Editor’s Note: Periodically the Spy decides it must protect the identity of a subject and/or their families when discussing difficult issues like addiction. That is the case here in Jim Dissette’s interview with “John,” who asked that he remain anonymous in order to be as candid as possible. We have respected his wishes.
Spy: First off, it’s great to note that you’ve been in recovery for over 15 years. When you talk about your journey do you feel that “how you got there” is irrelevant next to just maintain your day to day life in recovery?
John: In any recovery-oriented medium, AA, counseling or whatever, pieces of one’s story are often held back for various reasons: shame, guilt, embarrassment, whatever you want to call it and that shapes the stories we tell to ourselves and to others. Sometimes we are not fully aware of our own “story.” But, I believe that the things we do not tell might be the issues that are most damaging and potentially lethal and that need see the light of day. Ironically, at least in a group of addicts, there’s very little you could convey that would shock anyone. It’s not about them and their feelings anyway. The addict needs his or her own shocking moment, to own on gut level, “this is who I am right now, this is my behavior, these are the things I have done with a life out of control.” So there is a sense of ‘before and after,’ all of equal significance. Maybe telling one’s story will help another.
Spy. Did you have a moment like that?
John: I keep having them (laughs). But yes, I was one of the lucky ones. I’d been bumping around in counseling over the years, sometimes required by courts. On some level I knew something was wrong. I think every addict does early on. But I thought I could think my way through it, you know? IF I could read AMA papers on substance abuse and ‘understand’ it, then I could control it. Wrong, at least for me. I remember waking one morning after having read a paper on the metabolic effects of alcoholism. There were red wine-stains on the essay. That’s probably a sign, right?
I was also reaching the stage where I was getting used to losing things; the people I loved were fleeing, my driver’s license was gone, I lost back to back jobs. The insane part is that you somehow cop an attitude that life is that way. Be rugged, life’s a bitch, I’m just being me. Therein lies hell, more self-degradation, depravity physical illness, and death.
It was the September Princess Diana died. Three days after that I had a birthday and people were invited over. I wasn’t drinking that month—I was a binge drinker and could go for months, sometimes years—but I found an open bottle of wine in the fridge, automatically poured a tumbler of it and drank it. Instantaneously I was repulsed. I’d broken another of the thousand promises, so I heaved the bottle of the back porch onto a swamp. Did I mention that addicts are very dramatic?
I went about work, slept and woke up the next day obsessing about that bottle. I had to have it. It was a drive so intense it felt like my reason for being. Note, that I could have gone to store and bought a case, but I had to have that one. I threw pebbles off the back porch, arcing them the way I recalled throwing the bottle to see if I could figure out the search area and went off crawling through the swamp. Something happened on the way to the bottle. Knee deep in muck, mosquitoes I had this moment where I saw my whole life, every bit of it. Everything came crushing down. I saw patterns, consequences. It was almost clinical. I wasn’t judging. There was no self-pity —that comes later (laughs)—there wasn’t a sense of understanding. There was only razor-sharp clarity about the trajectory of my life, with zero denial. I watched a movie of my life in 30-seconds. And the person in that movie suddenly began to no longer exist and there was an overwhelming sense of freedom. I knew I had an open window, an opportunity to change. I was completely on a different track. It was a physical and very emotional event I will never forget. It felt like a spiritual interception.
Spy: What did you do?
John: I called a dear friend who was in AA. Paul was his name. I told him about my experience and I wanted this moment to last. He said something that took me to the next level, but was frightening. “are you willing to go to any lengths to have another day like this?” I thought about that. The fear set in. Any lengths? The old voice was saying, “come on, you’re not going to put your life in someone else’s hands are you, you wimp.” I actually told him. Let me think about that and call you back (laughs). It took about a minute. What did I have to lose? My life sucked. I wasn’t contributing one positive thing to myself or the human race. So I called him back and the journey began. The night before remains the last time I drank alcohol after 30 years of living with the beast.
Spy: So you went to AA.
John: When you are on fire you go to the nearest firehouse and ask for help. As they say, you don’t have read the label on the life jacket to keep from drowning. For me it was AA. Other’s have different paths. At first I was on cloud nine. I felt like I’d been cured. Looking back on it I realize that I’d been given the door to freedom, but I had to learn to walk again. By the way, I’m not proselytizing for AA. This is just my personal experience. Over time, I explored additional ways to keep my balance and we can get into that later if you want.
So, I jumped ahead a little in my story to a critical life-changing moment. It was the fulcrum. I’ve not really talked about how I “got there” or “where I am now.” We can do that later.
Some say it doesn’t matter how you “got here,” that what matters is how you go about your recovery. I have a personal theory, unsubstantiated by anyone on the planet (laughs) and maybe only my truth—but I think the seeds of addiction, the chaos and misery that follow and that arc of self-annihilation can not be separated from every aspect of who we are and everything we do today. It’s how you interpret the integration of the past and present that’s seems important to me. Who wants to get sober only to live a tortured life of guilt and shame? But how do you become free of that after you finally own the past, take responsibility for it? For me it was a complex puzzle and I’ve known people who suffered immensely in sobriety, often returning to active addiction. Who wouldn’t want to anesthetize if their lives were still living hells either for lack of installing and working new principals in their lives, or other severe mental health issues; bi-polarism, depression, PTSD, etc, …
Also I try to be careful about self-deception with all of this. Because I’m in recovery I can give myself the impression that I’m ‘special,’ and that can get dangerous. I’m never out of the woods. I just know better paths walking around in it learning to be a functioning human being and maybe help someone else along the way
So next time, I’ll talk about my particular path and how I think it prepared me for being an addict.
Part Two will be published on March 28
Write a Letter to the Editor on this Article
We encourage readers to offer their point of view on this article by submitting the following form. Editing is sometimes necessary and is done at the discretion of the editorial staff.