- Alcohol
- Drugs
Don R.’s Story
At 34, I was unemployed and unemployable. I had been fired by every worthwhile employer in town because I was completely unable to control my ability to show up for work. To put this in perspective, I lived in a city which at the time was the second largest city in the 5th most populous state in the country. The sheer number of its factories alone was so extensive that it had earned itself the unofficial title of “The Manufacturing Capitol of The World.” Yet I couldn’t find a job and was living in the basement of my mother’s house.
My first DUI was only a ticket. That was a VERY long time ago! My second had netted me a stint in an alcohol education class which met only once a week for 10 weeks. I passed that class only because I was able to convince my brother to call in sick for me on the 9th week when I woke up still too drunk to call for myself. While I was in court for my third DUI, the D.A. informed the court that I had a fourth one pending that I had not even been arraigned for yet. I stood there in open court feeling exposed, embarrassed and ashamed as the judge said to me, “Son, I’m going to give you a one-time opportunity. You can either do 6 months in lock-up or 28 days in a treatment facility.” In spite of my embarrassment, I summoned up the courage to respond with the only sensible choice I saw, “Your Honor, first of all, I am NOT your son. And secondly, I’ll take the jail time ’cause I ain’t no alcoholic!”
I began using drugs in the late 1960s and it wasn’t until 2 years later at the age of 16 that I tried beer for the first time. It was like meeting my best friend. I think I heard angels sing! Over the course of the next two decades, my drinking went from bad to worse. I was a straight A student in high school who dropped out the second semester of my senior year. I got married at 19, had 2 children and then divorced at 28. My second marriage only lasted 10 months. In both marriages, I had abused and beaten the women who loved me. It wasn’t that I did not love them, it was that while drunk I only had eyes for my one TRUE love, alcohol.
In the next couple years, I met a new friend, the needle! I had taken up shooting cocaine. At first it was only occasionally, but cocaine was a jealous lover and was on the fast track to beating out alcohol as my BFF. I found one other life partner and we were perfect for each other. She didn’t seem to really care how often I beat her because she knew that deep down I really loved her. We shared everything: alcoholism, drug addiction, needles and even front row seats to an abortion. But by the time I stood in open court defying the judge on my 4th DUI, we had managed to have a set of twin girls who were born 10 weeks premature due to our inability to control our addictions even briefly. They were 9 months old as I checked in to the county lock-up.
I was not a completely stupid man and I could see the handwriting on the wall. If I could not do SOMETHING to turn my life around, these two little girls were going to become a statistic. Already my two oldest children wouldn’t have anything to do with me. All they remembered of me was the violence and they opted out of that. The thought of losing two more kids was unbearable. I decided that I would make use of my time in jail to not only sober up, but find a better way of life. I got my GED, and began researching the history of The Bible. I was going to use this six months to fix myself! That lasted exactly 3 days after my release!
Meanwhile, my fear of my daughters going to foster care was quickly becoming a reality. Their mother and I broke up and she repeatedly took them to a babysitter and wouldn’t pick them up for days! I holed up in my mother’s basement again, found a minimum wage job and tried SO HARD to stay out of the bars! Finally, the girls ended up at their mother’s parents’ house. I figured they would be safe there for a while, but in the back of my mind I was remembering their mother telling me about her and her sister being sexually abused by their father, so I knew the clock was ticking. I hated myself for letting all this happen, both to my oldest two children and to these younger two babies. But I felt absolutely powerless! Thoughts of suicide began to fill my every waking moment. Finally, I called the treatment center knowing that, if I didn’t get help, I’d be dead in a week. With no insurance and no money I could only go on a waiting list. The wait was estimated to be three months. I gave up even pretending to try to stay out of bars and blew through all the money I had managed to save in a month. I also got fired. It got to the point that I was having conversations with my mother’s oven while no one was home. I began crying myself to sleep thinking about all the lives I had torn through. It was no longer a choice of staying sober, it was a fight for staying alive!
