After upsetting Thanksgiving dinner for my beloved wife and beautiful little daughter, I promised I would go to the basement rec room and get myself straight and give them a good Christmas. I lay on the couch with my wine bottles to help me taper off and went out the back door once a day to get more wine and a fastfood dinner or such. Occasionally, my wife would stick her head down the stairs to see if I was still alive. After a couple of weeks of this, I started the usual process of not being able to sleep; I was shaking and puking. I tried drinking nothing but sherry wine very slowly and sipping warm beer but nothing would stay down. I knew if I could just get a little alcohol in my system I would stop hurting so much. Nothing seemed to work. As fast as it would go down it would come back up.
Sometime on the eighteenth of December, I apparently became psychotic and took a 32-caliber pistol and put a bullet into my right temple. It is probably the grace of God that I don't remember it, and an even greater grace that my wife and daughter were out doing some Christmas shopping. When they got home they found me with what appeared to be a scalp wound, so 911 was called. The exit wound was hidden by my thick hair. While in intensive care, the pressure in my head started building up and I was rushed to the operating room for emergency surgery. I was in a coma for almost a week. When my wife asked the doctor what the chances of my surviving were, he said I had a thirty percent chance—if I regained consciousness. When asked what the quality of my life would be, the doctors wouldn't even discuss it. I finally regained consciousness on Christmas Day.
For twenty-five years I've tried to find the words to express the emotional and physical pain that I felt that day. What does a drunk do when he hurts and wants a drink? I didn't have anyone I could call to bring me something to drink and I had no money. But my wife had left my shaving kit with a bottle of shaving lotion in it. Don't scoff unless you've tried it. Two fingers of shaving lotion and four fingers of water and it will make up milky white, and it will do the job. Next, I needed to figure out how to get some more. I decided I could break the shaving lotion bottle and then I'd be given another one. If you want to break a shaving lotion bottle, you'd better get a sledgehammer. I banged it on the metal side of the bed and on the floor until I was exhausted. Finally, in sheer disgust, I threw it on the floor with all my strength. It hit the floor, bounced up to the ceiling and come down on some metal hospital chairs. One big racket! Since I was directly across from the nurses' station, they all came running. “What happened?” Nothing, I just dropped my shaving lotion bottle.
Somehow, this is what it took for me to be reduced to the point of hopelessness and helplessness. In disgust and desperation I lay back on my pillow and cried into the darkness. “Lord God, if you are there, take this life of mine and run it.” I knew nobody could make a worse mess of it than me. This is probably the only time in my life that I've been totally devoid of any ego. As I lay there, I began to realize that every time I'd been in trouble I'd been drinking. Every time I'd wrecked a car, been in jail, been in a psycho ward—I'd been drinking. Unbelievable. If I didn't drink I didn't get in trouble. Not that every time I drank, I got in trouble—in my youth I had a whole lot of fun. But somewhere along the line the gadget broke. And I spent years trying to fix it, to no avail.
Little did I realize that I had just taken the first three Steps of AA without reservation.
Some get this program easily, but for some of us we have to go the hard way. Now, after all these years, I am the most blessed man alive. In spite of the fact that doctors cannot find the right medication to control the seizures, the loss of balance, and the sleep apnea, I've had the opportunity to give my wife and daughter that good Christmas I promised them. And I've had the chance to be the loyal, faithful, and loving husband to the best of my ability, and a real father. Through many years of carrying this message to the local jail, I've had the joy of seeing several men really put their lives back together and become productive, law-abiding sober citizens. Not my works but God made them responsive to the message. Thank God and this program, which makes it all so simple. If I do not drink, I do not get in trouble!
Anonymous
Fairfax, Virginia
Where's My Reward?
September 2005
This coming October will mark my twelfth year of sobriety, but even with the passage of time, the inner demons of the alcoholic mind don't roll over and die that easily.
As my AA birthday draws near, a lot of old stuff has been coming up, a lot of thoughts and feelings that I associate with my alcoholic identity. There's a mindset around drinking that still haunts me from time to time, and that's the whole “reward” aspect. I so clearly remember being twenty-four years old and driving home from my receptionist job over the canyon on a Friday night thinking, Yep, I put in a good week and now it's time to party! I'd stop off and pick up a twelve-pack of my favorite beer and that would be the beginning of yet another lost weekend. It was my reward for having trudged through all those days. My own personal pat on the back that I couldn't seem to reach any other way.
There were many people coming and going in my life then, but my constant companion—the one thing I could count on—was getting high. Drugs and alcohol were the things that kept me going and the yummy twins that awaited me for a threesome at the end of every long week. It's been a long time since my life was anything at all like that, but I still have thoughts of, Okay, tomorrow is Friday and I made it through another week. Where's my reward?
It's not a twelve-pack, an ounce of weed, or a vial of pills ... so what is it now? Candy? Sex? A trip for coffee? Gimmee, gimmee, get me, get me! Something new, something tasty, something, some thing!
In contemplating this, what I realize is that this is still alcoholic thinking holding me hostage. I'm looking outside of myself yet again for something to fill that void. The road has gotten narrow lately in a way I can't describe. I've come to a certain plateau, and there's resistance to continuing the journey. It's not even that it's such a struggle; it's that I feel like I'm looking at this bleak, blank vista ahead of me and I have no desire to take another step.
There are things that are new (like teaching) and things that are challenging (like being in a relationship), and yet there's a part of me that's always looking for the treat. Give me something quick and easy! Give me something that's going to instantly make me feel good and give me satisfaction. None of this long-term goal stuff will do!
I sometimes feel that I live with a constant, churning impatience with myself and with those around me. Tonight, it's right here, right on the surface demanding answers, demanding satisfaction.
When I came home from work tonight I was exhausted, so I decided to take a nap. As I was falling asleep, a very loud car alarm went off down the street and it continued to shriek as I slept. It was an excellent metaphor for the way I feel, the way I continue to feel in times like this.
Lately, I feel as though there's always this shrieking alarm going off inside of me, wanting something. I can live with it, I can even sleep through it, but it's always there setting my nerves on edge and making me aware of the inner tension of my own hunger, my own insatiable demand for satisfaction.
I want to scream “Shut up! Shut up!” I want to throw a rock through the window of the car making the noise. It still wouldn't stop the shrieking, but it might move some of this energy I can't seem to tame.
So here I am. One more night I go toe-to-toe with this thing, wrestling in a grudge match with a faceless, nameless demon that says, “I want, I want, I want .... ”
What I have learned in the past twelve years is that my relationship with God and my spiritual practice is the only answer, even when I'm not sure of the question. I am finally in the relationship with the higher self I had been seeking through drugs and alcohol all along. My relationship with God, with myself, is all there is. All there will ever be.
Am I strong enough? Am I willing to commit my life and my heart at an even deeper level to doing whatever it takes to keep moving forward? Am I willing to walk off this damn plateau?