Desperation is one hell of a motivator. Perhaps the finest. I pen these words living somewhere in between a great deal of desperation, and a whole lotta hope. My journey in and out of sobriety since 1992 has been anything but linear. Pitfalls and pit stops of varying size shape and length have littered the path. It would be a bold faced lie to sit here and say that my life was an utter disaster every time I drank, that simply isn’t my experience. There were many many good times during my wetter years. Kids, jobs, accolades, friends, travel; all products of a seemingly normal existence and to try to minimize any of these blessings I received while I was in active alcoholism would be dishonest at best. 

One theme that has remained constant since my first drink and holds true to this very day is fear. Alcohol was the only thing I had ever found, until the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, that took away that fear. It simply went away, I was finally a part of, good enough, smart enough, funny enough; finally enough so that you would see me for what I wanted to be. Not what I was, never that. Because if you saw me for what I was, you would hate me as much as I hated myself. Those are powerful words and I am reminded of a window in the downtown of the small Mississippi town that I live in. It’s an old abandoned building but the lettering reads “No one is born hating another person for the color of their skin”. Ironic, given the state’s track record on civil rights but also causes me to wonder if I was born restless, irritable, and discontented or did I arrive there through a series of unfortunate events. I certainly don’t remember the day at school where I checked the box to become a hopeless alcoholic. I would have remembered that. This underlying fear has always been here, since I can remember, simmering just under the surface. I guess we are born truly different than our fellows. The cascading tidal wave of regret and remorse, and ultimately shame, that left me in my pit of despair was entirely of my own making. Let me be clear here, bad things have happened to me that I did not deserve and, yes, therapy has labeled a good many of them to be catalysts for my alcoholic career, but they were no more disgusting or disgraceful as anything else commonly occurring to anyone throughout history. I am not unique. My reactions to, and efforts to minimize or ignore, them are what separates me from my fellows.

An alcoholic is a truly unique being. This disease, and it is a disease, does not discriminate and knows no socioeconomic boundaries and cares nothing about the wake of destruction it leaves. Everyone is an equal opportunity sufferer. I keep waiting for this pink cloud to arrive, the proverbial unicorns and rainbows descending from the heavens and bestowing serenity near and far. Hasn’t happened yet, and I think I prefer it this way. My prior journeys in sobriety have always delivered this temporary euphoria and, while enjoyable at the moment, have required an even greater hedonic reset at it’s conclusion. It was a detox from the high of not getting high, just to not get high, again. Make sense, ok. Good. Today, life kind of just is. The wreckage of the past staring me squarely in the face. I have the makings of my amends list and the top name on there is the beloved IRS. Yes those fine folks that bring you April 15th year after year. Now, during times of, let’s call it, better judgment (a term I will use for the times in which I am not drinking and also performing as a functioning member of society), this day comes and goes with the requisite paperwork, some grumblings about monies owed, and a healthy does of relief once it is all said and done. During times of me wearing my not so smart and self-serving pants, I simply don’t file my taxes. Saying I ignore them isn’t true, I now it’s there. I just don’t do it. Today I have five years of unfilled tax returns, it’s insane for me to try and process this. I mean give anyone 5 times to do something, by the same exact day, every year, and they’re bound to hit it just once, right?!?!

See this is where my alcoholic brain sets in and can convince me of the most off the wall shit humanly imaginable. Among the certainties in life, death and gravity being a few, taxes ranks right up near the top. So how does one simply ignore this inevitability year after year? It’s pretty easy, open a liter of Vodka at 6 am and consume the rest of it before going to sleep and repeat this process until you are so sick that your unfilled taxes are the least of your concerns. See this is the grip that alcohol gets on my mind that does not occur in human beings that are not alcoholics. The most memorable of dates in the United States can go on year after year, blatantly ignored. As if it needed any additional foreboding. 

