This narrative is from a good friend of mine who came to faith during his in patient treatment. I am so very proud of him. You will be too.

My Story:

Sitting in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings the past couple of years I have heard both things I agree with and things I disagree with.  For me, there is nothing ‘absolute’ about recovery.  Outside of my relationship with God and the fact my body will die some day, I can’t find much else in this world that is absolute.  Therefore, to me, recovery is ‘relative’ and I have to do what works best for me.  What works for me may or not work for you and vice versa.  What I believe may be easily argued against by someone else.  That is o.k.  Therefore, it does not mean that what I have heard at AA is wrong.  Rather, it is just something I do not agree with or does not work for me as a solution. 

One evening, a gentleman spoke to the group about his own personal recovery.  He mentioned that his recovery was about himself and his ability to stay sober.  He said he could care less whether or not anyone else in the group drank; his own home group’s recovery was of no importance to him.  I disagree with him based on my own personal experience with alcohol.  For me it was a lonely, dark place; a place I never want to revisit.  There is a sense of belonging that resonates with each and every one of us and going through this, alone, (because your entire group has abandoned its recovery) is something I disagree with.  Human beings need to belong; I need support.  One of the first things I realized when I was drinking was that nobody wanted to be around me.  Friends started dropping off left and right.  In a sense you are only friends in ‘health’ and not in ‘sickness.’  But that is a whole different topic I can cover another time. 

Where my story begins is with what another gentleman said at this AA meeting.  He said that, ‘childhood trauma is something everyone goes through so do not come in here and tell everyone how bad your childhood was.  I do not want to hear that excuse as to it being why you are here.’  In my opinion, that discounts every theory on brain development and the impact(s) of childhood experiences upon it.  This by no means justifies my use of alcohol to medicate and ‘right the ship’ if you get my meaning.  Choosing alcohol to medicate was a poor choice on my part.

I consider myself to be an anxiety induced binge drinker with my real troubles starting at or around the age of 38.  This does not mean that I did not drink before.  Rather, this is where my troubles started occurring.  What is interesting in this is that the first time I reached out for help was when I was 12 or 13 years old.  I also remember, years later, asking for help the night before my wedding.  Crying to my Dad, I told him that I wasn’t sure whether or not I could go through with the wedding.  My Dad said that, ‘If she is not the right person, you do not have to go through with this.’  I remember vividly telling him, ‘Dad, it is not her, it is me.’  I foretold of the collapse I would experience and how I would drag her into it with me.  Bear in mind, at this point I am still not really a ‘drinker.’  At my wedding I had 1 beer and a shot of ‘Mad-Dog’ thanks to some great friends who thought they would be funny and bring a bottle.

My parents were divorced at an early age.  I lived with my brother and Mom while my Dad remarried.  I will not bring my Dad up again as I do not believe he adds a lot to the story.  The concern I have with him is the way he treated my Step Mom as an ‘idol’ at the expense of his kids.  If he wanted to do something with us, he had to check with her first.  And often, our every other weekend visits would be reduced to 1 night because something else was going on the other night.  My Dad views success as the title you carry at work, the size of your house, and the amount of friends you have.  The falling out that occurred with him was when I discovered he did not like my wife.  I started having my drinking problems and those coupled together led to his escape.  I had told him that I needed help and the response was I needed to help myself.  When my son had his 2^nd birthday and no card arrived from my Dad, that was the final straw that broke this camel’s back.

Where my real problems occurred were with my mother and step-dad.  The relationship here can best be described as:

• Justified drug use.
• Domestic Violence.
• Poverty.

My step-dad was a long haul truck driver.  Because of this, he often used ‘Crank’ which I

guess today is considered ‘Meth.’  I do not know much about it nor do I ever care to.  Regardless, his use was justified in that it helped keep food on the dinner table.  Never mind the fear it induced every morning he woke up, me not knowing how we was going to come out of it.  Makes me cringe today thinking about hearing him start to wake up and not knowing what version of step-dad I was going to get that day.  I remember one summer night, playing games on my Apple IIe, with Walkman in (listening to Cream or the Doors), and having a need to go get a drink of water.  Coming downstairs my Mom and step-dad were sitting at the kitchen table, orange piece of glass on the table.  I noticed a white powder and razor blades on the glass.  I came downstairs to get a drink of water.  I did not come down to witness meth being cut up on our kitchen table; the same place where the family gathered nightly for dinner.

