I’m stealing this line from Laura McKowen’s Instagram post. Flat out thievery. It happens — the joy, not the thievery — from time to time. Just the act of being, a sudden awareness of how good this is — this life that I’ve found on the other side of fear — the fullness of my life without booze can be surprising. ...
Anxiety. Fear. Agony. Those are the words that come to mind when I recall the first wedding I attended sober. It was a scant sixteen days after I’d given up the drink. I was still in withdrawal, and probably had no business going to a wedding of a fraternity brother. Still, I was committed to attending and even more committed to not drinking. ...
“What’s up with the water?” “What do you mean?” “Why aren’t you drinking.” “I don’t drink.” “Never?” “Never, not anymore.” This was going nowhere quickly. I was already frustrated with my new business partner and his behavior, but I took a few deep breaths. “I haven’t had a drink in over 18 months. If you’d like to have another SE like you last one, I can have a beer. If you like me to show up to meetings the way I have been, it’s best for me to have water.” His last systems engineer had a problem with the bottle and I knew it. He had been let go because of his habit of showing up to customer meetings intoxicated. I hoped that he’d get the message. “Why do you count?” I looked at our customer who sat across form me and could see that he sensed the tension. I could see that he was a bit uncomfortable. “What do you mean?” “Why do you count?” I had wondered whether or not my new business partner was clued in to my sobriety. I’d taken the job about three weeks prior and I was keenly aware of the fact that he’d talked to a lot of people that we both knew. I was also keenly aware that I’ve been public about my sobriety and that a simple google search would reveal a twitter account with links to this page. I was fairly confident that this line of questioning was coming from a place of knowledge of my status. While I’ve always been quite comfortable with my sobriety and I’ve been open and honest about it, I didn’t advertise it in the interview process — that didn’t seem prudent. I kept it under wraps and planned to share it at the appropriate time. This was not the appropriate time and I was getting irritated with it. “What do you want me to say?” ...
The first time the man who I would eventually ask to be my sponsor said, “I love you” to me I was a bit stunned and I managed to stammer that I loved him too back, even though I wasn’t sure that I wanted to say the words — not because I didn’t love him, but because it felt awkward. ...
Several years ago, my wife said to me, “I’d spend my last dime on travel” and I was dumbstruck. Certainly if I were down to my last dime I wouldn’t spend it on travel. Certainly I’d spend it on food, or better yet, beer. This was before I’d gone off the rails - in fact well before I’d gone off the rails. But that was my thought. ...
Primal. Visceral. Instinctive. Fear lives in the oldest part of our brain, the limbic system. The lizard brain. Fear lives in the same part of the brain that governs addiction and so it is not surprising that fear and addiction often go hand in hand. Or that addiction and trauma have such strong links. ...
Over the past month or so, I have not written much here. Perhaps you noticed. It’s not that I haven’t had anything to say, or that I’ve been isolating, or that I’ve fallen back into the patterns of my past. In fact, I have big news that I haven’t been able to share because, well, lots of people read this blog. ...
I get it. You had somewhere to be this morning and it wasn’t at your kid’s school to drop them off. Perhaps your wife usually does it. I don’t know your circumstances. And you don’t know mine. So when I stopped at the wrong spot to drop my kid off and then moved forward a mere 20 more feet, you really could have just played it cool, but you didn’t, you had to let me know that I’d somehow fucked up. And I get that too. Really, I do, because there are a million little things that get under my skin on a daily basis. Like when someone doesn’t use their blinker when making a turn. Like when the barista at Starbucks doesn’t leave enough room in my coffee, or leaves too fucking much. Or when I thought I had my wallet and I don’t when I pull up to the gas pump. Yes, I get it, that my stopping short of the mark to drop off my son really pissed you off. And you know what, I’ve walked in your shoes. I’ve been the angry asshole who made hand gestures at other people who I didn’t know because they fucked up in a minor way on the road. ...
Damien’s Note: Matt and I have followed each other on Twitter for some time and have had enjoyed good interactions. Last week, he reached out via Direct Message requesting my email, saying that he had something to share with me. When I opened the email, in the middle of my work day, I was dumbstruck. I had to get up and leave my home office for a bit to absorb the pain. Matt’s story hit home because I know what it’s like to loose someone important to death, but I can’t imagine loosing my wife. I hoped that Matt might want me to share this story on my blog. Matt’s story is one of resilience. He’s proof that our sobriety can be stronger than our emotions, life’s twists and turns, and even death. I married an amazing woman in 2004. We had been together as boyfriend & girlfriend for 7 years to the day when we tied the knot. Not only was I marrying the love of my life, this person was my best friend/lover & soul mate. I came out as bisexual to her early in the relationship, she understood and excepted me. If I am in a relationship with a person that’s it I am just in a relationship with that one person. By coming out to her it was as if I had come out to the entire world. I was free to be myself, no secrets and no shame. When I saw her eye up some attractive random man could smile and tell her she had good taste, a relationship like this comes but once a life. ...
