- Alcohol
- Faith
My name is Dan, and I am an alcoholic.
A friend of mine best described my addiction: “When you drink, you become a different person”. When I drank I became everything that I was not when I was sober, or so I believed. I hated being me, couldn’t stand being in my own skin and couldn’t understand why I felt like I did.
My childhood was troubled. My mother abandoned my brother and I at a young age. I lived with my aunt and uncle for a time, until my uncle took ill and died. We were reunited with my disabled father. My older brother had many health concerns and died at the age of nine. I spent the next years caring for my father. I had to grow up fast. A stepmother came on the scene, when I was eight. Many things changed. It was around this time I realized I wasn’t right. I didn’t fit in, and I wasn’t comfortable within myself. I struggled with emotions that I didn’t understand. I didn’t really speak. I couldn’t connect to the world and those around me.
In my early teens I began to struggle at school. I was diagnosed with severe depression, put on medications and sent for therapy. Up until the age of 17 this was my life. I hated it. Pills did nothing to calm the storm in my head. I wanted to scream, but nothing came out. Then I found it: alcohol.
I was brought up strongly religious. No one around me drank, and drinking was bad in my eyes. Despite knowing there would be consequences I took my first drink one night. I went to a shop and bought a large bottle of rum. I drank it all during the ten minute journey home. I had arrived. This was the answer to all my problems. Fear disappeared with that first sip, and I remember no more of that night. How wonderful! I didn’t have to feel how I felt anymore.
That first drink was the game changer, and it started something in me that I didn’t understand. Drinking became a large part of my life. Everything was mine for the taking, when I had a drink in me. I would drink socially in bars, pubs and clubs, and then I started drinking alone. I wanted that feeling all the time. Blackouts were common. I didn’t realize that wasn’t normal. I loved it. The less time around me the better.
As years passed my education suffered, relationships never quite worked and friends tolerated me. I worked, and I didn’t work. I was hard to be around, as I would disappear for days, weeks or a month at a time. When I disappeared, it wasn’t because I was drinking. It was mainly because I wasn’t drinking. I was gripped by total fear, terror and bewilderment. I didn’t know how to live, and some days I just couldn’t do anything. I self-harmed in multiple ways. I attempted suicide, as life was intolerable, and I wanted it to stop. Sometimes I could put on a brave face for a crowd, but inside I was screaming.
My father’s health was changing for the worse. I still cared for him daily, and the demands on my time grew. He was very ill. I had spent my whole life watching him die, and I wanted him to die and be released from his hell. Then he did.
Drink didn’t work like it once did. Greater and greater amounts were needed. I was hammered at my dad’s funeral, and this set the stage for the years to come. People became concerned. I had many “little chats” about my drinking, but drinking was no longer a choice. It became essential to drink. If there was a problem, I drank. And there was always a problem: me.
My friend got married, and I was his best man. I needed some “Dutch courage” to make my speech, and I could barely speak and stand, when the time came. I had started to use drugs by this point, and so I was not only drunk but stoned too. I had once had a conviction against drug use, as I had seen it ruin people close to me, but I couldn’t stop. My friend had a birthday and asked if I would stay sober for just one night. I tried! I tried so hard! But I couldn’t. I was miserable, and people had to keep dragging me away from the bar. All I could think of was alcohol. I left the party and spent the next three days drinking. I knew I couldn’t stay sober, but I didn’t accept that fact for over a year.
I attempted to go to my first meeting, but I didn’t try very hard. My drinking continued, and one morning I woke feeling like death. I phoned for an ambulance. I had very severe alcohol poisoning. I almost died, and my stomach lining and my liver were damaged. I was told by a doctor that I must stop drinking, but I spent the next day in the pub.
Spirits were now difficult to drink. Drinking hurt, and I would retch and wonder if I was going to be sick. I spent time trying to wean myself back onto them. I was still convinced I was not an alcoholic.
Another could-be relationship ended over my disappearing acts and drinking, I had stopped trying to hide my problem. I told her I would get help, so I went to a meeting while clean, sober, terrified and incredibly unstable. It was the day before my 25th birthday. I remember the first time I shared in a meeting. I said, “I want to put a fire extinguisher through someone’s skull.” That was how I felt. I couldn’t stand it. They told me to do this and that, work some magical 12 steps, have a sponsor and go to meetings. I sat there and did nothing, going mad inside my own head instead. I went and did the only thing that worked. I got drunk.
They say it gets worse, and it did. I was tipping alcohol down like there was no tomorrow, and that was the hope. It didn’t work. I had detoxed slightly in those months of not drinking, so I drank everything and anything I could. Blackouts weren’t happening, and it was hell. I was crying and screaming on my bedroom floor. I bounced in and out of recovery for a while, but I couldn’t understand how it worked. I just felt worse when I didn’t drink, but I didn’t feel better when I drank. I knew what I was, and I knew I couldn’t stop. I didn’t know what to do.
I went to a music event with friends. I said I wasn’t drinking that night, but I went to the bar to order a coke, and I came back with a beer. I could swear that I ordered the coke, and, in that moment when I realized I didn’t even know what I was saying, I hit my rock bottom. I saw I was beaten. I saw just how dishonest I was even to myself. It scared me more than anything that had happened before, and a lot had happened.
I went to a meeting, and I kept going. I did what they told me to do. My drinking stopped, and my head cleared. My depression lifted. My perspective changed.
I have a higher power that works in my life. My needs are catered to. I have to put work into my recovery, sometimes I question that, but, when I honestly look, what I gain far outweighs the time and effort I put in. I can’t put into words how grateful I am to have this design for living in my life. I used to joke that when god made me he forgot to include the instruction manual. Now I’ve found the instructions. They are the 12 steps of recovery.
Today I’m sober, and I never thought it was possible. You need never drink again.