REACHING FOR RECOVERY (PUTTING DOWN THE DRINK) Part 4

I'm not going to entertain or bore you with a long drunkalogue. As in the case of my character, Sister Mary Olga, my drinking escapades may seem to have been outrageously funny. The truth is that there was nothing funny about drinking or the effect it was having upon my life. It was also a way that I continued to escape dealing with my feelings and life's problems.

Here are some of the things that happened before I saw the light of a better way of life: I put myself and others at continuing risk as I drove in escalating drunken states. I would occasionally act out in anger at my partner when I was drunk. One time I hit him before passing out. The next morning I awoke and couldn't raise my arm out of bed. I had broken my wrist when I had hit him on his knee.

I contracted a serious and life-threatening venereal disease when I went out to a bar, got drunk, and picked up a stranger on the night of my maternal grandfather's funeral. The result was that I ended up in the hospital for a week. Fortunately I had not contracted HIV/AIDS as the doctors had suspected.

I picked up another stranger at a bar who turned out to be seriously mentally ill. He subsequently threatened to burn our house down and to kill me and my partner. The bottom line was that my quality of life became seriously compromised as it became more and more unmanageable.

After years of being able to stop drinking for periods of time, I finally went on a four month binge that was unlike anything or any binge I had experienced before. I began to drink to excess on a daily basis. It was not unusual for me to come home from work for lunch and have a few beers before returning. I would go to happy hour every day and drink until late in the evening.

Beer had become my drug of choice. I somehow felt that I could control my drunkenness better with beer than with alcohol – another practice of denial – The problem was that I was now drinking up to a case of beer per day. I had indeed become powerless over alcohol. I would not see the light until my partner of eight years left me. He was too frightened to witness what was happening to me to continue to live with me.

What I would later come to understand was that I had always been drinking to medicate a bipolar disorder. I'd never experienced a mania while I was drinking. When I was in an “up state,” I would drink like a fish. When I was depressed, I would stop drinking. I'm certain I would have had a brilliant mania during my final binge had I not been drinking. My experiences with mania were yet to come. I will discuss them in an upcoming article on recovery from mental illness.

Author Davis Aujourd'hui

REACHING FOR RECOVERY - (PUTTING DOWN THE DRINK) Part 3

Coming out as a gay man was a mixed blessing as far as my drinking went. Once I became a bit more comfortable with my sexuality, I began to go out to gay bars. That fueled both my alcohol abuse and my sexual addiction. In the beginning, I would limit myself to three beers. That would certainly change over time!

I drove drunk for the first time when I was nineteen. That behavior persisted for the next fourteen years. I always thought that I could handle it. Fortunately I never experienced any serious repercussions for myself or any others; however, I came close to having a bad accident on two occasions and I was once stopped by the police.

I failed the sobriety tests, but I was released from jail after a low breathalizer test score. I'd only had a few beers. The truth of the matter was that I was high as a kite! There were no tests for marijuana use in those days.

Even though I had become familiar with the experience of passing out, I didn't realize that I had black outs until after the eve of my wedding. My best man was mixing potent gin and tonics which was my drink of choice at that time. I wasn't about to complain. They were absolutely delicious!

The last thing I remembered was that I had been swinging from the shower rod in the hotel bathroom on the ninght of my bachelor party. I fell into a tub filled with ice water and beer. When I got back from my honeymoon, I found out what had happened after my last memory. I had come out to my sister, one of my ushers (a college roommate), and a childhood girlfriend. Talk about comedy and insanity! The underlying truth is that it was a very sad situation. Even so, it helps to be able to laugh about these things. All of this will be part of my coming out story, to be told in a future article.

I didn't always drink every day, though I would almost always have a beer. By the time, I was twenty-five, it would invariably be three or more beers per day. After injuring my back, I began to take prescription painkillers. When I told the doctor that they worked best when I drank them with a six pack of beer, he suggested I try to stop drinking for six weeks. Apparently that was his idea of a test as to whether or not I had an alcohol problem.

It didn't turn out to be a problem. I stopped for those six weeks. Of course, it helped that he doubled the dosage of the painkillers so that I wouldn't fee the need to drink as well. This would become the start of yet another addiction.

Alcoholism and sexual addiction went hand in hand during the years I spent more and more time in the bars. Happy hour had become a regular routine. It had also become regular for me to pick up someone with whom to have a sexual tryst at the same time. Happy hours became longer and longer as the years progressed. In the meantime, weekends were also often given over to nights out at the bars.

Fortunately I did have some sober friends so I had other social outlets as well. On those occasions I would moderate my drinking. Of course, that may have served to fuel my denial that I didn't have a problem. It would take many years of alcohol abuse before I was able to overcome that denial. I would become one of the lucky ones. I would achieve sobriety at a young age – thirty-three. That would be the beginning of my journey into recovery from addiction. There would be much craziness to come before I reached that part of my life's journey.

Author Davis Aujourd'hui