So what sets this wheel in motion? What is the catalyst that causes a seemingly normal person in other areas of life to ignore this, and other undisputed laws and certainties time and time again. At the root of it, for me at least, it’s our old four letter friend again, the word fear. You may ask, aren’t you afraid they will come get you? Oh I’m terrified. OK, aren’t you afraid you will owe more money? Yep, check that box too. OK so what is it, you’ve said you’re afraid of the consequences, so just file your damn taxes. Excellent point but I’m not gonna. Here’s the crux of it. If I file them, that fear becomes realized and the consequences certain. It’s a way for me to still retain some control of an impossibly uncontrollable situation until the inevitable happens. The dreaded letter that arrives asking for a meeting to talk about the unfilled taxes in question. Now, once this happens a series of unfortunate events are likely to take place in my alcoholic mind. The first of which is that I want a drink, now. Do not pass go, don’t give me $200 (although I am likely to need it and much much more at the end of this), I just need a drink. But isn’t that what got you into this situation to begin with? Of course it is, well not the drink per se, but good old alcoholic thinking did. And therein lies the answer. Faced with the most dire of circumstances, I have the potential to make my most insane choice in the world, stone cold sober. It’s just me and my brain sitting here, and my brain says drink, after factoring in all the other crazy, dumb, and bad shit that I have done to myself, it’s answer is still, “you now what would fix this problem right up and make it go away don’t you?!?!” The problem there is that my alcoholic brain has a memory span of exactly five seconds, give or take a few. It will only operate in the here and now, it cares not of past consequences or future ramifications, it only thinks in the right here, next 5 seconds, make the pain and fear stop and make it stop now kind of way. And there is the crux of my disease. Immediate pain minimization. See Jim (that’s what we’re naming him) will say, this sucks, eject, and if Jim is left in control, that’s exactly what we do. Eject. When Jim is at the wheel, time stops, here and now are all that matter. So let’s just fire Jim, and put someone else in the driver seat, a more sensible actor capable of contemplation and reflection longer than a goldfish. Great idea, I’d love to but I can’t. See, Jim has one of those positions that he gets to serve for life, he can’t be fired, he can’t have his position taken away and what Jim wants most is the absolute control over my brain 24×7 living solely in this pain minimization framework. So what’s the answer? 

My alcoholic brain will always live inside of me and there’s no replacing it. Sobriety and the 12 steps promise me that Jim will get a while cast of new coworkers that he has to learn to work with, and that over time I will be able to say “Ok Jim, I hear you but you’re an idiot, move over and let someone else drive”. See, I have to have something better than alcohol to replace that pain minimization framework. Are you kidding, give up the one thing that has ever made me feel like I’m enough, like I belong, like I fit in, and give that up? Willingly?!? You’re out of your mind. AA promises me that if I lean into my higher power, clean house, and help others that the pain subsides, the fears fall away and that life will function on a plane of normality that I have only hoped and dreamed of. 

Working the steps is hard. Doing the right thing is hard. Cleaning up the past is hard. There is nothing in the program that promises that it will be easy. I am programmed to take the path of least resistance and when alcohol worked, that was the path. Any alcoholic who says there was a time when alcohol didn’t work for them is either a) lying, or b) not an alcoholic. It truly worked for a time and became the only love I have ever known. I blindly and willingly followed it to the very gates of hell, no questions asked. Once there, and the pain of minutes and days and years began to stack up, the 5 seconds of freedom no longer worked. This is how alcoholics find themselves in the most precarious of circumstances and seemingly have no answer as to “How did you get here?”. The short answer is, we get there through pain. It’s the only common language we all speak and while we all take different trains to get there, we all arrive at the same Pain Station. You show me a real alcoholic, not some disco drunk, but a true dyed in the wool alcoholic and you will find someone who has endured a lifetime of pain, and a litany of bad choices to try and make the pain stop. That’s all we ever really wanted, was for the pain to go away. And through our efforts to make it stop, we were invariably leading ourselves into a bitter pit of morass that only divine intervention is capable of delivering one from. 

Am I excited about my meeting tomorrow with the IRS, hell no. I’d rather have a root canal. Am I willing to go back to the indescribable hell that led me to avoid dealing with them for all these years? Not today. Which is why I’m not sad about my pink cloud being out of stock. I still remember what a shitty driver Jim was.