The domestic violence was entirely awful on its own.  Watching your parents hit each other is not good.  Tried to think of a better way to say that but simply put, it is not good.  Once, I remember leaving a car show with them angry at one another.  Sitting in the passenger seat, step-dad driving, and Mom sitting in the back.  Driving down Broadway Ave., one hand on the wheel, the other punching my Mom, with my Mom throwing punches back.  I had nowhere to go, nowhere to escape. 

How do I and my family get through this?  Step-dad is needed to pay the mortgage and we need the drugs to keep step-dad going.  This is/was reminiscent of a hunter-gather society where the basic essentials (i.e. food, shelter) came at the expense of a proper childhood.  I accepted what was going on because it kept a roof over my head and food on the table.  The need for security emerged.

I also remember getting in trouble one day when I answered the front door to (2) men in suits and telling them, ‘Yes my Mom is home.’  Apparently they were debt collectors who came to take our car.  Tow truck shows up and pulls the car up the street.  Awesome when a girl, in your class, and her (4) sisters live across the street and get to witness all of this.  Huge sense of embarrassment and shame.  The problem was not with us losing the car but rather I answered the door and said my mom was home.  The real problem was deflected and blame was put on me; shame and pride were interfering with logical thinking.

  I also remember when my Mom stopped paying the garbage bill.  For about 1 year when we took the trash out, we just put the trash bag in the garage and let it pile up.  I know today that sometimes I put our kitchen garbage out in the garage and it starts stinking up the garage within an hour.  Imagine 1 years worth of garbage and having your friends come over.  My bike was in the garage and to get it out, I needed to open the garage. We probably had 75-100 bags of garbage in our garage.

I could go on with the stories.  I remember the time my Mom asked me (her Junior High son) to gather my change together as she needed it to go to the store.  These are all memories that I thought I had put away and had no realization that they impacted me the way they had; but these same memories had shaped the person I was going to become; I needed security.  The reason recovery is not absolute is that I believe someone dealing with the same trauma may deal with it differently.  How I dealt with this trauma is different than how my brother dealt with it and is also different than maybe how you would deal with it.  A company of soldiers in battle may all witness the same magnitude of death, during combat, but that does not mean they deal with it the same.  We do not look the same as one another therefore I see no reason why we should all think the same.

For years I medicated through accomplishment.  Trauma made life difficult for me in that it was caused by my Mom and step-dad.  Generally when one experiences trauma, the parents provide the needed nurturing.  But when your parents are the cause of your trauma, you are screwed.  And my father was not around to provide any level of support.  For me I started developing anxiety and a clear need for accomplishment.  As a kid, I had nobody to help me so I was going to dig my own way out of this and make sure my future family never had to go through what I did: I therefore started providing for my unmet wife and son at about the age of 12.  Accomplishment put me one step further away from that life style I so wanted to leave.  With the lack of parenting in my life, I developed some co-dependency issues and ultimately placed unrealistic expectations on my friends; I needed my friends to provide the nurturing I was not receiving at home.  I needed girlfriends so I would not feel alone.  It did not matter how mean or cruel they might have been, as long as I was not alone.  I cringe, today, thinking about what I put a few close friends through.

So, how severe did this get?  I label what I have to be Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) but not of the typical type you see so often played on TV and movies.  Rather than counting, I have the inability to rid myself of negative thoughts.  In certain situations I need constant re-affirmation that things are going to be o.k.  If I make a mistake at work, regardless of how trivial, I see myself losing my wife, house, and job and I am now living under a freeway overpass.  A lot of time spent ruminating about past and future suffering.  Contingency plans are developed for every situation and coupled with the fact that most situations are created in my mind, I have a lot of things going on up there.  The sense of balance for me was created when I accomplished something.  There was a release that made me feel good.  Accomplishment provided me with security.

So rather than live day-to-day, I lived from accomplishment to accomplishment.  Some of these symptoms included:

• Graduating from college with 2 degrees (with honors) in 4 years.
• Getting my MBA 2 years after college.
• Getting a 4.0 GPA (one quarter), while taking 20 credits in college.
• Quitting sports in high school because I was worried they took away from study time.
• Chronic sleep troubles, knowing I need to be fully alert for school/work.  I have to succeed.
• Becoming one of the highest trained volunteer firefighters in the area in a really short time.
• Worrying that my softball team was going to kick me off when I went through a slump.

