My Story by Rocketman
My Story
I was born & raised in a small Mormon community in Utah.
My Parent’s divorced when I was twelve.
My Mother, little sister and I moved to Federal Way Washington.
What an eye opener that was moving from the country to the big city.
I got drunk for the 1st time when I was 15 on MD 20/20.
I woke up the next morning missing 1/2 of my front tooth.
My buddy were trying to stop me from drinking anymore, I pulled the bottle
out of his hand and it hit me in the mouth. I was hooked from the begging.
Back then there were Heads & Jocks. I wasn’t into sports much so I ended up being a Head.
I spent more time out in the woods smoking dope & drinking than I did in school.
I did graduate only because girls did my home work for me.
I was married, divorced and married again by the age of 19 & moved back to Utah.
We had a baby coming & I had no ins. So I got a job working in the coal mines.
My drinking continued to get worse. When my son was born he had a Cerebral hemorrhage in the brain.
The docs didn’t give him any chance of surviving and was supposed to have surgery the next morning.
I begged God to let him live and I promised I would quit drinking.
Well, God did his part. My son did not have to have surgery. He is a Walking Miracle and
just turned 30.
I was ashamed for letting God down and felt like he didn’t want nothing to do with me.
Time passed and drinking got worse. I put my poor wife through hell for the next 13 years.
I would go to the store for a pack of smokes and wouldn’t come home for 2-3 days.
One time I ended up in Ventura California for 2 weeks.
When I moved back to Utah, my Father & I were making up for being separated for 7 years.
He was my fishing buddy. I had 6 sisters and 1 brother. My oldest sister was drinking and driving,
rolled her truck & died. A few years later my father passed away. Too much Vodka had destroyed
his organs. Still I continued to drink.
In 1990 my life was so unmanageable and I knew I needed help. I went to a rehab center. That was when I was introduced to AA and the 12 steps. I attended AA for 6 years & learned allot about myself and how to deal with life on life’s terms. I managed to stay sober for 8 years. Then, my only brother suddenly passed away, also alcohol related. He was my best bud, I couldn’t stand the pain and started drinking hard again. That drunk lasted for 5 years. It was so hard to put the drink down. I searched the internet and found a site called
the sobercity. Stayed sober for 2 years before slipping again. Since then I have had a few months here & a few months there. I know I don’t work the program like I should. I also know I can never enjoy drinking again It is poison to my body. In the past 18 years
I have been sober for 12. Better than nothing I guess.
I want to thank my beautiful wife for her love and support she has given me these past 31 years.
I know I should practice what I preach.
If you really want to get & stay sober, you can.
Just don’t go into it with half measures and hold on to those reservations like I do.
Alcohol and You: A letter to my son
Alcohol and You: a letter to my son.
I don’t need to lecture you about what alcohol does, because you’ve experienced it directly and indirectly. It is true that there are known health benefits of consuming small or moderate quantities, but as you consider drinking think about the likelihood of developing a heavy drinking habit. Here is a link that lists some of the many negative consequences of heavy drinking: http://www.ncadd.org/facts/problems.html
Alcohol facts.
Beer is 4 - 6% alcohol, wine coolers are 5 - 6%, wine is 10 - 14%, fortified wines (sherry, port) are 16 - 24%, distilled spirits are 40%, and a few distilled products are up to 75% alcohol. A drink contains 100 - 150 calories, so heavy drinking can replace a lot of your daily food intake, leading to poor nutrition, or add to weight problems.
It takes about 1 drink per 40 lbs. of body weight per hour to make your blood alcohol 0.08%, which is legally drunk in California. This is based on a standard drink of 1 beer, 4 oz. of wine, or 1.25 - 1.5 oz. of hard liquor (heavy drinkers typically increase the content of “1 drink” of hard liquor by 50 - 100%). You can get just as drunk on beer, wine, or spirits. The presence of ANY alcohol in your system is illegal if you are under 21. (1)
It is easier to ingest alcohol if it is sweetened. It gets into your bloodstream faster on an empty stomach or if the beverage is carbonated, and more slowly if you eat dairy products or fatty foods beforehand. That doesn’t reduce the alcohol in the bloodstream, it just slows down how fast it gets there. Men have more of an enzyme that breaks down alcohol before it gets to the stomach, so it is true that women are somewhat more affected by alcohol than men of equal weight.
