straight. I was also able to keep the depression away. Overall it was a very positive experience and when I left boot camp on July 3rd 1989, I
felt on top of the world.
Two days
later, lying out on the soft sands of Pensacola Beach enjoying a warm sunny day
without the need to drink. That didn’t stop me from drinking but it was the only
time in my life that I had two drinks and voluntarily stopped. I had half-heartedly
tried control drinking in the past but always failed. To be honest I never saw
the point in stopping at 1 or 2, but this time, I had only two drinks and
stopped. I thought I finally had this thing beat.
After
that it was a rapid fall back into the abyss. Everything begin falling apart on
me. I kept getting in trouble for drinking, and miraculously escaping any real
punishment. I couldn’t stay sober. I was living on unsweetened Kool-Aid,
Triscuits and Cheese Wiz. I would spend my nights drinking and my meal hours
sleeping. I was always broke, and I looked and felt like hell, while my depression
deepened and darkened. No matter how much I drank I couldn’t keep it away. I
swore off bourbon for good and switched to gin and tonic hoping for a difference
but the results were always the same.
My last
drink was on September 3rd 1989. After a particularly heavy night of drinking I
wound up alone in my barracks. And I was licked. I knew it. Emotionally I could
not go on any longer. I pulled out a razor to end my life. All my previous suicide attempts were a result
not of wanting to die, but because I didn’t know how to live. This time I
wanted to die. I wanted my life to over and done with. I prayed to God to give
me the courage to end my life, instead he blessed me with a clarity and serenity
that soothed my mind. I put down my razor and went to sleep. When I woke the
next morning I knew what I had to do.
A week
later I was accepted into the Navy Rehab at the Pensacola Naval Hospital.
It was a
real struggle getting sober at 19. I never lost anything because of my
drinking. I had hard time identifying
with others, and most of the time I was the youngest person in the room. I can honestly
say that I stayed sober primarily because I was afraid of getting kicked out
the Navy. If I could have gotten away
with it, I would have drank again, because I didn’t’ truly believe I was
powerless over alcohol. I could see what
unmanageability in my life but it took some time to realize that my life was
unmanageable because I couldn’t control my drinking.
After a
few years of being an AA tourist and a near relapse I decided to give AA my
full effort and I have not been disappointed. I have found that if I am dedicated to the
program of AA, and try to work the principles of the program in all my affairs
that life is not so bad. This included finding faith in Higher Power, admitting
my wrongs, and making amends. It also included getting a sponsor, getting and
being active in home group and reaching out my hand to newcomers.
Quite
obviously I have problems other than alcoholism. It took me six years sober
until I finally sought help for my depression. With
that help came anti-depressants that which made me feel very good. I remember
sharing with my sponsor at the time about this and I wondered out loud if I could
drink again. He asked me a simple
question. How many times did I try to kill myself while I was drinking, and how
many time I had tried to kill myself sober? The answer of course was zero. He
then told me “Maybe you shouldn’t drink” And really it is a simple as that for
me.
Today, despite
another lengthy battle with depression, I have been sober 28 years, I am
actively involved in AA. I have learned from my mistakes and doing my best one
day at a time. My life is not perfect, and it is very challenging but also
rewarding. It took me a long time to realize taking away the drink was only the
start, that recovery is a life-long endeavor. I see the opportunity to grow and
learn each day. I like who I am today and I love my life. I am
grateful now for all that pain that helped me to become the man who loves his
life today.
I will
end on this note. As I said I am a shy person. When I was living Hawaii, my
home group was a Men’s Meeting. My
sponsor wanted to me be involved in service work, which I was trying to avoid.
I conceded to be the coffee maker of the literature representative, but he was
insistent on me being the group’s greeter. I don’t know how many of you have to Hawaii
but native Hawaiians are generally big Samoan men. In meetings they don’t greet
each other with handshakes but with hugs. Every Monday night before the meeting, I had
to hug 40 giant Samoans and tell them how happy I was to see them. Needless to
say I am not so shy today.
This was
a very long story and I left a lot the recovery out. If anyone having
difficulty with their drinking, staying sober or just generally questions, drop
me a line. I would be more than happy to talk with you.
Thank you for letting me share,
Progress Not Perfection.
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