I have not been taking my meds
My personalities have never felt better
The programming was not working
So I switched off all the channels
Unlike Neo I took both pills
Turned into my inner child
Now I’m rolling and running down hill
Still profoundly upset with our depravity
I would argue the point that we are not civilized humanity
My best thinking had me drinking, drugging, and With myself Stuck IN
One of the worst days of our marriage, for both Sheri and me, was July 14, 2021. Since we are a couple who experienced my active alcoholism for 25 years, you might be surprised to learn I was four-and-a-half years sober on that traumatic day. Even without alcohol, Sheri and I make occasional trips back into the pit of hell with emotional relationship relapses.
Relationship relapses often spin out of control as both partners revert to deflection, manipulation, overreaction and self-protection – all skills learned during active addiction. But before we pull out the old tools of dysfunction, there has to be a spark. An impetus. A new or refreshed wound around which the spiraling decline can revolve.
We lie to ourselves and others about minor things, major things, and all the things in between. There was before, then there was after, and again, everything in between.
The things we wished we had said and the things we ended up saying that weren’t quite right and didn’t land the way we wished they would, and possibly their feelings wouldn’t have been so hurt, or there wouldn’t have been such a misunderstanding if only the words had been right.
But the right words are for the right situations, and when things are messy, and misunderstandings are already the tapestry that has been laid, that encloses and surrounds a relationship, it doesn’t seem to matter how one says anything.
“If we don’t find the trust we’ve never known, I’m not sure how we can continue.”
I wrote those words five years ago as part of the most popular post ever published on the Sober and Unashamed blog. The post is titled, “Inevitability of an Alcoholic Divorce.” I was about two-and-a-half years into recovery at the time, and I didn’t see how our marriage would survive sobriety. I remember that feeling like it was yesterday. Do you know what that feels like?
Our marriage did survive. In fact, it is thriving like I never thought possible. Our partnership is working because we both individually found the self-esteem to love ourselves so we could love and trust each other. And we found the self-esteem through vulnerability and authenticity. We talked honestly and we listened. To each other, but more importantly, to lots of other people. And our vulnerability was rewarded in ways we never imagined.
I didn’t hate my job. Not since I worked for an alcoholic landscaper one summer in high school have I ever hated my job. He was cranky in the mornings (hungover) and short tempered in the afternoons (drunk). He was OK at lunch, my one respite from hand weeding gardens at some big, corporate office complex. That job sucked. I was too much of a wimpy people pleaser to quit, so I pretended I had mono for a couple of weeks, then they just sort of forgot about me and got some other teenaged schlump to pull weeds and take the mild abuse.
As an adult, both before and after I crossed the invisible line into alcohol addiction, I really got into my jobs. I could see the path for career advancement and business growth, and I pursued goals with passion. I didn’t hate my jobs.
Popular media and other cultural depictions of us guys as horny, thoughtless seed scatterers are crass, shallow, and add a lot of unnecessary fuel to the inferno of misinformation and stigma blazing around the very real (and really important) topic of sexual desire discrepancy in romantic relationships. Take, for instance, the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary series episode titled, “Broke.” The very real (and really unfortunate) cultural trend of counting the number of, “baby mommas,” male athletes can impregnate as a source of bragging rights is one of the main topics. And as we have come to expect in our society, when our professional athlete superheros brag about something, the message trickles down. In this case, the message is that lots of indiscriminate, unprotected sex without acknowledging the very real (and really generationally traumatic) consequences is a sign of virility and success. It is part of what it means to be a man. I don’t relate. I don’t feel that way, but I am a man, so I am at least ever-so-slightly, tangentially tarnished.
But like with most stereotypes, amid the legions of uneducated assumptions is the kindling of truth from which the fire was started.
All alcoholism has underlying issues. Drinking often starts as joyful and social, but eventually, when we cross that invisible line into addiction, we are medicating something. Often, the thing we are medicating is adverse childhood experiences.
But childhood experiences can serve another purpose. They can ground us and give us strength. Memories of safety and family in childhood can remind us of the power of pure and unadulterated love. They can help explain how we became the adults we are today.
And when embroiled in the chaos of alcoholism – whether our own drinking or the addiction of someone we love – those innocent memories help us focus on the safety and connection we all deserve.
I’m proud to introduce these beautiful childhood memories from Kelly – a talented writer and dear, sweet friend. This recollection is not about alcoholism. It is an anchor to the simplicity of life that we humans unwittingly complicate. Can you remember the safety of your cottage?
***
For as long as I can remember, the cottage has been a part of my life.
For two weeks every August, my grandmother and aunt took my three siblings and me up to the cottage located halfway down the Keweenaw Peninsula, the northernmost section of Michigan’s U.P. Excitement made sleep a struggle the nights before leaving for the cottage.
We were warming up running a lap around campus. My boss was in the lead, and I was the trailing sheppard making sure we corralled all 60 of the high school soccer players we had assembled for a Saturday morning training session. As we approached the pitch to end our roughly one-mile warmup, I slowed my pace to separate myself from the back of the pack. Saturday morning was coffee time, you see, so jogging with a full bladder was becoming increasingly uncomfortable.
For a long time, I couldn’t silence the screaming in my head.
It wailed day and night, night and day.
Years passed while it ranted and raved, quieting occasionally in slumber.
After a while, I wrestled that wraith into a box where it remained my captive.
Its muffled screams blending into the soundscape – white noise humming and buzzing at the periphery of my mind like the foggy mist of last night’s dream.
“Sexual health.”
Those two words in response to the question, “Oh yeah, what in?” elicit stunned looks and awkward silence with consistency. Depending on who I am talking to, I hesitate to varying degrees to acknowledge that I am finishing up my master’s degree.
People who know my passion for writing about and studying maladaptive coping mechanisms like alcoholism assume psychology. Others who know my wife and I are self-employed assume it’s an MBA. A master’s degree in sexual health drops jaws to the floor. Those who compose themselves always have one or both of the same two follow-up questions. “You’ve got to be the only 50-year-old heterosexual white cisgender male in the program, right?” and, “Why?” The answer to the first question is, “I am meeting a lot of people I would not otherwise encounter, and it’s great to hear different perspectives (that is a long way of saying, ‘yes.’)” The answer to the second question is so simple in my mind, but it’s a bit hard to explain.