25 Years

So, no shit, there I was–March 31st 1982. I was riding in my car with my friend Jan, whom I considered the hottest of the hot–after all, she was an artist’s model as well as being a fiery redhead with a mind like a white-hot poker. She was all of those metaphors and more. She was also a hopeless drunkard like myself.

She and I and my wife at the time, Ginny, were scheduled to arrive at a party at our friend Michael’s place at 6:30. It was a Saturday afternoon, and she had been at an earlier party that day with Big Sue and Igor. I stopped by to pick her up there and we were on the way to Michael’s when she demanded that I stop the car.

I pulled over to the side of Race Street and she proceeded to roll down the passenger window of my car and threw up all over the right side of it. This was certainly disconcerting, to say the least. I tossed her a couple napkins from my glovebox and we continued on our way.

I asked her if she wanted to go home and sleep it off, but she said that she was getting her second wind. We swung by my house, picked up Ginny and arrived just a bit late. As per usual, the three of us headed for the keg in my case and the hard liquor for the two of them. I watched Jan for the rest of the evening getting drunker and drunker until she passed out in a heap at around 11pm. I walked out to my car and looked at the right side of it and realized in one of those moments when time stops that I was just like her.

So I quit drinking. I had been drunk for the last five years–solidly, without a break. Generally, I would start the day by putting a couple shots of blended whiskey in my coffee for work, go over to the bowling alley next to the factory for two beers during my half hour lunch and then stop off for one or two after work before driving home and picking Ginny up for a night at Murphy’s that would end with the two of us picking up a case at closing to hold us over until morning.

Most of the entire period of 1977 to 1982, as a matter of fact, is a blur at best. I vaguely remember getting married, but to this day, I cannot tell you what year it was, just that it was towards the end of October. I certainly cannot tell you anything about late 1981 or early 82 beyond who the President was and that the economy seemed better. However, the calendar came screeching back to me beginning on April Fools’ Day.

I took a few days off of work, since I figured that I would be a little bit shaky. Since then, I have learned that in many cases of alcoholics coming off of a five-year bender, the heart simply stops and it is highly recommended that one commits themselves to a hospital so that drugs can safeguard the body until the DTs fade.

Some addicts who have done both swear that the withdrawl from alcohol is an order of magnitude more horrific than that of heroin. I cannot say this for certain. However, I remember vividly that for three days I writhed in my bedroom while thousands of hallucinatory fleas jumped upon me and bit me while I scratched my arms bloody trying to kill even a few of them. I threw up anything that I tried to eat and shook and shivered and banged my head against the waterbed until it would all go away for a few minutes. Then it began again.

Finally, after about 72 hours, I collapsed into a deep near-coma. When I awoke a day later, I was shaky, but could keep soup down, at least. I was surprisingly enough not tempted by beer, since I realized that even one would send me back into the spiral that would cause me to have to withdraw again. Nothing was worth that.

So, now my problems really started. You see, stopping drinking does not end the difficulties of an alcoholic. All of the problem in my life were still there. The irrational decisions that I had made at work were still there to haunt me. My wife was addicted to both cocaine and gin and had enough millions to buy as much of either as she wanted. I was a manic-depressive that had been self-medicating with alcohol, caffiene and cigarettes and was still doing the latter two. And, most important, I was still an asshole.

Now, a lot of alcoholics end up in AA. It’s the surest way to stay sober–as a matter of fact, only about one in six who do not use AA manage to make it for even five years. My problem was that I was a militant atheist and the invocation of a higher power was close enough to religion to cause me to avoid contact.

The only way that I could see fit to manage my life was to do it with philosophy. The avoidance of drink was not for myself, but was done so that I was no longer a menace to my children, my co-workers or the poor bastards that had the extremely poor luck to be on the road at the same time as myself. By putting others first, I began living for more than just myself.

Secondly, I had to have complete and total faith in the virtue of what I was doing. I ruthlessly examined every facet of my life and, a bit at a time, began the moral repairs.

Because the tendency to return to the bottle with rationalizations and denial, it is absolutely critical that the non-practicing drunk never, ever allow himself to accept his performance of an immoral action as anything but anathema. One misstep is enough to empower the little voice inside one’s head that explains patiently to the alcoholic that “it’s ok, one drink won’t hurt…no one has to know.”

A pure heart is a necessity to continue living. This is part of the reason that so few drunks actually make it in the real world. AA makes such ethical strictures part of a daily ritual and formalizes the necessary moral boundaries for the alcoholic. Independents like myself have had to indoctrinate themselves with an examination of each and every action to see whether or not it is unethical. We know that one misstep, one mistake, one fumble will have a high liklihood in resulting in our deaths, and possibly the deaths of those around us.

Time passed. My marriage had been based on our mutual love of drink, and once it became obvious that that was over, we found that we had nothing in common. She ran off with her cocaine dealer, (who not coincidentally had stolen my first wife and badly mistreated her) and turned up dead within a year. She had snorted enough cocaine to give herself a stroke, which had occurred while she was bathing in an oversized bathtub. She slipped beneath the surface and was deprived of enough oxygen to make her brain-dead before she was found and resusitated.

I began examining my relationships with women–I had never spoken to one amorously without having at least two or three drinks in me prior to my sobriety. I solved the shyness problem by formulating human relations as an engineering problem. [There's a great story there, involving how I met kitten. It's too long for now, but I promise that I'll tell it in the future.]

Within a year of sobriety, I had landed my job as a DOE contractor with CDF. Within five years, my daughter returned to a home that was now safe for her. Gradually, trust was reestablished with the rest of my children, although my first wife remained convinced (and is to this day) that my sobriety was merely an act and that I would revert to evil at the first opportunity.

Other people came into my life. I found an effective medication to dampen the highs and lows of my bipolarity. I moved from the real world to academia at about the 10 year mark and continued to improve my life. At the present, I cannot remember the last time that I really craved a drink, to tell the truth. Often the family has liquor of one kind or another in one of the refrigerators in the house, and I don’t even notice.

This coming Saturday marks the 25th anniversary of the night that I chose to live. I’ll look at my children (and three of my grandchilden) who will be visiting during that time and feel so much joy that I have been allowed the luxury of those extra years.

This one thing, above and beyond everything else I tell you, “To thine own self be true.”

Tom