- Alcohol
- Friends & Family
- Mental Health
Submitted by: Susanne Johnson
My first alcoholic behavior was at the young age of four, when my mother went to the hospital to give birth to my brother. There were complications that made her stay at the hospital for a week. During that time she sent a toy home every day, and I smashed it every day. I had this unbelievable anger. I built all the plastic toy models throughout school, all the tanks, and airplanes. I built them on a Friday and by Monday they were smashed into a thousand pieces, hundreds of them. Self abuse become more profound as I got sicker and sicker.
I found my “solution” when got loaded the first time at the age of 16. I remember the feeling and, at the time, I thought, that this was it– it was all fun. I will remember that day all the rest of my life.
I went to the oldest school in the country, a collegiate boys school, and I was incredibly competitive. I was at a school where the core of the class eventually went to Harvard and, back then, I had learning disabilities. There was not much known about dyslexia at that time. I couldn’t read. I learned how to, but I was nine years of age, when that happened. Later, I overcame the dyslexia, but because I was nine I was so frustrated that I tried to jump out of a window.
I got therapy at that time. I was totally excited to go to therapy, it was like Christmas to me. I sat there for an hour, I don’t remember today what we even talked about, but I remember that at the end of the session I asked totally excited, “Okay, am I fixed?” I’ll never forget the look on the therapist’s face saying, “Oh, you poor boy.”
Then I eventually went to therapy several days a week all through high school, at a time where it wasn’t cool, and I had to hide it. I still remained the worst student in class. After twelve years of all this embarrassment and humiliation, I was done! Alcohol was the only thing that gave me confidence. It made me be able to talk to people, talk to women and go to college. Compared to high school, college was pretty easy. Nothing major happened, I was making my way through it, drinking like others and having fun.
One day, one of my buddies got kicked out of school because of his alcoholism. I remember we all argued with the dean about it. I had never seen an alcoholic and didn’t know what this was all about. After college, I became part of the club scene in New York for a while. I was out five or six nights a week and had a lot of fun. I had to have my first shots to get started and then would spend the rest of the night chasing that good feeling– although a lot of guilt came with it. I was also using cocaine at that time. I still didn’t think I had a severe problem. I could stay for a couple weeks at home without having anything.
Then I met a girl who was a little more advanced than I was. We did a lot more, we never went out without drinks or drugs, and then we started doing it at home as well together. I reached a turning point, broke up with her, got sober, had therapy and was sober for ten years after this. People around me were surprised that I got sober. They were all pretty hard core and compared to them, I was nothing.
Amazingly, during the next ten years I dated only untreated alcoholic women, and had a lot of very insane relationships. I even went to Al-Anon for a while. I wanted to get out of an insane relationship, the girl burned her own house down just to move in with me. She succeeded. I was codependent like hell; I took care of her.
I was living in Los Angeles at this time, and was successful working as a personal trainer with one of the biggest trainers there. He closed his place after his wife went nuts, and I had to figure out my future. A lot of people were throwing money at me to open my own place, believing in me and my success. They thought I was really good at what I did. I didn’t think that way. I thought that I was not that great, that I couldn’t be the leader, I had a non-existing self esteem; I was terrified.
I stopped going to my meetings. I need small meetings, where I can share and know the people. In LA they have huge meetings, where you don’t know anybody and nobody notices if you are there or not. It’s like a floor show and it’s fun, but it’s not what I need. I need accountability and feeling personally addressed. I’m a big fan of small men’s groups. There is no BS, nobody tries to impress. After I stopped going, I mail-ordered coke. It was just me and the internet. Nobody ever actually saw me using it in five years of doing so. It was my secret. I was a personal trainer doing this; the shame element was huge.
Soon after, I met my wife, she was a frequent user of lesser amount and a hard-core alcoholic, a real party girl. I was the one using larger amounts of cocaine, but a lot less frequently. When you put those two together, you get a couple doing a lot of drugs and very often. We went crazier and crazier. I talked at some point to a lady running a treatment center in Malibu about the show “Intervention Codependency” and how insane all the people on the show were. She only said, “Adam, if you talk about codependent craziness, those couples are a one and you guys are a 10.”
I was shocked. Our relationship and our use got crazier and crazier, we used coke like coffee. We got evicted by the sheriff’s department. I became suicidal and know something had to happen, it was hell. I looked like crap, the drugs didn’t let me escape anymore, I was always depressed, nothing worked. I was working at the highest level of fitness and looked like a zombie going to work. I had to take my wife to the hospital, saw her being restrained in an acute psychosis, the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. It is so bad to see someone you love in that condition and be helpless. I had no place to go, we were homeless and slept in the car. I saw her being taken care off and I thought, ‘it’s time now to check out’. I thought I needed to drive over a cliff and call it good. Depression makes a very logical argument of why you shouldn’t be here, it convinces you that it’s the right thing to do and everyone will be better off. It’s the right thing to do.
I was very hungry though and drove to a burger place first and then found a phone number of a treatment center that a buddy of mine has given me a while back. It was 11:30 pm and I asked them that if I needed help, when would they accept me? They told me to be there by midnight if I could. If they wouldn’t have answered the phone that late at night, I would not be here today. It gave me enough time to get there. I showed up ten minutes until midnight with a couple of cheeseburgers in my hand. I lied to them about how bad it was. I should have gone to detox, but instead I went straight to sober living. They protected me. I couldn’t call my wife. They insisted that she needed to get her own help. She needed to deal with her life and I had to deal with mine.
During my recovery I found out that often what I want is not what I need. I was struggling with my life not being perfect after a year of sobriety and doing everything I was told to do. I know today, that if everything just would have gone back to normal, I would not have attended so many meetings, nor would have worked the steps as intensely as I did. I had trouble figuring out where my life should be heading. I asked myself what I wanted to do, if I wanted to be a personal trainer until I age 70 or something.
I kept that relationship to that lady at the treatment center where my wife went, and she guided me into the world of being of service for others in the addiction field. It will take my life to the next level and I’m attending trainings now to reach this goal. I felt hopeless as a personal trainer, and hopelessness is death for someone like me. I need to have something to look forward to. I still struggle with depression, it will be around for the rest of my life, but I have tools now to deal with it.
Whatever it takes to stay sober and stay healthy today, sign me up. Fitness will always stay a big part of my life. Not only that you stay healthy in your recovery, but you have a respect for your body. Today, I feel that I can contribute, that I’m worth something now and that I’m a part of something. My head still goes up my ass, but it doesn’t stay there that long and it doesn’t happen as frequently. That what the program has given me and for that I can say that I’m a grateful recovering alcoholic.