On these digital pages I would like to capture a magnificent story, a story that I hope will perhaps inspire just one more person to walk this glorious walk into sunlight and joy. To tell it true will mean jumping around in time and space. So that it may be pleasant to read I ask God to Bless and inspire each word. If it fails it is I that fail but never God... Let's begin.
My name is Mias and I am an alcoholic... Such a simple sentence and yet each time I write or say those words my eyes goes wet in remembrance of what went before... It all started 70 years ago on a Sunday afternoon 3'o clock. My mom nearly died in the process of giving birth and there must have been quite a few other warning signals abound! Pandemonium with sulphur and thunder and lightning and nurses running like crazy to fetch crucifixes for protection... I started crawling soon afterwards and it took me sixteen years to crawl to my first drink of alcohol. On my way there I went through a very, very strange puberty and never really made friends.
Our home circumstances were such that other people and their children seldom came to visit us. Although I picked up some social skills I missed out on the most important ones. For example, on leaving for another school once, I did not even have the decency to say farewell to the one and only almost friend I had, another loner who showed his hurt years later at varsity by not greeting me in the passing. The signs of the young alcoholic in practice for far greater things were all there...
After the first drink, for the first time in my entire young life, I experienced that peace that had so eluded me till then. For the first time I felt part of life and people. I could connect and I could talk and laugh and be funny, o so funny, and the shyness left through the roof and life was great, just great! The next drink was my constant dream. I discovered how to switch on happiness and joy. The periods between drinks, mainly school quarters of about three months each, was made more miserable once I discovered the secret of 'real' life, happy life, fun and games life! Finally I had a life where I was joined to the rest of the world and an equal in all respect. Perhaps more superior than equal mind you.
Already, though I was blind to the facts, my drifting apart from people had started. The friends I chose were for their ability to share my greatest passion, alcohol. The women I fancied avoided me like the plague and the ones that did talk to me seemed to disappear after they have had their fill in booze. One personality trait that stands out through all the years was my intellectual intensity. I generated grandiose philosophies like stating that one could only say 'I believe that I believe' and then, after a few more nights of pub crawling and rubbing against the bar room philosophers
I modified that into stating that one can only say that 'I believe that I believe that I believe'. It has taken me all these years to figure out why everybody agreed with me and slowly started excusing themselves from my presence.
From a very gentle age I was a lonely drinker. O how I loved to name famous alcoholics to rationalize my drinking. 'Churchill drank a lot you know' or 'Langenhoven functioned best with alcohol...' and glowed with the silent knowledge that I was linked in spirits with them and I just knew that I was set for their greatness or more. Just how great took me quite a number of years and drinks to work out.
My first lesson in applied drinking was in discovering that drinking did not agree with engineering studies at all. The University of Pretoria was the battle ground for that elementary lesson. Two years, and after passing the first year in a roundabout manner, the writing was on the wall and out I went. What nearly killed me was that I tried balancing studies, drinking and playing snooker in the evenings. By the time that I left university I was a total nervous wreck. My guilt about drinking and not studying was tremendous. It sent me into heart palpitations that ended in a Psychiatrist diagnosing me with Anxiety Neurosis.
At that stage my life had so little to do with reality that I could have been described as crazy. I was a complete social outcast at the age of twenty. I longed for friends but was unable, with my shyness and low self esteem, to form any lasting friendships whilst sober. Then again, the drunken friendships were normally not the ones I wanted. I was alone and beaten and for the first time in my life it was checkmate.
My dad also tended towards drinking too much and he sort of understood that one needed a drink now and again. My mom, bless her soul, loved and honored my dad and must have thought that the apple does not fall far from the tree. One recurrent theme that I remember was us three criticizing the rest of the family, over a few drinks, in the evenings in the small kitchen. It was predictable and totally negative how each evening was spent and yet my family was caught in the vicious circle of uplifting ourselves by downing others and a few drinks in the process. It was not the kind of life I wanted to live at all but the booze kept me in it for the count.
After varsity I got a job at a soil laboratory. For about a year I worked in the day and drank in the evenings and weekends with my newfound freedom money. After that I worked for Geological Survey and worked in the day and drank in the evenings and weekends. After that I worked for Water Affairs and worked in the day and drank in the evenings and weekends. We once had a spell in the Blyderiver canyon where we worked until one o’clock and drank the rest of the time. My nerves were shot and remorse and guilt feelings washed over me like tidal waves. The only cure for this was a drink. The process was a masterpiece of perpetual motion!
