I am an alcoholic

Not everyone remembers the day they first thought they might be an alcoholic but I surely do.  I was in my senior year of high school skipping school with some friends, one of which lived in a very relaxed household where we could smoke and drink and generally hang out all day long.

To pass the time we engaged in an ingenious version of Monopoly that called for a shot of bourbon upon any occasion where a player went to jail, whether inside or just visiting. Many shots were enjoyed and I most assuredly looked forward to stopping at that corner as often as possible.

The game is long and otherwise not all that much fun so in due time my three friends got tired of the game and decided to go to the gym and get a little exercise.  I have nothing against going to the gym but on that particular day I was satisfied to stay and finish drinking my rather large can of beer which I imagined I would follow up with a few more shots of bourbon before I was ready to go out and resume the search for myself.

Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey.  Jack Black.  My good friend.

As they were leaving I heard Francis saying something but only one word rang out – and that word still rings in my ears today.  “Alkie.”

It wasn’t meant to be ugly or cruel.  It was little more than horsing around and the sting of it by no means reflected on my friend.  No, the onus was borne entirely upon my shoulders.  At once it seemed a hundred thoughts ran through my head… Could it be true?  Am I an alcoholic?  Do I have to stop drinking?  No. What do I do?  Does it matter?  What if I couldn’t drink anymore?  What if I didn’t drink any more?  How much do I really like this stuff?  Do I have to drink?

Soon the questions began to circle around and no answers were to be found.  A pressure began to build and soon it was pounding.   My head.  My heart.  My whole world was now in question and I was dumbstruck as to whether I even wanted to know the answer.

But then amidst all the mental gymnastics it was hard to avoid the simple fact that the question was the answer.  And though I buried it as deep as I could still somehow from that moment on I knew that only an alcoholic would care what the answer was.

I was in Dallas, Texas, in 1984, with my newly espoused and roundly pregnant wife.  We had planned to work for a year and then go to college at UT to finish up what we started at LSU.  We thought it wise to gain residency first and then pay the in-state tuition so we hired on at the local bar and grill where we served burgers and steaks all day and mostly drinks into the late hours.

I met friends and leaned toward the ones that like to go out and drink.  Whenever one would comment on my penchant for excessive drinking I would tell them straight up – “I’m an alcoholic, let me drink!”  My thinking was that it really was all in good fun and nobody was getting hurt so why not enjoy it full throttle.

One evening I stayed out late, very late, and came home to find my wife angry and confrontational.  I can’t say I remember even what it was that she was angry about exactly and while I can think of a dozen reasons they all fall by the wayside as I recall it because the only thing I really remember is the rage that possessed me of a Herculean strength and compelled me to lift her up and throw her across the room – onto a couch, thankfully.

It was that moment when I first realized that what I was doing was so terribly wrong. That I was doing it because I was drunk.  And that it was time for me to curb my appetite for spirits in general.

As I had all along told people to just let me go about my drinking business there was this voice, this whisper, this thought in the back of my brain that said it was ok as long as nobody was getting hurt or no real trouble was coming from it.  As I was performing this wholly uncivilized exercise upon my wife I could see myself doing it as if there were two of me there.  One doing it and the other wondering what in the hell I was doing!  My conscience reached up out of the muddy waters of inebriation and threw my ego on the floor where it proceeded to beat the crap out of it.

I didn’t know how to apologize.  Apologizing was not something I had a lot of practice doing.  And so I didn’t.  Among the many things my wife could never forgive me for I’m sure this one was high on the list.  But fortunately for me it wasn’t her forgiveness that mattered most – it was my inability to live with the idea that I had strayed so far from the model of decency my parents had tried to instill in me.  I guess in a sense they had done well even if I hadn’t actually lived up to it.

Many times in my life I had made commitments only to forget them the next day.  I’d see somebody act real cool in a movie and imagine my life changed forever only to wake up blissfully unencumbered by my oath.  But not this time.  In fact it weighed so heavily upon me that I had knots in my stomach and for a full day the thought of drinking was physically upsetting.

And so it was with great conviction and an ache in my belly that I henceforth was going to manage my drinking at an acceptable level.  Perhaps weekends only or just when there was a social reason for it like a party or Christmas – that kind of thing.

But much to my surprise I very soon found myself jonesing for a belt!  For the first time ever I realized that I didn’t just drink because I liked it – I really had to drink and I wasn’t quite sure why.  The thought, the compulsion, the sheer driven insanity of it laid full force upon me and before three nights could pass I took the drive across town and found something to stash away to calm my down.  I brought it home, I swore to myself this would be it and on the heels of that oath the thought came to me that if this was it then I should do it right and yes soon afterward the wheels came off.

The point I’m hoping to illustrate here is that only through the great humiliation of seeing myself for who I didn’t want to be was I able to see myself for who I really was.  And when all was said and done I finally realized I was not in control of my drinking and that it was far from just a fun thing I liked to do.

This was the beginning of an eight-year odyssey of often horrific events that finally brought me to the sobriety I enjoy today.