Your body metabolizes about 1 drink per hour, no matter how big you are. Once the alcohol is in you there is nothing you can do (except vomit) to get it out of your body faster. Caffeine may wake you up, but you’re still drunk. At your size if you have five drinks in two hours you are legally drunk, and you might be before that. Your 150# friend only needs three drinks in two hours to be legally drunk. You are both significantly impaired well before then—so which one of you is going to drive? If you then drink one drink per hour you are still legally drunk. You are not a particularly safe driver when you are on the downward side of alcohol consumption, even if you are legal. Note that your drinks are likely to get stronger as you drink more if you are drinking hard liquor or making mixed drinks.
Blood alcohol of 0.5% is usually fatal. Almost impossible to do with beer or wine, it is usually caused by rapidly drinking hard liquor—a liter (a little more than 32 oz.) of hard liquor consumed rapidly will kill a 200 - 250# person. Your body has a strong tendency towards self-preservation, and you will likely vomit as you approach toxic levels of alcohol. But consumption of other drugs (especially marijuana) will reduce that tendency. That was a factor in the local death of a college boy last year–21 drinks after smoking pot. He was celebrating his 21st birthday. Assuming the drinks were 1.25 oz of liquor each, he consumed about 3/4 liter over a few hours and died in the presence of the friends who had been encouraging his drinking.
Death can also be caused by aspirating vomit while unconscious. If you haven’t vomited while still conscious, you are likely to pass out at about 0.3% blood alcohol, and if you end up on your back your life can be in danger. Pushing someone who has passed out over onto his or her side or face can prevent choking, but be careful—if they awaken while you are doing this they may become very agitated or violent because of their drunken disorientation.
Alcohol as a habit.
A light drinker doesn’t drink daily and doesn’t get drunk. A moderate female drinker drinks an average of one drink daily; a moderate male drinker drinks two; in both cases they might not drink every day. A heavy drinker drinks more than that, and usually drinks daily. (2)
A child whose parents are heavy drinkers OR who have always been abstinent is much more likely to drink heavily than one whose parents drink moderately. A boy whose father and grandfather drink heavily is many, many times more likely to drink heavily—one statistic I have seen is 900 times more likely than other boys. Whether this tendency has a genetic or environmental basis—or both—is a subject of debate. In my opinion children who see parents with a strong affinity for or a strong objection to alcohol are more likely to fixate on the drug than those whose parents have a more casual attitude about it. It shows the importance of lifestyle balance. It doesn’t mean that abstinence is a bad choice for anyone, nor does it mean that your parents’ drinking causes you to drink.
Alcohol use proceeds to abuse from Experimentation to Social Use to Habituation (regular, usually daily, drinking) to Chronic Drinking. This is not an inevitable progression, it is the continuum along which most people who drink find themselves. Binge Drinking is episodic heavy drinking, usually with intervals of abstinence (and remorse!). Many people who are habituated to alcohol function fine in their daily lives, including people you love and respect. But when alcohol becomes an important part of your daily life, or you have intentionally gotten drunk more than once, it’s time to take an honest look at your habit.
There is no medically accepted definition of the term “alcoholism.” To most people it means chronic drinking, binge drinking, or any use of alcohol that has significant social, personal, or health consequences.
Defining chronic alcohol use as a disease was a major step forward in public acceptance of new treatment methods. Previously alcohol abuse was viewed in moral terms, with heavy class overtones in how it was dealt with. Lower class drunks were thrown in jail; upper class people had “a drinking problem.” Heavy use of alcohol was a normal daily event in colonial times and during the early 19th Century. The rise of the Temperance movement in the late 19th Century led to the move for abolition and Prohibition (a colossal failure) early in the 20th Century; these movements were largely based on the premise that alcohol use was immoral. The Salvation Army represented mainstream thinking about alcohol abuse: treat it in the church basement. The rise of modern medicine, and the young field of psychology, changed the focus to the medical consequences of heavy use and the brain chemistry of substance abuse (still an emerging area of science).
Alcohol treatment and recovery groups.
If you are drinking daily, or get drunk intentionally every so often, you may decide that you have a problem with alcohol and want to seek help. Except for Moderation Management, all of the alcohol recovery groups believe that you should abstain from drinking, but they take very different approaches to how and why you should do so. Even MM believes that you should abstain for 30 days before trying to drink moderately.