For the first time then I got a job in a field that truly fascinated me. I became a computer operator at a big company with the promise that I will be trained in programming. I applied myself to this job so much so that I worked tenaciously and then drank tenaciously again. Like all alcoholics I was described as an excellent worker, with the qualification ‘when sober’. Although I never drank at work I often had hangovers that were reported as ‘Flu’ and I took quite a few Mondays and other days off because of this seemingly chronic disease. Whatever I was ordered to do, I did with gusto. The main reason why I performed two levels above the rest was to ensure that nobody could criticize my drinking because of bad work. Our first programming course was in machine ‘Basic’ language. This meant literally programming by moving and shifting 0’s and 1’s around.
During this course I had to excuse myself from class a number of times because of anxiety. The evening after such an incident I would drink heavier to cover my feelings. To this day I believe that if a secret government agency wants a device to break down self-esteem they would have to look very far to beat the efficiency of alcohol in the alcoholic. Because my nerves were so shot I complained to my doctor that I was very nervous and that I was inclined to that because I was born like that. He smilingly prescribed a tranquilizer for me and assured me that more than 50% of the 700 IT staff was using it because it was such a stressful environment! That was the beginning of a 20 year love affair with tranquilizers for me. It was hell getting rid of them but that is another story which I will share later on.
In this period my dad and I started weekend farming on my mum's farm near Kroonstad. We had a few hundred sheep and about a hundred cattle. It was a very, very strange farming operation. The farm was like one big pub. After a year my LDV was filled with strange round circles where the moist glasses rested on the dusty body. It looked like a designer paint job!
The farm had a long row of ancient Eucalyptus trees. We loved each one of the trees for in their shadow we could rest and refresh our spirits. As a matter of fact, my dad and I loved the refreshing-spirit trees so much that we planted a hundred or so more. I suppose motivated subconsciously, just to ensure that we did not run out of trees... Thank God trees do not gossip!
Soon after doing the computer prgramming course and whilst still operating on the computer console, I wrote a print program that the then experts at our company in Cobol programming, a far easier language, has not gotten around to yet at that time. It saved us hours and tons of paper. This boosted my alcohol consumption because I rationalized that a clever person like me deserved a few drinks! I was becoming very egoistic and that did not help my consumption at all! After about six years of this I got an anxiety attack one nightshift. Suddenly I realized that I was unable to stop drinking. I had lost control... It was hell! I had heard of rehabs and booked myself into a Pretoria one and drove myself over one wintry morning and clocked in!
The first three days was spent in what was called the 'sputnik' ward. Pumped full of tranquilizers and Vit B co. the newly chastised sweated it out there in sheer misery. For three days the fly-specked ceiling was our only joy and guilt and remorse settled in like a thick fog over a winter sea. After three days I was sent to a dormitory and attended the daily talks and lectures. I attended a few meetings because it was expected of us. I listened and looked at the speakers and realized that I had not reached such a pitiful level yet that I had to resort to such desperate measures, thank God! Every morning it was Vit B Co. injection time. To this day I can remember the taste in my mouth and waiting for the prick of the needle to remind me that I was born in sin and so I will perish, if I kept on drinking.
One wintry afternoon, it was the week of the Soweto demonstrations; I decided to ask God for a message of divine guidance so that I would know what to do next. I prayed and opened my Bible at a random place and read the verse where my eye first fell. Now, take into account that my forefathers used the Bible as a source for baby names and that my full names are 'Jeremiah Isaiah'. I closed my eyes and randomly opened the bible. The first place I looked was Jeremiah 35:1 which reads 'But they said, We will drink no wine: for Jonadab the son of Rechab our father commanded us, saying, Ye shall drink no wine, neither ye, nor your sons for ever' . A more direct intervention than that I could not have hoped for.
In silence I prayed and thanked the Lord for confirming that alcohol is bad news for me! I could sense the dawn of a new day, God has spoken, and I relaxed knowing that surely I will never drink again...
Dawn of a new day...
I left the rehabilitation facility after the recommended 21 days. Until then I had been living with my parents but should really have had a place of my own at that age. There were quite a number of minor incidents at my parent's place because of my drinking. My parent's were so thoughtful that they had organized a bachelor flat for me during my rehab interlude. Complete with fridge, bed etc. I felt as if I was being spoilt rotten! I would visit them often but their demeanor remained a bit nervous for the first couple of years. I suppose Jack the Ripper also had parents so I was not unique in not being welcomed back like the prodigal son.
Soon I moved into 'sober survival mode'. This was something like what one would imagine a robot, that has been programmed to behave like a human, would function. The program was more or less going to work until five, listening to Beethoven's 5’Th piano concerto lying on the carpet doing relaxation exercises. Drinking lots of Rooibosch (Herbal) tea with honey. The main thought theme was working through oceans of guilt and remorse washing over me. Soon I learned to run away from myself into work. I had now been promoted into the programming world. Main reason I believe was because the security in the Computer room was of such a high grade. Sort of 'No drunks allowed!' I did extremely well in programming after a few months.
