Friday, July 29, 2011

Okay, I'll Go First

This project is ostensibly intended to offer stories from people who have confronted their condition and began to build a new life.  So, let's get started.

At the end of 2006, I stopped drinking after having thoroughly embarrassed myself and my wife in front of all of her family.  Again.  My drunken rages had become a largely nightly event.  With this one, I knew I had to stop drinking.  I staked our marriage on staying away from booze, and my drinking came skidding to an uneasy halt.  

I thought it was a simple matter of will; failure would be a incontrovertible sign of weakness.  I would push through the struggles.

Until I didn't.  A little over a month later, the smallest slight, cultivated for days, gave me all the excuse I needed to start drinking again.  It wasn't long before the raging spectacles became routine once again, and my wife invited me to find a new place to live.

Even before I was asked to leave, I verged on despair.  I knew that I had lost my wife, and I could hardly imagine the damage I had visited upon my kids.  I hated myself, and I felt such shame about my drinking.  Naturally, my reaction was to anesthetize myself with more booze.  During the day, I tried to find some handle to help me break the cycle, but I couldn't see one.  I believed that my only choices were in-patient rehab, AA, or to keep drinking.  None of these choices had any appeal.  I leveled with a friend of mine who had dealt with similar issues, and she put me in touch with a young Catholic man who had overcome his addiction.  I confided in a few others, but I still found virtually nothing to lean on.  

Having nowhere else to go, I turned to prayer.  I asked friends to pray that I might find a way.  I prayed for reassurance that I would be loved once I admitted that I had failed, that I was weak, that I couldn't quit on my own. Having reached the edge, I needed desperately to know that there was something waiting for me when I landed.

I remained on the edge, waiting and drinking, for about a month.  One morning, my friend called to tell me about a news story about AA meetings in my area that had been taken over by a cult.  Needless to say, my interest was piqued, and I immediately found the story online.  The story had a lurid storyline, and I had no clue how the bizarre story might help--until I saw a sidebar story containing an interview with an area counselor.  

I have virtually no memory of what he said; I didn't read it closely.  Instead, I looked for information about his employer, Kolmac Clinic.  What I found was a clinic that specialized in outpatient detox and rehab.  I called the clinic immediately and set an appointment for an evaluation.

Getting to the clinic wasn't such a big step.  Answering the interview questions honestly was bigger; I had never admitted to anyone how much I was really drinking.  At the end of the evaluation, I was confronted with a question that absolutely terrified me: "We can get you in here tonight.  What do you say?"

I went to a nearby park where it occurred to me that I had had my last drink.  Stunned, I walked to a nearby chapel and prayed for help, for strength.  Then, I went back to the clinic where I sat down and introduced myself to the strangers around me, "I'm Don, and I'm an alcoholic."




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