And I was a Christian through 98 percent of what I’m about to tell you. Do you have any idea what that does to a guy’s head? I had already been trying to get sober for years by then. Every time I’d give up, God would do something crazy to get my attention. He never let me go. I was his child. But I’ll let God speak for himself on that score. He sure spoke to me enough about it.
Like almost all the stuff that’s happened, every single time it came looking for me. This “thing inside me” happened on its own accord without any help from me, and I’ll tell you for sure, I certainly didn’t go looking for it. I had no idea anything like it existed. It was something already there. God put it in me. And how do you tell God to get lost or start complaining about it? I’ve noticed he’s a tad deaf at times. After much prayer, he has finally spoken clearly to me about this little oddity of mine, and for now I am to leave it alone.
4: The Facts
I need to stop a moment and explain a few things that are very important. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m an alcoholic, “type four.” That’s the hopeless kind. If there were a type ten it would describe me to a T. Whatever it is that makes men, women, and many children (such as I was when I started) drink to the point of insanity, deprivation, degradation, and death—whatever that quirk is, I have it in spades. (You will notice I use the present tense.)
Alcohol took my life before I even had a chance to have one. I started drinking way too early to know anything different. It simply never even occurred to me to be any different. It seemed I’d always been that way. I just assumed that drinking was simply part of the “being bad” thing. There was no childhood, no graduations, no girlfriends, no nothing for me—not even any childhood friends. Not really. From age 10 on I began to live alone and apart, isolated from my peers. Any relationships I did have were built upon principles of mutual convenience. The person had to have skills or tools I could use to get us both more alcohol and drugs—that was it. There was only booze—booze, drugs, and the search for a more effective way to get both.
Looking for, obtaining, and drinking alcohol became the most important things in my life from the very first time I drank—right along with getting every other kind of drug I could get my hands on. The moment I had my first taste of alcohol, something in me clicked on like a long-buried switch that had been just waiting for the right chemical sequence to activate it. My reaction to it was immediate and almost violent.
I had seen my father having a glass of sherry one evening while he was reading a book in his study. That damnable curiosity got a hold of me, and I decided I would try some. I snuck over to the liquor cabinet, found the sherry (Dry Sack), and had a good long pull. A couple of minutes later it seemed as though the heavens had opened up! It was wonderful. I had to have more—and man oh man, I got more, all right! After the first taste, I waited for my parents to go to bed, snuck downstairs, and drank just about the entire liquor cabinet’s contents. I think there may have been one bottle of wine left. My father said I’d have drunk the cabinet itself were it possible. He woke the next morning to find me unconscious, covered in my own vomit, lying on the living room floor, surrounded by empty wine bottles, with an almost-empty jug of brandy in my hand. All I can remember is looking up at him and hearing him say, “Kevin, I think you may be alcoholic” (an astute comment from the director of the Chemical Withdrawal Unit at the Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg). I had no idea what he was talking about. I found out in a quick hurry.
Now when you mix the physiological reaction of my body to alcohol with its psychological effects, the sense of confidence and security it brought to a frightened and insecure child, you can easily see why it’s no small wonder that alcohol and I immediately became the very best of friends. Alcohol seemed to take away the fear that I was so afraid of. It wasn’t that I was afraid of anything in particular. I was afraid of fear and felt I must eliminate it from every aspect of my life—or else I’d have to consider myself a coward. This I went to great lengths to do. I had to prove to myself that I was afraid of nothing. This self-imposed insanity almost killed me many times. For me, this saying was so true: “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.” I started drinking at age 10. After that, the only life I knew was the one alcohol and drugs dictated. I would do anything, whatever the cost, to not feel that fear hammering at my chest, and for me that meant I had to “drink with a vengeance.”
Experts define alcoholism as a bio-psycho social disease. Seems a nice, tidy, and informative sort of diagnosis. I’m sure it beats “insane drunken sot … ism” or any of the other more descriptive titles for an alcoholic. I personally prefer “he’s an angel—with an amazing capacity for whisky,” but that doesn’t seem to fly with a lot of people I know. What it actually means is that its effect impacts every single aspect of a person’s life. Physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially the alcoholic becomes gravely ill. The main thing left out in that description is how it affects a person’s spiritual life. Mildly put, it poisons the soul and brings death to everything and everyone it touches.
All I know is that the moment I drank it, I never stood a chance. I was simply unable to defend myself against it. I didn’t even know I should have defended myself. I knew that it was part of the “being bad” package, but that was it. I had no idea the first day I drank alcohol that the course of my entire life had been determined.
As I look back, it is amazing to me the ingenuity, audacity, and tenacity I showed at that age in obtaining it. As I mentioned earlier, I ran crews of my own panhandlers in the streets by the time I was around 11 or 12. They brought me the money; I got the booze. When the liquor stores went on strike, I simply smashed their windows out with a shovel, took all the Texas Mickeys (that’s the really big bottles), and created my own parties. I stole everything that wasn’t nailed down. I would pretend I was walking into a liquor store with my dad by striking up a conversation with a total stranger as he walked in and then leave with a stolen bottle to pretend I was waiting outside for him. I also was an amazingly good pool player by the time I was 15 and could sneak into the back of bars, where everyone would have to buy my beer, and then there was always panhandling—the list of how to get booze was as vast as my imagination. Not to mention, booze was only four dollars for 18 beers when I started to actually buy the stuff. Drugs were much easier to get, so for a time the balance shifted, but alcohol was always my first love. So it began. A lifetime full of pain and confusion, both for me and for everyone my life touched.
There is another definition not so tidy as a bio-psycho social disease. I once heard an unusually wise, educated, and godly man—a long-standing member of Alcoholics Anonymous, with many years of solid sobriety—define it like this: “Alcoholism is the most complete, horrifying, and destructive disease on the face of the planet. It is like no other. Of all terminal illnesses in the world it is the most terminal. It is complete sickness of the body, mind, emotion, and soul brought about by the compulsive use of ethyl alcohol. It results in the total and utter annihilation of body and soul.”
The “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous agrees and supports this definition completely: “with it there goes annihilation of all things worthwhile in life. It engulfs all whose lives touch the sufferers. It brings misunderstanding, fierce resentment, financial insecurities, disgusted friends and employers, warped lives of blameless children, sad wives and parents—anyone can increase the list.”5
This nightmare is what I must wake up to, acknowledge, and accept every single day for the