              I could write 3 pages on this alone but I think one of the more terrifying things for me was when a doctor referred me to a specialist for swollen lymph nodes.  I had a cold for several weeks and finally went to the doctor.  He pointed out my lymph nodes and after a 2^nd visit, recommended I see a specialist.  Couldn’t get into the specialist for 2 months.  Stewed about it and did all the research I could on lymphoma; I knew I had it.  Turns out the doctor wasn’t even looking at lymph nodes but rather saliva glands.  I was good to go.  Problem in my mind was that the specialist obviously missed something and I had this condition.  I cannot tell you the number of times I went to minor emergency over the next several months out of paranoia and the freeze this anxiety brought on.  At times, I literally could not move.  Would go to different places because I was ashamed and knew that I had been there a few weeks prior.

I never really lived life day-to-day.  Rather, I lived from accomplishment to accomplishment.  Always the next accomplishment was going to provide me with that sense of overcoming and relaxation that I so desperately needed.  What people do not realize is that I had been acting out and it was killing me; accomplishment only leads to the need for additional accomplishment and sometimes greater accomplishment.  Not all that different from someone who needs more a drug to reach a certain high than they did in times past.  Problem is I was acting out through accomplishment and getting patted on the back for it.  Keep going.  Everyone looked up to me and thoughts I was doing great.  Parents wanted their daughters to marry someone like me; nobody recognized the signs that it was killing me.  I was able to deceive a lot of people for years.   This idea of accomplishment to someone in recovery is staying sober for 1 year and getting a coin.  Great and congratulations but really how are you doing?  The coin means nothing if the addiction has just turned to something else and the person really is not doing better.  It was not until I started drinking that people really started to see that there was a problem; I had traded addictions.

So my crash came when my dog died, my son was born, I started having problems at work and my marriage was failing.  Do not get me wrong, the best thing ever to happen to me was my son being born.  But for someone who needs security and whose ultimate driving force is that of being the provider, adding another mouth to the equation was negative for how my brain works.  And besides (and understandably) I was not getting the attention I needed.  I started feeling alone.  With all this, I could no longer achieve the same level of accomplishment.  Anxiety was taking over.  The part of my brain that deals with executive decision making was routinely shutting down.  I was stuck in the fight/flight and feeling/emotions epicenter of the brain; I could not break back into the other part of my brain.  Therefore, I started binge drinking when I froze.  Regardless of the negative consequences, drinking was opening back up.  I knew it was wrong but it was the bridge that was going to get me back to thinking correctly and get the accomplishment motor going again.

WARNING:  Sounds like I just justified drinking as my parents had justified to me taking meth when I was a child.  Drinking got me back, but I am in no way intending for anyone to think I was justified in doing it this way.  I knew what I was doing was wrong.  On the list of things you can do to restore balance and right the ship, drinking is a poor choice.  But admittedly it was the best thing I have ever done as it finally led me to get the help I needed.

Since my crash, I have since arrived at 2 years sobriety.  How did I do this?  Telling complete strangers my story helps.  Internalizing shame intensifies the behavior.  I always say that ‘Shame’ and ‘Anxiety’ were the 2 girls at the bar buying me drinks all night.  Another big step for me is in the word ‘Acceptance.’  Acceptance that I am this way but also acceptance in others.  If man was created in the image of God then who am I to dislike someone for what they do because they too have been created in this image.  Faith in the covenant relationship of marriage has been huge to my recovery.  We live in a consumer society where when the newest phone or bigger TV comes out, our prior electronics are no longer suitable.  We move on.  If someone stops providing for us in life, we move on.  This recognition has changed how I approach my marriage and friendships.  It is no longer what my wife or friends can do for me, but rather what I can do for them.  In regards to marriage, people often forget that there is a 3^rd person standing there at your wedding and it is God.  Getting back to the consumer relationships, one example for me stands out.  One does not ask for new children when those children fail to meet your expectations.  But in marriage, it has become acceptable to move on.

           And boy, I am really working at freeing others of my expectations.  Everything I need I direct towards God.  Someone once said to me that ‘Anxiety is arrogance in that you are upset things are not going your way.’  Anger falls in line with this and helps shut down my executive decision making part of the brain.  It is why you cannot rationalize with me when I am anxious and/or angry.  I have come to realize that I cannot live according to my path but rather I have to recognize that I am on God’s path.  And so today, rather than beat myself up when I take a step backwards, I choose to recognize that I am human and am actually thankful for having caught myself.  I am going to continue to have bad days periodically and I recognize that.  I just cannot let them result in a downward spiral.