One simple example was a problem that the payroll people had with an endless loop. It was a case of a number of top programmers having battled for a week to find the problem, to no avail. They asked my boss for assistance because he was rated the top COBOL analyst. He picked me up one evening about 7'o clock and we went to the office. While he was unpacking the coffee flask and sandwiches for the night I said I want to go and have a quick look at the program. It took me about five minutes to diagnose that they were dividing by zero, which is a no-no and to correct that. Despite my successes I was still riddled with guilt and my self esteem was well below zero.
I went to different churches and philosophies looking for happiness. Examples of this were comparative religion study, Yoga, spiritualism, Buddhism and prayer meetings. Although it helped me to keep going I was still riddled with guilt and my self-esteem was zero. During this time I sort of helped a lady with two young children whose husband was going through a bad spell in a confined environment. I loved the children and evenings were spent at their place with one child on each knee. It was wonderful to experience when they regained enough trust that they started sleeping with their eyes closed again. It was quite a battle getting her husband out of the confined environment and when he did come out, they moved to an up market part of town and I did not see them very much.
I met a young lady at a church meeting after about four years sober. We were good friends and should have remained that. I think we both wanted to be accepted so much that we were just natural born suckers. We got married after a few months and tried our best to make it work. There were some problems that just did not lend themselves to be solved and after two years we called it quits and got divorced. I then really threw myself into work.
My whole life, since stopping drinking, was still more or less on auto-pilot. I had huge personal problems, was depressed and anxious and filled with guilt that grew and grew. Life was miserable and although I was good at my work I had no friends and my failure at marriage had compounded my self-esteem and shyness problems. In hindsight, there was a lot of life skills, like conflict handling, socializing, forgiveness etc. that I needed to pick up somewhere. The problem was that I could not do that because alcohol and my background had isolated me. It was a strange, strange time. To be honest, checkmate seemed to be my constant status...
About a year later I took one of our students, whom I intended bedding, to a beer garden. She asked me if I wanted some Schnapps seeing that it was a German festival. I said no thanks I will have a cool drink. She asked again and the third time she said "Have one; you are surely not an alcoholic?" I should have said 'yes' there but I did not pass that test... That same night I could again not drive home. I had picked up exactly where I had stopped. My liver had recuperated a bit and my resistance was not so high so, to my detriment I did not have hangovers for a while. Drinking, once again, made me feel so good that I thought "What the hell, I must have been unhappy or depressed when things went wrong the last time".
It was now seven years since God has commanded me never to drink again. When I took that first drink in the evening I just knew that His diagnosis had been wrong. If I knew then what hell lay ahead I would have found the courage to commit suicide and gotten it over with. It is the one quality in man that tomorrow will always be a better day. The horses that ran last today will win tomorrow. For me to have thought that I could cope with life’s demands without all the survival skills I lacked was like a man expecting an engineless car to move forward on it's own steam. To be fair, I still do not know of an institution that teaches those skills except growing up in a family with a love foundation.
Life was hell then onwards and each day it got worse.
Drunken nights changed into drunken weekends into drunken weeks. I avoided my parents like the pox because I thought they thought I was still not drinking. My boss was so understanding, mainly because I was still an excellent worker. If I must describe the next few years the best try would be 'dark, cold, sweaty, guilty hell', over and over and over and over. It was evenings of plastic alcohol induced 'joy' and mornings of dark hell with no hope of salvation ridden with guilt.
The blackouts started then. I will never forget the looks of pure disgust my two cats, Sun and Japan, would give me when I lay in an alcoholic stupor on my sweaty bed on a Sunday morning. The rest of the world would be relaxing and laughing going past my window. I will never forget, one evening I was feeling so joyous about life, after about half a bottle of Brandy, and I played Queen's 'I want to break free'. Singing along and wanting to break free with my whole being. God knows I had nobody left to break free from at that stage. Everybody had left voluntarily of their own accord and with their own transport or walking of into the sunset.
Those were strange times, very strange times. Strange music mixed with strange philosophies with strange women in a strange, strange world. In writing this I am skimming over the details as if taking a spoonful of water out of the sea. Somebody might remember me from that time and say that I looked and acted happy. That could be true but the defining word would be 'acted'. I started acting towards people what I thought they wanted me to be. Of my own personality there was very little left. I did not like my own personality in any case. To each person I had to interact with, I presented a different version of 'Mias'. Mias XP 11.2 for this one and Mias Vista rel 2.1 for that one. It was hell keeping track of who I was towards whom.
Then things grew really worse. My choice in friends and women really took a dip and it was a strange period, very strange. My 'Flu' sick leave started getting longer and longer. I did not seem to care anymore although I always felt very guilty about the previous nights/days doings. Just a very few of my drunken behaviours that was totally negative included driving drunk, harassing friends and non-friends on the phone at all hours, breaking up a marriage and so it can go on and on. In my black loneliness I had a permanent dream of finding another person who would share my life but I was absolutely unable to enter into a normal loving relationship. In short, I was acting totally selfish and self-centred.