The disease metaphor for alcohol use was combined with a strongly spiritual approach to treatment in Alcoholics Anonymous. The fact that AA was founded by a couple of upper middleclass white guys made it possible for people like them to admit to alcohol abuse. AA is the oldest, largest and best-known recovery organization, and despite the spiritual/religious basis it is heavily used in our legal system (this is periodically challenged as a violation of church and state). A DUI is likely to result in a sentence that includes mandatory AA meetings, and people aren’t likely to challenge that when jail time is the alternative. AA’s principles are that alcohol abuse is a disease that is invariably fatal, that abstinence is the only cure, that you admit that you are powerless over alcohol, you call upon a higher power for help in achieving abstinence, and that you regularly attend meetings to get the support you need. (3)
Newer recovery organizations reject the disease metaphor for alcohol use. Rational Recovery is a secular group with treatment based on cognitive behavioral science. (4) When the founders decided to make RR a for-profit business and changed the nature of the recommended treatment system, the board of directors resigned in protest and formed SMART Recovery. (5)
I have found SMART very useful. Both of these groups use a more scientific approach than AA. In effect, they help you persuade yourself to choose not to use drugs. Identifying the reasons that you choose drugs and avoiding the triggers that start abuse are the basis of these approaches. A big difference is that you—not a higher power, not a group—are responsible for your own recovery.
It is an interesting fact that the majority of people who quit abusing alcohol do so on their own, perhaps demonstrating that it really is a matter of personal motivation and choice. They may seek support from family and friends, but don’t join any particular organization—they decide to quit and “simply” stop drinking. George W. Bush is a good example: he says that he drank too much wine one night, as he had at times in the past, and that Laura Bush “gently” encouraged him to quit—so one day he did.
Statistically, most people “lapse” one or two times before quitting for good—but many don’t.
People who belong to recovery groups will often find it hard to believe that people can quit without a specific support group. Information on the effectiveness of the different groups is hard to come by (especially for AA, because it is anonymous and the evidence is anecdotal). Any recovery group can be effective for people who have acknowledged that they have a problem, are motivated to quit, can accept the basic principles of the organization, and anyone can benefit from the support provided by other members of a group if they choose to do so.
So why do people drink?
Every culture that has had the opportunity has fermented anything that would produce alcohol. There is clearly a strong animal impulse to ingest alcohol. The action of dopamine on the receptors in the brain, and the interplay of drugs and neurotransmitters, was only identified in the early 1960’s, so the chemistry of why we drink is still being discovered. (6) Most alcoholic drinks taste good, the buzz is fun, and they seem to enhance social situations because they relax the “worrying” part of the brain and loosen inhibitions. Everyone drinking (or sharing pot) together is a social bonding experience, and the non-user may be socially isolated. Our culture certainly encourages the use of alcohol!
That explains why we drink, but not why we get drunk. It certainly doesn’t explain why we continue to get drunk after we have embarrassed ourselves, made ourselves physically ill, or experienced a bad hangover! Why would you do that again, knowing the consequences? With some honest introspection we can identify the emotional reasons we drink to the point of being drunk, and the reasons vary.
Reducing stress, relaxing, not worrying, rewarding our selves after a hard day or arduous work, feeling mellow or sexy (hah!)–just look at booze ads and see what they’re selling! Most of all, they tell us that we “deserve” it—yes, sir, we’ve earned the right to pickle our brains! Just think of Bill Cosby’s classic skit on this subject.
SMART Recovery suggests that if you become aware of absolute words like need, should, must, etc., and replace them with more accurate words such as want, would like, would prefer, would enjoy—then it’s easier to abstain when you realize that what you perceived as a need is really a want. (7) A “need”, if it is truly a need, “must” be met. A preference can be avoided. There may be some discomfort, but it’s manageable. “What a day! I need a cold, tall one,” becomes “I’d sure enjoy a beer. Think I’ll go to the gym instead.”
Especially when you’re down, and your day seems to have gone badly, you can deflect the notion that you “need” a drink (or 2 or 3 or‰.) to somehow make you feel better. Then you can look the underlying beliefs: was the day really that bad? And is a depressant a good antidote to feeling depressed?
Heredity or environment, or somewhere in between?
Your family on both sides is a mix of heavy drinkers and abstainers, which does not bode well for you statistically! Your mother and I have both been heavy drinkers. Your grandparents on one side are habitual drinkers and on the other are/were abstinent. Nearly all of your aunts and uncles are habitual drinkers. One died of complications of alcohol abuse. As our counselor said, you’re hard-wired for drinking. But remember, you are not a statistic; you make choices.
All this means is that alcohol is all around you in your family, and that people you love and respect have made bad choices about it. You have seen the consequences. You have tried alcohol and other drugs, and you like how they make you feel. I urge you to recognize the likely consequences of developing an alcohol habit, and remember that you have both a genetic and environmental predisposition to alcohol abuse.
Like many people, I have found that abstinence is an easier commitment to make than moderation. It’s much easier to say, “I don’t drink” than to say “I only drink this much.”