Then the call came! It was the Friday of Labor Day weekend and a bed had opened up if I could be available Tuesday morning. I stayed drunk the whole weekend but I showed up on Tuesday morning with my bags packed. I felt scared and alone, but determined. I said a little prayer that went something like this, “God, if You can’t help me NOW, then F&%k You!” The guy who got off the elevator to escort me up to my bed was the dealer I had bought cocaine from in the early days when I could afford bulk sales. He had gotten clean and sober and taken a job helping others get through this.
For the first time in over a year, I had hope. That good feeling lasted right up until I got kicked out of treatment 14 days later. I had been sailing through in my happy place eagerly participating in helping everyone else with their problems and happily ignoring my own! One day during group therapy, all the counselors ganged up on me and confronted me about my evasive tactics. I felt the same shame and embarrassment I had felt in front of the judge and I reacted the same way, with anger. They threw me out. I went back to my mother’s house. I sat in front of her oven and it all came rushing back. I had been sitting in treatment feeling safe but doing nothing to prepare for this. The oven doesn’t care! Drink or don’t drink. The oven can cook your food and nurture you, or will just as gladly suck your life dry leaving your blue, bloated body for your mother to find. I called my counselor at the treatment center and BEGGED for my bed back. He said he would allow it ONLY if every single staff member on the floor agreed! For the second time in as many decades (AND as many weeks), I said a little prayer. “God, You gotta either help me or get ready to face me!” So I waited. An hour later, the counselor called me back and told me I had 20 minutes to get there. After that, I had to go back on the waiting list. I made it in 15.
For the next week, I threw myself into being as honest and open as I possibly could. I poured myself into the program as readily as I had poured untold numbers of bottles over the years. And nothing changed! I could feel it. It wasn’t working. I knew that I was just as doomed as the day I had walked in and I only had 7 more days until they released me. That night I had a dream. In the dream, my mother was driving a school bus and taking me to see my kids. I have no idea why the dream affected me as dramatically as it did but I woke up in the middle of the night crying. I lay there knowing in my heart of hearts that I was going to die. I was going to die and my twin daughters were going into foster care. My mother, who had only three years earlier buried my oldest brother who died from a drug overdose, was going to have to bury me. And although a part of me was afraid that my roommate would hear my pathetic weeping, I got out of my bed knelt down on the floor, folded my hands and tried to form a prayer that was not filled with the bile and confrontation that my previous two had had. I knelt there for a long time while prayers filled with “thee” and “thou” circled my head like plastic Indians on the warpath. But I knew this one had to come from my heart, had to be real and had to be ME! Finally, I said, “God, I can’t do this” and I heard a voice, as clear as a trumpet say to me in response, one word, the only word I needed: “ALONE!”
The desire to drink, to use drugs, to hurt myself and others fell away from me completely. That was 22 years and one month ago to the day. I graduated from treatment and went into a recovery house. I found a job and returned to school, taking computer classes at the local tech college. It was only a matter of 4 months before Family Services contacted me to say that my twins were in foster care. I spent the next two years fighting for and finally winning custody. I began getting computer consulting jobs from my work at the tech college. I was making more money than I ever imagined possible! And through it all I went to meetings, lots and LOTS of meetings!
It hasn’t been perfect. My mother contracted cancer, but I was able to be by her side when she died. Years later, I found that my sharing of needles had led to me contracting Hep C, but at the time there was no worthwhile treatment. A few years later, it was found that I had also contracted AIDS. By the time I was diagnosed, my T-cell count was down to 4! I was 10 years clean and sober, a single parent of two bright and beautiful tweens and I had AIDS! But while it didn’t seem fair, I had to ask myself: was what I put my mother through for so many years fair to her? Was it fair that I had rampaged through the lives of so many women and left them with emotional scars that would take a lifetime to heal? God’s grace is unearned. So when do we get to question His will? Only when bad things happen? No, I think not. As recovering addicts and alcoholics, our “attitude of gratitude” has to be applied universally to ALL situations or we might as well go back to conversing with the oven! And the oven doesn’t care!