Wish that I could repair all the harm I had done but some things are forever in the past. It was then that I subconsciously realized that work was interfering with my drinking and that I would not be able to keep the charade up much longer. I had decided to run away from all my self-created problems. My retort to criticism tended more and more towards suicide. My work was awfully nice about everything and even made an appointment for me with one of the in-house psychologists.
He explained to me that they liked me working for the company but yes, that there were limits and that the company would have to consider its options at some time. I explained to him that I had turned to God recently and that I could see the whole problem ending right then. He was so happy and beamed and shook my hand. I was so glad for God’s support once again. I could see that I had given the psychologist a lot of job satisfaction that day.
Now I knew that I had to make some plan. I was too scared to commit suicide and besides, I still had money left for booze. Rather do it the slow healthy way! These people did not understand that they were the reason for my uncontrolled drinking. The stress that they loaded me with and the ‘meager’ salary I was paid was the last straw. I decided that I should resign, before I got fired, and to have a six month break in my dad’s seaside house where my shattered nerves would recuperate. I thought it a given that
I would not need alcohol if the work stressors were removed. So, I put my flat in the market and slowly gave my furniture away to a band of easy women who would bring ldv’s to cart furniture away at the strangest of times. It was a three bed roomed duplex with dishwasher, washing machine, fridges etc. and I can not remember getting a cent for the lot. I resigned and moved into a boarding house until my pension and sale of my flat would pay out. This was true unadulterated hell. With no stressors left I found myself drinking 24/7.
Life did not feel very fair any more.
I remember greeting my dad before I left for the beach house. He said that he would not see me again. I replied that surely they would come down and he said that he did not mean it like that. I only understood three months later when he passed away. He was seventy nine years old. The man I loved most of all persons on this earth. All that I had left in this world was my old rusty car and what could fit into it. Of I went on this new adventure into a brave new world called stress free sobriety…
Stress free sobriety...
Arriving at Oyster Bay, where our beach house was, I felt positive and relaxed. At last I would have the time and atmosphere to face my problems head on and work them away. I planned to do lot's of reading, angling from the sandy beach, long walks to clear my mind of yesterday's ghosts. I also knew that I could have a drink in comfort now and not worry, for a good while, about going to work. I bought quality drinks with my pension and sale money. Lots of Whisky and Brandy and Beer and Champagne and sweet red wine in beautiful two liter glass jars. The drinks were for the first period which could be roughly described as a ‘planning period’. No reason rushing headlong into things… Oyster Bay, at that time, was nearly deserted. My nearest neighbor was 500 meters away. It was sheer joy having no responsibilities and at last, zero stress.
Time slowly passed. My week of planning turned into a month and suddenly everything began to look familiar again. I closed the curtains and went outside the house once a week. That was to go to the closest bottle store for alcohol. I became paranoid and had spells with delusions. One evening I could hear a radio playing classical music. This was strange because the nearest house was beyond earshot. I listened and listened and only noticed something strange when I realised that I could tune the radio to a different station just by thinking. In future, it seemed, my radio would not need batteries anymore… This was frightening and I literally drank until passing out and then drank when I woke up again. I forced myself to eat something now and again because I knew my body would go without that.
Then my dad passed away. It was a strange time that, very strange. In retrospect I can see that certain events triggered certain responses in me. That still does not make it feel better that I was totally drunk during the few days that I went to Pretoria for my dads funeral. On the evening before the funeral I visited an escort agency and I nearly crashed my dad’s car in a drunken spell. I do not know where to begin to explain that I did things totally contrary to what I wanted to do and felt I should do and I had very little choice in the matter. I had to go to the funeral parlor to identify my dad the morning before the funeral. He was lifeless and cold and transparent and he looked sad, oh so sad…. As if sensing me and crying that life was for aught……
This was strange times, very - very strange.
I left Pretoria and flew back to Oyster Bay. The shock of my dad’s death hung like a black shroud over me. I knew that I could not carry on like I did, even if it was just in memory of my dad…
Normally I am a reasonable intelligent person that does most things which I decide on. It still beats me how many thousands of times did I decide to stop drinking, drink less, drink like a gentleman and somehow never got around to doing that. The amazing thing about this was that I also forgot that I have failed so many times. It was as if I was suppressing that knowledge so as that it can not confront me as a failure. Each time I picked up a drink it was with the belief that ‘this time was going to be different’ and it never was... Einstein said that one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I was guilty as charged by that definition.