There is a lot of talk in the rooms about feelings, and specifically about feelings that we didn’t want to feel. I know that I personally drank to cover up feelings — of inadequacy, of fear, of confusion. We talk a lot about how alcohol numbed our feelings, or put them aside, but we don’t often talk about the feeling that resulted from our drinking. I know for me, especially as I neared the end, I felt feelings of hopelessness, anger with myself and others, and despair as a result of my drinking. I felt like I was trapped — and I was trapped in a cycle of daily drinking. I felt that there was no way out and I hated what was happening. I distinctly remember looking at myself in the mirror, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the middle of a bender, and thinking — I hate you. ...
For months, I have woken up filled with anger and angst about the politics of the United States. I’ve felt that it was my responsibility to be educated, to be involved, to raise my voice against injustice, to resist. But in the 24 hour news cycle this has become taxing — Taxing on my mental health, my family, and my friendships. I’ve been keenly aware that my anger and angst, my resentments, have been eating me alive. I’ve also been keenly aware that these things are beyond my control. Intellectually, I know what to do, and yet, I have resisted. And I’ve felt trapped. Trapped by the fact that this is an “outside issue.” I’ve felt a strong need to talk about it in a safe place, a meeting perhaps, but have known that I cannot bring up politics in a meeting for obvious reasons. I’ve been caustic in my criticism of this new reality on my social media outlets. Where I’ve needed to bring healing words, I’ve only brought sandpaper to rub the wounds of my friends. ...
Reconnecting with my wife has been one of the most precious gifts of my sobriety. In the depths of my drinking, there were times when I felt that I’d lost her emotionally — times when I felt like we didn’t connect at all — and I didn’t know why. The reason is quite clear in retrospect, but when you’re stuck in your shit, you don’t see it. ...
Life has been moving very quickly in the past two weeks between work and family. I had a trip to Florida right before the inauguration. The following week I had a few health related appointments (nothing to worry about, routine things like an eye exam — turns out I need readers for my daily computer work). Of course, mixed in there has been the rush of being a father, with a son in cub scouts, and basketball. I got violently sick (Norovirus) towards the tail end of last week and didn’t really recover until Monday of this week. I’ve been trying to keep with a cadence of at least one post per week, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to write since the inauguration of President Trump. It’s hard to believe its only been twelve days since the inauguration and only nine since we were introduced to the idea of “alternative facts.” Everything feels like it’s accelerated over the past two weeks, and the chaos with which the administration steeps its tea hasn’t helped much either. The truth is, I’ve wanted to write, but not about sobriety. ...
dogma |ˈdôɡmə| noun a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true I have a long standing distrust of organized religion. I grew up going to Catholic school. The Catholic’s had all the answers, and they were entirely sure that they were the only ones who had the answers. In my daily religion classes, I learned that Protestants were not true Christians, that Jews had missed the message, and we didn’t talk about Islam. I learned that there was “one catholic and apostolic” church. I learned that all other religions were “less than” Catholicism. And while I wasn’t in a practicing Catholic family, I eventually received the Sacraments and was confirmed when I was in 10th grade, even though I am confident now that I really didn’t believe. Now, in 1986, a new house was built on the vacant lot next door and Norman moved in. Norman was a born again, fundamentalist preacher who had two kids and a wife. He drove a Mercedes (which was really odd for anyone in Taneytown, MD at the time). His wife was an attractive lady and I always had the sense they should be on PTL. ...
From a very early age, I harbored a deep sense that I wasn’t good enough, that I didn’t fit in somehow, that I was less than. Growing up in the country, my early feelings of unworthiness stemmed from the fact that my family didn’t have a farm, that I didn’t have my own bb gun, that I didn’t have a pocket knife and of all things, that I didn’t have a down vest. See, those were the things that the “cool” kids seemed to have. As a kid, I was oblivious to the good things that I had. It didn’t matter that my father was a world renown instructor at the National Fire Academy. Never mind the fact I was sent to private school because my parents desperately wanted to make sure that I got an education in a town where education wasn’t valued as highly as a set of antlers mounted on the wall of your living room. When I reached the age that little boys start to think that it might be nice to be around little girls, I felt like all the girls wanted nothing to do with me — and for the most part I think that was true. I asked the same girls to “go with me” over and over and got the same response every time, “no.” Not even a “thank you.” It didn’t help that my options were limited to about 15 girls in my class, but I didn’t understand that. Years later, I still struggled with this. On the night that I met my wife, I was so convinced that she wouldn’t want to see me again that I struggled to ask for her phone number — after talking to her for nearly two and half hours at a bar in DC. Finally, in desperation she pulled out her card and said, “Call me” before leaving for the night. See, my feelings of unworthiness were so strong, perhaps only outweighed by my fear of rejection, that I’d never asked for a girl’s phone number in a bar. I was 31 years old and couldn’t work up the nerve to ask for her number. At times, those feelings are still strong in my recovery. ...