On Drinking

I wrote and read this for Spitballin' at Quenchers on Monday. Today is my four year sober anniversary.

As some of you know I’m a recovering alcoholic. I don’t have any problem with people drinking, so anyone here imbibing please be at ease. It is just something no longer within my ability. Some people have asked me what it’s like and some people, I think, are curious but out of politeness don’t ask. In general I think there is some confusion about addiction, some mystery about what it looks like. This is what it’s like.

My last drink was around 730am July 28th, 2012. A quarter inch of backwash and booze from a Bacardi Superior bottle minutes before I was picked up by my parents and sister and taken to rehab at St. Joseph’s hospital, admitted through the ER I had a blood alcohol level of .38. In treatment I had what some might call a spiritual experience. Don’t confuse this with religious conversation because Jesus, Muhammad, and Yahweh had nothing to do with it. But something happened. I humbled myself before the world and asked for help and help came. My perception changed and I realized control is an illusion and only by letting go, only by seeking help, by taking suggestions and doing the next right thing defined not by me but something outside myself could I find relief. God willing this Friday will mark four years without a drink.

When talking about addiction many people draw a parallel to the century old characters of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. That an addict is Dr. Jekyll when sober, Mr. Hyde when drunk or high. That they are reasonable when clean, monstrous after consuming, and there is some truth in this. Controlled substances diminish or remove entirely an individual's ability to make reasonable choices and after prolonged use the brain becomes rewired first and foremost to acquire the substance of choice, overriding conscience and judgement. But the Jekyll/Hyde metaphor is problematic, an addict isn’t changed to a different version of themselves, some purer form, the personification of their most base desires and impulses, the reality is that the addiction itself, the disease, is the thing that is released, that is in control.

I acquired a name for my alcoholism when I was in college. I was at a party with some friends walking the line between drunkenness and oblivion. I grabbed a friends phone and starting dialing numbers at random. After numerous rambling voicemails someone finally answered. After a moment of silence they asked “Who is this?” and out of the darkness I mumbled “The Candlestick Maker”. And this name didn’t come from some recess of my consciousness it came from somewhere else as if in my perpetual inebriated state tapped into some other plane more akin to a skewed Dali landscape than our reality. A lawless place, absurd, random and devoid of pity.

My biology and psychology are different. I got drunk for the first time when I was 16 and even then I knew something was amiss. It felt too good. Above and beyond that pleasant sense of warmth, that blush of euphoria, I felt a deep and cataclysmic sense of comfort, as if my entire life before was spent in irritation and alcohol was my first taste of relief. My whole life I felt apart, disconnected, and alone and being drunk made me feel accepted, interesting, even cool. Getting drunk was not something fun to me, something to help loosen things up socially it was my global solution, my cure-all. It was the only way I could feel like myself. And because of that I chased it with a ferocious and single-minded obsession. I started drinking alone at 19, drinking in the mornings at 20.

Don’t get the impression it was all immediately bad. There was a time when drinking worked for me when it did bring out the person I wanted to be, that it allowed me to be gregarious and fun, that it lubricated both romantic and interpersonal situations. Because it did, but even during college, there were times of isolation and despair.  As time passed and my consumption gained momentum the drink began to subsume more and more of myself. Soon all that was left was an insatiable and cloying thirst for more. My dad ironically calls it “the gift”. For we Nelsons are blessed with a wondrous capacity for liquor.

Specifically what that looks like is drinking hard liquor late at night, night after night, day after day, long after friends have gone to bed or cut you out of their lives entirely. Watching Pulp Fiction for the 100th time with a sense of panic and foreboding, as if each new day could bring calamity. Starting fights for no reason save a sense of crippling self loathing, breaking windows and punching holes in walls, lashing out because it is infuriating that the outside world doesn’t reflect the destruction within.

Towards the end I did my drinking almost exclusively alone. I would call in sick frequently and visit 7Eleven for booze at 7am. Towards the end I didn’t want to drink anymore but after a tortured day at work I would get off the train and something would come over me. Running through my head the thought “not today, not today, no today” but even so my body, as if on its own, possessed by something Other would take me to the liquor store. Not wanting to, having no desire for it, I would drink. And drink, and drink. In hopes that it would alleviate the anxiety, the self-hatred, the depression but all it did was enhance those feelings. On and on and on.

Towards the end forsaking hygiene, food, and friends for my stalwart companion Jim Beam I was alone, depleted, and suicidal. There’s a scene in the TV show the Trailer Park Boys that best describes what I had become and a potent metaphor for alcoholism. In one episode park owner Mr. Lahey is attempting to get sober at the request of his lackey Randy. Towards the end of the episode Mr. Lahey is acting erratic and Randy opens a closet to find a flood of empty bottles. Randy asks Mr. Lahey why. Mr. Lahey responds “Randy, I am the Liquor.” That is what its like. Its not a matter of upbringing, character, or will. At a certain point there is no “why” no explanation. Addiction has no reason it takes hold and it only has one purpose to serve, more. At the cost of family, friends, employment, romance, health, whatever it takes.

There is a lot of misinformation out there about addiction, a lot of judgement and prejudice. If someone in your life suffers know that it is not deliberate that they are sick. A quick google search will provide countless programs and options for those seeking help. And know that there are solutions out there for them if they want it. The road to recovery can be hard but it is infinitely worth it. For someone that is still suffering what you can do is be there for them when they ask for help, unfortunately you can’t lecture or bully someone into getting sober. The desire for change must come from them. For someone who is recovering feel free to ask questions if you are curious, for me I’m more than happy to discuss my experience and offer help to anyone in need, but be aware that it is a sensitive and personal subject and if someone deflects or seems reticent let it go.

Needless to say I am alive. And day after day I’ve strung together almost four years of sobriety. I am recovering. I came back from the brink and my life is more exciting and wonderful than I could have ever imagined. I’m more a part of my family than ever before, my love life more fulfilling, my friendships deeper, my creative life more complex and gratifying, and as for employment I can say that I show up every day and do my job- for me a real triumph. I came to realize my father’s term for alcoholism was both ironic and not. That ultimately it was a gift. That although I struggled, although I suffered, dealing with my addiction provided an opportunity at life I had only dreamed of.