The weeks after my dad’s death I drank more and my mood was also very, very depressed. My awake hours was spent almost 100% in figuring out how to commit suicide. After about three weeks I went to town to collect my car and the car was not ready and one thing led to the other and I drank on in town. About three ‘o clock the police picked me up for being drunk and disorderly in public. The last thing I can remember was that I backhanded a policeman so that he sailed through the air for about three meters. I am sure that I was possessed by a demon then and every time I lost control because of drinking too much. I say that because I am not an aggressive person and definitely not a brawler.
I woke up in the police cells across the street from the building where my dad had been a much loved magistrate some years ago. I was lying on my stomach with my arms outstretched and it did not take a genius to work out that I had been chucked in there bodily. My belt and shoelaces was removed and the toilet had no seat. The burglar bars were pretty thick and I could see that no one was going to burgle this police station! This was definitely a low even for my drinking career.
I spent about two hours of sheer agony in that cell trying to work out what the hell I have done now to be in jail. I could remember very little and would have had a problem denying any charges put to me. The station commander then had me brought out and I got a talking to and promised never to get that drunk again and said that I was sorry and I found it rather easy to look genuinely sorry and sad about my doings. I paid a R30-00 admission of guilt fine and I got my belt, laces and wallet back. I wanted to give the policeman that I had backhanded some money to treat his girlfriend but they said they could not take money.
However, they were selling special wine for raising funds for the orphan fund and I could take some of that if I wanted. What a bargain! I bought a few bottles at a horrendous price and then the police took me out to Oyster Bay. The policeman even put the wine in the fridge for me. Normally, after such an event, the shock would have kept me from drinking for at least a week. This time out I was drinking ‘police wine’ on the front verandah at 9’o clock the next morning feeling so proud that I was helping the widows and orphans.
Then things took a turn for the worse.
Drinking 24/7 and slowly loosing my mind, life was hell from that point on. Once, in a drunken stupor, I wondered if I had perhaps died and that this hell that I was experiencing was really Purgatory. It felt exactly like that in any case. To decide the issue I decided to walk out onto the wet grass. If I could feel it under my feet I would be alive else I would know that I have died. The test came up negative for it was death that I yearned for at this stage. I was planning how to commit suicide all the time now. I would decide to take an overdose, cut my wrists and then shoot myself. Always deciding against it because it would take a while for anybody to find me and the house would smell to high heaven. In the end walking into the sea came up tops for cleanliness and style.
My mom came down to visit for the summer holiday and I did not drink for a whole month then, out of respect for her. I was however not much fun and slept the whole day, every day. When I took her to the airport I started drinking as I was waving goodbye through the lounge window. I only made it back as far as Jeffrey’s Bay, halfway home and woke up the next morning with the mother of all hangovers. Having stopped drinking for a month I had a lot of quality agony-guilt time and had worked out that I must drop this dream of the stress free life fixing all problems and find a job. At least I would not have as much time to drink then. A strange thing happened then, although I had just lain of for a month I suddenly found that I could not stop at all even if I tried all the tricks in the book. It was as if all the ghosts of the past had come to haunt me all at once. I was shattered. I could not visualize a life without alcohol but neither one with alcohol. It was the final checkmate…
Then, suddenly, things went from bad to worse…
My mom could obviously hear on the telephone that her favorite and only son was drunk 24/7. She commandeered a family member to come down and confront me. She arrived at Oyster Bay and started breaking me down in every possible way she could. 'I had married because I was selfish she said and blamed me for this and that. I was confronted over and over until a terrible sadness enshrouded me when I looked at her in sadness as if for the first time in my life seeing her. To this day I know that if I had wanted to drive someone to suicide I would have done what she did to me. She also had quite a severe drinking problem and about eight ’o clock, when she lay passed out on the bed; I took the last bottle of whisky that my dad had left there and walked down to the sea.
The Walk
I walked down to a high dune that my wife and I now refer to as ‘the walk’. I decided that I would walk into the sea just before dawn, when no people were around, and just keep walking until the water was too deep and I would have no choice but drown. I could visualize the mirror like surface of the sea that I would be able to watch, drifting lifeless with the current on the sand below. What was strange to me then was that I felt elated. I was not going to wake up with more problems tomorrow because there was not going to be a tomorrow. I spoke to God and apologized but asked His understanding that I just could not go on. That I was coming home early and that He must please forgive me. That night it felt to me as if He accepted my hopelessness too. I finished the bottle of whisky, my second that day, just before dawn. I was flustered and strangely anxious, despite all the whisky, walking down to the beach because I knew that what I was going to do would be final. I
dressed down to my underpants and left my watch and glasses also on the beach. I think I did that because I wanted to leave some sign of what has happened. Something else I remember is splashing water on my chest and wrists to prevent a heart attack, as I always do when swimming in cold water. I then waded into the sea. It was a long shallow tide. I must have walked in for about a kilometer before the water reached my neck. It was then that I decided that this water was too cold for my liking and I turned around. I must have gotten hypothermia with all the alcohol and cold water because I passed out in the shallow water.