I only chose abstinence when I was highly motivated to do so. We’ve made a promise to each other—I won’t drink, and you won’t drink or do drugs (ok, I won’t do drugs either, but I don’t have the opportunity anymore!). I appreciate how you’ve helped me keep that promise and make it easy to say, “I don’t drink.” Thanks for keeping your part of the bargain.
Your choices and your future.
You are at an important age. The habits you take on in your late teen years become deeply engrained by the time you are in your 20’s. Seeking a high can become an end in itself, and can crowd out other activities and interests.
You have friends that are choosing to use drugs regularly, and who may also be making poor life decisions about relationships and their futures. You can still like those people and care about them, but you probably can’t help them change the directions they are taking. You can certainly be there with facts and support if they talk about it, but they will only change when they are sufficiently motivated. After all, Grandma didn’t quit smoking until she got cancer, and even that wasn’t enough motivation for Grandpa. People don’t want to be saved, and they resent being told about their bad habits and behaviors.
Should you choose to use alcohol or drugs again, I won’t consider it a moral failing or the start of a progressive disease. It’s just a bad choice. We have a good relationship, so we will talk about why you made that choice, what beliefs and emotions it was based on, and how you plan to deal with it next time. A habit can be hard to break, but it can be done.
Your past does not have to predict your future; we both know that from experience! And if you get into a situation where you have used drugs or alcohol you know you can call me at any time of day or night to come get you. I’ll be sober, and your safety comes first. You won’t get a lecture…then.
Think back a year or two. I’m glad to see how well you are doing emotionally now. For that part of your stress that was caused by my alcohol abuse and bad behavior, I am very, very sorry. I know those are just words, but I have worked to make my behavior match the words. You kids wanted to see your parents healthy and sober, and we are. Our counselor told me to model contentment and happiness, and I am trying to do that for you. I am happy in my sobriety (and yours!) and you are a big part of why I chose it.
Now think ahead a year or more. If sometime in the future you are plagued by doubt, depression, or anxiety, and things seem hopeless, think back on this time in your life when you pulled yourself up, took care of yourself, and developed confidence, poise, and peace of mind. You helped me through a time of great emotional distress. How well would you have done any of that if you were stoned or drunk?
It really is easier to deal with sadness and distress with a clear mind. Sobriety doesn’t bring happiness, but it definitely makes it easier to achieve and recognize.
I am very proud of you, and love you very much. Let’s take care of ourselves.
Dad
Footnotes:
1 Here is a chart and some information about drinking and driving: http://www.california-drunkdriving.org/levels/
Note that you can get a DUI for blood-alcohol levels below 0.08% if your driving is impaired in the opinion of the officer.
Here is an online blood alcohol calculator: http://www.intox.com/wheel/drinkwheel.asp
Here are some odd facts about alcohol law: http://www2.potsdam.edu/alcohol-info/FunFacts/ItsTheLaw.html
2 Moderation Management, a self-control group, defines moderate use as follows: “For women: Do not drink more than 3 drinks on any day, and no more than 9 drinks per week. For men: Do not drink more than 4 drinks on any day, and no more than 14 drinks per week.” http://www.moderation.org/otherlim.html
3 AA asserts that their organization welcomes atheists and agnostics. Read the 12 steps of AA here: http://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org/default/en_about_aa_sub.cfm?subpageid=17&pageid=24…and you can decide for yourself. You can also read We Agnostics in the book Alcoholics Anonymous (I have a copy).
4 “RR was founded in 1986 by Jack and Lois Trimpey in response to the lack of choice in the field of addictions. At the time, there was no choice other than the 12-step, spiritual healing program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Lack of choice in recovery styles is still a serious national problem, but RR has become well-known as a viable and widely available alternative to addiction.” http://www.rational.org/
5 SMART Recovery: http://www.smartrecovery.org/ Teaches self-reliance rather than reliance on a higher power Views addiction as a complex maladaptive behavior rather than as a disease. Encourages you to recover and move on with your life. Does not use the labels “alcoholic” or “addict.” Does not have a “sponsor” Holds meetings which are actual discussions rather than a series of monologues Evolves as scientific knowledge evolves
6 http://www.utexas.edu/research/asrec/drugs_m.html is just one web site with information on drugs and neurotransmitters. I have plenty more if you’re interested.
7 http://www.skysite.org/primer/exchange.html gives examples of absolute words and their alternatives.
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This site is dedicated to the many men in the world who in some very private manner have had to deal with alcoholism and addiction in their lives. These stories are unique, personal and are an attempt to help other men who have either had their own issues with addiction or have had a family member they remember all to well suffering from alcoholism and addiction. It is my hope that men will come together here and support each other as they share their very private and personal stories so that others will realize they are not alone.
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