Jim at 14

October 23, 2021

I have been clean and sober since October 23, 2007. I have not had an alcoholic beverage or an unprescribed drug since that date.

Since I don’t even crave alcohol or drugs today, it seems like an eternity. But since I know how easily that can change, how my addiction can turn on me, it also seems like only yesterday.

From a very young age when I had tiny sips of booze at Christmas, I fell in love with it and obsessed it all year round. When I was 12, though, I began reading all kinds of books about addiction and pop psychology. A few years before that my father went to George Brown College to study to be an addictions counsellor, something that intrigued him after his own path to sobriety began at the former Donwood Institute. He didn’t follow through with that, but I was afforded a library on the various facets of addiction and sobriety as the world understood those concepts in the mid-1970s. On top of that, I was attracted to novels (what we would now call YA literature) like Tuned Out, mostly drug and addiction scare literature, and then books like Sara T, Portrait of an Alcoholic (also an after school special). And, for a few years there, my musical hero was Randy Bachman, a Mormon and therefore straightedge.

The point of all this is that early education on alcoholism and addiction did not temper my excessive alcohol and drug use. I had the negative and positive example of my father and various people he met at Donwood. I had all those books and pamphlets and novels and short stories and films and TV shows, not to mention the example of my childhood musical hero Randy Bachman. Through grades 7 and 8 I had decided there was no reason to ever drink or drug.

When I was 14, in grade nine, I started getting alcohol here and there, at first to fit in with people I wanted to befriend, and then because I loved the feeling of oblivion, letting go of me and my fears. Within about a year, however, I discovered that alcohol (and drugs) allowed me to cope with life even when I wasn’t partying. It helped me ask girls out on dates, it helped me in social situations where others weren’t partying, it accompanied me at practically every live performance (and I went to scads and scads of them), through pre-drinking, sneaking out at intermission to go to, say, to The Morrissey when I was watching a show at the Concert Hall, and by sneaking alcohol into venues in craftier and craftier ways. I even occasionally drank at movies, eventually needing the sedative effect to keep me grounded. I also took all manner of drugs - hash, mushrooms, LSD, but mainly pills, uppers, downers, and all-arounders. Alcohol was my drug of choice but if you took it away, I’d have used more of those pills, more regularly. I believe I am an addict with a preference for alcohol, but I don’t believe, at base, that I have a different affliction than someone addicted to crack or opiates (when did we start saying opioids?)

When I was 18 I started suffering consequences, including troubles with the law, but at this point and right until the end of my drinking, it was all about getting away with it, because nothing mattered more than getting out of myself. I remember when I was waiting for trial, my father, who was supportive throughout, pleaded with me not to go into any bars until I was free and clear. I was underage after all and there was no reason to throw gasoline on fire. I agreed with my father, and then that night I went to the Jolly Miller with my sister. This is not a bar I had ever been to, but the opportunity to have another night of drinking despite my father asking me stay out of trouble till my trial, on and despite my agreement with him, was too great. I went to the bar, got drunk, and got into an outrageous argument with the bouncer’s girlfriend. For some reason, the bouncer had to call the cops. They weren’t after me, but I was looking for trouble.

When I was 20 years old, after an out of control weekend drinking with a friend in Peterborough, I woke up with the worst possible shakes. We were at his parents house and there was no possibility of having a drink. I also realized that I had lost my glasses, the beginning of an expensive pattern that I continued right until my last relapse (I hope) 14 years ago. In Peterborough it meant insanely wandering around the whole city and Trent campus looking for my glasses. We never found them. I swore off alcohol forever, got on the bus to Toronto because I was working in the comic book store that night. On the way to my shift, I picked up a 24, and took the edge off throughout my shift.

I spent the next 24 years meaning to quit, sometimes quitting for 2 weeks, 6 months, and once even 15 months. But each time I reserved my right to drink again, which is exactly what I did. It was killing me, it was damaging the person that I wanted to be, but drinking was too compelling. And when it stopped being compelling, I still couldn’t stop, even though I wanted desperately to quit. I needed to drink to deal with the effects of my drinking. I would drink, or take a sleeping pill, to get rid of the shakes. I would be so thankful when the shakes had passed, I was so happy to be alive that I found myself forever swearing off again… until around 4pm, and then I would end up in a local dive bar just for one or two (that would turn into 8 or so), then to a LCBO to make sure I could maintain the inebriated equilibrium, only to repeat the cycle the next day. My whole life was like this quote from Dorothy Parker’s “Big Blonde”:

“Mrs. Morse had been drinking all afternoon; while she dressed to go out, she felt herself rising pleasurably from drowsiness to high spirits. But as she came out into the street the effects of the whisky deserted her completely, and she was filled with a slow, grinding wretchedness so horrible that she stood swaying on the pavement, unable for a moment to move forward.”

In the spring of 2007, I managed to back myself into a corner pretty badly, and I had to agree to get sober. I found myself drifting from private counselling to a daytox program to finding myself drunk and, to top it all off, behaviour that increasingly suggested I was manic-depressive (a term I prefer to bipolar disorder). The counsellor at the daytox program proved to be a life saver, eventually persuading me to attend recovery meetings. I eventually ended up at Homewood Psychiatric Hospital in Guelph. Homewood was a civilized but firm institution that allowed me to dry out, to start getting honest with myself and others, to understanding that the only solution they had was to get us on a lifelong pattern of 12 Step meetings and, as a bit of a sidebar, allowing me quality time with a psychiatrist where she put me on lithium carbonate, which I take to this date. It regulates mental/emotional cycles and contributes to my sobriety: my alcoholism wasn’t caused by my manic-depression, but they feed each other.

It’s interesting that I can take pills for manic-depression, my neurological disorder, achy muscles, sunlight deprivation, and other issues that come and go. For my alcoholism there are no such pills and, though I applaud the various scientists working on the case, I do wonder if they will ever succeed. So far there have been pills that make you violently ill if you drink (antabuse), naltrexone to eliminate the pleasure and reduce the cravings, campral for withdrawal symptoms, and a handful of others. These are not so compelling sounding. For a drug to be effective in “curing” my alcoholism, it would have to take away my self-centeredness, my fear, and my resentments. Addicts don’t have a monopoly on these character defects but, for me, when they are inflamed, there is always a danger that I might drink, drug and fall into a melodramatic, melancholic, poor-me (pour me a drink), self-flagellating, stupor.

So part of my recovery has been doing the things I have to keep those defects at bay. If you know me, you might wonder if that’s working, but I’m pretty sure it is. I’m pretty sure the combination of things that I am doing in that regard (as well as taking lithium) has made me more chill (or at least neutral). I am not prone to disappointment or anger, but I’m also less prone to excitement and anticipation. Something may be lost in tamping down these emotions, but I can’t afford to fall off the wagon. I’m pretty sure I might die.

The most important part of my recovery though, has been the sense of community that I’ve found in fellow alcoholics and addicts, the idea that I’m “no longer alone”. That idea has had many meanings over the years, but it is the constant, and I fully expect it to be the core of my recovery as I go forward.

(PS: I have the occasional beef with the way some people interpret 12 step groups, but, rest assured, I have been an anti-authoritarian atheist the whole time I’ve been involved and it has not been a problem. I have been allowed to get and stay sober, be part of the community, do service on every level, and voice my opinion on all matters.)