The tide was going out so I did not drown. At about nine ’o clock I felt someone kicking the holy life out of me. When I looked up and saw my confrontation appointed family member I knew that I was not in heaven. The next step in the confrontation options the person had was to have me institutionalized so that they could fix me proper. The district surgeon came out and informed me that I was a danger to myself and I could choose to go to a state mental hospital voluntarily or I would be committed there. I volunteered… After that things got really - really very – very bad…
Things got really - really, very -very bad...
I had since these times heard a saying that says 'Nothing is so bad that a drink won't make it worse'. May I bear witness to its factual correctness for oh God how true that is!
About then I started praying again. I remember once I had stared at the ceiling and shouted in desperation 'I want to get up and go to my father'. This was my recognition that the prodigal son and I would have made a fair pair.
I was delivered to the State mental Asylum about 8'o clock that evening. Everybody was pretty nice and assured me that I was 'safe' now and that 'they' will 'look after me' and that I can 'relax'. They took all my tranquilizers and took me to a room. I was with a bald guy with huge popping eyes and on a mission for Christ. He started by laying hands on my head and praying for my health. I could feel the demons streaming into me from him and I realized that 'Oh Boy! was this going to be a fresh new experience for me.' In the daytime he mimicked aircraft taking of every time one took off from the neighboring airfield, which was about every half an hour. I was sad later when I heard that he had passed on but also glad that for him the race was over.
In the morning a cocky male nurse in-charge, with some sort of chip on his shoulder, came to explain things to me. I asked him about my tranquilizers. He informed me that I would not need that any more. Years later I learned that he was hooked on tranquilizers and had probably pocketed it for him. Being in a state mental asylum and drying out from alcohol and stopping tranquilizers at the same time were a bit much for me. I tried being as friendly as I could to all because I realized that one could end up in a catch-22 situation in that place and be sent of to long-term if misunderstood.
The psychiatrist spoke to me and after that a nurse informed me that there was not much that they could do for me as I was an alcoholic and actually should have gone to a dry out farm or such. There was no mental disease really that they could treat. However, they would be so nice as to keep me for 21 days until I felt better. I was very glad for this light sentence because I was scared shitless of being absorbed and forgotten by the system.
My family did not visit me and life was strange, very strange in the asylum. I realized that after this experience I would never drink again and realized that now I had learned my lesson! It had taken this great fall for me to accept the truth but even so it was worth it. Time there was spent walking 5 meters this way and then 5 meters back.
That was the only way I could hold on to my sanity with the two withdrawals happily fighting for supremacy inside my shattered body. One night I went into light Delirium Tremors and that was scary, real scary. I could only remember what I did when I vaguely remembered this ‘dream’ I had. About all I could do was to walk about. My mind was a mess of thoughts looking for a way out. The only positive note was that almost everybody there was a lot worse of than me. The electric shock therapy cases with their thousand mile stares and blue bags under the eyes scared me most. I remained on my best behavior for the rest of my stay there.
I was very nice towards the staff and tried to ignore the fact that they did not really expect anyone there to have a need for communication or being able to do so coherently. It was a bit of a downer when I went to the nursing office and they would put all the scissors in their drawers and watch me like a hawk. This was sort of a very low time in my life not helped very much that my family had written me of and did not contact me.
It was then that I decided to ask God again for advice. I prayed and again opened the bible at a random place and read where my Bible opened. Lo and behold, it was once again Jeremiah 35:1 which reads 'But they said, We will drink no wine: for Jonadab the son of Rechab our father commanded us, saying, Ye shall drink no wine, neither ye, nor your sons for ever'. My bible does not fall open there normally. As a matter of fact, later when looking for the verse again it took me a long, long time being forced to read the whole of Jeremiah. It was after this divine intervention that I realized that God was not joking when he told me the first time to keep my life and wine separate. I also knew that the light was at the end of the tunnel. That even if my physical and psychological makeup was a total wreck, at least I would be slowly rebuilding my life when coming out there.
The nurses organized a room for me in a reasonable boarding house. Thank God I still had some money left. It was also there that I spotted a nurse that I fell in love with head over heels. It was love at first sight and she later said it was the same for her. We met later and became friends and married and I believe that God had sent her in my way. There was however a few minor details that had to be sorted out first. One of them was that I decided that I could not ask her for a date before I was functioning a lot better. I had to have a job at least I decided. I had a new dream…
The day I left the asylum I looked up at God through the roof of my tiny rusty car and promised Him that I would never drink again. At last I had a new dream and hope and vision…
A new dream and hope and vision…
Life was strange in the boarding house, very strange. I went to breakfast, lunch and dinner and walked around the city a lot. Every day I still remembered the state mental asylum and I knew that I never wanted to end up there ever again. Life was starting to look up again for me and I almost smiled sometimes. I remembered my solemn promise to God never to drink again, every day. It took me a whole month to work my way around that one so that I could safely break the promise…
How I broke my promise to God was that I went into a fancy restaurant and after studying the menu and trying to look as normal as possible, I ordered a bottle of good vintage wine to support an excellent meal. I remembered that even the Last Supper was not without the heartening warmth of wine. Here I was drinking like a gentleman and I just knew that would be my way for the rest of my life! On my way to the boarding house I dipped into a bottle store and got two bottles of brandy just in case of snake bite or an emergency. There I was back in the squirrel cage. The alcohol gave me so much confidence that I did not even realize that I was tied to the tree again and that the fire was being lit.
Then things got really – really - really bad, very – very - very bad…
To this day I am very superstitious of using the saying ‘Well, at least things can not get worse now’
I was very scared of being found out drinking by the ‘mental police’, whoever they were, and then probably to be locked up and the key thrown away. To say that I was in continual total anxiety and fear and scared sort of very bad was the understatement of the century. My biggest problem was getting rid of empty bottles. I remember one day driving about 5 kilometers to a lonely beach and, after looking around, taking the plastic bags full of bottles out of the boot of my car. After looking around again I dropped them in a garbage bin and drove of. A bank robber at a failed hoist could not have been as nervous as me then!
This drinking went on for about a month but things were different now. The alcohol did not have the same effect anymore and it was not ‘working’. I realized I had huge problems then and tried switching to wine and then beer but to no avail! Alcohol kept on not delivering! This was bad, bad news. I tried many times during this period to control the number of drinks I would take. An example is one sunny Saturday afternoon when I took a leisurely stroll to get a weekend newspaper. I worked out, along the way, that I could pop into a pub nearby and have just one beer. Just one and that would be it and I would return to my room and read the newspaper.
I remember asking the bartender for the biggest bottle of beer that he had. I savored the beer and stretched it out for about half an hour. Then, paper under the arm I went to the door. Outside the afternoon was even more sunny and perfect. I looked at this wonderland and realized that the one beer had not quite ‘touched the spot’. I went back for just one more beer… They closed the pub at about one ‘o clock in the morning on me. On my way to the boarding house there was a group of about ten tramps huddled around a small tin fire. Feeling like company I shouted some or other greeting to them and to show my love for all mankind. The retort was something like ‘F…off! You will get the police on us!’ I had now reached a stage where even tramps had no use for my company…
Then, just as things were starting to look worse again, things got better. In the next weekends paper there was a questionnaire with twenty questions to determine if one is an alcoholic. I thought ‘what the hell’ and did the test. Surprise, surprise I got a full score!, twenty out of twenty, I was overqualified so to speak! I decided that if these people knew so many right questions to ask they probably had some answers as well. I decided then, for the first time in my life, to go to a meeting without prejudice and to give them a good try. That, as it turned out, was the best decision I had made in my entire life.
As I write this I am crying just from the memory of that precious golden moment. A person that does not understand alcoholism will not know why I cry, but I do, I always do… Having been confined in the dark, sweaty bowels of hell with each day like a hollow laugh and seeing the door opened and the light and trees and blue skies outside was Heaven to me...
A new beginning...
On the 4’Th of April 1989 I went to my first meeting, with an attitude of 'please help me'. That is still my Sobriety date, through the Grace of God. The chairperson was a man that was in my class at school 25 years before. That helped me a lot and very soon I felt at home. The people were nice and I felt that they understood me. My only problem was that someone must have spoken to them because they seemed to preach, around a corner, about all the things I did when I was drunk. Only later did I learn that, because all our stories are so similar, most newcomers feel that someone had split on them!
This group that I went to was based in a club for alcoholics. That saved my life because I spent almost every minute of the day there. If I wandered of and the craving started I ran for the club like a kitten from a dog. Very soon members started taking me along to go and visit persons who had contacted us for help. Walking into a room smelling of alcohol and seeing the unmade bed and the sweaty person, normally with a cigarette, sit-lying in the bed with a look of total despair was something that helped me a lot. Suddenly I realized that even though I was too shattered to go for a job interview again, here I could help people in a way that doctors and psychiatrists can not. Just by being able to greet the human wreckage and say ‘I understand’ always gave them hope. Someone has done it perhaps they can also do it… It was easy to respect the dignity of people seeking help because my dignity was respected when I arrived.
The strangest thing was that I quickly recognized this new sober way of life as what I had been seeking in so many religions and philosophies, all those years before. The most amazing was that there was no incense burned or chants or hymns to be sung. It was a simple ‘we love you so sit down, shut up and listen’ approach. ‘Do the things that worked for others and it will work for you’ and 'The answer is God, what is the question?' I was told. There were people that had literally ended up in the gutter and they had regained all and more of their lives. One member had thousands of people at his funeral I was told. That was a man that I had listened to many times and who was the humblest of the humble.
A new life...
What transpired in the years since I have stopped drinking is nothing less but sheer magic! To discover that one has not lived at all, after 40 years of going through the motions, is like being released from prison or hell...
A Fine, Fine Day (for a reunion)...
I am listening to ‘Hotel California’ of the ‘Eagles’. Funny thing happened. Somehow or other I missed the years when it first came out. Was busy drinking… I love the song so I KNOW that I would have bought it then, had I heard it… Many things like that happened in my life. I was also not around when they dished out wives and families and happiness. I was drinking and sort of missed the party… Now I am listening to ‘Hotel California’ and a few others, and I LOVE it! I also have not had a drink for 28 years now! What a coincidence! So… please read on and see if I can turn your head...
About Fathers, Mothers, Sons, Daughters, Grandsons ad infinitum.
Few things explain the effect of the 'sins' of the Fathers on the other generations better than Dominoes set up to fall in sequence. For instance, very often it is found that the Grandfather, Father, Son and Grandson are all alcoholics. For that matter they may all be thieves, gentlemen or fancy dressers. Fact is that each one in succession will probably do, BY EXAMPLE, what the previous in the chain has done. The alcoholic somewhere in a probable long, long chain, who recovers, are the 'chain breaker' and he or she stops this vicious negative cycle through Grace and positive action.
This effect is really very understandable. The son learns from the example of the father etc. and probably HAS NO OTHER example. How can one blame him then?
OK, so if the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons what else is new? Quite right, the GOOD character traits are also passed on so in the end one can only sigh and say 'Well, that is life...' which is quite true for the 'normal average' person but not so the alcoholic. Just look at a few examples of the utter chaos often created by well-meant actions of the recovering alcoholic when setting things right for instance.
The alcoholic sits down with the father or mother and starts making amends by sharing how wrong he/she were when drinking or still after stopped but not sober yet. It is so well meant and comes from the heart but, the parent might interpret it as hidden accusations. The reason is very simple that the parent KNOWS, whether consciously or subconsciously, that they have probably made a major contribution to their sibling’s failures. So - they do not really WANT to hear what sounds to them like accusations dressed up all 'holy moly'. This results in a perception by the alcoholic that the parent is not interested or does not believe in the sincerity of the amends.
What is the truth in cases like these? Probably somewhere in the middle. How should the alcoholic then handle these parental amends? What happened in my case was that I went through the initial shock of finding my mom ‘not interested’ in my amends. This made me sad and furious all at the same time. How I eventually worked through this is that I shared the experience and the effect that my parents drinking and examples had on me with friends. By talking about it I realized that:-
1. My parents were also not perfect, like me, but I WANTED them to be perfect and I believe that is normal for a child looking up.
2. That the guilt feelings they felt in being bad examples was very real to them and yes, like me, they did not feel like facing the truth.
3. That my parents just wanted me to be OK, healed, normal, whatever as long as they do not have to be involved. This is normal I believe because I was the one that wanted to become sober, that wanted to set my life right and NOT them.
Once I realized that my parents were also not perfect, like me. That they felt guilty, like me and that they did not have the Grace or insight or personality to change a very strange thing happened to me. I was able to really LOVE my parents for the first time in my life because I took them down from the pedestals which were my own creation. I realized that it was me that should and could change and that the best I could pray for in them was that they might change in some aspects IF I set an example that they might want to follow, without preaching to them.
The amazing thing I then understood was that should I have had children they would have FOLLOWED MY example and that any ‘bad’ behavior from them would in effect be a mirror copy of my own. Once again I would only have been able to lead by example…
So, the moral of this story is that the alcoholic must accept that he/she were part of a chain of predictable events and that through Grace and honesty and willingness he/she is leaving the chain and setting a fresh and positive example and starting a brand new life. It must be one of the most beautiful gifts in sobriety that one is able to turn a vicious downward cycle into a path towards Light and Love…
It is so important that the recovering alcoholic understands these complicated mechanisms hidden in ordinary family relations. Being ‘rejected’ or ‘ignored’ when making amends to my mom was probably the number one almost slip experiences I had. My feeling was ‘well – I can just as well go and drink for what they care!’ Thank God for friends who told me to keep coming back until I saw the light...
Looking back I know that I would suffer all I had if that would mean that I would be in the same place as I am now. All the gifts I have received and the change and growth that became possible, because I failed so miserably, was all worth it! There is something strange happening in this world and that is that I believe God has a path (School?) laid out for each of us and we can either follow that path willingly and with a smile or kick and scream against it but walk that path we will.... There is much, much more in this universe than just suffering, riches, power,flesh, blood and tears. It is a bit like swimming though. One will only experience it once you dive into the water. What advice can I give to a fellow sufferer? "When going through hell - keep on walking...."
